Following the release of the Rebellion set back in December last year, the developers of blockchain trading card game Splinterlands are now set to expand this 5th core edition with the introduction of new soulbound reward cards on August 15th, the day the new season is planned to start.

Expansion Details

The studio is adding a total of 43 new Rebellion reward cards, making the expansion the same size as the one done for the Chaos Legion set. Here’s how the cards are divided by rarity:

  • 12 common cards
  • 12 rare cards
  • 7 epic cards
  • 12 Legendary cards

Next to these new cards to use in your decks, this update also brings with it 4 new abilities that can potentially unlock new ways to beat your opponents. These abilities are called Mimic, Corrupted Healing, Execute, and Wingbreak.

Mimic lets you get a random ability from your opponent from the start of round 2 and onwards, with a 25% chance of gaining a random ability from the enemy’s attack. By mimicking the abilities of your opponent, you could potentially disrupt their strategy in your favor, though some exceptions are to be noted. The counter to this ability is Dispel, which removes one earned ability based on the order you received them, so the first ability you managed to mimic will be the one that Dispel removes from you. The following cannot be mimicked: Ambush, Debilitations (more on these in a bit), Weapons Training, Flank, Reach, Charge, Targeting abilities, and Taunt.

Corrupted Healing restores 1/3 of max health to allied units every round. So why is this corrupted? Well, that’s because whenever a unit is healed, their max health is lowered by 1. Tricky. The Execute ability is straightforward though: if the unit has 2 or less health remaining after an attack, you’ll be able to strike the same unit once again to finish them off.

If you ever wanted to attack units with Flying first, then the Wingbreak ability will let you do just that, inflicting a bonus +2 damage on the target that has Flying and always attacking them first no matter what rulesets and abilities are active.

Debilitations

Some of the new cards bring with them one of 3 types of Debilitations, all of which actually either damage your own units or give them negative effects. To balance things out, these cards come with higher stats than what’s usual, so you’ll have to figure out whether the tradeoff is worth it.

The three Debilitations included in this expansion include Incendiary, Electrified and Weary. Incendiary adds Burning at the start of each round, which even has a 33% chance to spread to adjacent units, deducting 2 health to all affected. The official post does mention that this effect can be removed though.

Electrified inflicts 1 damage to all of your units at the start of a round, while units with Weary have a 10% of becoming Exhausted every round. The percentage actually increases by 10% every round, going up to 80%, and if a unit does end up becoming Exhausted then that unit must skip their turn without the option to Retaliate.

How to Get New Cards and Unbind Chaos Legion Soulbound Reward Cards

On August 15th, you’ll be able to find the new Rebellion reward cards in rarity draws and loot chests from the Reward Shop, where you can spend Glint to get these soulbound cards, meaning you won’t be able to trade, rent, or delegate them, nor use them in Conflicts or on land. Eventually though, these cards will go out of print, and when they do, you will have a limited time option to unbind them and make them tradeable.

This is exactly what is happening with Chaos Legion soulbound reward cards. On the same day the new cards release, the Chaos Legion ones will go out of print and thus become no longer possible to get from the Reward Shop, opening up the opportunity for players to unbind them and turn them into assets that can be rented, delegated, traded, and used for land gameplay.

Unbinding will be available for 180 days and cost “10 times a card's power-per-BCX in Dark Energy Crystals (DEC)” for the first 29 days. This means that you need 50 DEC to unbind a single BCX regular-foil common card (1 BCX * 5 power * 10), while a max level regular-foil common card will cost 20,000 DEC (400 BCX * 5 power * 10), according to the developer's examples.

If you'd like to unbind any Chaos Legion card then you will probably want to do it as soon as possible starting August 15th, as the costs actually increase every 30 days as follows:

  • Day 1-29: 10 times the card's power in DEC
  • Day 30-59: 11 times the card's power in DEC
  • Day 60-89: 12 times the card's power in DEC
  • Day 90-119: 13 times the card's power in DEC
  • Day 120-149: 14 times the card's power in DEC
  • Day 150-179: 15 times the card's power in DEC

After 180 days have passed, any Chaos Legion card not unbinded will become soulbound forever. DEC used for the unbinding process is burned.

“Rather than flooding the market with a deluge of cheap reward cards, these unbinding costs are comparable to the current market value of most Rebellion cards. We feel this pricing model is in the best interest of our players, as unbound reward cards will likely be scarce and highly valuable. This should prevent a drop in the floor price of cards and ensure players' collections retain their value.”

Full details on unbinding and more can be found in the official announcement.