Rebellion is Coming and We are in for a Treat! (My Reaction)

A few days ago, Splinterlands made a post, which I would link here:
@splinterlands/the-rebellion-is-coming

I was really excited by this since it was already been delayed by 2 months (which is good, in my opinion since Chaos Legion left us with a huge chunk of cards to play with.) Not only Splinterlands gave us a few teasers but they gave us A LOT to chew on.

I suspended all my next few plans in order to react and digest these new information. This may be a longer post than I will be expecting (knowing how talkative I am when excited) so let's just get right down to it.

Before we start with the main topic, let me just insert this really quick. I am not really a lore person unless it's about an animatronic kidnapping and killing kids and stuffing them into suits that will haunt a kid's pizzeria.

However, I really want to point out the pack lore. I don't know what happened before since I am not a lore guy for Splinterlands but the naming of the packs were really awesome.

The composition of the lore is really easy to understand and simply based on the title of the packs, you can quickly have an idea of what's happening with the lore even without reading the hundreds of cards in the game. Splinterlands is really doing a good job now even from a Lore standpoint.

Some comment though. Sometimes, less is more. I hope that rather than posting a full 6 paragraphs of lore in each card, they reduce it to 1 paragraph. If they can reduce it to 1 sentence, then that's better. In Yugioh, you can tell the lore based on the artwork and that's why they don't need to make millions of paragraphs in the card just to do the card/archetype lore. They did the same idea in Legends of Runeterra, a Riot game (Maker of League of Legends). I hope they can apply this idea to Splinterlands.

I honestly do want to know the lore of Splinterlands but I am not a book person so when I see more than 1 paragraph of words, it discourages me to do so.

Since I am talking about lores, I suggest adding this idea on Spells/Equipments in the future. For example, instead of just writing a lore in the spell, "Meteor Strike", maybe they can do like a meteor falling to The Kraken, for example. This shows the player that part of The Kraken's lore that it was killed by a meteor. My point is use the Spells or Equipments on the existing lores and let the player fill in the blanks about the importance of those spells/equipments in the lore of Splinterlands. It's more fun and fulfilling "find out" what happened instead of "just being told."

That idea for lore is also what made FNAF very successful as the game/books does not simply tell the players/lore seekers what happened. They just provide hints and kept the players guessing by making their own theories. Whether they are correct or not, in the end, it's all just a theory. A game th...

Each Rebellion booster pack will have a base price of 5000 Credits or 5000 DEC, and purchasers may spend VOUCHER tokens in order to receive a discount on the base price. Each VOUCHER token used will reduce the price by 200 Credits / DEC and the maximum discount available using VOUCHER tokens will be 20%. This means that with the maximum available VOUCHER discount, each pack will cost 4000 Credits or DEC plus 5 VOUCHER tokens.

Considering the price of DEC and VOUCHER tokens on various external markets at the time of writing, the total USD cost for a Rebellion booster pack, not including bulk bonuses described below, will be roughly $3.10.

This is a little less than Chaos Legion. I remember Chaos Legion was priced at about $4 per pack which became a big issue since the pack before that was $2. I think $3.10 is a fair price. According to Lazada, a pack of Yugioh cards is priced at P99 or a little less than $2. That's a solid, physical card.

Years ago when I was an active Yugioh player, I remember the price of the pack or booster at around P150 each or a little less than $3. So, pricing it at around the same is good, in my opinion.

We're skipping the pre-sale and talk about the general sale since there's nothing I can contribute on the pre-sale.

The general sale of Rebellion booster packs will also begin at this time. There will be a total of 9.5M Rebellion packs available during the general sale, and the pricing and bulk purchase bonuses will be the same as described in the pricing section above.

Every day, starting on the date that the Rebellion set is released, if fewer than 25,000 (25k) Rebellion booster packs are sold that day, the remainder of the booster packs (up to 25k total) will be removed from the sale pool. Of the packs removed from the sale pool each day, 90% will be burned and 10% will be sent to the DAO for use in future promotions or however the SPS token holders wish. For example, if 8,000 Rebellion booster packs are sold in one day, then at the end of the day an additional 15,300 Rebellion booster packs will be burned and 1,700 Rebellion booster packs will be sent to the Hive account@sps.dao account.

I am happy about the 9.5 million packs Rebellion packs vs 15 million Chaos Legion packs when it was released. The lower the quantity of packs means it would increase the demand and will make price of the cards higher for selling.

Isn't 9.5 million still high? Based on numbers, there was 1.5 million Untamed Booster Packs that were created so this is still 6x the amount of Untamed. Even if there will be a burning feature for Rebellion pack, I think that is still too high. Chaos Legion also had burning features but there's still 1,648,609 copies of Pelacor Mercenary on the market.

I am not trying to be negative but we always need to see the possible good and bad sides in order to get to a fair judgment. I hope I will be wrong for the better of Splinterlands.

The Rebellion edition will feature four new unit abilities which should open up a host of new battle strategies and combinations for players to use, and that players will need to watch out for from their opponents! Each new ability is described below and we can't wait to see how they will shake up the arena:

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!

"using their gauntlets, shields, helmets, or perhaps physical attributes (spikes, hard shells, etc) as weapons!" I am not sure about this part. Maybe, we'll see more once the full pack has been released.

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 to the Repair ability. You can't Repair something that's been melted into acidic goo! Note that this only affects units with Armor.

This is a good ability. It's like Cripple but with armor. This is a good counter against my Zombie Dragon Build which uses armor and Void armor as its main defense since when you use Resurrection on a monster, they get 1 health but with full armor.

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!

This is very underpowered. I feel like it's just another Possibilus the Wise but with a monster. It would be good for Fire Splinter though especially that Soulbound monster with Melee Weapons Training. I am not sure how this differs on just having a monster with Reach.

Lookout - A unit with this ability results in adjacent allies taking one less damage from attackers with Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity. Give your team a heads-up when stalkers approach from the shadows. It's always a good idea to have a Lookout!

I felt Sneak is a little strong and hard to counter. I am abusing it quite recently so this would really hinder that part of my strategy. This must be a Must have monster for rules of combat, Equal Opportunity, Super Sneak and Target Practice.

We are planning for some (but not necessarily all) of the Summoners in the set to be dual-element - meaning that they can Summon cards from two of the five basic Splinterlands elements together on the same team, plus Neutral cards as always. The Dragon Summoners in the set will not be dual-element beyond their normal ability to summon both Dragon cards as well as cards from any other single element.

I think this is a good idea. I do want this to be applied to a rule of combat instead. We have Taking Sides rule of combat that disables the use of neutral monsters so if possible, I do want to have a rule of combat that allow you to use any monsters from any Splinter. I think this would increase the creativity of players

Imagine having Scarred Llama Mage (Earth) as your summoner then having that last stand effect on Uriel the Purifier (Life). That increase in damage from the Last Stand ability, combined with Uriel the Purifier's Recharge ability that inflicts Triple damage while having What Doesn't Kill You rule of combat, giving your Uriel the Enraged ability. I would laugh my -beep- out if I see Uriel the Purifier do a 18 damage per attack.

In addition to featuring dual-element Summoners, the Rebellion edition will also introduce a game-changing new mechanic known as Summoner Tactics. Summoner cards with this new mechanic will have two different sets of buffs or debuffs that are available for the player to choose from after both players have revealed their teams! It is currently planned that most, if not all, of the Summoners that are part of the Rebellion set will have the Tactics mechanic.

The new effects of the summoners though feels really overpowered and feels unfair to fight against if you don't have rebellion summoners. The possible high mana cost though makes it a bit fair. I want to see how this would be played out.

May I suggest a rework of old cards instead or maybe applying these effects as an item/equipment like how you can banish certain cards for Brawl as a Guild ability, maybe a player can pre-choose a certain "player ability" that will apply to the match.

I also do hope that the summoner would be at least 7 mana or else this would be really overpowered.

I like the summoner Tactics though, it's kind of the same idea as the "player ability" that I were suggesting just now. Although, it feels unfair for a player who isn't using the Rebellion summoner. Looks like Rebellion Summoners will be a

MUST

rather than an IMPROVEMENT if you want to win. This would certainly bring down the price of all summoners and increase the price of Rebellion summoners. Again, I hope the devs can plan a rework in the future to apply this to all summoners in the game for it to be fair.

I hope there would be at least have a cost-effect in this mechanic. I am thinking something like, "This summoner can give your tank a Shield ability BUT all of your monsters reduce their speed by 1 OR you can reduce all opponent's damage by 1 instead.

While some people can argue that "Immortalis already have this kind of ability and he gives it to all monsters on your team so he's more overpowered," the fact that you can adjust your strategy AFTER seeing your opponent's team an unfair advantage. You can PREDICT what your opponent will do and use Immortalis to POSSIBLY counter it but the new summoners remove the prediction part as you can be sure that your ability choice will counter your opponent's main strategy.

To make things even more interesting, if the enemy team features some units with the Forcefield ability, it may even be better to apply the -1 Ranged attack to your own team in order to get their attacks below 5 damage so they won't be deflected by the enemy's Forcefield!

Apparently, this can also be applied to your own team. Not sure if the increased/decreased stats can be applied to the whole board or only on one team. This opens up a good strategy though and future abilities with effects such as "Monsters with this ability increases their damage instead of decreased." that can be a counter to team that likes to reduce the opponent's stats.

Some of you may also note that this new mechanic seems similar to what we have been planning for the Item and Spell cards that will eventually be produced through the Secret of Praetoria land expansion - and you would be correct. This same system of making choices post-team-reveal is planned to be used for Item and Spell cards in the future, and this new Summoner Tactics mechanic will give players an early taste of what Items and Spells will be like and how they will completely redefine the way Splinterlands battles are played!

This would just be a taste of the future of the Splinterlands. Maybe, this release would be like a testing ground for what they can do and what the community thinks about the future changes in the gameplay. Whatever their plan is, it's a good note and I am excited for its new growth.

Finally, we want to note that for asynchronous battles, such as most tournaments and guild brawls, players may still use the new Summoners, however they will not be able to wait until the opponent's team is revealed before choosing their Tactic. In the future, when post-team-reveal decisions become more commonplace, we plan to extend asynchronous battles to add a second phase for post-team-reveal decisions, but for the time being they will stay as they are and the Summoner Tactic, if available, will need to be chosen before being able to see the enemy team.

I hope Splinterlands would think along the line of "step-by-step battle." The best example for this would be Yugioh.

In Yugioh, there are phases for each battle and each phases, both players are given time to respond:

Draw Phase - Turn player draws a card. The opposing player can use abilities after the turn player draws a card.

Standby Phase - Some effects applies during this phase. Opposing player can use abilities after the turn player's actions.

Main Phase 1 - Turn player can summon monsters, use effect, etc. It is the MAIN phase of the game. In other games, it's also called, "Preparation Stage."

Battle Phase - Turn player can start attacking or use abilities. Other games, this is the "Battle Stage."

Main Phase 2 - Same as main phase 1. In Yugioh, you can perform one normal summon per turn. If you don't use normal summon in Main Phase 1, you can do it in Main Phase 2.

End Phase - Some effects activate in this phase. This also gives the priority back to your opponent and lets them start with their own draw phase.

There are other "mini steps" in between these turns. I won't detail them since we're not really talking about how to play Yugioh. But it would be the same in Splinterlands where the turn your attack made the opponent's monster's health to 0 is different than the turn it was removed from that battle.

The reason I enumerated these is I wish, in the future, Splinterlands would apply some or even all of these. As they said in the post, " In the future, when post-team-reveal decisions become more commonplace, we plan to extend asynchronous battles to add a second phase for post-team-reveal decisions..." I really like having an impact in the battles as a player. I want a game where I can use a spell at a very specific time, maybe when my monster have 1 health and I can heal them before the poison effect activates and that may win me the game.

I like having an impact and it shows you the player skill instead of just putting everything out and relying to RNG gods to win/lose the game.

Just like how I don't like the current state of Yugioh, I hope they don't go overboard. I hope Splinterlands can balance the simpleness of the game allowing newcomers to be able to join and play the game without needing to read a 10 page manual on how to do each and every thing. While being simplistic, I also hope they can make it complicated enough for the advanced players to keep playing and wanting more. I am completely confident that Splinterlands devs can do it though with their vision on the game.

I like the new design of the cards. It reminds me of Vanguard TCG for some reason. Looks more cartoon-ish as well, kind of like DC Superheroed, which I like as well in cards.

I won't really comment a lot on this since, to be honest, I really didn't understand a huge chunk of it. I suggest you check the main post of Splinterlands and read it for your own. I left a link above going to Splinterland's main post where you can find more information about Conflicts.

All I understood is that it's a new type of airdrop process and you need to stake the rebellion packs to get points for the airdrop. This means you cannot but packs then sell it or open it for the airdrop. Whether this is good or bad, I really don't have an idea.

All in all, I think all these changes are good for Splinterlands. Especially the Summoner Tactics. One of the main reasons I think why Splinterlands is infested by bots is because there's no player-input for it. Bots or automated responses can easily be replicated and used if there's no or very little decision making involved in the process.

Regardless of if you are botting or playing manually, being the "player" doesn't really have much impact. At least, with this new mechanic, there's a bit of decision making in which players would be in advantage of.

I am also excited for the future because this new mechanic will be the foundation of adding these kinds of player inputs in the future. Maybe, this will also pave the way for making Splinterlands a competitive world-wide Esport in the future. Just like how many recognize Heartstone, Yugioh, Vanguard and other card games, I hope Splinterlands can make a name and stand alongside them and these player inputs or mechanics is what I think this game needed to separate itself from being a different style of manager simulator

In Football Manager Simulator, or any manager simulator, you will be tasked to hire your own employees and players. Once you've done so, watch them as they play against the other teams to see who win by having a better team. Sounds familiar?
In Splinterlands, when you press the "Battle", you will be tasked to make the best team you can with the limits of the rules of combats, mana cap, and elements available. Once you've done selecting your team, you can watch your team battle with your opponent and see who wins.
Gameplay-wise, is there a difference between a manager simulator game and Splinterlands battle?

In any case, I'm really excited for this new face of Splinterlands. The only other problem I am seeing is the amount of packs. I still believe that the 9.5 million packs are still too much, especially, if you need to multiply that by 5 since every packs will release 5 individual cards, regardless of their rarity. That will put you to 47.5 million cards and probably hundred thousands, if not, millions of cards will be stranded in the market.

I hope that since Rebellion was now released, they can focus on making the LAND in order for the excess cards to be absorbed by that feature. Otherwise, this would be another Chaos Legion and we'll see multiple copies of cards fall to $0.01 ruining the economy once again.

• This post is an entry for Splinterlands Social Media Contest.
• Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos. Photos and drawings without cited sources are mine and made for this post.
• Animated Banners and Dividers are edited in Canva Pro.
• Some of the fonts used are from instafonts.io

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