How Much Does A Competitive Silver Deck Cost? — Following The Winners

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In my last article I looked at how much it would cost to buy all of the current Conclave-era cards at Silver level.

The answer, using the prices available at the time, was approximately $1,630.13.

That was already down from the original estimate of $1,978.34, but it was still a lot of money for somebody who simply wants to arrive in Splinterlands and start playing competitively.

It also left me with a more useful question.

What happens if we stop pricing every card and start with the cards successful Silver players are actually using?

To begin answering that, I looked at the completed Scarred Hand Silver Cup, pulled out the teams submitted by the top three players and counted the cards they used.

Then I took the most popular cards and priced them at Silver level.

Before getting into the figures, I need to give full credit to @beaker007, who created SPL Stats. The Buy Missing CC tool makes this sort of comparison possible and continues to become more useful, so please go over and take a look at the site.

The tournament

The top three players in the Scarred Hand Silver Cup were:

Place	Player	Record
1	@tj70903	18–1
2	@tidepodoreos	17–2
3	@garute	17–2

Between them there were 57 scheduled player-games. Six did not contain a submitted team, so I excluded those empty or forfeited entries rather than treating them as real lineups.

That left 51 submitted teams to examine.

This is still a fairly small sample and it comes from one tournament, so I am not going to claim it represents the entire Silver meta. It does, however, give us a much better starting point than simply guessing which cards a new player might need.

Which cards appeared most often?

One Archon stood out immediately.

Archon	tj70903	tidepodoreos	garute	Total uses	Teams
Dragonlord Mancer	5	8	6	19	37.3%
Elowen Sylphie	0	1	5	6	11.8%
Hanv	3	3	0	6	11.8%
Loving the Moo	3	1	1	5	9.8%
Razi Clanktrap	1	3	0	4	7.8%

Dragonlord Mancer appeared in 19 of the 51 submitted teams. That is more than three times the usage of any other Archon in the top five.

The most-used units were:

Unit	Element	tj70903	tidepodoreos	garute	Total uses	Teams
Calamity	Dragon	7	6	5	18	35.3%
Doomshield Warden	Neutral	2	4	7	13	25.5%
Suiko	Neutral	6	7	0	13	25.5%
Tenrai	Neutral	5	7	0	12	23.5%
Dar ‘Gottem’ Gearnut	Life	2	5	4	11	21.6%
Ironcoil Bulwark	Dragon	3	5	1	9	17.6%
Kaori Matsune	Neutral	3	2	3	8	15.7%
Portia Nyr	Neutral	5	1	2	8	15.7%
Conjurer’s Hubris	Water	4	3	0	7	13.7%

Calamity was the most popular unit and was used by all three players. Doomshield Warden, Kaori Matsune and Portia Nyr also appeared in every player’s teams.

Suiko and Tenrai had excellent totals, although neither was used by garute. That does not make them bad choices, but it is a reminder that a high total can sometimes reflect one or two players favouring a particular build.

Turning the data into a deck

I needed a cut-off point or this would quickly turn back into another article about buying everything.

For the first version of the deck, I selected Dragonlord Mancer and every unit used at least eight times by the top three players.

That gives us a nine-card core:

• Dragonlord Mancer
• Calamity
• Doomshield Warden
• Suiko
• Tenrai
• Dar ‘Gottem’ Gearnut
• Ironcoil Bulwark
• Kaori Matsune
• Portia Nyr

There is a reason this group fits together reasonably well as a starting point.

Dragonlord Mancer, Calamity and Ironcoil Bulwark provide the Dragon base. Five of the units are Neutral and can follow the deck into different elements, while Dar ‘Gottem’ Gearnut gives us a clear Life option.

It is not a complete tournament collection. It will not cover every mana cap, ruleset or unavailable element. What it does give us is a compact group of cards with evidence that successful Silver players are actually using them.

What does the Silver core cost?

I priced a clean collection starting from zero CC, using regular-foil cards and the Silver target in the SPL Stats Buy Missing CC tool on 12 September 2026.

The calculation remains:

Required CC minus Current CC × Lowest Price for 1 CC

Here is the result:

Card	Element	Tournament uses	Lowest 1 CC	Silver estimate
Dragonlord Mancer	Dragon	19	$21.72	$65.15
Calamity	Dragon	18	$9.60	$28.81
Doomshield Warden	Neutral	13	$0.13	$7.92
Suiko	Neutral	13	$10.95	$32.85
Tenrai	Neutral	12	$0.90	$8.99
Dar ‘Gottem’ Gearnut	Dragon/Life	11	$17.80	$53.40
Ironcoil Bulwark	Dragon	9	$0.15	$3.70
Kaori Matsune	Neutral	8	$1.97	$5.91
Portia Nyr	Neutral	8	$5.99	$17.97
Nine-card core				$224.70

That is quite a difference from $1,630.13.

The nine-card core is $1,405.43 cheaper, a reduction of approximately 86.2% compared with the theoretical cost of buying all of the current Conclave-era cards at Silver.

Of course, we are not comparing like with like. One figure is a broad collection and the other is a small starting deck. That is precisely the point.

There is a very large gap between owning every card and owning enough useful cards to begin building competitive teams.

Adding a second element

The next card on the usage list was Conjurer’s Hubris, which appeared seven times and gives the deck a Water or Fire option.

Expansion card	Element	Tournament uses	Lowest 1 CC	Silver estimate
Conjurer’s Hubris	Water/Fire	7	$1.38	$34.48

Adding it takes the ten-card Dragon, Life and Water/Fire starting collection to:

$259.18

That is still approximately 84.1% below the $1,630.13 full Conclave-era Silver estimate.

The Neutral cards are particularly useful here because they can support either element rather than forcing us to buy a completely separate group of units for every expansion.

The market-depth warning

All ten cards had a price available when I took this snapshot. There were no blank or unavailable market prices in this particular group.

That does not mean somebody could definitely buy every required CC at the displayed figure.

SPL Stats uses the cheapest available price for one CC and applies it to all of the CC still required. If only one copy exists at that price, the real shopping bill could be higher.

As with the previous article, this should be treated as a benchmark rather than a guaranteed checkout total.

Anybody actually buying the cards should still compare:

• individual regular-foil copies;
• combined regular-foil cards;
• gold and black foil alternatives;
• the number of copies available at each price; and
• renting before making an expensive purchase.

Dar ‘Gottem’ Gearnut and Dragonlord Mancer account for $118.55, more than half of the nine-card total. Those are the cards where patience, combined listings and alternative foils could make the biggest difference.

Is this a competitive Silver deck?

Not by itself.

It is the start of one.

The tournament tells us these cards are useful, but it does not tell us that nine or ten cards can answer every battle. We would still need more low-mana choices, specialist cards, alternatives for different rulesets and enough element coverage for battles where Life or Water is unavailable.

There is also a danger in copying tournament usage without understanding why the cards were selected. Rulesets, mana caps and the opponent’s likely team all matter.

What this exercise does show is that we can use real battle data to narrow the shopping list dramatically.

Instead of spending $1,630 buying everything, a new player could start with a $224.70 core, rent the gaps and learn which additional cards they actually miss.

That feels like a much more realistic way to build a collection.

What I want to test next

This is only the first pass.

The next useful steps would be:

• check how often these cards won rather than simply how often they appeared;
• separate usage by ruleset and mana cap;
• compare the regular-foil estimate with combined, gold and black foil listings;
• add the most useful cheaper supporting cards;
• price the missing CC against an existing player collection; and
• repeat the analysis across several Silver tournaments.

One tournament can point us in the right direction, but several tournaments would tell us whether these cards are genuine staples or simply suited this particular event.

For now, the headline is fairly simple.

The theoretical cost of every current Conclave-era card at Silver was $1,630.13. A nine-card core based on what the top three tournament players actually used came to approximately $224.70, or $259.18 with the first Water/Fire expansion.

That is not a finished deck, but it is a far more achievable starting point.

Would you start with this tournament-tested core, or would you spend the same budget building a wider collection of cheaper cards?

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