How expensive is Conflicts going to get?
Prologue
I got quite lucky with my last conflict, drawing 3 copies besides my 3 guaranteed ones and now am the happy owner of a Zyrx. While repairing my wagons and arranging them, I saw that I reached the 333,334 points/h with less wagons, as I had upgraded my deck a little, and was quite happy with that, feeling a lot better about conflicts after my critique.
Until I saw that this brings me only 2 guaranteed copies now. After Conflicts being 4x as expensive as in Rebellion, it's now going up even more in price. I wrote about me being de-motivated last time already, but did the economical effort to get into the game, and get at least a level 2 Airdrop, 3 CC. Now I'm sitting here and wondering, again - is it worth it?
(I adapted my Wagon calculator with the new values. Click here to find it within the Land Setup Calculator, download and/or copy to your won drive so you can sue it. Navigate to "Wagons" and play with it.)
New Costs
The newest Airdrop will need 850 entries for a guaranteed card, meaning more or less 118,100 points/hour. That's 7k more than last time. Luckily, card prices have come down a little, so the new CP/$ looks like this:
Epic Gold and Black Foil are still the most efficient for conflicts, followed by Common GF and BF. Legendary cards have mostly maintained their value, which means their efficiency has suffered as the rest of the prices dropped.
No, to get 7k extra in CP per hour, the cheapest way would be to buy 16 CC of a Common Gold and 2 CC of an epic, both Gold Foil.
Gotta find cards that you want to upgrade though, so you don't need extra slots or extra wagons, which would make it even more expensive. A better idea might be to go for 3 Epic GF, leading to only $1,80 more, providing 7500 extra CP and occupying only 1 slot.
A quick calculation. Assuming that each stage of the conflict will need 50 tickets more for each guaranteed card, so 7,000 points/h, will will need 1200 Tickets per guaranteed card in the last airdrop. That's 400 more than now, meaning, 56,000 more than now.
Want to get it done right away? 2 BF Common + 2 GF Common + 2 GF Rare + 2 GF Epic for every GC that you want, and you're done. $280 per GC, and you're done for the next 8 drops, so, $35 per drop.
Just an idea. It's pricey. Make sure to think well before you do it!
What will we get?
This is speculative. Zyrx was a one-time-thing, a lot more copies were printed as will be in the next conflict, as many people might decide that it's not worth the trouble to pay $6 to repair the wagons, and then another $33 for each guaranteed card.
For me, I had to repair 6 wagons, which cost me $36 (a little less as a friend gave me a hand with a good deal, but for the sake of argument let's say I bought on the market). On top of that, I'd have to spend another $100 on new cards to get my 3 Guaranteed Copies.
Meaning, each GC costs me $45. Zyrx is at $10 at the moment. See the problem?
The good news
Rebellion Conflict cards are holding their value, and a lot. Even without the spend on Repair kits and such, and with a lot higher drop rate (400% more drops than Conclave Arcana), the cards are still between $13 (Rage lvl 4) and $34 (Tofu lvl 4) per Card Copy, and that's the max cards. The single copies or level 2 cost around 25-50% more.
Also, the cards that I buy for conflicts are not only for conflicts, they are supposed to help me in my game play, too. Which of course influences the price, as the most useful cards are usually more expensive, too.
Zarin the Scorch is a useful card. Not the best in my opinion (and please feel free to correct me and explain). Having it at level 2 will help my game play a lot, as I can give Phase to a high speed monster like Slade, and pair with Sevaya to make it even more unlikely for Slade to be hit, things like that come to mind. Mana would be around 25 or more for that combo, including the cheapest dragon summoner.
The cost for kits will maintain some of the value for cards. Each card will cost at least $6 for the near term future. But most likely more. Hopefully, they won't end up like Zyrx.
What if I get lucky?
Let's say I upgrade my cards and make the 3 GC. If I get lucky again, drawing another 3 CC, I'd have spent $136 for a level 3 card. Just looking at the money, I'd need the price per CC to stay around $25, and it will be worth it. Otherwise, it would've been cheaper to abandon conflicts and buy the cards afterwards.
The probability of the price staying high? Low. Zarin is no Tofu, nor Lorkus. It's not even a Rage or Venka. I'd say maximum $20 (Rage + Wagon Kit).
Just from the total reward chances, 3865 CC of Zyrx were printed in Guaranteed Cards. Of course, that's not exact, as a lot of chances did not lead to a GC. The Card Counter says that 1786 Copies are in circulation, but I don't know if that refers to CC, or just cards, meaning a 11 CC level 4 counts as 1.
Conclusion
I already spent on Wagons because I hadn't read the announcement for Conflicts well. So, I'm going to participate in this conflict. From then on, I will see. I'll monitor the price development of Zyrx, and then of Zarin.
But my motivation is gone again. Having to spend $150 each month to keep up with the rising threshold is not something I look forward to. There are some cards that I wanted anyway, so I'll just keep building my deck accordingly. Or just abandon conflicts.
It's not only this conflict. How it is and was managed will probably make me refrain for ever buying into a new modern set again.
I get that money has to be made. I get that the big spenders keep the lights on. And we got a free2play for the low league players. But, right now I feel like it's just as in real life - the middle class gets screwed over. Either you buy your way into the upper class, or you'll find yourself among the poor.
And I repeat my main critique: The initial communication about conflicts was really, really bad from the team. The announcement to bump the threshold by 400% had to be announced before the pre-sale, so set expectations right.
And buying enough packs to get gold-level reward cards should bring players very close to getting those in the conflicts, too. Bringing the threshold to a starting point of 400 points/GC would've done the trick. 800 was overkill.
I'm still disappointed.
Former posts:
Calculating Land part 1 - How to get your ROI
Calculating Land part 2 - Are pools worth it?
Calculating Land part 3 - Organic Growth
Land Plot Efficiency for non-whales
Card-Production-Coefficient - Combining LPE and ROI
Renting for Land - at what cost?
Risks to my strategy
What do refined resources cost?
Real cost of Wagons
How to perfectly adjust your wagons
Calculating Totem and Title boosts
Calculating Plot Rarity Boost
Setting up a Rare Stone Plot
The final Beginners Land Setup Calculator
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)
Thanks I really enjoyed reading through. But hey! My friend, I find it boring playing card games you know:) 😌😌
lol :-D Yeah, some of my posts are about the card part - but there's more to the game. Not much, Land is not that developed yet. But one day...
I enjoy playing the game. And figuring out the most efficient way to do so, with my limited budget in comparison to others. But I'm hanging in there!
🤔🤔 I see! I have been seeing some posts here on hive much about card games and am like aaah!! 🙄🙄 You know, I tried playing splinterlands recently but I think I need some practical tutorials.
The new free to play mode is pretty good to practice a little. And if it clicks for you and you like it, you can purchase the spellbook, buy or rent a few cards and start earning SPS. It's not much, so if it's not fun to you, I don't recommend spending on it :-D For me, it's a hobby, and I have no problem paying for my hobbies. But sometimes it's a little too demanding on that front :-D
Yeah! Have heard of that free to play mode. Am going to try that out this weekend hopefully. Thanks 👍
Very expensive is the answer which is why I didn't buy into it at all. After being burned by Chaos I haven't felt the desire to put much more money into the game. And all of my old cards lost almost all of their value. I only really do brawls now!
That's a shame. Yes Chaos Legion as really bad for the whole ecosystem. Rebellion a little better. The whole idea of Conclave Arcana is great, it's really just the conflicts that are too out of it.
Though I won't dispute that it's expensive to qualify for these airdrops, I think there are two logical fallacies in your argument:
(1) You're including the cost to obtain cards in the cost of the airdrop itself. You can sell those cards afterwards, so it's not like you "consume" that value (i.e. it's not like the $6 wagon cost). I.e. if you spend $100 on cards to get that 3rd GC, you can later sell that $100 of cards back (perhaps for the same amount, or a bit less, but certainly not zero).
(2) With BF CPs the way they are (yes, probably too high), if they'd set it at 400 for a guaranteed card we'd have twice as many Zyrx as we have today, which would be double the amount of other legendaries. Zyrx was already printed about 10% more than other legendary cards in CA. Doubling that inflation would've led Zyrx and other airdrops to have much lower values, which would make people complain as well.
I'm not saying they ran this perfectly. BF CPs should've probably been lower, but that ship has sailed and they can't change it now as people already bought in. However I still think it's worth continuing to qualify for the airdrops that you can. The only real cost is the $6/wagon, so as long as each airdrop you receive is worth more than that, you're getting value.
That's a great point, I hadn't seen it that way, thank you. Especially the first part. I almost never sell, because I don't have enough money to buy and then don't use the cards. Either I build my deck, or I don't. Hence the approach of looking at what cards I need anyway.
Just buying something to get more of something else is not possible for many players. And $125-150 a month is a lot, and it's accumulative - it's 8 months of that, so $1000-1200. Though I don't think that "just buy now and sell later" is a valid option for most players, I do see the argument and thank you for pointing it out!
About 2), I understand the math behind it, though what bothers me the most is the failure in communication. They said that there will be some changes to Conflicts - but going from some changes to +400% is quite steep. And again, it doesn't make sense to get 6 or 7 guaranteed copies in the pre-sale, and then only 2 in the conflicts.
Honestly, I would've never bought as heavy as I did if I had known that. If they had put the cards on the table from the beginning. The arguments are valid! It makes sense for the game economy in the long run, but they took away the possibility for middle-league players to take an informed decision, because they didn't inform. And I still feel betrayed by that.
EDIT: And yes, I did go back in posts to find if it was me who screwed up, but I didn't find anything. I'd prefer to know that I just over-read something in the official posts, or that it was somehow my own fault. That would feel better, as so many other things in the game are going really good, and I would love to be able to get into a new set with the confidence that everything openly and directly communicated. So, if you find that piece within the official posts, feel free to point it out!
I don't think you "screwed up" as I don't believe the team gave any specifics on the airdrops early on. However, it was clear based on BF CPs that they would be necessary for airdrops, which is why in my initial pack comparison I suggested buying Alchemy packs for those who wanted to maximize airdrops: https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@bravetofu/comparing-conclave-arcana-pack-types. At the time I didn't realize that this would mean fewer airdrops for RF collections, but in retrospect I think it makes sense. So yeah while the team weren't explicit about it, I feel we should've seen it coming as soon as BF CPs were announced...
Well, maybe they'll communicate better with the next set and re-build the trust. I'm still thinking about how to handle this. Probably I'll go into it to get the Archons to the right level. I'll calculate how many points/h a Gold league-Deck would bring me, as that is what I wanted.
Formerly, it was a maxed deck. But that motivation went when the first conflict was announced, as playing maxed with probably critical summoners at only level 2 would've have worked. In Gold, I can still do that.
Thanks for sharing! - @yonilkar
