This morning, the @Splinterlands team announced the details of the long-awaited Chaos Legion card pack pre-sale! I know I've been waiting very impatiently for this release and have been preparing by stocking up on SPS tokens. Let's have a look at how this is going to work and my own thoughts on what I think may happen to the market for vouchers and SPS.

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The Chaos Legion Packs

There will be 15 million Splinterlands Chaos Legion packs released. This is an enormous increase over the last pack, Untamed, in which only 1.5 million were made. This increase in supply was necessary due to the rapid growth of new players coming to Splinterlands. I believe the devs are hoping that this increased supply will help moderate prices for new players so they don't leave shortly after joining due to cost reasons.

Each Chaos Legion pack will cost $4. This is an increase from the $2 price charged for the previous packs. This makes sense that the devs would increase prices since their own operating costs have soared with the increased popularity of the game. This price point means Splinterlands will bring in about $60 million (before discounts) on the up-front pack costs alone.

Purchasing a Chaos Legion pack will entitle you to have a chance to receive 13 new cards that are being airdropped after each 1 million packs are sold.

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Pack Discounts

There are a few ways to score a discount on your Chaos Legion pack purchases.

1. Purchase 100-499 packs and get a 10% additional pack bonus.
2. Purchase 500-1999 packs and get a 15% additional pack bonus.
3. Purchase 2000+ packs and get a 20% additional pack bonus.
4. Pay with SPS and get a 10% discount on the pack purchase price (pre-sale only).

You also get a discount if you are a Guild member and have upgraded your lodge. Your discount could be as high as 10% depending on your Guild's progress in upgrading that building. If you're not currently in a Guild, this is a great reason to do so. I've made much more progress in the game since joining the @Hive.Pizza guilds and it's a great way to talk strategy and help each other grow.

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How Does the Presale Work?

During the 30 day presale (beginning Monday, October 18th, 2021), 1 million Chaos Legion packs will be available for purchase. While you can purchase packs during the presale, you cannot open them until the actual release date of the set in November.

Purchasing packs during pre-sale also entitles you to special perks:

1. Eligible for a chance to receive all 13 new cards that are part of the ongoing airdrop as Chaos Legion packs are sold.
2. 2% chance of receiving a limited-edition promo card.
3. 2% chance of one of those limited-edition promo cards being a gold foil.
4. If you purchase at least 50 packs, you are guaranteed a limited-edition promo card for each 50 purchased.
5. If you purchase 1000+ packs you will be guaranteed to get a gold foil limited-edition promo card for each set of 1000 purchased!

In order to purchase pre-sale packs, you will need a VOUCHER. These vouchers will be airdropped based on the amount of SPS that a user has staked. The formula to calculate how many voucher credits you will earn is:

( [YOUR STAKED] / [TOTAL STAKED] ) * 33,333 = Vouchers per day

The majority of my SPS is liquid, but lets take a look at how many vouchers I will earn each day with my current staked balance of 568 SPS and the current total staked balance of 93,585,063.

(567.989/93,585,063) 33,333 = 0.202*

That's right, I'll only get one-fifth of a voucher per day of the pre-sale, or about 6 vouchers total. I'll tell you right now that I certainly want to purchase more than 6 pre-sale packs. What can I do? Buy more vouchers...

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Buying Vouchers

There will certainly be fewer vouchers dropped each day than will be demanded, so I believe the vouchers will trade for a hefty premium on the secondary market. Players who want to get guaranteed GF limited-edition cards in the pre-sale must buy at least 1000 packs and that would require staking about 100,000 SPS, which currently costs $33,000. Their only option other than ponying up $33,000 is to buy the vouchers from players who don't want to buy pre-sale packs (who may be few and far between). The significant staking cost to earn voucher tokens and the lack of players willing to part with their voucher tokens leads me to think we could see some wild prices on the market for these vouchers.

If the devs make these special limited-edition cards especially powerful, then the sky is the limit on the price that voucher tokens could go.

What should you do? Well, that's entirely up to you as I'm not providing any financial advice here. But I have been accumulating liquid SPS for weeks now in anticipation of this pre-sale. With SPS prices rising over 25% shortly after the dev team announced pre-sale details, I'm inclined to believe the price will only continue moving upward as players better understand the new Chaos Legion packs and the need for SPS to take advantage of it.

It's unclear what the devs will do with the SPS that is used to buy these packs. If it is to be burned, that would be an interesting development but I imagine they will sell it back into the ecosystem to fund their own operations. Could SPS hit $1 again? It's entirely possible!

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What Should I Do?

While I probably won't be able to buy 1000 pre-sale packs on my own, I would very much like to pool my resources with a group of people in order to take advantage of the additional discounts and bonuses at this purchase level.

The GF Limited-Edition and airdrop cards could be sold off and the proceeds distributed to each of the participants in order to help defray the cost of the arrangement. Alternatively, the airdropped cards could be randomly awarded to those who participated in the group purchase.

If you decide to go this route, please only do it with people you trust completely and make sure you document everything and have accountability in place. Scammers are everywhere in the cryptosphere so make sure you're always protecting yourself first!