Vonak: The Flames of Rebellion Gives Birth To New Abilities

Hi! @saydie here playing Splinterlands everyday!

This was another week to lit the flames of Rebellion as the presale was currently on- going. As I published this post, there are already around 300k out of 500k presale packs that have been sold with only 12 days remaining until the presale ends so if you wait too long, you either might be running out of time or running out of packs. Remember! There will be 2 promo cards that you can only get by buying the presale packs, similar on how Doctor Blight was on the Chaos Legion which at first glance looks to be as an incredibly plain card at first but turns out to be a very powerful card and I believed this new promo cards will also be like that in the future.

At the same time, this new set will give birth on new abilities that would bring new strategies to the game and so far, there were 4 abilities that were known to be included in Rebellion and a possibility of a 5^th ability was teased on the townhall and in this post, I will have an in depth review with the said abilities and some possible lineup with the current Chaos Legion Set.

Rebellion Card Abilities

Armored Strike

Ability Icon	Description
	Any unit with this ability gains an ADDITIONAL Melee attack using its Armor stat. This allows characters to improvise with deadly force, using their gauntlets, shields, helmets, or perhaps physical attributes (spikes, hard shells, etc) as weapons!

The details for this ability was still vague for me as it was described in the official post as to "gains an ADDITIONAL Melee attack using its Armor stat". I'm not sure whether the monster will lose all its armor and be added to its melee attack or the monster will have additional attack but still be able to retain its armor. I'm excited to know how this ability works in ranked battles and to test it out myself but here are the some traits of this ability that should be true regardless of how it work.

• Only monsters with at least 1 Melee attack can have Armored Strike ability.

• Melee monsters should at least have 1 to be able to use Armored Strike ability.

• Armored Strike ability would not work in the Unprotected ruleset.

• Armored Strike ability would not be present in the Keep Your Distance ruleset.

Which means that this ability could not only applied on tank monsters but also on monsters with Opportunity, and Sneak ability as long as they are monsters with melee attack just like the monsters below.

Opportunity	Reach	Sneak

Additionally, I am thinking how this ability will work together with the following abilities whether we can make good synergies with them.

Protect	All friendly Monsters gain +2 Armor
Rust	Reduces the Armor of all enemy Monsters.

• Will the additional armor from Protect ability be also added on the melee attack of a monster with Armored Strike ability?

• Since Rust ability activates during pre- battle phase, would the reduced armor be deducted to the supposed additional damage by Armored Strike?

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Corrosive Ward

Corrosive Ward	When hit with a Melee attack, a unit with this ability does 2 damage to the attacker's Armor AND reduces the max Armor of the attacker by 2. This is the nemesis to the Repair ability. You can't Repair something that's been melted into acidic goo! Note that this only affects units with Armor.

This is similar to the Cripple ability where monsters lose max health every time they were attacked but this time, it was the the max armor of that was being reduced and at the same time, instead of attacking, the monster that have this ability must be attacked in order for this ability to work much like how Thorns ability would work but here are the some traits of this ability that should be true regardless of how it work.

• A monster should have an armor and a Melee attack should attack a monster with Corrosive Ward ability in order for the ability to work.

• Attacks with Range and Magic will not reduce the armor of the attacker.

• Corrosive Ward ability would be useful in the Armored Up ruleset.

• Corrosive Ward ability would not work on Unprotected and Keep Your Distance ruleset.

As implied on the ability description, Corrosive Ward was the nemesis of Repair ability which is to say that they will be the a counter for the following modern cards.

And now, I also wonder what would happen to the melee attacker when they attack a monster with Corrosive Ward if they also happen to have the Thorns ability or if there is a briar patch ruleset.

Thorns	When hit with a Melee attack, does damage back to the attacker
Briar Patch	All monsters have the Thorns ability.

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Flank

Flank	If the unit with this ability is in the first position, then the unit in the second position gains the Reach ability. Prepare to leverage positioning and the element of surprise. Now your first two units can work together to bring down the enemy tank!

Majority of the melee monsters can only attack when they were at the first position but recently Chaos Legion gains the ability to give Reach ability on all monsters with Possibilus the Wise but that was only exclusive to water element. And now, monsters can also give Reach ability for any element as long as they have monsters with ability and here are the some traits of this ability that should be true regardless of how it work.

• Flank will only activate when the monster adjacent to it has Melee attack.

• Sneak and Opportunity ability takes precedence over Reach so be careful not to put monsters with those ability next with Flank.

So with Flank ability, you can now double down on placing melee monsters with high damage output with high health and high armor and focus your attack on the front and would greatly benefit this monsters.

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Lookout

Lookout	A unit with this ability results in adjacent allies taking one less damage from attackers with Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity. Give your team a heads-up when stalkers approach from the shadows. It's always a good idea to have a Lookout!

I often play Sneak and Opportunity teams cause they usually target the most vulnerable unit of the opponent but with Lookout ability reducing the damage inflicted by those attacks, one might consider whether it is better to focus fire the attack on the front or not. It was also interesting how this ability will synergize together with the following ability that reduces the damage of the opponent monsters.

Demoralize	Reduces the Melee attack of all enemy Monsters
Headwinds	Reduces the Range attack of all enemy Monsters.
Silence	Reduces the Magic Attack of all enemy Monsters

With this abilities that reduces the damage of monsters, the damage of monsters with Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity will be further reduced regardless of their attack type.

On the other hand, I also can't quite fully grasp how this ability work with the following abilities.

Shield	Reduced damage from Melee and Range attacks
Void	Reduced damage from Magic attacks
Forcefield	This Monster takes only 1 damage from attacks with power 5+

If a monster was supposed to received 1 damage because it has Shield, Void and Forcefield, would that damage becomes 0 when it was next to a monster with Lookout?

Final Thoughts

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Having new abilities together with the Rebellion set will definitely bring new ways for us to build our lineups and consider how will affect the result of our battles. This will be very vital specially on Modern format as with the release of Rebellion, Untamed and Dice will be gone. For now, some of the abilities I mentioned above have quite vague description but I could already think of the possible synergies together with them and whether my speculations were true or not will be known when Rebellion was out.

That was all for this post and see you on the next one!

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