I have disliked the direction Splinterlands has taken for a while and these mage wagons just is another step creating yet another asset making everything more costly and complicated. All this while card prices continue to fall off a cliff as most of their use case is stripped away from them over time.

They have at least managed to get DEC to peg but mostly by milking older existing players and not so much because new money came in. It's quite sad though as the core card game really has the potential to be really fun and accessible.