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You don't have to, its a choice. You can play in Novice or Bronze for relatively cheap. One could also post about the game here on the Hive Network on frontends such as Splintertalk.io and earn crypto for our content. That crypto can then be used to purchase in game NFT's that are used for game play. There's lots of ways to build a fun to play deck without spending much.

Personally this game has made me money.
Takes money to make money I suppose.