Bug or Feature? New Strategy against Forcefield

Today Hive account@appbap had an interesting battle, he kindly gave me permission to write about what happened.

Watch The Battle

In his Lineup he put Djinn Oshannus with the forcefield ability. This ability should prevent any damage that deals 5 or more points. Or should it? The description is somewhat peculiar. What constitutes an "attack with power 5+"? Is it the actual damage that reaches the target or is it the base attack?

His Djinn Oshannus came against Ifrit Rising. That card has the recharge ability and thus deals in its attack rounds three times the damage it would normally do. Ifrit Rising has a magic attack of 3 and therefore with recharge pumps it up to 9. Should that be lowered to one with the forcefield ability?

The game does not think so. Djinn Oshannus was hit with 5 magic damage. The actual 9 damage were reduced by the void ability, i.e. cut in half and rounded up.

We wanted to be sure so we started an experiment. We called a challenge against each other and in the second battle we got both water and life splinter open with enough mana to pitch Djinn Oshannus against Uriel the Purifier.

Watch The Battle

Oh look at that. Uriel hits with the full 9 melee attack. So it is not restricted to magic.

But the question remains: Is it a bug or a feature?

I went on and looked up the battle in splintertools.io. In their simulation the damage dealt by Uriel is cut down to one.

So either Hive account@splinterlands or Hive account@splintertools has it wrong and one needs to fix it.

What's your take on this issue? Let me know in the comments. Should we open a ticket or have we found a new strategy against forcefield ability? Would give recharge a new meaning and make it more valuable, wouldn't it?

Thank you for reading.

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_{Header image designed in canva.
Divider designed by freeztag as free to use.
Special-Opps logo and animation designed by Hive account@appbap, used with permission.
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All other images are screenshots from the game.}