We've all heard the arguments before:

1. Players want to earn a lot of reward cards
2. Too many reward cards makes an unstable economy

So the solution: having non-tradable "Soulbound" cards lets us have some cake (1) without eating it (2)... The end result is players can get these cards for free, if they have the cards, SPS, and a lil bit of luck.

I guess let's look at some pictures with numbers?

Let's consider a strong, appealing card from the current soulbound set: I'll use Commander Slade as an example - nice card, Rare, solid tank.

Soulbound means lots of cards: 33,000 cards are made up of 161,000 BCX (according to Splintercards)

Compare that to Rebellion core set Rares, which have printed 39k BCX, and only 4k cards available.

The good news is there's enough for everyone now.

161,000 BCX???? Wow - we can all get these cards! There are 4 BCX of Slade for every BCX of any given core Rare card from the Rebellion set.

So by the time this print run is over, nearly everyone that wanted to get their fill of these guys, will have a chance.

No pushing or shoving necessary!

The bad news is there's enough for everyone now.

We just finished telling you that for every Rebellion core Rare, there are 4 times the supply of these rewards cards out there.
Now let's say someone has an incomplete deck (I used to call it "Silver" but now let's just call it 25% complete) - they can almost certainly get these cards up to their summoner levels, and well beyond.

So why do they need to buy these? Who is the buyer?

Doesn't this seem like the game is stacked against the mythical "New Player"?

Current Tradeable Supply is a rounding error

We have over 33,000 of these cards out there, but only 212 are unbound and tradeable. Look, there are only 5 of these bad boys available for rent when I'm writing this - and they are all level 1!

I get it - the high unlock price means speculators have a high degree of risk with very little reward due to the limited upside potential before these go to Wild.

The Risk/reward curves is upside down!

212 free trading cards is nothing. They barely trade and the entire set is a "blip" on the card market cap.

But what about the DEC burn from minting these cards?

Well, we've seen how few cards get minted. We aren't talking about lots of DEC here.
I'd wager that the small amount of unburned DEC is probably offset by increasing player satisfaction and adding to the future earnings (EV) of owning cards generally?

The Pitch: bring a bit of "sustainable" excitement back to reward cards

If every individual one of these reward card draws had a 0.1% chance of being instantly unlocked, it would have minted what, maybe 2000 "real" Commander Slade cards... from 212 to 2212 BCX. It's still half the distribution of Rebellion.

I don't think that is any kind of risk of overprinting.

And yet it brings jackpot potential to every single card draw!
It also brings some excitement back to players that have already maxed their cards.

Maybe this will just break the whole economy?

Well, I doubt it. But maybe you can convince me? Let me know what you think.

EDIT: Since some players have burned DEC to unlock the current reward card set, perhaps the best time to make a change like this would be with the next reward card set.