Back again with another weekly recap in the world of Splinterlands. Obviously the biggest news of the week was the Townhall revealing a LOT more of the details surrounding Land and how it will be implemented into the game. I already did a deep dive earlier in the week here, and a second part here, so I won't go into it in this recap. You can read those if you want all the details. Suffice it to say there is a LOT coming down the pike with Land and the ramifications for the game will be profound. If they can make the vision a reality, it's going to be very fun to be a Splinterlands player for a long time to come.
There was also a fairly controversial Proposal that failed this week. It had to do with buying "potions" to increase your chances of getting better Land when you "survey" it down the road. As I said, it failed, but there was a lot of good discussion and debate about it during the week of voting and if I had to guess, there will be some future iteration of this same proposal with some tweaks to make it more palatable to the people who voted it down in the weeks ahead. Keep an eye out and/or feel free to join the discussion on Discord.
We also got the second to last Airdrop from the Chaos Legion packs. There is only one left once the next million packs are sold or burned.
Astral Entity is a Legendary Death Summoner with three traits. -2 Armor, Dodge, and Resurrect are all really useful traits. Once people figure out the best combinations of monsters to use with it, it's going to be very powerful. Obviously rulesets will play a role, but the -2 Armor alone is a counter to Kelya, Lux Vega, and Grandmaster Rathe, all of which can be a little OP sometimes. This gives people a few more options to counter as opposed to having to match. Should be fun to see how often it gets used.
Speaking of Airdrops, Riftwatchers packs have now crossed the 950k mark and are slowly closing in on the next airdrop at 1M. With Chaos Legion packs approaching the end, these will be the only packs available through the game. We're not there yet, but it's coming. If you want to be eligible for the airdrop at 1M, you should probably consider buying some fairly soon.
The most impactful news of the week though is the recent surge in token prices.
DEC has surged from down around .60 up over .82 in the last few days. If you read my "Deep Dive" or listened to the Townhall you'll know 
SPS has also risen by around 20% in the last couple days. There could be a few reasons for that. One, the community voted to mint a reward card to be distributed only to SPS stakers. The more SPS you have staked, the more cards you'll receive. Two, SPS will play a large role in getting DEC down the road for Land. Again, I covered that in my deep dive so I won't go into details here. Third, Hive has surged from just below 40 cents to over 60 cents. Since SPS is tied to Hive through LPs and by virtue of the fact Splinterlands is built on Hive, there's probably some carry through. A rising tide floats all boats... Plus, the fact of the matter is that you can now "convert" one Hive into almost 20 SPS. Three days ago, that ratio was closer to 1 to 14. Simple math.
As I just mentioned, HIVE has jumped from a low of around 26 cents less than a month ago, to over 60 cents. Nothing like a double to get people excited and moving money again. Who knows how long this will last? We've seen these weekend pumps before, usually spurred by the Korean markets. In my opinion, HIVE is wildly undervalued and should be trading much higher, but my opinion doesn't matter. The market is what it is. Will it maintain and go higher? Who knows? But it's nice to see some green on the board for a change.
That's it for the news. Card prices and the rental markets have continued to slowly trend higher. With land coming towards the end of the year, I would expect prices to continue to slowly increase as there will be a very big demand for them once it goes live.
With that in mind, I'm still hunting bargains. I have three things I'm trying to accomplish with these purchases. One, I'm still trying to improve my deck for battling. Two, with Land coming, I want as many cards as I can get my hands on to hopefully sell later. And three, again, with Land coming, I want to see if I can get some Alpha/Beta cards maxed out because they will probably be more powerful for working plots down the road. I don't have a ton of Land so I don't need a lot of cards. But it would be nice to run the plots I do have at maximum efficiency.
First though, as everyone knows, Soulbound Rewards Cards started getting passed out this week. Here's a quick look at what I've acquired so far.
I've got a loooonnnngggggggg way to go until they're really usable but...gotta start somewhere.
And now, on to my...
I had this at level 5 and found the right combo to max it. These low mana cards end up finding their way into lots of battles so it pays to have them maxed whenever possible. With the new ruleset of Ranged Only, you often need as many options as possible to fill out your lineup.
I've had this at level 6 forever but just kept finding other things to upgrade instead. With the addition of the Magic Only ruleset, this card now has a few more advantages. I finally bit the bullet and maxed it out as I feel it will only get more and more expensive as we progress. Plus, the 3 mana is really nice for Death.
Same for this one. I don't know how often I'll use it but, I saw a good price and maxed it as well. There are times the snare comes in very handy, but it's not often. Still, it's another summoner that could be used on Land later if necessary.
This is probably my prize of the week. It's a Beta card that I had at level 3. I was able to find a good price so I maxed it out. It is now the first and only Legendary Beta card I have maxed. Not sure if that will matter in Land yet or not, but if it does, at least I'll have one Legendary Beta I can use. In the meantime, it's a decent rental and I can always use it in Wild format.
And last....
This is also a Beta. With the hint that BCX is going to play a role in the "power" of your cards on land, I found this for a reasonable price and maxed it. I could already make a $30 profit if I sold it at current levels (assuming someone would buy it). But, more importantly, it has 505 BCX compared to only 400 on maxed Untamed and beyond. If it does end up mattering, I really want to own a few and I think it will definitely be better to buy them now rather than wait until everyone is scrambling for them. Again, it doesn't sound like it will matter much how useful the card is in Battling. Its going to be more about the level and BCX.
That's it for the week. Pack sales are accelerating, Airdrops continue to be scattered in the mix, and prices are finally going the right direction; both on cards and tokens. Overall a pretty good week.
Thanks for reading. Happy Battling!
Hive is the Way.
