Aside from the game modifiers, the different card abilities bring depth to the gameplay of Splinterlands. Depending on the set of abilities that each card has, we can create formidable lineups to help us win our matches. Some abilities are there to increase the stats of the cards or reduce the stats of your opponent's units. Some abilities are there to provide support, while others are there to debilitate the opponent. There are also abilities that allow cards to share their attack or give them other abilities, as well as abilities that only take effect when the card is defeated. Knowing how each of these abilities works and in what situations they can be used was essential to being at the top of the game, but it can be very challenging, as the number of abilities has just increased as new sets are being introduced in the game.
That said, there are some abilities that are no longer in use in modern formats. Here is the list of abilities that you can no longer see when you play in Modern Format.
Splinterlands Discontinued Abilities
As of the writing of this post, the number of Splinterlands abilities has reached 121, including the new abilities that were introduced with the Escalation mini-set. However, there are 5 abilities that were currently unavailable in modern. These abilities were:
A debilitation that reduces maximum team size by 1.
This ability was so far the newest among the sunsetted abilities as it was a debilitation that was introduced in Rebellion, specifically, the Dragon Archon Nidhoggr, but a few months ago, the archon was reworked, and the debilitation was removed.
Well, the reason why it was removed was obvious. With the Archon having a huge mana cost, it is already difficult to use it during small and mid-mana battles. Then, on High mana battles where it was supposed to shine, it was being handicapped by the debilitation. It would not matter much if it were some regular Archon, but it was an airdrop Archon that was created to represent the top buyers from the pack presale, so seeing how the Archon was doing worse had soured those investors.
I think if the team chooses to add the debilitation on a non-airdrop archon, and perhaps even a unit, it has a better chance of being accepted in the game, as long as the stats and abilities of the card will justify the risk of using it.
Attacks dealing 5 base damage or more instead deal 1 damage.
These were among the first abilities that were introduced in Chaos Legion, with the most notable card being Djinn Oshannus in my opinion. From what I remember, the reason why this ability was sunsetted was that it makes matches longer to resolve, as it turns damage that is 5 or more to 1.
And with the new cards, many of them were focused on Attack or cards that gain additional attack over time to make battles resolve faster.
That said, there are already some abilities that can immediately counter Forcefield, such as Expose, which can remove Forcefield on a card, albeit its effects can be cleansed. Another ability that can counter Forcefield was Relentless Strike, which inflicts true damage on a card, meaning the damage the card will inflict will be equal to its attack, regardless of having Forcefield, and will also inflict +1 additional damage on the target.
Deals double damage if the target's Mana is 10 or more.
Another ability that was introduced in the early Chaos Legion Era, Giant Killer, is much like Oppress in a way that it can inflict twice the damage on certain cards. The only difference between the two is that Oppress only works on non-damage units, while Giant Killer only works when a card costs 10 or more mana.
That is why it did not make sense to me that the team had discontinued including this ability in modern. If what the team wants in battles is for it to resolve quickly, would it not make sense to use this ability, since most of the high mana units often have high health?
Among all the discontinued abilities, I think that this is one that can easily be brought back if the team wants to.
*When defeated, adjacent units gain +1 to all stats.*
The Martyr ability is also one of the newer abilities that were introduced in the game, which comes along with the first batch of soulbound rewards that were introduced in Chaos Legion. It's kinda like the reverse of Bloodlust, where adjacent units will get a full stat boost when the card with this ability is defeated.
I believe that the reason why this ability was sunsetted, was because it was so similar to the Bloodline Tribute ability that was introduced in Conclave Arcana and plays an important role with the Bloodline mechanics, where cards that share the same bloodline would gain stat boost after the unit with Bloodline Tribute was defeated. And unlike Martyr, which only affects cards adjacent to it, Bloodline Tribute will affect all allied cards regardless of their position, as long as they share the same bloodline.
Because of that, I think that we will not see this ability back in modern anytime soon.
One extra Gladiator may be used in battle.
And for the last discontinued ability, we have Conscript, which allows players to summon 1 Gladiator unit in battle, and was also a recent ability that was introduced at the same time as Martyr on soulbound reward cards.
I think that it was a cool ability for an Archon to have to be able to occasionally summon gladiator units that mostly can only be used in brawls, since even when a player has a max-level Gladiator unit, he may not be able to play it at that level during brawls, since they may be capped by the fray they are playing.
I think that the biggest issue why this ability was discontinued was that the team had given players an Archon for free that they could play for most of the battle since it was present on all elements, allowing players to play the game without buying or renting any cards.
Closing
Among all the abilities, I think that Giant Killer can be brought back immediately without having that much effect on the balance of Modern Format gameplay, same with Forcefield, which already has some counters. And if the team does not want to flood units with these abilities, maybe they can do this on the upcoming promo cards to be sold at the Voucher shop, so the mint rate on the card will only be based on its demand.
Thank you, and see you on the next post!
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