The Blog of leqclibre

What was my surprise the other day when I discovered this page. Foundations cards are fully sellable, fully tradeable without any unlock fee. Isn't it glorious? So glorious I had to complete the campaign and immediately sell all of my Foundation cards. I just had to. After all, the price can only go down over time as the cards get farmed, so if I really want them, I can re-buy them later when the price is right. But will it ever be? Will these cards ever be worth it? Worth buying, worth maxing out, worth using in the game? That is the question we will try to answer in this post, so buckle up!

First of all, where are these Foundation cards earned? First, during the campaign, where you can earn the equivalent of a starter deck to play in Foundation mode. These cards are too weak to compete in ranked, but low and behold, the new Foundation mode only allows Foundation cards to be used, so a new player finishing the campaign can immediately start playing and earning cards in Foundation. That is positive, but it still doesn't tell us much about the mode itself, only how to get started. Still, any new player now has a very real incentive to complete the campaign in order to start the true "free-to-play", "play-to-earn" experience that Splinterlands is now offering openly.

But still, what is Foundation mode? Once you finish the campaign, you can participate in this manual play mode that only allows Foundation cards and rewards you with random Foundation cards as rewards for winning battles, similarly to any other ranked mode, but instead of SPS and glint, you only make progress towards the next reward card, and the next leagues that reward more and better cards. This means Foundation is actually a closed system. No matter the strength of your modern or wild collection, this won't give you an advantage in Foundation mode, because everyone starts off equally. Unless, of course, you are willing to buy the cards off the market. And that, my friends, makes the whole thing "pay-to-win" as well as being "free-to-play". Web2 is back in the house!

So, is it worth it to engage, and progress in Foundation mode? That is the crux of the issue. Let's start with the cons of this mode. It is very time consuming, and the cards are not very exciting. You will feel like you are playing for scraps, at least until you reach the higher leagues where you earn more chests every time you collect. If you are playing and selling the cards as you get them, you will probably not rise very far. On the other hand, if someone buys a full set right away and gets to Gold I, they will earn many more cards and subsequently make more money, but it is still a time consuming process if the bots are not allowed.

I won't pass judgement on wether this mode is worth it, but I decided pretty quickly that it wasn't for me, so that's why I sold my cards. What about yall? Are you digging deep and investing money into this mode? I hope you are able to make good profit, at least until the card market is saturated and the buyers are done chasing. This is a positive addition to Splinterlands, and I won't talk bad about it. However, there is a certain futility to the mode as it pertains to being a stepping stone towards modern or wild ranked. If the cards are not good enough, even at silver level, then why not buy actual cards on the market rather than try to make it with a Foundation deck? Those are philosophical questions better left to those that are more passionate about the game itself than I am. I hope you enjoyed the read and that my analysis proved useful to you.

Until next time!