When The Reign Falls Down - MVHQ

When The Reign Falls Down

Examining the latest trends in ReignMakers newest hit product

Roothlus
Apr 21, 2023
Project
When The Reign Falls Down

What started out as a small chat with about 10 of us at the beginning of the football season has matured into one of the most active, focused discussions in the MVHQ Discord. After the football season finished, a few of us were occasionally playing UFC, DraftKings’ second Reignmaker game. I tried it once, buying the event packs, which was a different experience than football. Only buying these cards for a certain fight card and effectively being useless outside of franchise score thereafter, didn’t really draw me in to a sport I already don’t know much about. I didn’t cash, and ultimately decided UFC was too out of my area of understanding to commit much time or money to it.

 

But then Reignmakers announced football Crafting Tokens! Basically, you could use different recipes of cards to burn to receive different tiers or types of cards (Skill starters or QB1s, etc) and that revived the channel a bit. I expect 2023 to be a big year for MVHQ in football, with how many cards we burnt and how many crafting tokens we bought.

 

Shortly after that, they announced…golf! And that brought the chat completely back to life and appealed to an entirely new customer base. Us football vets saw an influx of new MVHQ users coming in pumped for golf. I, for one, am not that into golf but seeing everyone pumped for the Reignmakers version of it made me try it out as well. And I must say, so far, it’s been enjoyable. I didn’t put as much as most people did into it, well maybe that’s not entirely true. I gambled on 2 Legendary packs and mostly bricked! As someone who is called “Mint God” by some of my friends for always hitting the goods, I was down bad. But fear not, as I am enjoying playing week in and week out and slowly building my portfolio. MVHQ overall has done quite well with golf so far! Congrats to the crushers raking it in on a weekly basis!

 

With the NFL season finished and golf in full swing, I wanted to highlight a few strategies and important aspects of approaching Reignmakers. And no, I didn’t intend to make a golf pun, but yes, the Netflix show with the same name as the aforementioned pun is a pretty fun watch. 

 

First, the way Reignmakers works is unique. You’re front-loading most of the money you will spend at the beginning of the year and then slowly honing your portfolio throughout the season depending on player sentiment and injuries. Why is this? Because there is no charge to enter any RM contest–just a card requirement that differs at each tier (Core, Rare, Elite, Legendary, and Reignmaker). Funny enough, the way offering prize pools works, it aligns with how RM has to operate. You can’t legally have a buy-in that goes directly towards a prize pool, so DraftKings has to announce their prize pool before the tournament is even available to register for it. I don’t know what RM would look like if this wasn’t the case, but thankfully it is, and we get to play for free after spending money upfront!

 

Because these cards don’t exactly carry over year to year and are effectively useless during the off-season, all Reignmaker cards have what I like to call a half-life. For instance, before kickoff of week 1, all the players have a certain expected value per game, however, since there are 17 games in a season, it includes all 17 games into its market price. For example, at the beginning of the season, a premier WR was around $800 in the Elite tier, and by the end of the season they were going for around $250. Now, clearly, there are other factors in this, like injuries, playoff contention, player ability, team offense, or even the number of showdown games they play in a certain season.  All that can change a card’s value, with the only guarantee being that the player's price at the beginning of the season will lose a good chunk of its value by the end of it. The good news is, in theory, you should be recouping all of those losses in the EV, which is shorthand for expected value, that you win throughout the season and for some, completely surpass that EV with some big wins. Congrats JJ and Poop!

 

This concept works for golf as well. So, it is important to figure out a game plan for the season!


For a whale who wants to spend a lot of cash and compete at the highest levels, a good strategy is ripping a bunch of packs early on, then selling some to recoup losses as the cards populate. Later, reinvesting some key pieces through the year makes the most sense. As fellow MVHQ member, Al Smizzle always says: "this is a market game, first and foremost, and if you can time the market well, you can really make a pretty penny!" I managed to pull it off a number of times last year. I stocked up on rookies who, I thought, could have a breakout year, or backup QBs who would be the starter if there was an injury or subpar play from their team’s QB1.

 

So, here are a few strategies that I highlighted for you to make some moves in Reignmakers and hopefully get some dubs along the way!

 

Strategy 1: Spend a lot early. Rip packs, sell back cards you don’t want. Buy occasional missing pieces for your lineups week to week. 

 

Strategy 2: Spend a medium amount on packs early.  Rip a few packs in hopes of hitting a big one but make sure to check with the MVHQ sharps to figure out which packs are the best EV as Legendary packs can be very high risk. Sell off a ton 60-70% of the way through the season to recoup 30-40% of what you spent this year.


Strategy 3: Spend no money on packs and choose a tier or two you want to play in. Then buy only on the marketplace, so you get exactly who you want. You can make speculative buys as well and slowly but surely build your portfolio, mixing in fiat and prize pack contests. 

 

Strategy 4: Spend no money on packs and a minimal amount on the marketplace. You can use your starter pack and enter the lowest tier prize pack contests. You will generally guarantee yourself a card most weeks and can slowly build your collection. This is the slowest path to generational wealth, but also the cheapest barrier to entry. By the end of the season, you may be able to move up a tier or play the fiat contests with another lineup you can build.

 

So now that you’ve been given some light strategy on how to approach Reignmakers for the current golf or UFC season and the upcoming NFL season, I hope you are primed and ready to go! Overall, I think DraftKings has taken a huge chance on making NFTs and daily fantasy sports work together, and personally think they’ve done an impressive job in achieving that. Of course, in the details, there are always issues here and there that can be done better. But, considering how unusable the marketplace was at the onset of Reignmakers and where it is now, I must say they have vastly improved the UI in many aspects. I do think at times DraftKings doesn’t need to do an extra pack drop or two, but we must remember they are a publicly traded company that needs to show returns or else the shareholders get mad. I remember a scene from Silicon Valley where a CEO marched around saying I have a fiduciary obligation to the company!! And somehow that scene is etched in my brain for eternity and unintentionally taught me about how startups work. I’m basically ready to run a company. Anyone hiring??

 

Still, what started out as a hey I may dabble in this has turned into an obsession for a good chunk of us in MVHQ. I look forward to seeing more of the community atop the leaderboard. Heck, thanks to the vision of Poopaloop we got MVHQ’s first produced Youtube show going as well as weekly Spaces with the team over at Lucky Trader. As we all love to say in the space, we are so early–but in Reignmakers we really were. So, that’s a cool place to be and if you feel a little apprehensive like you missed out, right now is a great time to hop into the golf competitions to get your feet wet and learn the ropes. Please take advantage of the very active and helpful RM chat in our Discord! Then you can start planning for the 2023 NFL season. Right now, if you’d like to be ready for the NFL, you can buy some 2023 crafting tokens and 2022 cards for nearly 80% off what they were worth. Now…you’re playing with power!