Splinterlands: Zyriel Purchase

The Splinterlands development team has now moved towards quarterly Promo cards as a way to continue increasing cards to the ecosystem. It is also a way for them to generate some income given the fact that there are no card packs available for sale at the moment. I think it is an important part of their business models in order to achieve sustainability during bear markets. However, the community has mainly focused on the oversupply of assets at the moment given how the demand has dropped due to the smaller player base. It is definitely a challenging moment in the ecosystem but it is not the first time we have experienced one.

When things started to head south last year, the team was asked on a Town Hall how to support them and the continuity of the ecosystem itself. They made no demands but stated the obvious in supported the sale of assets. So when they announced the Promo card sale, it was a no brained for me. However, to be fair, I can understand the criticism around the pricing for the card. It is quite challenging to strike a balance these days around supply and demand; as expected, it comes down to price.

They put up 15,000 up for sale and came short of selling around 5,000. That means that the team missed an opportunity to get some more funds for the immediately future but I think they will take this as a learning for the next Promo card. They will need to better measure the demand or drop the price to balance it out at a better point where they can gauge more interest. Another alternative is for the team to make cards more powerful to strike up the demand. However, I am actually glad they do not go that route as it could be detrimental to the meta and overall competitive landscape of the game.

The interesting approach of this release was how they offered guaranteed Gold Foils for the card with the purchase of at least 25 cards. I think this decision drove a good amount of the demand we saw during the 30 day sale. From my approach, I could not justify the amount needed to pay for a maxed out Gold Foil. While I focuse on Gold Foils for my Collection for Modern, I do not really go for Legendaries given their price. Instead, I went for a couple more than maxed just in case I did get luckily with a Gold Foil which I did not.

The card itself is interesting as it brings the unique aspect that the team built around this card. Zyriel is the first card that will be playable in two Splinters; Death and Life. It is also the first Promo card that provides Weapons Training which is also relatively new for the game. I have not yet found consistent good situations to use the card for battles but I am sure they will pop over time as the meta evolves. I do believe that the cards benefiting the two Splinters is great as they were in need of some alternatives. Time will tell if this was just a start of more to come or not.