Well, sort of. If you have the right cards anyway.
Let's look at a few mtrics I brought up the other day and then move onto the rental market, what's happening, and what I'd be buying for it right now if I had more money to spend on cards.
The metrics
Yesterday the downtrend in daily active users continued and we hit a 10 month low in active players at just 130k players. Games played stayed easily in its downtrend although up a little from its low a few days ago. But some other interesting things happened. New players bounced off the line yesterday to make anice uptick. Still within the average but an uptick is an uptick.
And rather surprisingly, the amount spent on cards yesterday bounced off that uptrend support line.
That's a little surprising just because prices dropped on many cards. Its a great sign though because it shows that while some people are panicking out, there are dip buyers taking advantage of the situation.
Honestly, I am a little tapped out on investable cash right now and I don't really want to sell anything else I have but I would be a buyer here. There are SOOOO many good deals out there and the rental market is starting to come into focus on what's going to be valuable.
Someone put a chicken up for $10 though and I did have to gank that. I mean come on you guys. Now you're just being silly with these chickens.
Alright but this is a post about the rental market
The reason I started with the above is to show you the type of power that is coming.
We just got through the first 1/3rd of the season. Usually by this point I'm doing somewhere around 9k DEC per day in the rental market and I have about 2/3's of my deck rented out.
These last few days have been dead but today, I'm sitting just under 8k dec.
So right now, with less than 1/3rd of the normal player base active, my rentals are only about 15% below where they would normally be.
Its gets better though.
I'm actually playing. I have a full deck set up for each splinter except death. I just don't care about that splinter. Sorry.
Usually at this point I would have every card I owned up for rent. Now my best cards aren't on the market.
Also, the cards that usually make me most of my DEC are sucking. ALl the high CP cards right now are absolute garbage. Usually I'd be renting out all my preCL gold epics for 50-80 dec at this point per day. Right now many of those cards are going in the teens or 20s. All those new legendaries and rewards cards that have been paying out over 100% APR when combined to max over the past couple months are all paying nothing. None of mine are even rented out because I don't want to bring them that low.
Even a lot of my gold rares that usually bring in about 10-15 dec per day are sitting mostly unrented or going for 2-4 dec.
This is all happening with cards that haven't rented well any days except end of season. These are my gold beta and alpha cards. My gold summoners. The legendary cards tha used to go for hundreds but lately have gone for 10 and are now popping back up to 50 and 100 dec. My Alrics I mentioned to multiple people and was told they are dead. I'm renting out a level 2 Alpha Alric regular foil right now for 100 dec.
Last season I couldn't get 3 dec for him.
The cards that are renting now are the cards that I bought last summer because I thought one day they'd be the go to cards. Some have done well and some have disappointed but right now almost all of them are finding their place in the game.
The last few seasons the whole rental market has been about CP. It hasn't even made sense because CP became so abundant and it was still renting for so much that bot owners I told to are saying they've been operating at a loss.
Nothing made sense about it until you realize its all bots could do to keep playing. Now that those bots are gone and the ones that are left are better at renting useful cards, the generic CP play is mostly done. For now at least.
This rental market coming back with this few players and with this much force in these targeted areas is just another tick in the column of people are serious about playing this game and they are figuring it out. They are playing cards they haven't played before. They are more competitive. Its no longer bot after bot after bot playing starter cards in bronze and silver. That was boring. Now its interesting again. You don't know what you're going to face. The rewards are higher. I'm getting at least 20 chests per day now for under an hour of play.
I even did a dragon focus yesterday. I always re-roll dragon!
But here we are. And guess what? Those bots that went away aren't really gone.
They're going to come back and if they don't come back they will sell their accounts to other bot accounts with better rental tech.
And when those guys come in with the full force of 400-500k accounts working the rental market, the CP strategies will come back. All those gold cards that currently aren't renting are gong to rent again. Prices are going to shoot above what we've seen for end of season rallies for the past 8 months on a daily basis.
Which is why it is insane to me that right now, cards are on sale. Almost all of them are.
I would love to bring in a quick $10k into this market because I fully believe I could add another 30-50k dec per day to the income I'm expecting by the end of this year with that. Plus, they won't stay this cheap.
If you have cash laying around and its not at least a little bit on your mind to throw it into buying some of these cheap gold and legendary cards (maybe not so much the rewards cards but CL is probably fine), I'm seriously wondering why not?
What I would be buying right now?
So what would I be buying right now if I could. Chickens. Seriously they are $13. I know I keep harping on these but the cards people are paying for are the playable cards. I've seen level 1 chickens jump to as higher as 70 dec per day because a few bots rented early in the season to push up quickly to silver. I could see a wold where a chicken rents for 100 dec per day or 36500 dec per year. Right now you can buy them for 13,000 DEC. That would be almost 300% APR on the cheapest chickens right now.
Mylor. Mylor is a beast at lower levels. In teh last ramp up I bought 100 of them and was renting them out for 40 dec per day when dec was worth 10x what it is now. I pushed the price from $20 to $35. Today they are back at $20. That's stupid. You know what ever last person in bronze 1 is playing? A level 1 mylor. There'a only 16k or them and you know more will be combined. Today I rented out a level 2 mylor for for 89 dec while the level 1s are still going for 1 dec.
Summoners. Just all the summoners. Especially any deals you can get on gold summoners. You can get some beta summoners for under $10. That's stupid too.
Any gold foil epic card from untamed or before that's under $100. Any gold foil legendary card thats under $100. Preferably CL instead of rewards cards.
Beta gold rare cards under $100. Alpha gold cards under $200. Alpha and beta rare cards period. Especially the ones like Frozen soldier though who are absolute beasts to play with in many games and are going for a few bucks in beta and like $12 in alpha.
Like any of these cards...
Especially those cheap Alrics. Think about Alric for a second. Water has amazing magic capabilities but you need Alric to play them. They don't make that dude anymore. There are no more magic summoners coming that we know of right now for water. Alric is money and you can get a beta Alric for $60!
CL legendary cards. Kron. Any card in CL that currently has a market already. The gold foil disintegrator or whatever that's going for $2 and I see played all the time in silver. Card like those are abundant now but they will not be when the bots reappear and growth starts back up.
I mean, its hard to lose right now. There' so much out there worth buying.
The only cards I would completely stay away from right now, just for a little while, are the new new rewards cards. Those are still coming in heavy so they probably will drop a bit more.
That's what I'd be doing right now anyway but of course none of this is financial advice I'm a moron and you'll lose all your money.