I'll come right out and say that I chose Splinterlands over MTG every time for the past year since I started. I still love the game of Magic, but I love Splinterlands more. I loved the economy surrounding magic, but I love the economy surrounding Splinterlands more.
What are some advantages that Magic has over Splinterlands?
Physical cards and live in person human interaction.
I've had a ton of fun going to card shops and making friends playing magic. Magic is a game that I can enjoy at home with my wife.
With Splinterfest some of us were able to meed each other and enjoy some of this personal aspect. There was also an opportunity to open some physical cards although I'm not sure how we're supposed to play with those when we don't have any efficient way to work thru the algorithms that the game plays for us.
Splinterlands has a great community where we're able to interact online here on PeakD, on YouTube, Discord and any number of other sites, but it's not quite the same as being able to talk with someone live while you strategize around each other.
Multiple formats
I'm not talking about Legacy, Modern and Standard. I'm talkabout physical cards, MTGO and MTG Arena. I always liked physical cards the best, but the online formats also filled an important niche.
With Splinterlands we can play online any time and I think it's already much easier to play from my cellphone than even MTG Arena became.
Where is Splinterlands beating Magic?
The Economy
When I started Playing Magic in 2014 it was more for the economy surrounding the game and the deck building than the actual gameplay. With physical magic cards you have something that can be bought and sold on the secondary market. The issue surround the selling of physical magic cards ends up being the transmission and confirmation of that in the mail. If you sell to a store in person they're getting the better deal by a long shot. You can trade with people you meet but those are rearely cash transactions. You can sell on a number of online forums but those forums get a piece of the pie and the cards usually have to be mailed with the cost of that being passed onto you the seller. Cards on MTGO can be bought and sold but virtually all the profit goes to secondary card markets. In Splinterlands the fee for selling on their internal marketplace is minimal. The record of those transactions is also free to see and verify if you ever wish to.
Splinterlands also has the benefit of giving you an opportunity to rent cards out. Secondary markets are able to do that for MTGO but again there's no realistic way for you to benefit from that.
Rewards
In live paper magic you can often win real tangible cards but you've generally more than paid for those cards up front and again there are big limitations on selling those cards further down the road.
In MTGO you can win various points that can be used in game to get cards or enter more games but it generally gets kept in game pretty consistently.
In MTG Arena you can win cards and points in various ways but you can't sell those cards. It may be a good entry for competitions that really pay out but that's only if you're extremely competitive. In Splinterlands you're constantly winning cards and cryptocurrency that can be readily sold or exchanged and turned into real money. This ease of use with winnings has been abused by some and folks driving Splinterlands are working around that as we speak with the new soulbound rewards cards. I really like the way that they are going to allow those rewards cards to come to market after the next set of rewards cards comes out.
@splinterlands/announcing-the-new-chaos-legion-reward-cards
I am very excited for the new rewards cards
What are some challenges facing these economies?
Hasbro has a reputation for printing and reprinting cards into oblivion. I have concerns about Spinterlands doing the same thing but again the folks behind the game have plans to allow for growth to catch up. I'm very excited for downtime between Chaos legion and Rebellion.
I hope this post has been helpful and informative. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game. If you're interested in starting your own Splinterlands adventure feel free to use my affiliate link to get started https://splinterlands.com?ref=jingo-submo PeakD is a terrific site for learning more about the game and the market.
