Many strategies in Splinterlands rely on armor. And with the upcoming Rebellion ability, Armored Strike, other abilities that either directly or indirectly affect armor would be essential. And in order to balance this potential meta-defining ability, a direct counter to Armored Strike will also be introduced when Rebellion hits the game.

CORROSIVE WARD

According to the official Rebellion post, which you can read here, Corrosive Ward reads, "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." So on top of the armor reduction that the enemy monster will suffer from the melee attacker, it will get another 2 armor damage.

At first, you may think of it as a watered-down version of the Shatter ability where it destroys the target's armor completely, regardless of the damage the monster dealt. But I think the key there is that it also reduces the maximum armor by 2 points. I may need to confirm this but it may be possible to reduce the maximum armor to zero which in turn means that Repair would no longer work on it.

Corrosive Armor might come in handy for exceptionally good tanks like Uriel the Purifier and Imperial Knight who both have high armor and self-healing. These tanks are usually paired with one or two units with Repair in the backline which creates an impenetrable wall. Rendering the Repair ability useless through Corrosive Ward would dismantle this kind of defensive strategy.

SUPPORT MONSTERS

Diminishing the enemy monsters' armor at the start of the battle would also be helpful for Corrosive Ward. On the Chaos Legion cards, there's a handful of monsters with the Rust ability like Time Mage, Queen Mycelia, Wierding Warrior, Scavo Technomancer, Suidae Shaman, Raa, and Zyriel. There's also the summoner equivalent of Rust, Astral Entity. Having them on support will ensure the destruction of the enemy's frontline monsters early on.

So there might literally be an Armor Wars between armored and anti-armor strategies in the upcoming Rebellion metagame. And until we see what monsters carry these new abilities, we can't definitely be sure which is a better tactic.

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Thank you for reading and see you in the battlefield!

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