Introduction
Good day, everyone! How's your recent ranked battles? Good? Bad? Meh? Have you read the latest Splinterlands Townhall Summary? If not, check Splinterlands' post here - Splinterlands Town Hall Summary - October 31st, 2022 - 1PM Eastern! In the latest town hall, one of the future change log in the game is the addition of three gameplay rulesets. Though everyone who's been playing for awhile now are already familiar about these new rulesets, these will still change the phase of the game. In this post, I would like to share my thoughts and experience in these new gameplay rulesets that are already live in the game.
Quick Summary
Here is a quick summary of these new gameplay rulesets.
 | THORNS All Monsters have the Thorns ability. Thorns Ability - When hit with a Melee attack, does damage back to the attacker. |
 | MAGIC REFLECT All Monsters have the Magic Reflect ability. Magic Reflect Ability - When hit with Magic damage, does reduced Magic damage back to the attacker. |
 | RETURN FIRE All Monsters have the Return Fire ability. Return Fire Ability - When hit with a Ranged attack, Monsters with Return Fire will return reduced damage back to their attacker. |
Thorns
Most of you might already know that Mylor Crowling gives this ability to every friendly monster at the start of a battle. This is a huge pain in the neck when one of the ruleset in the battle is Up Close and Personal wherein only monsters with a melee attack can be used and you know that your opponent has the Summoner Mylor Crowling. So what to do when faced with a battle with Thorns ruleset? One of the tricks here is to use monsters with two types of attacks, like War Chaang, Oaken Behemoth, Agor Long Tail and The Vigilator. These monsters can still attack even if they are not in the first position.
You can also try using summoners that gives armor buff like Kelya Frendul or use Lorna Shine that gives Divine Shield to all allied monsters at the start of the game. These buffs will negate the first damage from Thorns and can be useful to your team. And if the battle rule set has no Up Close and Personal, use Ranged and/or Magic Attack monsters as much as possible. With the new Thorns Gameplay Ruleset, could we see a decline of Mylor Crowling users? Hmmmm.
Here is a sample gameplay with Thorns Ruleset.
Magic Reflect
The Summoner Owster Rotwell gives this ability to every friendly monster at the start of a battle. The return damage is equal to half of the damage received back to the attacker, rounded up. And it's a pain in the neck when you used a summoner to buff the magic attack of your monsters. This ability is quite a disadvantage when the game play ruleset or only active element/s forced you to play Magic Attack monsters. But based from what I experienced, you may want to have monsters with Void ability. This ability will reduce damage from magic attacks and mostly, the reflected damage from Magic Reflect is only 1, thus it will not have any damage to monsters with Magic Attack and Void ability, like Djinn Oshannus and Void Dragon.
Here is a sample gameplay with Magic Reflect Ruleset and has Djinn Oshannus.
Return Fire
The Summoner Lir Deepswimmer gives this ability to every friendly monster at the start of a battle but with this ruleset in play, you may want to use other summoners. The return damage is equal to half of the damage received back to the attacker, rounded up. So, you may not want to use Ranged Attack monsters if this ruleset is present. If ever you are forced to use Ranged Attack monsters, you may want to add a monter or summoner that gives armor to allied monsters. In this way, you will have protection from return damage. It is also quite a disadvantage if you have Ranged Attack monsters with Blast ability. Yodin Zaku gives this ability to allied monsters. Blast ability will also inflict damage to adjacent monsters and in return, will also trigger Return Fire.
Here is a sample gameplay with Return Fire Ruleset and has monsters with Blast ability.
Amplify Ability
With these three new rulesets that returns the damage to the attacker, one of the abilities that will surely help your lineup is the Amplify Ability. This ability increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy monsters by 1. Currently, here are the list of cards with Amplify ability. Out of these cards, the only summoner is Grandmaster Rathe that gives Amplify ability to all allied monsters. Could we see a drastic price increase of these cards? Hmmm.
Takeaway
There is little doubt that the introduction of these new rulesets will alter gameplay. There will be players who will use the chance to continue using monsters that are weaker than these rulesets; some players will seize this opportunity, while others will not be prepared to play with these. What's intriguing is that, in contrast to when these are utilized as abilities, you may view the rule sets before selecting your cards. Will the addition of these new rulesets cause the card usage rates of summoners Mylor Crowling, Lir Deepswimmer, and Owster Rotwell to decrease? I don't think so, considering that these summoners still have a lot of advantage even without the Thorns, Magic Reflect, and Return Fire rulesets. And lastly, what I realized is that you should have different kinds of attacks and abilities in your deck in order to be ready for each kind of gameplay ruleset. You do not want to have a battle wherein Fire is the only available element with Return Fire ruleset and your deck has Yodin Zaku and a bunch of Ranged Attack monsters only. 😅
That's it, and thanks for reading. If you're interested in playing Splinterlands, here is my game link - splintercell-01.
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*Images used are from Splinterlands and splintercards.com and edited in Canva.