The dream of every young kid who is playing any given competitive sport is to advance your way to the highest level of competition possible, be that professional or wherever the lights shine the brightest in your opinion at the time. The dream that follows really closely to that vision (especially in baseball) is to have your fresh smiling "mug" on the picture of a premium trading card. An industry has risen for kids to have that happen at a very young age as you often see kids tee-ball teams, or pee-wee soccer, football, you name it there is a way to get a picture, bio info, stats all kinds of similarities to the "real" cards of today and in the past. Even for this comical knock off of a 1987 Donruss style front featuring Kramer and the 1986 Topps style back with his elusive friend Bob Sakamano.
Welcome to another crackpot proposal of a brainstorm that may go off in a tangent. In a bit of brainstorm, or "brain-twister," we have time to time where the thoughts come fast and furious sometimes without rhyme or reason when and where they hit on, similar to a tornado or twister as they are called in certain dialects of the United States.
So back to the thought, or the original question. How does the game honor the ultimate fans, contributors, guilds, groups, whatever the reason or affiliation to the game? I mean the real, hardcore pushers and advancing people and/or groups in the game?
The answer... Make them blockchain immortals in The Splinterlands as 'card monsters.' This was done with the legendary summoners with a purchase of a kickstarter package and I thought it was cool as can be. Honoring people that are willing to put that kind of stake in the game is a novel and brilliant idea. It made real monsters of them, and they happen to be among the most sought after cards that have been printed to date making this is a visionary and humble endeavor of the game development knowing where the game starts and ends-the customer, the client, the card holder, all that perpetuate the game- the fan.
So here would be the rationale with a splattering of concepts, examples, and perceived results from doing something like this, but on a mainstream release at some point. First, I will use the example of the partnership of the genesis of the game yaba and aggie. They of course would have to be where it starts. You can go many ways here in the caliber of cards that are printed and these would be legends for sure. Make them both a card with a custom ability (yes more work and testing I know, I am good at telling people what to do with their time and game-lol). Having them be a card and utility among their own would likely be best because you don't want to trample the value and attributes of a card already made by making it obsolete or a less desirable version of one of these cards, not minimize the impact of the "Fandom Monster Prints."
Lets say both of these have 1 health, zero everything else, and have a manna of 0 (or even better yet [-]1?) but come with an ability that is obtained when powering it up, or the ability that is there at the level of the initial gold card (like level 2 now for a legendary). The ability for the yaba bonus card would be let's say, "Platinum Alchemist," meaning the value of gold cards double that are played to gain DEC. The aggie would be the same except the ability would be "Alpha Alchemist"- meaning the alphas would get the same buff in DEC payout of 2x. Play them both and win with all alpha golds-get a 4x bonus. That's extreme but hey, the top dog cards need to be performance based right?
Now, in the exact same vein, lets' say you add in one of my many favorites 
Another one, let's say 
Another thought on this same train of thought is "Guild Banner Cards." Meaning, if you play this card and the banner featured on your card is the guild you are in, then you would get some kind of bonus-not sure what, maybe a bump in reward payouts, whatever, you get the point. There could be a rule set that has this card with some kind of special ability or stat buff, something like that also could be a possibility. Have a card for each registered guild with their logo and guild name on the card of course and go from there. Again that would be a quite an undertaking, but another stroke of fun. Have a rival guild? Put up a big bid on that card in the marketplace and hoard them away from your rival guild. There are many strokes of competition and gamesmanship that can go on there for sure.
There are many others this can be done for, on an ongoing basis as more and more print runs are done over time in kickstarter campaigns, in orb cards, you name it that would of course be up to "mission control" of course as everything must pass through there in all seriousness to ensure utmost quality. They could even be consumable or single-usage cards as well. The virtues of something like this is with the other card calibers that are printed alongside of them they will have a "fade out" phenomena that we watched unfold in the beta version with the additional neutrals and other single prints (cards not printed in the alpha version). Though we had a great deal of reproduction of alpha characters in beta cards, they watered down the odds of pulling "like rarity" cards in booster packs. Meaning the initial print of the single print commons in beta were lessened with these other cards. So if you added a few legendary buff cards like the two mentioned above which could be consumables, possibly even new reward cards at some point. Again however the game central command chooses to navigate is where the happy medium will be found if concepts like these implemented. Plus who wouldn't want to own a mattclarke steemmonsters card with a picture of him holding a literal, physical version of a flesh golem (or him holding a gold for the gold version-lol)? Bottom line is by the game developers doing what they say they are going to do they have created a very fertile plain for infinite concepts and ideas to grow. Get ready monster fans, we are only a year and a half in a game that went from when two guys said, "hey let's make a game," to present day. Seems like longer than that I know if you were watching this unfold since the early days of the game.
Again as a reminder if you are renting SM cards from my cryptkeeper17 account be sure to message me when your agreed rental term is finished so that you may get your free neoxianag delegation.
Thanks!
Enough of my comments, please share yours. Let me know why something is a good idea or why it should be shelved and never talked about again. Either way your comments are welcome and best of luck in the new season.
