Introduction

A few days ago, Splinterlands announced details about Rebellion. Rebelllion is coming with two promo cards for the presale only, some new in game mechanics and an improved airdrop system. I will be sharing my thoughts on all this in this post.

Thoughts On Rebellion Booster Pack Details & Pricing

The presale is scheduled to begin on Wednesday, October 18th, at 2:00 PM ET / 18:00 UTC. source

Rebellion packs will be like previous packs which come with five cards with one being a minimum of rare. I think the main difference is having two promo cards in the presale whereas Chaos Legion only had one which was Dr Blight.

Each Rebellion booster pack will have a base price of 5000 Credits or 5000 DEC, and purchasers may spend VOUCHER tokens in order to receive a discount on the base price. Each VOUCHER token used will reduce the price by 200 Credits / DEC and the maximum discount available using VOUCHER tokens will be 20%. This means that with the maximum available VOUCHER discount, each pack will cost 4000 Credits or DEC plus 5 VOUCHER tokens. source

As you can see, the pricing is sticking to the same as Riftwatchers. I like how they are allowing Credits or DEC instead of SPS as from the Riftwatchers sale, we learned that having packs sold in SPS wasn't very ideal. I think having it also in credits will make it easier for people to just use their credit card to make some purchases for these packs. Currently, I think it would be a slightly better deal to buy these packs using DEC though. I like how there will be utility for vouchers to reduce the price to four dollars which is the same as Chaos Legion. I think this price point was fair and should be ok.

My only concern here is there's still a lot of things yet to be delivered like land that from the community sentiment it doesn't seem like there's a lot of intent to purchase these packs. I could be wrong though but there's a chance that this may be the first Splinterlands presale to not sell out within minutes like how Chaos Legion and Riftwatchers did. I could be wrong though. Personally for me, I won't be making any purchases as I'm lacking the funds and on top of that, I'm still waiting on Splinterlands to deliver on past things like land and nodes.

Thoughts On Presale Promo Cards

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At first glance, Mantaroth seems like an alright legendary card. I think if we compare this to Arkemis the Bear, it seems very weak in comparison. I think in almost every situation I would probably prefer to put in an Arkemis the Bear. I think we may see this card in maybe a melee attack anywhere or sneak ruleset. This card could also be good in odds only ruleset. Aside from this, I'm not too sold on this card but I could be wrong.

Grimbardun Smith seems like the Almo Cambino replacement since untamed will cycle out. I think this is a potentially solid card since it's neutral and a solid tank that can cut any form of damage in half. It's immune to cripple and can repair it's own armor. I could see this card being a beast in reverse speed. It definitely counters Dr Blight hard which is one of the best cards in reverse speed and in game in general.

As for the art, I'm loving the art. I like how we can see the full body of the art for the character. I think this is a great improvement from past editions. It looks really nice and in my opinion hitting closer to that triple AAA quality in terms of the art.

Thoughts On New Abilities

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Armored Strike - 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! source

This is an interesting ability I feel and I'm wondering if the buff in attack reduces if the armor is lost. I feel like it will because if the attack doesn't reduce as the armor is gone then this will be a super OP ability. This will give Queen Mycelia, Arkemis the bear and other protect card more utility. At the same time, this will also create utility for rust which is the counter for protect.

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. source

I'm loving this ability as it's a great counter to armor repair. What I'm not liking is that they limited it to melee attacks. I feel they should have made this more general that even magic units and ranged units could apply this . I'm also curious whether or not this can be cleansed as affliction can be cleansed and allow units to be healed again.

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! source

Flank ability will add more interesting lineups in my opinion. I think this ability would pair well with that new legendary card in the presale. Basically this ability, will give opportunities to have melee units without reach in the second position to be played where they normally wouldn't be used.

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! source

Lookout is probably the ability I find the most interesting. I love to play sneak and opportunity teams and this will be a great ability to counter these strategies. I think the team probably realized how powerful sneak opportunity water and life were so they had this change to provide some counter play.

Dual Element Summoners Confirmed!

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Dual Element summoners is something I talked about before even the idea was shared by the Splinterlands team if you go look back at my old Splinterlands post. I even talked about having multi element summoners which is something probably for the future as Rebellion set is only confirmed to have dual element summoners. I'm liking the new mechanics it's bringing with it's abilities of having a choice between abilities. It's also super cool that these abilities can be targeted. The big thing for me about this is that this will make bots have to adapt to the changes and it may make it harder for bots to play the game as the game is getting slightly more complex with additional steps than just submitting a lineup. There's more decision making involved which will mean more skill and more potential ways to make a mistake which can cost the match.

New Tactic Stage

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As you can see here, the new summoners will have the addition to choices of abilities which will create probably another step after creating the lineup. What I like about this is, you can adapt your strategy after seeing your opponents team. You can see which ability would be more suitable to counter the enemy and this will greatly reduce the RNG aspect of the game I feel and reward more skill. Currently, we have to guess what the opponent will play but after Rebellion is out we will have the option with the new summoners to adjust our strategy to cater to what we didn't expect to potentially turn a normally losing game to a victory.

Improved Airdrop System

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I'm loving this change in the airdrop system. People will have to stake their packs they purchased to get the airdrops. They can also stake cards which can still be used in the game which is amazing. In the past, people just had to buy which cost a lot of secondary market activity which usually involved dumping cards/packs. I think this change will help people hold their assets more than to simply try to gain a profit from the airdrop and selling the packs they bought at a discount through bulk buys.

The downside of this I feel is that this may make those people that bought bulk purchases before not participate in the rebellion sale since there will be more risk for them to try to make an "ROI". I could be wrong about this. In the end, the sales we have in the presale will tell the story whether I'm right about this. This is something I'm foreseeing. In a way this will keep secondary market prices healthy, and hopefully encourage more people to buy directly from Splinterlands than from others at a cheaper price!

Concluding Thoughts

Rebellion seems to be the new shiny thing. A lot of people are selling their other assets to get Rebellion. I've seen prices fall like crazy for CL and Untamed. This might be the time to look at other Splinterlands while majority are focused on the new shiny thing. This is not financial advice though! Let's hope Splinterlands end this year with a bang! I'm excited and looking forward to see everything come together with what Yabapmatt envisioned Splinterlands to be.

Thank You

Thank you for reading and supporting me. Do comment below your thoughts on the Rebellion set!

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