Greetings, Splinter fans!
I had some major issues with my laptop and have been offline for a while so missed a week(or two?) with Splinterlands. As always in the crypto space, a lot can happen within a week and Splinterlands makes no exception. The anticipated The Rebellion edition sale has begun and by the time of writing this post, over half of the 500k packs have been sold.
Also, the weekly Social Media Challenge on Hive has changed a bit since it's now understandably about The Rebellion. As I was doing my research about all the new stuff this edition is going to bring along I found myself already strategizing with the 4 new abilities.
So, this post is about analysing these four and moreover, my plans on how to make the most of them with my existing deck. Let's take a closer look!
ARMORED STRIKE
Any unit with this ability gains an ADDITIONAL Melee attack using its Armor stat. This allows characters to improvise with deadly force, using their gauntlets, shields, helmets, or perhaps physical attributes (spikes, hard shells, etc) as weapons!
So, if I understood this correctly, the unit in question can be a magic or ranged monster and will receive a melee attack based on the strength of its armour so a unit with 2 armour points would have an additional 2-point melee attack.
This could lead to some awesome strategies with certain rulesets such as Melee Mayhem which allows melee units to strike from any position. We could perhaps place the monster in question somewhere in the back and if it in fact should have magic or ranged attack, it should be able to strike twice in a round.
Just for a second, imagine the monster with Armored Strike being something like the Lave Launcher here. Now just add a +6 melee attack to those stats and pretend playing Melee Mayhem.
Damn!
Well, perhaps their base armour won't be on that high level but we can always dream....
Probably the most interesting aspect of this ability will be when it is combined with some buffs or other monster's abilities. For example, the Protect ability, or the summoner, Eternan Brute, will add +2 armour and therefore it should also add up the Armored Strike monster's additional melee attack. Very cool.
CORROSIVE WARD
Corrosive Ward - When hit with a Melee attack, a unit with this ability does 2 damage to the attacker's Armor AND reduces the max Armor of the attacker by 2. This is the nemesis of the Repair ability. You can't Repair something that's been melted into acidic goo! Note that this only affects units with Armor.
Oh, yes. This is my absolute favourite!
A well-planned Repair strategy can be extremely frustrating to play against unless you are using magic.
The way I see it, the Corrosive Ward ability allows one to set traps for players using tank units with strong armour and well-protected repair monsters to support the tank.
Then again, I probably shouldn't be too happy about this because some of my favourite strategies include using Legionnaire Alvar as a tank unit.
The main reason for using him is the Void Armor ability which I use to counter magic teams since Void Armor makes magic strikes hit Alvar's regular armour(8) before reducing its health.
In one of the tactics I use Swamp Spitter to repair Alvar's armour and in another one I play River Hellondale to Resurrect him with full armour.
Now, this makes me wonder, if the max armour is reduced would Alvar come back to life with a full or reduced armour?
FLANK
Flank - If the unit with this ability is in the first position, then the unit in the second position gains the Reach ability. Prepare to leverage positioning and the element of surprise. Now your first two units can work together to bring down the enemy tank!
Ok, I was wrong. This will be my favourite new ability and here's why:
With a Flank unit as a tank, I would place my old favourite tank monster, Goblin Mech, as a second unit and it should then have the Reach ability.
Now, here's the thing, Goblin Mech already has a Piercing and pretty strong melee attack. It will be able to reduce the armour of opponent tanks and also deal the remainder of the attack to their health. All this is done from the safety of the second spot!
Also, if the Flank tank monster should fall, Goblin Mech would take its place and start doing its original job as a tank and hopefully still have the armour of its own at this point.
I would imagine this new ability giving a new life and appreciation to such "forgotten" monsters as Goblin Mech.
LOOKOUT
Another interesting ability. A unit with Lookout ability will help the adjacent units in a way that they will receive one less damage from monsters with Sneak, Snipe, or Opportunity abilities.
POSSIBLE USE CASE
The first idea that came to my mind would be to use this ability with Fire Splinter and Tarsa as a summoner. I would place a monster with Lookout next to a fragile melee unit such as Orella Abadon or Battering Ram.
For example, my beloved Ram is a pretty fast monster but even with Tarsa's summoner buffs (+1 health & +1 attack) it really can't take a hit with a max health of 2 hitpoints.
With the help of a Lookout monster, Battering Ram will survive a blow made by a monster with 2 attack points.
Furthermore, if I should place Disintegrator in the last spot and on the other side of a lookout monster, it too would benefit from the ability.
Disintegrator has pretty good defensive stats and at the back could take some hits from those enemy Sneak monsters. It would also use its Demoralize ability to reduce the attack power of melee units and therefore contribute to helping Battering Ram to survive.
Ultimately, it all depends on what kind of stats the Lookout monster would have and the mana cost. A magic or ranged unit would be just perfect so in addition to helping friends, it could also make an offensive impact from the back.
Conclusion
All in all, I'm pretty excited about all of these four new abilities and probably got a bit carried away with my imaginary deck building but nevertheless, I do believe they'll become somewhat of a game changer. New strategies will emerge and perhaps some older ones will be cast aside. For me, the most interesting thing, and the one I'm waiting for the most, is to see the effect these new abilities(and monsters) will have on the older cards. Hopefully, some classic ones such as Goblin Mech will go through a renaissance and conquer the battlefields once again.
Thank you for reading!
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Also Playing:
- Wombat Dungeon Master
- Terracore
- Rising Star
- Army of Crypto
Disclaimers:
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Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands
