Opened 119 Chaos Legion Packs Yesterday After Buying Vouchers - Was It Worth It?

When deciding if I'd buy my third and fourth plots of land, I spontaneously decided to diversify with 119 airdrop-eligible packs instead. Without direct access to buy Hive, this is always a complicated undertaking that can ruin the fun.

Should I have just bought the land and kept it short and sweet? After going through the process below, I still don't know.

After going through my baseball card pack phase as a kid, I don't want to gamble on digital ones to try to hit it big. However, I had only previously bought 11 Chaos Legion packs with vouchers I got on Hive-Engine, on top of 8-10 more (ineligible) on Hive-Engine at a premium. Small ball here.

Buying packs with the hope of building up cards doesn't really appeal to me since there can be so many card levels for modest benefit at my tier. I'm also assuming that today's card prices will drop as more supply gets introduced, but eventually it'll level off and maybe even appreciate over the years. Other editions have dropped substantially, so it's a bit off-putting to see how quickly they're devalued just because a new edition comes out. If this may be the case, buying individual cards with credits is so much easier given my exchange roadblock.

Overall, buying another simple "1 plot" without many Chaos Legion cards seemed to be putting too many eggs in one basket last night, even at a good price. Since I had to buy all of the vouchers out of pocket, I definitely didn't enjoy buying something just to be able to buy something else. It felt like airdrop eligibility may be nice to have for future surprises, so I'll spend some, but I'm not going to go crazy here. Additionally, if I got a big card, I could flip it for most of a plot and ride many free cards, a calculated risk.

I was initially only going to use $480 of UST I'd recently accumulated from defi interest, requiring multiple swaps and transfers to get it into Hive. Investments of this size at a time are fair enough for me. Slow and steady, and digestible if it's a bust. The eventual route for this UST was a trade, IBC transfer, transfer, trade, trade, send, send, trade. This is a massive pain and drain on my time. So many clicks and confirmations needed. I also log all my actions, so it's a lot to track.

When will Hive have more onramps or interoperability with IBC? After doing this many times, this is such a deterrent. I'd invest so more if it Hive was more connected.

^Please?

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Back to the tale.

After getting 70.6 vouchers with 109 HIVE (ouch), and sending it to my Splinterlands account, I bought credits with the remaining 212 HIVE for packs and potions. I wonder if it was better to have bought DEC early to earn vouchers, but I don't think I'd ever have gotten enough to get a significant amount of vouchers.

Locked and loaded, eager to check out, I was then faced with a dilemma I didn't think about before. Damn.

The 100 pack level bonus of 10 voucher-free packs. Damn!!

I just wanted to go to bed at 4 AM, but that was a good value given that it skips needing vouchers. Hook, line and sinker upsell there. The only problem was that I didn't have liquid defi yield available, and that I'd have to go through much of the same long process again... DAMN... ...

I debated grabbing the 71 packs since I went through enough hoops, but decided to dump an alt-coin I really like that I had on an exchange I use for ultimately getting my crypto ready for Blocktrades. Sighing hard, I went and dumped it while it was in the red lately (a lousy move), just to get this 100 pack bonus cleared. Perhaps I'd get a nice Gold Legendary card to make it worth it, or a few Legendary cards from future airdrops. There was enough upside to repeat most of the original process and sell out on other project for another $355 of ammunition. I won't touch my core holdings, so I need to play with extra powder. So I tried to not fall asleep and did what I needed to do to ultimately get more Hive...

[REDACTING ANNOYING PROCESS], I got the other vouchers, credits and potions for my first bulk pack sale ever (previous high was 10), and bought 108 packs. This got me the 10 bonus without the $22.00 needed at the time for vouchers, 118 total packs and with a net savings of $62. This covered some fees for the setup.

I was then faced with the choice of how to open this set. It was a lot of packs for me, but it's probably tiny for the big players. You have to start somewhere, and I blame @blewitt for all of this.

Exhausted, which probably didn't maximize my fun, I opened all 118 at the same time without any clue of what to expect. I don't follow the pack probabilities or anything. Thankfully, below is exactly how my opening started... 2 Legendary cards in my first two clicks was kind of a thrill. Was this a sign? I actually didn't realize that they were doubles until later when I got to understand how the cards were unveiled. I wasn't even paying attention to the red banners. It's obvious to see now, but I was exhausted and couldn't think.

Not bad for the first two clicks...

I got a lot of gold cards and 9 Legendary cards. I didn't get a Gold Legendary, but I only got 590 cards and thought I might get 1 at most. After researching their values, they're not worth too much, but they'll be useful. As it stands, I definitely lost money in terms of current values, but it's a long haul move. If I bought the packs and held those to sell in 2 years, perhaps it'd have been better, but this helps the gameplay be more enjoyable in the interim.

Here are the Legendary cards I got. I bought 1 River Helondale to level him up.

Here are the Epics I got. I bought 4 on the market after to level 4 of them to L2.

I got a bunch of gold cards, but the best were the Kelya Frendul (from 2 packs earlier in the day), a Cursed Windeku, and a Mycelic Slipspawn.

One additional note was that I bought $100 worth of credits with the leftover funds from the second transfer to get the 118 packs to either buy some singles or a few more vouchered-packs once my next 2 posts pay out. I really don't want to go through this process again to buy a few more packs, so I'll accept my airdrop rate and casually get standard packs later on. I still want more land. This brings my total spend yesterday to $480+$355+$12 = $847. That's almost two land plots. :(

With far more cards than I've ever seen, I spent some time 9/10th asleep merging cards. I also spent about $32.50 on loose cards, including the third River Hellondale mentioned above to get to L2 (which I can't use yet). The $12 above came from two packs bought earlier in the day with a post payout. If I could use L2 Legendary cards, I'd immediately level up my Djinn Oshannus since he's cheap at $9. I bought mine at $51. Damn.

I'm eager to see how the new cards I got play in games. I'm primed to get to SILVER III now and will have a much easier time with daily quests. With 2 gold summoners and several L2 summoners now, I'll have more strength and new abilities in the matches. I also have $68 of credits left to cherry pick other cards, but might wait until I buy more packs since I don't want to buy something I could easily land in the next couple of packs I get.

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Conclusion:

So after all this, am I happy? I'm not sure. Maybe the overall market has me feeling drab in general.

Even if I got amazing cards, the steps for me to try to onboard are really annoying. If credits were able to buy everything, that'd be a different story. Also, I now officially realize how difficult it'll be to get high level cards when I'm just getting some cards to L2 or L3. It seems impossible. I can practically get Commons and Rares up cheaply by buying cards, but am I really going to change my game play with this and/or earn more?

I was also hoping to boost my Collection Power to get into Silver and am almost to 30K there. I'll cross that line with the loose cards I buy or in the next couple of packs. Will I get my ass kicked there and prefer more casual competition in Bronze? TBD.

As of now, I'm thinking that land may just be easier to invest in. At least I have 129/300 covered for the Legendary airdrops. I may get another 21 packs before the 12th, but I don't see myself getting more with the need to keep buying vouchers. It just takes too much effort since I can't get Hive on my exchanges.

Lastly, I'm not special and saying I did anything amazing here. This is probably mundane for the larger SPL players, but it's a big step for me. Market conditions are down and I really want to diversify into other games, especially for Mirandus Exemplars, but I'm doing my best to build in the SPL community with some modest responsible funds.

Thanks for your time and for any tips.
@steemmatt