Reward cards have always been a major part of the Splinterlands game. I've always loved receiving cards ever since I started playing this game. I remember the first End Of Season rewards that I ever got in bronze league and how I felt about it. The first eos chest I ever opened shook around a little before the brief glow presented a Venator Kinjo. That was the first legendary card that I ever owned and I got it from a bronze chest which had a 0.2% chance of containing a legendary.
Back then, Venator Kinjo was one of the recent reward cards and it was worth a little above $13. That experience was really exciting for a beginner like me and it got me much more interested in the game.
Things are different now with the introduction of soulbound reward cards. You can't just earn them and know how much they are immediately. In fact, these cards are currently not worth anything because they cannot be traded, rented, burned, delegated or transferred. Bummer right?
Well, not so much. Let's talk a little bit more about these soul bound reward cards.
Reward Cards Are Now Soulbound
On January 20th, splinterlands announced the new soulbound reward cards with a pretty cool theme. You can read the original post here. There are 43 of these new cards with 37 monsters and 6 summoners. Below is a breakdown of the number of cards by rarity;
What about the print supply?
This is a major concern for me regarding these reward cards. Other rewards cards had a print supply that we could always reference to when necessary. These new soulbound cards, on the other hand, are very different. Instead of having a print supply, these cards will stop getting printed about 1-2 years from when they were announced. By then, we would be able to unbind them with DEC. I'll talk about the DEC later but let's look at the print rate for now.
We are just in the second season since these new cards were released but it seems like there are a lot of them already. According to this tool, the common cards are each already over 370,000 BCX in supply. That's a lot in just a few weeks! This high print rate can be attributed to the fact that we can now pull out multiple copies of a card from a single chest. Of course, this feature is necessary for leveling up the cards quickly as they cannot be purchased just yet. I already have a level 2 Lobb Lowland (the Earth summoner).
Speaking of summoners...
We Can Earn Summoners!
The first thing that got me really excited while reading this post initially was the idea of receiving summoners as rewards. From what I know, there have not been summoners in reward cards since Kretch. Now, we will not just receive a dragon summoner but also a summoner for every other element. That is really cool! It's even better considering that these 6 mana rare summoners come with the new Conscript ability that allows for a gladiator card in ranked battles and an extra one in guild brawls.
Among the six summoners, I have a level 2 Lobb Lowland, a level 1 Helios Matriarch and a level 2 gold foil Helios Matriarch.
Eventual Value
This is my favorite thing about these reward cards. According to the official post, these cards will eventually be able to be unbounded but we would have to "infuse them with DEC". This actually brings to life an interesting game mechanic.
Think about it, the cards that would be on the market would be the ones that have been unbounded but given that some players would be playing with their cards, not every card would be unbounded and therefore not every card would be part of the market supply. This means that, unless a player wants to immediately rent or sell his cards, there would no point infusing them with DEC. The price of these cards may be well affected by their market supply rather than the entire supply.
But what if players have more cards than they actually need? Could this lead to flooding of the markets with a large number of cards?
Well, we would have to wait and see how that works out. Still, one way I think this can be curbed is by combining the cards. Players will have to combine their cards before unbinding them if the cost of unbinding remains constant across all levels. This would also reduce the total supply of the cards but may also cause low availability of lower level cards in the market. New players could have a hard time because of this. Oddly enough, I am excited to see how all this would play out.
Cards On Land
During the Q&A of the most recent townhall, Aggy mentioned that infinite staking of cards would be allowed Land phase 1.5. Now, I am not sure if the soul bound cards would be able to be staked just yet but that would be answered in the whitepaper as stated here. Working on the assumption that the soulbound cards will work on land, it would be a great way to put these cards to immediate use as they would become more desirable. More people would want to play the game to get these cards, level them up and stake them rather than having to purchase cards to stake.
Are The Bots Finally Losing?
I have known that Splinterlands has been fighting the bots epidemic ever since I started playing the game. I don't know if they're winning or not just yet. People say that there has been progress made by the team but I don't know how they measure that so I can't confirm or disprove it. Regarding the soulbound reward cards though, I have conflicting opinions. The bots may be affected by the soul bound reward cards in the short term but that does not mean they cannot function long term. Sure we will not see so much reward cards in the market from bot farms but things can change down the line. Maybe, the bots will keep getting the cards and just flood them in the markets later on. I don't know if this can be a reality but the infusion of DEC should curb this in some way.
Final Words
The new reward cards are an exciting development in the game. I really cannot wait to get most of them. Right now, I have pulled just 12 of these cards but I have been able to level up a good number of them. I also have 2 gold cards which includes the summoner that I mentioned earlier. Well, I better get playing so that I can pull more cards.
That's All For Today, Warrior!
- Unless otherwise stated, all images used in this post are from the Splinterlands game.
- All dividers were made by me with Canva.
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Ya let's collect these soulbound reward cards 🤩
We can’t stop now!!🤩
Ya maybe I won't get max but hopefully at gold league 🥺
It's probably ok if you get just enough for your league
Ya gold would be ideal for me 🤪and seems reasonable from the droprate
Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
Thank you 🙏🏽