Splinterlands | Thoughts on New Reward Cards

By costanza | costanza | 18 Feb 2023

A full set of 43 new Reward Cards were released recently for Splinterlands and there has been a full season of earning them so far. These are some initial thoughts I have about them...

Collecting New Reward Cards is Fun
I think pretty much everyone agrees that collecting cards in the game, leveling them up, and building your collection is a fun gameplay loop. The new reward cards pretty much exactly bring this which is great for the game even though they aren't direct rewards that can be sold.

The print rate, especially for common cards, seems really high as on my Alt account where I play in Gold League with Level 3 Summoners I already have some of the cards leveled up to where I can maximally use them. The fact that potions are used and there is a chance of multiple cards to be included makes the gold card pulls potentially really juicy. I still have yet to get a Legendary card on both my accounts combined and those likely will once again be hard to acquire.

As for the cards themselves, the summoners at 6 Mana cost feel underwhelming while the Martyr and Weapon Training abilities seem to be really fun but possibly also overpowered. With Game rules where all cards get opportunity, it just gives a massive boost right from the start when placing it between monsters that have a double attack.

Unclear Minting Rules
What bothers me the most about the Reward Cards right now (and also with land) is that there is still no clear info on what it will require to turn them into real tradable reward cards. What has been said is that it will be possible to mint the cards after they go out of print and it will cost more than the DEC burning cost.

I hope they manage to balance this is a fair way making it both into a sink for DEC and Vouchers. It probably would be good if leveled-up cards would be cheaper to mint compared to level 1 cards as those generally can be sold for more.

One thing is almost sure and that is that a lot of DEC will be needed by players and only a part of the cards will actually get turned into real tradable cards. It most likely will act as a way to pump the SPS price as everything is being done to get it to peg and there simply isn't enough of it not to have players start burning SPS.

Souldbound Reward Cards Future Problems
I see 2 main problems that could arise...

Botfarm owners can easily grind these cards now and have an easy way to extract value as summoners are part of the set. A solution for this could be to turn the Soulbound Reward cards into the equivalent of Starter Cards that no longer have the power to earn the moment the new set is released. That also will give more incentives for players to turn them into real reward cards. This also somehow brings the downside that what used to be earnings now kind of turns into another expense in the game.
The 2nd problem is that Collection power is quickly becoming totally useless. I know the system will change in the near future but I fear that with the new system it will incentiveze players too much just to have 1 or 2 strong decks instead of striving to get a more complete card collection.

Conclusion

While the new reward cards are fun, it feels like common cards are printed too quickly while at the same time, it feels impossible to ever collect enough of the legendary cards during the time that the reward cards can be accumulated. It would be nice if the rules to eventually mint them would be made clear already and some measures need to be taken in order not to have a new massive bot farm issue years from now. All this said, it's nice to see that the game is more fun than ever at the moment all while the economy has been holding up quite well.

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