# Competition is tough! - Splinter Stats Ranked Rewards Season 65 Report Card

Hi everyone!

@aftersound released a video this week basically saying that it is hard work getting wins in Modern and that he's essentially not playing ranked anymore and having way more fun in Training with ghost cards...

Watching this... I felt super seen. It felt so much harder getting wins this season than really ever before. I managed to break into Champs III in Wild but then promptly got kicked out and could not scratch my way back in. Playing and losing constantly definitely feels like a chore at times.

My assumption is that the player base is very slowly shrinking and the accounts remaining are heavily invested and tough to beat...

The bots issue is always an interesting one. You could argue that bots are better than human players because they've already been preprogramed to use the best cards for any given situation - while a human player has to problem solve in 2 minutes. You could also argue that bots are worse than human players because there is too many variables that bots won't be able to accommodate like a human can.

Personally I think it comes down to the card collection of the account, a bot with a massive collection of cards to choose from is very likely going to beat me every time, whereas a bot with a smaller collection probably won't beat a human with a similar sized collection.

My theory on why it's getting harder to win is that the bot accounts less invested in the ecosystem are leaving (less wild battles than 6 months ago in the above graph) while the bot accounts with huge collections have stayed.

I'm also think that I might be placing too much emphasis on the ruleset of each game... I think my team decks are too specialized and I'm getting beaten by decks that are more balanced. I'm definitely going to have to work on better strategies going forward.

In regards to Heloise the Hallow... I am genuinely shocked that the price is lowest near the very end.

I thought FOMO would kick in, especially since the whales seemed to be happy to keep the price high where I thought the natural slump would be in the 70s. Good luck for those that get it in the next week before it finishes.

Personally I'm still trying to figure out the scenarios where the Heloise works well. I've honestly barely played it the last few days.

Glint season rewards will show in the season they are claimed.

I think Wild isn't paying as much Glint as it used to.
I'm going to have to pay more attention, but in the past Wild seemed to pay double or sometimes triple the Glint that Modern did (although it was hard to get a good read because I've rarely been in the same league at the same time) and in this last season I'm not sure that was the case.

You can see that my last few games for the season were rocking in around 1500 Glint...

... but usually in the last couple of days in a season I'm collecting around 2K Glint per win.

I did get myself to 230K Glint:

Which is just short of my 265K goal (to get me to 538K which will buy me Batch 1 of Legendaries and Epics), but I've still got that Glint surplus from 2 seasons ago.

Unbinding for Chaos Legion Reward cards has ended, so now my only option is to keep or burn them for Glint... which is fine. I don't think there was much of a market to buy them anyway.

After my last report card I put my spare Legendary Rebellion reward cards up for sale (at the lowest price at the time)... Endless Gibbon, Frigid Wolf, Grifzi but so far I've only sold a single Endless Gibbon card. I used that DEC to purchase a single Emberguard card, so now I've maxed that one.

Two weeks to sell a single card does make me think there isn't going to be much of a market for surplus cards until after this batch has ended, so at this point I should try my best to not get duplicates.

This is where I'm at overall:

I basically have 6 out of 12 cards maxed out already:

This is where I'm not smart enough to figure out maths. Simply, I have a 50% of getting duplicates.
Duplicates cost 10,000 ($6.80) to unlock, but cost about $10 to buy. You can burn a duplicate for 2,500 Glint but to get a single Legendary draw costs 35,000 Glint.

I'm missing 17 Legendary cards to max them all out... so if I had to pay to max them, it would cost at minimum $170USD. Of course, I wouldn't max them all, I'm not even super sure how useful they are since I haven't really been playing them because I generally need maxed cards.

Maybe I'll do one more batch to see if I can shrink that $170 at all...

This is probably a mistake...

10 Legendary Draws for 350,000 Glint with 10 Alchemy potions:

Okay... so 50% of these cards are duplicates - whoops!

I can now max Sergeant Grauzral, Blackmoor Jinx and Syrenth. So that saves me $30ish. I needed both Death Ranger and the Gallicus so that's another $30 saved.... so I think this was literally 60/40 a good/bad idea, haha.

I now have 9 out of 12 Legendaries maxed out - but I don't think I can rely on the draw anymore. I might just have to accept that I'll need to buy the remaining 11 cards that I need, or just not worry about them.

The decision to burn or sell duplicates is a big one because it costs so much to unbind (10,000 DEC) so if they don't sell and you end up burning them for Glint - it ends up being a waste.

I think I'll try and sell these ones, but it is a gamble - I assume (but don't know) that these reward cards would get cycled out shortly after Conclave Arcana is released.

I think (but again I don't know) this moment is the cheapest to unbind them.

I now have 9 Legendary Rebellion cards listed for sale... the longer time goes on, the more competition I'll have and the lower the prices will go - so I think you really do want to avoid getting duplicates in the quest to max out these cards.

In terms of Epics, this is where I'm at:

25 Epic Draws for 187,500 Glint with 25 Alchemy potions:

Shocking!
I think I might have my first duplicate in the Halfling Refugee, but the rest are all very useful. Only 1 card to go to max out Olivia of the Brook.

This also means I've maxed out my first epic, giving the Halfling Refugee 5 melee:

Pretty amazing for a 1 mana card. I can't think of any time where this card got Exhausted at a crucial moment.

For everyone's information... Epic cards cost 2000 DEC ($1.36) to unbind, get 500 Glint to on burning (7500 Glint for a single Epic draw) and the Halfling Refugee is listed for about $2.12. I'll attempt to sell this one to see how long it takes.

The question on unbinding/selling versus burning is compounded for gold foil cards since it's all way more expensive. I have a gold foil version for all 7 Epic Rebellion Reward cards.

I now have 151,759 Glint remaining...

Rentals are sliding ever further down...

I totally forgot to claim any SPS this season, which means next season will be double the usual. It's a shame, I really wanted to see what effect my puling out a bunch from an LP for Heloise would have on my overall earnings.

Here is where it stands currently...

Hope you're doing well in the game...
Thanks for reading!

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