Push & Shove... But Don't Buy The Best Cards In The Game?

Don't Buy OP Cards

As I watched the price of the Shieldbearer fall after the release of Conqueror Jacek, I knew this was going to be the topic I wrote about in the first edition of my newsletter. I had been thinking about it for a while. Specifically, ever since we saw the onslaught of new cards and abilities put out to counter the Scarred Llama and Yodin. It was simple enough. If you’re at the beginning or middle stages of building your deck you shouldn’t buy OP cards. I’m still going to write about this, but Splinterlands OG Dwayne Cunningham, aka Infidel1258, took this idea up a notch. He did the unthinkable. He sold his Kitty!

Let’s backtrack. Why would I ever be telling you not to buy the best cards in the game? They’re the ones that lead you to the most wins right? Well, yes, but that’s just in the short-term. You have to understand the main motivation of the game developers to fully understand my point. In the ideal world, across infinity matches, all cards would contribute equally to winning. The outcome of any battle would be tilted solely by the skill of the players facing off (with a little RNG of course!). In practice this is obviously impossible, so what we see instead is game balancing on the fly. If specific cards become too powerful and “unfair”, new cards, and often even abilities, will be introduced into the game to try to balance things out.

The team does a fantastic job at this! Kitty, Yodin, and Llama have long dominated matches, so the team stepped in. While they haven’t yet found a way to counter Kitty well, the same cannot be said for Yodin and Llama. The once powerful trio have started to drift away from each other in price with Kitty largely maintaining its value.

So, what happened? Well, we saw the introduction of two new abilities, Deathblow and Reflection Shield, to counter Llama and Yodin respectively. The Vampiric Blossom was created SPECIFICALLY to stop one strategy, which is the Llama + Cube poison rule set meta. Reflection Shield and Grandmaster Rathe coming out within weeks of each other was a similarly clear reaction to Yodin dominating across all leagues.

The most recent example we’ve seen of this was Conqueror Jacek, who at least in part was in response to the budding Taunt meta we’ve seen take hold of higher leagues. As a result, the most infamous modern Taunt monster Shieldbearer started to see his price tumble. While still the most expensive rare monster, we’ve seen a significant decrease in his price since the release of the new legendary summoner for the fire splinter.

So am I telling you that you should run out and sell all your best cards? Not quite. I do often sell cards as people realize their value and they increase in price, with the full intention of buying them back later. And Infidel1258 makes a fantastic point. Selling his Kitty unlocked a ton of capital for him to reinvest across the ecosystem, potentially earning him far greater returns than what he can expect to receive from the most expensive modern card in the game. Am I going to sell my Kitty? Not right now, but there’s definitely a possibility I will do so in the future if the right opportunity presents itself!

The main thing you should take away from this post is that when building your deck you should focus on useful, but non-meta cards first. These will typically be lower priced and you’ll be able to spread your capital across far more cards than you would if you invested in the best cards in the game. Nothing worse than sinking 70% of your capital into one or two cards only for the developers to effectively nerf their value weeks later. Try to buy the cards that will EVENTUALLY be the best in the game, but people just haven’t realized it yet. Obviously, far easier said than done.

Thanks For Reading. As Always, Push & Shove.

Chaos Pack Tracker

After the flood of pack sales we saw following the end of the SPS airdrop, we've now come back down closer to the 10K pack per day average we had seen over the previous weeks and months. While we'll almost certainly see things pick up again as Conquerer Jacek gets closer, even if this pace were to continue we'd still be getting him in less than a month!

Reward Card Update

Take a look at the print rates on the original common reward cards! Getting closer and closer to that 75% threshold where historically we've seen some of the reward card prices start to tick higher. I do think this time will be a bit different though based on massive size of the prints and the move might occur later, but nevertheless, we're starting to see the light at the end of the print rate tunnel!

My Monetization Journey

Last, but certainly not least, I want to start being more open about my monetization journey with Splinterlands, so expect regular updates in these weekly newsletters!

July was a milestone month for me as it was the first month I was about to monetize my Youtube videos. It occurred midway through the month, so no surprise that number is low. Making up for the YouTube number was the Rathe airdrops, which added a big boost to my revenue.

I started my rental account in August, so it's nice to see that account start bringing in some DEC. Very excited to grow that even higher. Another edition in the month was the LP rewards. Who knows how long those yields will remain elevated, but I'm definitely going to take advantage of them while they are!

Finally, you can get a glimpse into the future from the "Other" section of the table. This newsletter is just the start of my planned offerings, which I hope will both benefit my community and help provide some diversity in my revenue streams. Exciting times ahead to say the least! I really appreciate you all being here!

GIVEAWAY WINNERS!

We breezed through the 100 subscriber goal for the second 10,000 DEC giveaway and I added a third 10,000 DEC giveaway for my Twitter followers, so let's giveaway 30,000 DEC! As always, I used a random wheel spinner. Here were the winners:

1. booboohabibi

2. Powis

3. Capricorn03

Congrats to our winners! If you didn't win, don't worry, there will be a lot more where that came from! Any time I launch something new or hit a milestone I always do giveaways, so stay tuned!

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