I have made it no secret that I have been extending my investment into Splinterlands of the last few months and while I am not a large volume player by far, I suspect that from a total investment in position, I am relatively up there, since everything I have bought has been in the last six months.
From a playing cards perspective, I have been trying to get a few gold versions maxed of the cards I regularly play, especially the neutrals, as they will likely see the most game-time. A couple days ago I picked up two more (combined them this morning after renting them for EOS), with one being a life card (A splinter I am fleshing out) and the other being a neutral - with both being low Mana - where I tend to play a fair bit. These are both from the current Reward Card set and there is plenty of emission left, but they have also been creeping up in price.
But, buying individual cards isn't really the core of my strategy, it is buying packs and my plan is to increase my holdings substantially with the Chaos Legion set and perhaps hopefully, max out one deck. So far in the presale I secured about 1300 packs and had to buy vouchers for nearly all of them, which is about a 20K investment, which is insane. However, that gets me a handful of Promo Cards including one Gold Foil guaranteed, so while it won't cover the purchase initially, it is something. But, this is only about a quarter of the estimated packs needed to max a deck, meaning I need to buy around 4000 more packs, which is around 16K more dollars.
This isn't a small amount of money.
There is no way I can get enough vouchers from the SPS I hold in the next 2 million emitted, so I have to get them in the open sale, but there is a huge problem. I will be able to pick up a few hundred vouchers that I planned to use for the bonus packs in the open sale, and I was collecting SPS for the purchase as there was a discount available, but even if there wasn't it is a tradeable token.
So, the problem is that the packs are potentially going to sell out very fast, but there was an announcement from 
Starting with the second pack sale phase on December 8th and going forward, Chaos Legion packs will only be able to be purchased using Credits in the Splinterlands shop. Players who would like to use DEC or SPS tokens to purchase packs may still do so by simply using those tokens to purchase Credits in their accounts, but it will no longer be possible to purchase packs directly with DEC or SPS as it was during the presale.
Right. See the issue?
So, because of the potential to of a lightning sale phase, everything has to be ready for the purchase. This means holding all of the credits needed to cover a bulk purchase. But, there is no guarantee that there will be any packs to buy, let alone enough for larger purchases. However, "Credits" are an in-game asset only, which means that anyone who is ready to buy and misses out on making their purchase, is stuck with potential mountain of credits that are non transferrable and can only be used in-game, unlike DEC and SPS.
I made a mistake. Because I am an idiot.
Don't be Taraz.
I now have 16,000 dollars worth of credits that are potentially useless if I am unable to buy the packs I plan with it. Well, they are not useless, I can buy single cards, but that means likely paying several times more each for them and it destroys my strategy of building simultaneous rental value.
But, I might not be the only one who has done or will do this and that means there will be potentially quite a few people who have far too much credit, and far too little of what they wanted to buy with it. Is there a mechanism in place to mitigate this? With credits being a resource sent out from Splinterlands, essentially all of this is "cash-on-hand" (I don't know how they hold it all) for the Splinterlands team. Will there be refunds on unused credits bought since the announcement 
I don't expect so - but that is going to leave at least me with quite a bitter taste in my mouth (and a ton of Credits), which is why I am writing this now so that others don't do the same - or at least think about it before making a similar move. However, because this is a credits only buy, there is far less reason (in my opinion) to hold SPS than there was earlier.
I actually sold a lot of the SPS I have in order to get the credits, because even if I had staked it all (I still have some stake), I wouldn't come close to being able to get enough vouchers to cover my purchase. In order to do that, I would likely have to buy another couple hundred thousand SPS, which is just out of the question. So, the best I would have hoped for in way of vouchers would have been to cover some of the bonus packs of large purchases. But, this would still require a mass of credits for the purchase anyway.
Now, this might be no issue at all and I will be able to get the packs I want in the open sale without a drama, but now I have this nagging feeling that I will both miss out, and be stuck with the credits. Which sucks a bit! At the end of the day, I will work something out either way, but I think that people should consider what happens if they are stuck with the credits, as it might be worth it to do the conversion on the fly - though this in itself might be a chokepoint to stop getting packs, as everyone is converting at the same time.
Will 12 million packs go in the first day?
I don't know, but I don't want to hold Credits.
When is the next pack release coming?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Edit:
Thanks for seeing this 
I was getting a little worried as I discovered I was 5th largest Credits hodler! :D
Btw, I bought them all last night after the ANN.
