All images are taken from Splinterlands, my own screenshots, or sourced gifs. Banner image edited by me.
Why this card is CRACKED! Rise of the Busted Gnome
Greetings everyone and welcome to another Splinterlands post. This week we will be talking about the best card in Splinterlands that will be at the top of the meta and effect everyone's lineups, future ability prints, and much more going forward. This card will be a defining piece of the meta and is objectively the tankiest card Splinterlands has printed to date with 20 HP at lvl 1. It's honestly pretty insane, I know the modern meta has a lot of high damage lineups but this card just MESHES INTO THOSE LINEUPS, and if THESE are the stats required to be relevant we are in trouble. We are now in a meta of "print broken things, then print things to counter them down the line" the way a lot of TCGs start devolving into. In wild this card is actually completely batshit crazy. This powercreep is unsustainable even if there are currently counters available for it.
The "Balance" behind it: Counters exist so it's fiiiiiiine
The "balance" behind this card is "Some players with maxxed out lineups tested it and it can be countered so it's good to go". Just because something "can be countered" doesn't mean that this card isn't amping up all Splinterlands card math going forward to a degree that is unsustainable in the long term. I get that they want to make the voucher exclusive card a chase card but this is some of the wildest powercreep I've seen in any cardgame. "But rex we've already powercreeped everything in modern to the point where this is in line with everything in modern, doesn't that make it ok?". No not really, this will limit design space going forward and either have cards needing to have egregious amounts of damage or health and actually just be a "next set is stronger than the last, whale in to win or GTFO" dynamic. Diablo Immortal style (which is likely what is intended here). Ideally you want powercreep to be a minimal factor in selling cards and have "new and unique mechanics" be the draw. Not just "we printed a new thing, it has literally 20 fucking HP at lvl 1 and is barely ahead of the powercreep we already established. You need this or you're shit out of luck. We are just going to print things numerically more valuable and stronger over and over after this too. Not in small increments mind you, just set to set.". This can't keep going this way, we are just 2 sets from chaos legion when Grum was "Oh shit look at this powercreep, they have to add abilities like giantkiller just to deal with this shit". I'm sure there are lineups that counter it, I'm sure it probably just seems "Like a card that just barely exists" in the modern meta. But that's sort of my point, you can't just keep powercreeping directly numerically like this without seeing what is called "the design space ceiling" where you can't print bigger numbers anymore and have nowhere to go. Yugioh suffers from this and is riddled with turn one turn kills (in an interactive card game NOT an autobattler), and this is Splinterlands equivalent of "jumping the shark". The moment where things start to exponentially and compoundingly get crazier and crazier. Just because it's on par with current powercreep doesn't mean that "printing numerically stronger cards" at this rate isn't unsustainable.
Talking Tidbits: Frontier is the only competitive mode
I'm just glad Frontier will remain a pure and competitive mode, I at least have a sanctuary to play my cards where powercreep isn't as much of a factor. However, I am worried about the future of the mode. Will they powercreep the current crop of foundations cards with new cards 40 percent stronger numerically and make every other card irrelevant? It now puts it up in the air for me. Is this game worth continuing to play and stream if this is the level of pay to win that will occur in modern, and will it spread into Foundations? I sincerely hope not.
Thanks for reading this little card math rant. Would love to know some peoples thoughts on this card. Thanks for looking at this post, liking it, licking your screen, and whatever else it is you people do when I put words on HIVE. As per usual someone in the comments is going to receive 1 SBI unit, you will be notified in a comment reply sometime after this post pays out. Cheers and see you in the Splinterlands Battlemages.