DraftKings Diary | Crafting and Burning Edition

In the DraftKings Diary, each week Lucky Trader's Jason Rouslin will walk through his buys, sells, and team lookahead to give you insights from an experienced DraftKings Reignmakers player. 

Check out Jason's full portfolio with the Lucky Trader Reignmakers Portfolio Tool. 

Season 1 of DraftKings Reignmakers is officially in the books and overall, it was a very successful season. The game's popularity will surely grow over time, but the believers in the product will help carry it forward. Thus, all eyes turn to the future utility of the cards, and in this article, I’ll go through my strategy and how I plan to get the most yield and utility out of my holdings going into next year.

Future Utility Options

First and foremost, when developing a strategy, we must understand all the options available. So, in case you missed the announcement, here's a quick breakdown of the future utility of 2022 cards: 

1. $100,000 in weekly prizes for just 2022 cards. It can be assumed that the breakdown of prize pools is likely to be $30,000 to the REIGNMAKER tier, decreasing by $5,000 down to CORE. 
2. “Craft & Burn” functionality is the other main utility for 2022 cards and was expanded on by DraftKings this week. In summary, crafting and burning will be a two-step process. First. one must possess a “crafting token,” which can be obtained in three different ways:
1. Own at least ten cards in each of the CORE, RARE, and ELITE tiers and receive up to three tokens, with each 10-card interval awarding another token. 
2. Buy them from the primary marketplace: tokens will start at $1.99 for the CORE, $4.99 for the RARE, and $39.99 for the ELITE. These tokens are in limited supply and will be available today. 
3. Buy them from the secondary marketplace: after the supply is bought on the primary market, tokens can be resold or bought on the secondary market. 
3. Last but not least, ten percent of 2022's Franchise Score value will carry forward into next year.

Portfolio Recap

Interested in seeing what makes up my 1500+ NFT card collection? Check it out here!

Now that we’ve defined what utility we can derive from the 2022 cards, it’s crucial to assess your portfolio on the whole, determine how many crafts & burns are available, and then try to determine which cards are worth keeping for next year’s prize pools, and which should be used in the craft & burn function. To do this, I’ll provide a breakdown of my own portfolio and some of the best holdings at each rarity tier.

One note, I rated all of my cards on a 1-10 scale, based on the player, and the serial number of the cards. A "5" would be considered a starter, and would trend up because of player and serial from there. Find serial numbers in parentheses. 

CORE:

• No. of cards: 1207
• Top cards: Tony Pollard (2), Justin Herbert (3), Christian Kirk (3), Dallas Goedert (4), Travis Etienne Jr. (6), & Patrick Mahomes (7). 
• No. of Quarterbacks rated 5 or above: 101
• No. of skill players rated 5 or above: 410
• Maximum No. of Crafts: 1207/5 = 241

RARE:

• No. of cards: 324
• Top cards: Joe Burrow (3), Kirk Cousins (7), Daniel Jones (8), Justin Fields (9), Justin Herbert (14), Trevor Lawrence (16), Josh Jacobs (7), Stefon Diggs (7), Ja’Marr Chase (8), Stefon Diggs (9), A.J. Brown (14).
• No. of Quarterbacks rated 5 or above: 31
• No. of skill players rated 5 or above: 110
• Maximum No. of Crafts: 325/5 = 65

ELITE:

• No. of cards: 143
• Top cards: Saquon Barkley (1), Dak Prescott (3), Kyler Murray (6), Josh Palmer (6), Deebo Samuel (6), Cooper Kupp (7), Dalton Schultz (8), Tua Tagovailoa (9), Justin Jefferson (9), DeVonta Smith (10), Jaylen Waddle (10), Chris Godwin (12), Lamar Jackson (14), Amon Ra St. Brown (18), Davante Adams (19)
• No. of Quarterbacks rated 5 or above: 13
• No. of skill players rated 5 or above: 48
• Maximum No. of Crafts: 144/5= 28

Crafting & Burning Strategy

Analyzing my portfolio like this helps in guiding along the process of just how to attack crafting and burning. Beyond determining the value of each card, it’s important to also keep track of the amount of quarterbacks, which are likely to be needed in the format for next year. From there, four other positional cards would be needed. Based on the above, I'll be able to create the folllowing amount of lineups with these cards, in next year's contests: 

• CORE: 100 Lineups 
• RARE: 30 Lineups 
• ELITE: 13 Lineups

I'll also have a solid number of cards that I believe would provide little to no value next year. I'll use those in the burning function, where tokens are needed. With a limited supply being introduced to the general marketplace, I’ll aim to buy the following amount of tokens at each rarity tier. 

• CORE: maximum of 150 tokens.
• RARE: maximum of 40 tokens.
• ELITE: maximum of 20 tokens.

Utilizing a rating system for each card allows me to properly plan for which cards may be valuable going into next year and which cards may be used to help build a 2023 set. Being able to determine which cards could provide value next year is really anyone's guess, but the individuality of the game is one of its greatest aspects.

Stay tuned for more crafting and burning updates as the offseason progresses, and of course, good luck with pack rips from all of your crafting and burning!