Just over 1 year ago the initial pre-sale of 300,000 Alpha edition booster packs sold out. Shortly thereafter, the Beta edition packs went up for sale, which included a reprinting of all of the cards in the Alpha edition plus many new ones.
A total of 900,000 Beta edition booster packs were made available for sale, and as of the time of writing, there are under 100,000 left. As the Beta edition booster packs are close to selling out, we thought it would be good time to discuss the plan moving forward and provide a retrospective of what things look like for the Alpha edition cards one year after they sold out.
Splinterlands: Untamed
Once the Beta edition booster packs sell out, we plan to start pre-selling packs for a completely new edition of cards that we are calling "Untamed". It's important to note that the Untamed edition will consist entirely of new cards, and no cards from the Alpha or Beta editions will ever be reprinted again.
The Untamed edition will be similar in size to the Beta edition and will contain all of the cards necessary to play the game since this will be the primary set of cards available to new players going forward.
We are taking great care, however, to ensure that the new cards are complementary to the existing Alpha and Beta cards, rather than a replacement for them, so that newer players who want to compete at the highest levels will still need to acquire many of the older cards to be able to build the best teams for all available rulesets.
Of course, since Beta edition booster packs will no longer be available for sale through us, players will need to purchase the cards they need or unopened packs from other players - the early adopters - on the market! Keep an eye out for more information about the Untamed edition as it gets closer to the pre-sale.
Alpha Numbers
First, we would like to take a look at some numbers around the Alpha edition packs and cards from when they sold out through the following year. While obviously there is no guarantee about what will happen in the future, it should give an idea about what could happen with the Beta edition packs and cards going forward.
Again, it's very important to note that all of the Alpha edition cards were reprinted in Beta, whereas once Beta sells out none of these cards will ever be available again except in secondary markets.
Here are some interesting numbers/stats about the Alpha packs and cards:
- Sold out on 9/11/2018
- 28,244 packs sold on the last day
- 57,627 packs sold in the last 3 days
- 267,338 Alpha packs were sold (rest were bonuses/giveaways)
- $820,000 approximate current total Alpha card market cap
- Alpha packs currently selling between $5 - $9 on the market
Our two key takeaways from this are:
- Packs sell out very fast when it gets down to the end; and
- The Alpha edition cards appreciated in value by over 50% in total.
Another interesting fact is that the vast majority of Alpha packs were purchased using STEEM, which was trading in the $1 - $2 range for most of the time the Alpha packs were on sale. This means that had you taken $1,000 worth of STEEM and purchased Alpha packs last summer, the cards would be worth around $1,500 now vs the STEEM which is, unfortunately, only worth about $160.
Beta Numbers
Now let's take a look at some rough numbers for the Beta edition. As you likely know, there were 900,000 Beta edition booster packs created in total, which creates a total of 4.5M Beta edition cards. While that may sound like a lot, due to the card combining and burning mechanics it actually ends up with a very small amount of max level versions of the cards that will ever exist.
The following table shows some rough numbers of the current amount of each rarity of card that has been printed to date, an estimate of the amount that will be printed in the remaining packs, and the total number of max level versions of each card there will be. Please bear in mind that these are rough numbers and estimates. The Epic and Legendary summoners are split out since they were introduced at a later date via an airdrop and have a lower total distribution than the other cards with the same rarity.
| Rarity | Current | New | Total | Max Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 170000 | 15625 | 185625 | 368 |
| Rare | 65000 | 4348 | 69348 | 603 |
| Epic | 18000 | 1176 | 19176 | 417 |
| Legendary | 5000 | 400 | 5400 | 491 |
| Epic Summoner | 10000 | 1176 | 11176 | 243 |
| Legendary Summoner | 2000 | 400 | 2400 | 218 |
As you can see, in most cases no more than 300 - 500 people will ever be able to own a max level version of these cards. The Legendary Summoners are by far the most rare of all, and arguably the most important too. This table also only deals with the regular versions of the cards. The number of max level gold foil versions of the cards will be MUCH smaller.
Got Beta?
We can't predict the future and we don't know what is going to happen. We can promise, however, that we will do everything that we can to grow this game by 10X or more as quickly as we can. We live and breathe Splinterlands and we want nothing more to be able to share in the success of the game with our player base that has made all of this possible.
We're now at under 100,000 Beta edition booster packs remaining. The rate of pack sales has been increasing as the amount remaining drops lower. This is your last chance to get these cards outside of the secondary markets. So one question you should ask yourself is...
Sweet. Cant wait for the new cards
YESSS!!!! Love these Beta's!!!! When they first came out I rejected them, LOL! I said oh no I am all Alpha.....then a few days later got a few and was hooked! I love these beta cards!!!
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i igree
greetings, @steemmonsters
I am buying mine beta packs :D
Awesome first year! I can't wait to see what's in store next. Keep up the great work.
I used to have DEC. Then the ability to buy Beta packs with DEC happened. I no longer have DEC. :)
Haha! Same here. Here's the 1 million-DEC tip --> Use your DEC to buy/upgrade your GOLD cards. The gold cards earn bonus DEC (%5 per card per won battle), and so with the gold cards you don't actually LOSE/SPEND your DEC, but actually INVEST it into cards which will earn DEC into the perpetual future. You're welcome...
Only one year and Splinterlands are already making history!!
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Crazy how time flies and yes one day I'll make the regret selling your Alpha cards post.... Congratulations, let's keep it going...
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No reprints is nice.
Do yous have any plans with increasing the DEC value of BETA cards and the capture rate Beta cards currently get once BETA has sold out?
I have my fingers crossed in hopes that's the plan yous intend on going with. The current DEC gap between Alpha and Beta is too big when we consider BETA had allot of other things tossed its way that hurt the cards value such as the old league giving out BETA boosters and the current potions that increase the drop rates of the more sought after BETA cards while not working on ALPHA boosters. PROMO cards that came after BETA creation also earning a better capture rate is a mild KITN for us BETA collectors as well.
Of course ALPHA is the first edition and should reap the most benefits. Yous are doing great things with the game but it would be nice if BETA got at least a slight increase in the DEC department once Beta Boosters are no longer available for purchase from your website.
I'm really looking forward to the new untamed edition to see the difference in gameplay compared to alpha and beta pack cards. Keep up the awesome work guys!
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May look into grabbing a beta pack or two while they are still there.
They make great tokens.
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For real this has been quite a ride wish I could pick up more right now. I will try to get a little more at least before they are gone
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I actually have some mixed feelings about this announcement. You made an incredible game, and no doubt scarcity is a good thing to build value. But, if you're aiming for mass adoption, and you say the new cards are not a substitute but a complement to the existing ones, that means the vast majority of the future players will never be able to get maxxed alpha/beta cards, because they simply won't exist. And won't this create a big gap between old and new players? Or am I just overreacting? :)
Great point! I second that and would like to stress on the means of how to get mass adoption, like making phone apps for the game and reducing the complexity for people that don’t know about blockchain stuff.
For me that’s mass adoption strategy.
What you have to understand about this game is that it is and always will be weighted in favor of a very few people at the top. Matt and Aggroed designed it this way so that they and a small group of other people would benefit to a disproportionate degree. They have tons of alts, but they designed it so tracing who owns which ones is basically impossible. But those of us who have been around since last year have seen how everything benefits the people at the top more. DEC distrubutions are massively weighted in favor of the people at the very top. The tournament rules and rewards are weighted to people who own golds and alphas. The season rewards are massively top heavy. Last year, they had it so the early adopters were able to farm lots of beta packs through season rewards. If you can think of an incentive in this game, it will be top heavy, because Matt and Aggroed's alts are at the top. They and a half dozen other people probably own more than 50% of the cards in existence, between all their alts. This isn't going to change. In fact, it will only continue to get worse, because the top heavy rewards continue to make the issue more pronounced as time goes on.
I wonder if one still has enough time to create a team in the given time frame if the number of playable cards per splinter is increasing. It will last longer to find the cards one wants to use ...
Maybe to reduce the number of playable cards per match again, there should be more than only two combined rule sets?
One could add rule sets like, for example, "Neutrals only" ...
"One could add rule sets like, for example, "Neutrals only" ..."
Very good idea !
Or change the Rise of Common to a really Rise of Common, as actually you cannot use only common but also rare monster.
New players(under 3 months) don't be sucked in by the scarcity fear tactics used to drive pack sales near the end of its sell life we heard all these same points before for alpha when the were running out and it's been a year now and look at the alpha market. 10s of thousands of cards still plenty avalible to buy at reasonable prices at 1/3rd the card count. Once betas sell out therell be a spike in sales but it'll level out and then increase slowly like alphas did. Also don't be fooled by the promises of player expansion 10x we have been at this for over a year now we've seen the rise of adding random battle conflicts,reward cards,tournaments,tron players,dec,and guilds and the total population has increased maybe 2x since 1st month of battles went live. And while that is a great accomplishment if all of those things only doubled our playerbase i dont honestly see the coming changes turning that an additional 10x anytime soon. Have fun but be weary of great old uncle aggroeds wild claims of fame riches and glory only those at the top will be seeing anywhere close to a great payday.
I guess that an app version is going to drive adoption. Most people want to play on mobile. I know I would like that
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This is true. Aggroed is supposedly in charge of marketing and has made promises all year long about how the game is going to grow but it's just promises. His only strategy is to bring in a small number of whales. Honestly, I think they're facing issues with not being able to scale this quickly on the steem platform and so they are stalling for time, while stringing all of us investors along. They haven't made a single effort all year to gain one bit of media coverage, despite the launch of the tournaments, the rental market, the DEC, etc. Every time a newsworthy event comes along they stick their hands under their asses and sit on it. The promise of an imminent 10X of the user base is probably illegal, because it's not just a forward looking statement and they aren't actually taking any sort of significant action to create that outcome anytime in the near future. This game is going to remain niche. Gods Unchained and other competitors were behind Splinterlands earlier this year but are now almost ready to begin scaling their userbases and generating lots and lots of media coverage. It's a straight up lie for aggroed to claim this game will be increasing by 10X in the near future.
Very interesting post. If player basis grow than cards will be really espensive I think and one point missed in this post: Many of cards are burned, so the max-level-cards will be even less than wrote here.
!giphy investment
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Right on, thanks for the sub 100k pack warning (kind of like the 2 minute warning in football). Yes those packs flew, and the perspective is on the nuts, steem was way higher and easier to come by, and when the buying started it hit and stopped very suddenly due to the packs running out. When ruthlessly efficient people like me start buying packs, look out, and I have been grabbing them off the market for the last few weeks now from the SCOT token. The limits are pretty crazy and this will be an extinction of new production of many cards we've gotten used to "always being around in continual print," but soon that will that will not be the case which will be interesting to follow the FOMO for sure.
Hey @steemmonsters crew! Thanks for the numbers and predictions on the beta cards, and the optimistic sneek-peek into the next edition to come. Unfortunately, I have some disturbing news today, and thought I would post it here (and in Discord) for other players to see. I hope you will respond. Two months ago you made us aware of your "upvote feature", whereby we can send any amount of DEC to @splinterlands and get a nice upvote from "@steemmonsters". I have been doing that, assuming that this is a totally legitimate thing to do (as I wouldn't have even known about it if you hadn't brought it to our attention here in your official posts). Today I sent 2,000 DEC for my new post : https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@transcript-junky/steem-monsters-drug-wars-power-strategy-tips-26 , and after the usual nice ~ $5.00 (~40% upvote) from you I was dismayed to then find a massive DOWNVOTE from @trafalgar and @traf (two seemingly associated accounts, based on their content). It seems that the reasoning for the downvote is because I am "buying votes". I don't look at it that way. In fact, your "upvote service" is the ONLY one I use, and I only use it for ONE of my three weekly Steemit series posts (you can check my profile). I have been assuming that this was totally legit, since you actually posted about it. So why am I then being punished for using this service as it was presented? This has cost me 2,000 of my hard-earned DEC this week, and so I would like to appeal to the SteemMonster admin for BOTH an explanation as to whether I have been "abusing" your upvote feature, and secondly, if you recommend that I STOP using your own feature, based on the risk of having my posts related to your game (and using it's native token) downvoted, thereby losing the tokens I have earned from the game. If it turns out to indeed be too risky for me to continue using the upvote feature then I would like to request some form of compensation (ONLY for this new post, because none of the others have been downvoted in the amount which basically cancels out your entire upvote). For instance, a few complementary beta packs (2-3) would be fair, since the upvote is (40% - $5.59). You guys have always been VERY FAIR, and so hopefully we can solve this without me losing my 2,000 DEC - especially since I had NO IDEA I was even doing anything potentially "wrong". If you DO compensate me for the loss I would also like to ask for your advice as to whether I should even bother using the upvote service if I (and other players) run the risk of having our entire DEC contribution wiped out with a large downvote. Please respond and advise, and I plan to contact some of the admin on Discord later today. Hopefully, I will get a response here before having to spend time doing that. I love the game, and am not on the "offensive" here. But I think it is justified for me to post this grievance due to the fact that I was simply following the "upvote feature" directions you provided here on this official profile. Any response is much appreciated. Thanks.
I was a little hesitant to try this game out. But I decided to buy the $10 Starter Pack and am really having a fun time. I have purchased quite a few of the Beta packs and will buy several more. The game is well designed and quite easy to get into. A few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.
Very true :) !tip 0.3 sbd hide
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What is the function of the booster packs, I don't think I have heard about it before.
Even if I had something to complain about I Won't since I am Grateful that my Steemmonster ALPHA's Are Worth More than my Steem Account. I actually benefitted over the past Year instead of Losing like 90% of my Steem Account Value........
@steemmonsters, Let's see team what UNTAMED will bring for us and for this Ecosystem. Keep up the continuous developments and exciting steps. Stay blessed.
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Una pregunta, una vez se acaben las tarjetas Beta, que recibirimos los participantes de sus concursos? Sobres Untamed?
Great achievement, I should say. Very impressive statistics, nice results :) I'm happy I did not miss beta version thought missed alpha. :)
Going to be A LOT of new monsters and some new summoners with this untamed set. Can't wait!
Just picked up another 500 plus 75 bonus :D