What are the most difficult “Modifiers” to manage in Splinterlands? (Part 2)

Best regards Splinterlovers 💚

Two days ago, I published a post about “Modifiers,” giving a very basic overview of how they work and how they’re categorized—something that’s crucial for understanding the theory behind what playing Splinterlands is really all about. So, if you’re new and just getting started with the game, my recommendation is this: if you want to earn rewards for playing, you need to improve your gameplay, and to do that, you have to learn about “Modifiers.” and the basic level of understanding you need is in the first post I wrote, which you can access by clicking HERE. Although I have other posts discussing them as well.

So, what will this second part cover? Well, here I’ll discuss “Modifiers”—or rules that are more complicated to handle—and how they might be addressed in a game to counteract them, something that’s extremely important in the strategies you should apply to try to secure as many wins as possible, which is what will bring you significant profits in the medium and long term. Of course, as I always say, this requires not only theoretical study but also practice; you need to play and experiment, test things out, and be creative for the learning to take hold, but at least it’s a start.

If you want to learn about the most complicated “Modifiers” in the entire game, stick around until the end of this post:

---

Splinterlands' "Heavyweight" Modifiers

As everyone knows—or at least should know at a basic level—not all modifiers are created equal. Some are more complicated than others, and then there are those modifiers that create a completely hostile environment where survival is a difficult task. But it’s not impossible; we just have to try to play the right cards in the right positions. Yes, I know it sounds simple, but it’s not exactly that simple either. Still, this is the first step so you can take action against it.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s start with the modifiers I call “Heavyweights”:

Noxious Fumes

• Impact: This modifier reduces the duration and/or the number of standard rounds a battle typically lasts, as units on the battlefield lose +2 hit points each round due to the poison.

• How can we counter this? The only way to deal with it is to play cards with the Immunity and Cleanse abilities, so that either the first ability prevents the tank from taking any damage from the poison—essentially making it immune—or, failing that, the “Cleanse” ability can remove those negative effects from the tank, buying it more time.

• Ideally: Ideally, in addition to the above, you should play cards with high health points that can also regenerate their health using “Heal,” along with another unit with “Tank Heal” that can provide support.

Backlash

• Impact: This modifier is new, but it can be quite annoying and troublesome, since poor accuracy—in short, cards that miss their attacks—can take 2 damage points every time this happens. It might not seem like much, but it can actually be quite annoying.

• Its Effectiveness: If we aren't careful with this modifier, it can certainly wipe out entire teams by causing attacks to miss—and, of course, due to its lack of speed, since fast cards usually hit their mark.

• Synergies: The goal is to force the opponent to miss their attacks, so in addition to having high speed, it’s best to use units with the “Phase” ability for magical attacks and the “Dodge” ability, which focuses more on increasing the chance of a miss.

Equalizer

• Impact: Although it’s one of those old rules that has been around for a long time, it can complicate things. The effect is that low-mana-cost cards with high health—which might otherwise be weak—take the health from the card on your side of the field with the most health and distribute it among all your cards. This means that even cards with very low health can suddenly become very resilient.

• Synergies: One way to play this deck is to field units that cost very little mana—units that are generally low on health but deal a fair amount of damage. This makes them very dangerous cards, especially if they become highly resilient.

• How to Counter Them? The idea is to focus on reducing the enemy’s card shield to some extent so we can go straight for their health points with a massive attack. At the same time, we should use abilities like “Cripple” to lower their maximum health with the successful attacks we land on the opponent’s cards.

What is the strongest “modifier,” and how do you evaluate it?

To wrap up this post, after looking at those heavy modifiers—which are among the most difficult to handle—it’s time to decide which one is the strongest of them all. However, to make the right decision, we need to consider not only the damage but also a number of parameters and details that will generally help us with this:

• Disruption: Here we must ask ourselves how often the modifier forces players to abandon a standard combination—essentially stepping outside their comfort zone and moving away from their most frequently used strategies.

• Strategy Nullification: The question here is: how many abilities or types of cards does it completely nullify when it comes into play? This is a very good question, since a modifier capable of doing this could throw any strategy off balance.

• Archon's Authority: And my final question is whether the modifier allows the "Archon" to decide the outcome of the game regardless of the units being played.

The Verdict

After analyzing each of the questions I mentioned earlier, the only “Modifier” that achieves this is the famous rule known as “Back to Basics.” Believe it or not, it is the only one that meets all the criteria I mentioned earlier, which is why it is the most powerful “Modifier” of them all.

For those unfamiliar with how this works, basically, when a card is in play, none of its abilities can be used. This means that the card relies solely on its original battle stats, so decisions should be based on those stats rather than on its battle abilities.

---

Conclusion

With this post, we now know which “Modifiers” I call “Heavyweights”—the ones that usually make players’ strategies much more complicated. We also know which one is the strongest of them all, so I hope this post has been helpful to all those new players, and I encourage you to take this information and put it into practice.

If you have any questions about this topic, please feel free to leave a comment.