This is one of my favorite cards from the Rebellion set (Commander Slade)

Hi, Wizards! ⚔️

Hello, community! I’m @wizardwarrior, and I hope you’re all doing great. It’s been a while since I last posted or heard from you; unfortunately, I’ve been a bit busy, but I’ve managed to find some time to bring you more content, so I hope to be much more active here and try to provide as much value as possible. Also, because of the limited time I’ve had due to personal circumstances, I haven’t been able to draw or bring you more amazing art, so I don’t think I’ll be able to do that anytime soon. However, let’s see what I can do to create posts based on the incredible design work from the Splinterlands team.

But I don’t want to leave you without some great content, so today I’m bringing you something I’ve wanted to do for a while: a breakdown of some of my favorite cards from the “Rebellion” set, which I’ve absolutely loved. It was really hard to choose because these cards are undeniably powerful, and I can see why they’re part of the META. The truth is that both Rebellion and Arcane Conclave introduce players to a new level of strategy, and that’s what I like, but since I love the cards and want to add some value, in this post and future ones I’ll share several of them—but right now, the one I want to highlight is one of my favorites.

The Commander Slade....

This card is absolutely insane; just take a look at the image and tell me if it doesn't look impressive the moment you see it. Well, it's more than that; the truth is, this card can do much more than its appearance suggests, and you only need to look at its stats and abilities to understand everything it's capable of. Plus, part of this post is to show you what these cards can do.

To start, let's take a look at his stats:

• Rarity: Rare
• Statistics (Level 4):
  • Cost of Manna: 10 points; it is a bit pricey, but I think it's well worth it—you just have to see it for yourself.
  • Attack: 5 melee attack points, which can literally tear apart any opponent that gets in their way.
  • Speed: 6 points, which makes it quite fast and very elusive—which is surprising, because given its large size, you wouldn't think it could move that fast, but it does.
  • Shield: 7 points, which is quite useful for maintaining the defense and slowing down any enemies that manage to hit.
  • Life: 10 points, which is great for all its stats; it’s a very durable monster, which is much appreciated.
    
    

Commander Slade's Abilities

• Special Abilities:

  • Enfeeble: Every time this card lands a successful attack, it can reduce the enemy's melee attack power by 1 point. The best part is that, given its speed and power, it rarely misses, and it can easily deal between 70% and 80% of any card's health in a single hit.

  • Dodge: This ability perfectly complements this card's capabilities, as Dodge gives it a 25% chance to evade any physical attack, whether melee or ranged. However, what many players don't realize is that this chance increases when you have very high speed; this means that very few cards will actually be able to hit it on the battlefield.

  • Deflect: As if that weren't enough, this ability grants it incredible defense—especially when the other two abilities help boost both its defense and attack—because speed is a double-edged sword in a good way; with "Deflect," it literally reduces adjacent or redirected damage to zero. The abilities involved are (Magic Reflect, Thorns, Return Fire, and Blast).

  • Backfire: To top off this card's brilliance, its final ability is "BackFire," which triggers every time one of the enemy's cards fails to hit ours; when that happens, our Commander Slade deals 2 damage back to that card. The best part is that, with such high speed and the "Dodge" ability, it’s nearly impossible to hit, so to that total of 5 damage points, you’d have to add 2 more for a total of 7, because the damage return is almost guaranteed.

Strategic Analysis

• Ideal situations: Ideally, you should play this card in battle situations where mana is plentiful; in these scenarios, players typically field tanks and highly durable monsters with strong defense and attack, but these are precisely the perfect opponents for "Commander Slade," as he can easily take them down.

• Synergies: I would play this card with Archons that boost speed or melee attack points, though they don’t necessarily have to be Archons; regular units that provide this benefit work too. This will make our card unstoppable. While it might be a bit risky to base your strategy on a single card, I hope you win many battles in the process.

• Counter-strategy: As I said, they’re perfect against powerful tanks that are usually slow; however, their weakness is magical attacks, so you need to avoid facing teams made up entirely of magical units, because you’ll most likely end up losing.

• Recommended position: Ideally, this unit should be at the front of the front line, as its role is that of a tank; that’s why we recommend pairing it with cards that boost its speed and attack, to ensure it’s effective both defensively and offensively. However, if you can add a “Tank Heal” card, that would be ideal, as would a “Repair” card for its shield.

The truth is, I absolutely loved its design, and it’s also one of the cards that synergizes best with its own abilities. It’s a very powerful card with a rarity that’s sort of in between—you could call it “rare”—so I definitely think it’s an “underrated” card. In my opinion, its value should be higher; however, supply and demand tell a different story, but it’s an incredible card.

That's all for now; next time, we'll take a look at another one of my favorite cards from this edition of "Rebellion."