Splinterlanes Talismans — read one, then build around it

✦ Every Splinterlanes match is played under a ruleset you did not choose and one you did. The one you did is your Talisman — and most players treat it as a badge, when it is a third of the board they get to design in advance. Here is how to read a Talisman, and how to build the Lane it governs.

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Reading the plate

Open your Talismans page and every Talisman you own is a plate. Read it top to bottom:

• The first line is always a Rules Mod — a Splinterlands ruleset, in effect over your Friendly Lane. Earthquake, Reverse Speed, Explosive Weaponry, Back to Basics: rulesets you already know from the Splinterlands battle screen, each on one Lane.
• A second line, if there is one, is a Tier 2 mod — a Mana, arrival or combat effect: Monsters you place in your Friendly Lane arrive with +1 armor, say, or the first Monster you lose in your Friendly Lane refunds its Mana cost to the pool.
• A third line is a Tier 3 mod, and three is the maximum.

The Rules Mod is the part that changes how you build, so the rest of this guide is mostly about that first line. But note what the plate does not say: a Rules Mod never restricts what you may place. The rulesets that ban cards in Splinterlands — no melee, no legendaries, four Mana or less — are not in the pool. Your Deck is always legal in every Lane, whatever your Talisman says.

Where it applies

The board is mirrored. The Lane at the top of your screen is your Friendly Lane; it is your opponent's Hostile Lane, and it fights under your Talisman — both halves of it, your Monsters and theirs. Your Hostile Lane, at the bottom, fights under your opponent's Talisman the same way. The Command Lane in the middle is always Standard rules.

So a Talisman is not a bonus to your army. It is a rule over one specific third of the ground — a rule that binds your opponent's Monsters exactly as hard as yours. Nothing on the plate favours you by itself. What favours you is that you knew the rule when you built your Deck, and your opponent finds out when the match starts.

Both plates sit on the board from the Archon picks onward, so your opponent can read yours and choose which Archon leads their Hostile Lane accordingly. What they cannot do is change the fifty Monsters they brought. You can — before the match, in the Deck Builder.

Build a third of a Deck

Here is the trap: you do not build a Deck for your Rules Mod. Your Deck is one pool of fifty, your Hand of five is drawn from it at random, and two of your three Lanes play under rules you do not control. A Deck of fifty Flying Monsters for an Earthquake Talisman is a Deck that is terrible in the Command Lane.

What you build is a third of a Deck: enough Monsters that love your Rules Mod that your Hand usually holds one when the Friendly Lane needs a placement — and then, at placement time, you route them there. The Rules Mod tells you which cards to bring; the Lane you drop them into is a decision you make five seconds at a time.

Some Rules Mods, and what they ask of the Friendly Lane:

Read your own plate against that table, then read your fifty. If fewer than a dozen of them are cards you would be pleased to draw for that Lane, the Deck is not built around its Talisman yet.

One more rule that follows from the mirror: the same table is a guide to your Hostile Lane. Your opponent's Rules Mod is on their plate from the first pick. If it says Earthquake and you have Flying Monsters in Hand, you know where they go.

The Tier 2 and Tier 3 lines

The extra mods are simpler to read than the Rules Mod, because they all favour their owner and they all say exactly what they do. A few, from plates in circulation:

• Deep Reserves — your Friendly Lane's Mana pool starts with +2 Mana. Two Mana on round one is a whole cheap Monster ahead.
• Warded Arrival — Monsters you place in your Friendly Lane arrive with +1 armor.
• Widow's Coin — the first Monster you lose in your Friendly Lane refunds its Mana cost to the pool.
• Quartermaster (Tier 3) — Monsters you place in your Friendly Lane cost 1 less Mana, never below 1. Over 25 rounds that is a lot of Mana.
• Defiant Soul (Tier 3) — once per match, the first Monster in your Friendly Lane that would die survives at 1 health.

Many mods come in a pair that reads your Luck — the score on the board that counts the randomness that broke your way. A Fated mod is on while your Luck is below your enemy's; a Fortunate mod is on while it is above. Fated Edge, for instance: while your Luck is below your enemy's, Monsters you place in your Friendly Lane arrive with +1 to their strongest attack. A cold streak, on that Lane, hits harder. The condition is checked at the start of every battle round, so it can switch on and off as the match swings — and a few Tier 3 mods are the same effect with the condition removed, always on.

Then there is the Mulligan family. You already get one free redraw of your opening Hand; a Tier 3 mod can guarantee one of your cheapest Monsters is in the fresh five, promise that none of the cards you threw back come back, or let you take the Mulligan twice.

No Talisman? You have one anyway

If you own no Talisman, every match deals you a free loaner for your Friendly Lane — a different one each match. It is a real Talisman for the duration, plates and all, and it is never a handicap: a loaner never carries more mods than an owned Talisman it faces, and two loaners facing each other always carry the same number.

What a loaner cannot give you is the thing this whole guide is about. You find out its Rules Mod when the match starts, the same moment your opponent does. The edge of owning a Talisman is not that it is stronger. It is that you knew.

Getting one, keeping one, showing one

• Win one. Every ticketed win in Ranked or a stakes room rolls for a prize, and sometimes that prize is a Talisman. A foil-heavy Deck raises the odds it lands at Tier 2 or 3: every Black Foil or Black Arcane card in your Deck adds 2%, every Gold Foil or Gold Arcane 1%, over all 53 cards — an all-black Deck more than doubles its Tier 2 and Tier 3 chances. The Deck Builder shows your Deck's bonus as you build.
• Or open one. Every Real Sealed Bundle comes with a Tier 2 or higher Talisman to keep, already Engraved.
• Equip it. In the Deck Builder, the Talisman select sits beneath your Monster list. Each Deck carries one, so a Deck built around Earthquake and a Deck built around Reverse Speed can each carry the Talisman that suits it.
• Engrave it. For 1 🎟 the house writes the Talisman's full record — its id, its Rules Mod, every mod — to the Hive blockchain, so it can be reconstructed if anything ever happens to our records.
• Show it. Your Gallery is public by username: a frame for every Rules Mod, your mightiest Talisman of each on display, no equipping needed.
• Trade it — soon. The Talisman Market is built and being tested with our own money first. There is no date; when it opens, this blog says so.

Until then, the best Talisman you own is the one your Deck is built around. Go and read the plate.

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Questions, or something here that does not match what you are seeing in game? Comment below — this blog is where we answer them.