Never really understood why they call it redemption, but man I love this ability. Only existing on nine cards means this is a very valuable tool to include into your lineup, and one your opponent might not be expecting.
Above you see Two Gun Pete, Spirit Shaman, Exploding Rats, Cursed Slimeball, Halfling Alchemist, and Thunderbird. These cards, along with Fire Elemental and Dragon Spirit are the only cards you will find blowing up battlefields upon their death. Special Shoutout to Fina Voxom as well, the only Gladiator card to offer this ability. First, lets look at the rules of the splinterlands ability
Redemption.
Note: The damage dealt is Melee and follows normal rules of melee attacks, and Shield protects against this damage.
You might be saying, "Just one damage?" It's not a big deal right? Not normally, but we can couple this ability with others to make some wonderful recipes. My favorite ability to pair Redemption with is probably obvious to you all, but here it is,
Weaken.
Note: Weaken cannot reduce health to less than 1
The note there should be enough explanation to why this pairs so perfectly with Redemption. It's pretty common in 15-20 mana rulesets for opponents to flood the board with monsters that have relatively low HP. So, consider this team, one of my absolute favorites.
Crypt Mancer with two weakens means I'm removing three HP from my opponent's monsters! That means the one damage coming through is VERY likely to take out at least one backline monsters, as long as they don't have armor protecting them.. Armor might seem like a good counter, but there's a great solution to this in the ability Rust:
Pretty sweet combo right? The card-designers really thought out these abilities, and what's good to know is that there are weakens and rusts in every splinter. The only splinter I think you can truly abuse this is in Death. In the other splinters you have one or at max two cards with each of these abilities, but they normally come at a relatively higher mana cost. In death, it costs only 6 mana to get two weakens with a redemption. Add 5 more mana for a Crypt Mancer and you've now got virtually three weakens. Don't forget Darkest Mage with rust ability for only 2 mana. If you've got 11 more mana, you could always throw in a Chtulhu for maximum fun, and w/ 7 extra mana, I'll tell you a hilarious combo to pull off on your friends, Ancient Lich. When your opponent takes out your Cursed Slimeball and almost loses their whole team, you resurrect it and then watch it finish what it started. You can always throw Halfling Alchemist in there in position two to get the double or even triple Redemption party started if the Lich was invited.
Altogether, Redemption is a pretty fun mechanic. In most splinters it's an added bonus and might not be the most deadly ability, but in the death splinter, it's one you can abuse in the higher leagues.
Let me know of your favorite combos in the comments!
Blessings, fam