Should I Buy Conclave Arcana Packs?

There has been a trauma or overhang about buying packs for those who started with the Chaos Legion Presale last October 2021 (more than 3 years ago). There was massive NFT gaming hype (i.e. Axie) in 2021 and when @splinterlands released Chaos Legion, management thought of taking advantage of the hyped demand; thus, printing a lot of packs. When the hype died down, so did the demand; hence we were all left with a large supply of Chaos Legion packs/cards. An investment loss.

Each time there was a new release after Chaos Legion, I no longer participated. Except with Rebellion when they introduced the Conflict system where one has to stake assets from the new set in order to get chances of airdrops.

Presale Involvement

I liked the changes they made starting with Rebellion and there was an impending change of guards as soon as Chaos Legion gets out of Modern Ranked Battles. So I no longer hesitated in participating in the Conclave Arcana Presale last April 22, 2025. I chose to buy Legendary packs based on my analysis, which showed greater promise during that time. My estimates though did not account for the black/arcane foils which hold a lot of value today and could have changed my decision back then.

I have spent 408k DEC (~$408) and the main motivation for that number is to get at least the minimum promo cards for which are as follows:

One Rare Promo Card (Arcane Skinwalker) for every 40,000 DEC or Credits spent
One Legendary Promo Card (Gramel the Hunger) for every 400,000 DEC or Credits spent

This means I am guaranteed to get 10 Rare Promo Card (Arcane Skinwalker) and 1 Legendary Promo Card (Gramel the Hunger). The actual result is as follows:

Bonus: 2 of my Rare Promo Cards are Gold Foils! Not bad!

My spending is just ranked 417 so I didn't get any further rewards after that (only up to top 250). The rank 250th spender (at 1.6M Dec or ~$1600) receives "The Mystic" Rare title. If the demand is slow, I could've reached that rank but this means more people are willing to spend more than me, which is a good sign for the game.

Should I Open Or Not? -- Refer to Peakmonsters Pack Stats

As per my PreSale analysis post, I wasn't still sure on what to do with the packs whether I open it or not. This is where Peakmonsters comes in handy. They have a Pack Stats page that helps show the value of the contents per pack.

Conclave Arcana Legendary Pack Stats

As seen above, opening legendary packs are somewhat giving break-even values; however, take note that 60% of the expected value is based on Gold and Black foils which have relatively lower probabilities. So definitely using all potions is a must. The Law of Large Numbers applies here such that to reach the expected value shown here, more packs should be bought.

Open Sesame!

I first opened my 7 out of 17 packs to leave an even number for later. You can reminisce it with me here because the results were outstanding:

https://splinterlands.com/mana-well?t=c512d29e7ecf771c7657593ad549cca7d9f15089

The results were encouraging as I was able to pull 2 Gold Legendary cards and even 2 Legendary Summoners (Sheng Xiao)!

Sample of the card pulls below:

I then opened the next 10 packs but the results were dismal. I felt a bit of buyer's remorse as if I was in a casino. That earlier winnings eventually led me to open more but ended up with a net loss. :P

Overall, upon opening my packs just today after more than a month of holding it, this is the actual value of my 17 Legendary packs.

If you're curious what were my top draws, here is the list from Gold foil to Epic cards.

Retrospective

I lost 10% of my cost so I guess not so bad. It was still a great experience and that is part of the risk. Next to determine is whether I sell these immediately to market, or rent it out (if yield is high). Also, Alchemy packs have better value so maybe I try to raise some money to buy and open those. We'll see. :)