We are 22 days away from the first Conclave Arcana conflict airdrop, Zyrx the Emberglace, a legendary Dragon unit, both in terms of bloodline and element. As the drop approaches, the community is embroiled in controversy over the format of the airdrop. I am not surprised, they are only catching up to my recent article on the issue of Black Foils skewing the distribution of the cards in favor of the ultra-rich. There is a lot to unpack if we are going to analyze the whole situation, and much of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I want to talk first about the card, and then I will summarize my thoughts on this airdrop in general.
First of all, here is Zyrx the Emberglace. For some reason, the only image I could find of this card was in a video uploaded to the Discord, no way to find these stats on the Splinterlands website, and that is annoying. Second, I can't stop rolling my eyes at the obvious Game of Thrones plagiarism, with the conflict being named "A Song of Fire and Ice". Come on Splinterlands, what are you doing? This goes beyond simple wit, and into poor taste. Just my opinion.
Let's get down to analysis. This card is absolutely overpowered and meta-breaking, not meta-defining. At ten mana, this absolute beast of a unit boasts a whopping seven damage split between melee and magic, seven armor, and ten health. I don't have enough fingers to count all of this stuff. On top of that, it has Flying, Charge, Execute and Bloodlust. It also has Incendiary but that only means he will be a provider of Painforged bonus to your team. You can't even call it a real debilitation at this point, given how much the current meta rewards damaging your own team. This card will absolutely delete enemy monsters all day long and make himself stronger in the process. One kill equals +2 damage, plus everything else. He has execute to ensure the enemy won't get away either. This is just a big "WTF" monster, and given what else we know about the airdrop, that makes it even more disturbing.
In order to make my point that this card is overpowered, I only have to bring up my comparables. I chose to compare Zyrx to Agor Longtail, Immolation and Rage. The first thing to notice is that each of these cards cost significantly more mana than Zyrx, while being obviously weaker. They are all airdrop cards too, so no excuses. Agor Longtail does 6 combined damage, but he does not have Charge, and he costs 15 mana. Immolation does 6 damage when Blast is counted, but has only 9 HP and no armor. Rage is in a category of its own because of the Weapons Training and Life Leech, but boy, he costs 16 mana, not 10.
Who designed this card? Who approved it? This is just sloppy to me. I fully expect a nerf, or maybe a significant increase in mana cost. Zyrx should cost the same as Rage: 16 mana. Just like the CA set had to be nerfed precipitously before release, I think you can link this directly to the poor "testing" that is taking place behind the scenes, and in who the company specifically chooses to listen to when making these decisions. If you are reading this and feel targeted by this comment, that's probably because you are. Sorry, just my opinion. What are we doing here, Splinterlands?
I won't push the card analysis much further because I don't think this will be the final version. The company just proved that they will edit cards retroactively if they want to, like they did with Tasoshi Drakamoto. No poll, no precedent, just doing it. I suppose when your work is so sloppy to begin with, solutions like this are appropriate. No wonder people are pissed.
Let's talk about the airdrop. Now we know how much a wagon kit costs, around 6$. That is a direct tax on every conflict card that you can get. Just another cheap money grab, another paywall, another way to burn people's money while offering less. Most people will never get more than 1 card on a single wagon, but even if they do, they will have to instantly buy another wagon just to get the card. Forget being lucky and getting two for the price of one. Nope, the company made damn sure they had that avenue covered. If not for this drop, at least for the future ones.
So, what to think of this? My advice is, forget the conflict, buy the card. Don't participate in a system designed to frustrate and ruin you. I heard people complain about spending thousands of dollars "just to get" a few copies of a 20$ card. That is entirely the wrong way to look at it. If you are addicted to "earning" these cards rather than simply buying them, that is on you. I will be looking at the market in the opening days, seeing how low the price can go. If the final version of the card is still worth buying of course.
Thanks for reading, stay tuned for more!