Splinterlands is constantly evolving by introducing new ways to enhance players' experience and its rewards. Every month we see Splinterlands patched up with new updates, some feel nice and some make this game a little harder for new players.
Recently, Splinterlands came up with some new changes and also informed us about new reward cards, loot chests, abilities, and rulesets. In this post, we'll discuss those updates and see how things will go after these updates.
The announcement of new soulbound reward cards came on Friday, 20 January 2023, it was announced that there would 43 new soulbound reward cards will be released to the game on 31 January 2023. The cards will hail from Chaos Legion Edition and some of these cards will have new abilities as well.
What is a soulbound reward card?
This means these cards will only be playable by the owner and remain locked for a certain time.
But, there is a piece of good news these cards will not remain soulbound forever, once all reward cards are distributed out to players and declared out of print, these cards will behave like normal game cards. This will surely take a long time, but hopefully, it will be less than 2 years, consider it a long-term investment.
Design and Look of Soulbound Cards
These cards have similar look and feel as a regular reward card, but there is a small chain attached to the bottom right of the card. Thanks to 
These cards look pretty amazing design-wise and look-wise. I think new reward cards will make the game more exciting and challenging.
Breakdown of Soulbound Reward Cards
Following is the breakdown of the planned 43 cards with type, rarity, and element:
There is good news and bad news about rewards in the loot chests, let's find out about the bad news first.
There will 3 new abilities known as Conscript, Martyr, and Battle Training. Conscript ability is only assigned to Summoners.
Note: This coming update will allow all players to use Gladius cards in normal ranked and tournament battles.
Conscript
When a player uses a summoner having Conscript ability, he can play 1 more Gladius card in the battle, which means that the battle can contain 2 Gladius cards instead of 1.
Splinterlands plans to introduce "Conscript Ruleset" in brawls also, which will allow both players to use one more Gladius card in their battles. There is a possibility to use 3 Gladius cards in a battle if any player uses a Conscript Summoner during the same ruleset.
Martyr
This new ability is quite impressive, when any monster with "Martyr" dies in the battle it boosts adjacent monsters' stats to 1 point, which means if an adjacent monster has 2 Speed, 2 Attack, 2 Armor, and 2 Health, it will then rise to 3 Speed, 3 Attack, 3 Armor and 3 Health.
Positioning this monster in between 2 monsters can benefit both adjacent monsters and receive +1 to their stats.
Weapons Training
This is a unique ability of its kind in Splinterlands, with this ability now players can give attacks to their "no attack" monsters such as Venari Heatsmith and Baby Unicorn.
When you place a monster with Weapons Training ability adjacent to any no-attack monster, this ability will provide the same attack type to an adjacent monster. Although it is to speculate that this ability may give reduced attack to an adjacent monster, it is yet to decide by the devs how many attack points the adjacent monster would have whether equal or reduced.
The effect will go away from an adjacent monster when a monster with Weapons Training dies in the battle. 6 Soulbound cards of different rarities and elements may have this new ability in the game.
Splinterlands have now 2 new rulesets which are already patched up in the game on the 24th of January and many of you have already enjoyed them in your brawls and battles.
Going the Distance
In this new ruleset, players can only use ranged attack monsters, no other type of monsters will be allowed.
Wands Out
This ruleset requires selecting all magic attack monsters in the battle, no other type of monsters can be used.
Previously, there was a maximum of 2 rulesets combination in higher league battles, this old rule is eliminated. Now, there can be battles having 3 rulesets making the game more challenging and tougher than before.
3 Rulesets combination will only be applicable in Gold league and onward battles, tournaments, and guild brawls. Chances for ruleset combos will occur according to the following table provided by Splinterlands.
After the new update, all rulesets can combine with each other except those that are incompatible with each other, for example, Briar Patch ruleset is incompatible with Wands Out and Going the Distance rulesets, similarly, any other incompatible rulesets combinations will not occur in the game.
To review the list of incompatible rulesets visit Battle Ruleset Updates article provided by the Splinterlands team.
I think that with these new changes, the game will become more challenging and force us to apply different new strategies. Even the experienced players will have trouble finding good strategies, I also hope the bots will be severely affected by new updates.
When new soulbound cards will enter the game, they will benefit new players by helping them create new battle strategies against their opponents. Although, seasoned players will have much more benefits as they can accumulate better cards by advancing in leagues.
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Images and References Courtesy: Battle Ruleset Updates & Announcing the New Chaos Legion Reward Cards
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