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Behold The Legendary Gold Foil Crunch With The Splinterlands Land Expansion

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@flauwy
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For the longest time, the rarest cards in Splinterlands were looked upon as some weird extravagancy without much value other than their rarity itself. This has changed over time and while rarity alone becomes now more important than ever, the usefulness of the golden cards, especially the legendaries, is already on another level and will skyrocket with the land expansion.

Rarity

The first factor for discovering a price for any card in the game is its usability rather than its rarity. This was true and obvious from day one back in the Alpha days of Splinterlands, although few, including myself, didn't really anticipate how the concept of rarity will play out down the road.

The game is designed with an increasing hyperdeflation for all cards, through burning and combining, reducing the supply forever. More about this concept in my article: The Hyperdeflation Of Splinterlands: Why The Cards Are Exploding In Price

This is now also increased through lost and inactive accounts as well as collectors who hold Splinterlands cards outside of HIVE as NFTs on Ethereum or WAX. Some of these cards will probably never be transferred back, to keep the minting number of that card on those blockchains. While minting numbers have no relevance for Splinterlands players, they can very much increase the value of the card when held as a true NFT on ETH or WAX (cards on HIVE are technically no NFTs although still pretty much the same thing). Collectors/Investors pay top Dollars for a mint #1 (and also other numbers).

When we look at the gold foil legendary (GFL) cards, we see that there are only a few dozen of each in circulation, especially from editions that are already out of print, like Alpha and Beta, as well as some of the Promo and Reward cards. The highest print numbers have the Untamed GFLs with now around ~100 and still a few more about to be printed by opening all the remaining Untamed packs. For example, the GFL Beta summoner Plado Emberstorm has only 40 of them in total supply. If you want to play with that card in higher leagues or higher gold foil tournaments, you probably need to combine 2 or even 4 of them, to level it up to a useful level - which will further lower the total supply forever.

Long story short: All GFLs are ultra rare and will even become rarer over time.

DEC Advantage

The first direct advantage of playing with gold foil cards was introduced with a Dark Energy Crystal (DEC) bonus for winning ranked matches in the league system of Splinterlands. DEC is the in-game currency that can be used to purchase cards or pretty much pay for anything else in the game. It is generated as a reward for ranked matches and by burning cards. The DEC bonus for winning ranked matches with gold foil cards is 5% for each card, adding to up to 35% bonus (7x for six monsters and one summoner).

Combined, this is considerable bonus, if these cards are actually being used in ranked matches and will add up to a lot of extra income over time. Obviously, it will take long to justify the high prices of GFLs through that bonus and on its own will probably never create a return of investment - but it is a nice extra. This point will probably have the least impact on card prices but is still relevant enough to mention in this context.

Collection Power & Tournaments

A big advantage for playing with gold foil cards in general and GFLs in specific, are gold foil tournaments. These are special tournaments reserved for gold foil cards only, that usually offer considerable prices, even if you rank relatively low in the overall competition. There are multiple dedicated gold foil tournaments for lower and higher leagues every single week. Because of the higher card prices for gold foils and the much lower supply, the competition is automatically reduced a lot.

A few months ago, Splinterlands introduced the Collection Power system, where the DEC burn value of each card on one account is being added together, to create an entry barrier to higher leagues and tournaments. For gold foil tournaments, only the gold foils that are currently playable by that account and that are also eligible for that particular tournament (depending on what editions are allowed to be played), are considered for the Collection Power score.

These entry levels are flexible at the whim of the developers and currently extremely steep. I used to have a gold foil collection worth over $6k USD and was still not eligible for the largest all-edition gold-only tournaments. I had to undertake a large investment in multiple GFLs (because legendary cards have naturally larger burn values and hence higher Collection Power), to become finally eligible for all available gold foil tournaments. The return from these events are so large, that it made my investment decision easier.

Land Expansion

The largest benefit for GFLs will enter the ecosystem with the upcoming Land Expansion. Although exact details are still to be announced, we already have a decent idea of how economics are supposed to work there:

  • Each land will be a NFT, limited in total supply
  • Each land will produce one of three different resource categories
  • Each resource category has a different rarity
  • Over eleven different resources are already announced
  • Resources are used to build and upgrade buildings and craft items and spells
  • On each land you can build one of various buildings with DEC and resources
  • Each building can be upgraded with DEC and resources
  • You can stake monsters and summoners as workers into buildings
  • Each worker will give production boni based on level, rarity, edition and foil
  • Each land will come with one of fourteen different terrain types
  • Each terrain type will favor workers from one of the different splinters

For more details about the land expansion check out these two older posts of mine:

Monster Workers in the Land Expansion: Will The Demand For Splinterlands Cards Grow?
What Are The Best-In-Slot Workers For The Splinterlands Expansion

Some of these land NFTs will be similarly rare as GFLs and produce the rarest category of resources. Every owner of these lands (and likely for most other lands as well to effectively farm ALL resources) will try to get the highest returns out of them and increase their production with all available options like building upgrades - and of course the best workers possible - GFLs!

Since the terrain type will favor a specific splinter, you will need one (or several?) fitting workers from that very same splinter, in order to get the best production rate for this single land plot. Assuming you want to farm ALL resources, you need at least one land plot from all of the eleven resources we already know about. Now if we also assume that all these plots have a different terrain type, you will need workers from all splinters, to match the terrain types. And if you want to maximize their potential, you want those workers to be GFLs, ideally on max level and from the older editions.

Guess what: There is not enough supply of GFLs - or even gold foils in general, to create enough workers for everyone. In total there are currently 4245 GFLs in circulation and many, if not most, are not leveled up yet. And there will be 150,000 land plots in circulation...

Conclusion

Rarity, Collection Power requirements for tournaments and especially the Land Expansion has already and will likely continue to create a growing demand for cards, especially for gold foils and specifically for GFLs. When land is released, many players will be ready to buy items and spells to stay competitive and the only way to get them is from other players or by crafting them themselves (which is nearly impossible due to the random drop factor for all crafted items). Hence, all resources will create a passive income for the land owners, especially with those rarer resource categories. And the better the workers, the higher this passive income will be.

Now do the math what this potentially incredible demand and massive supply crunch will do for the price of all Splinterlands cards, especially the Gold Foil Legendaries!

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