I have never really got into any games outside of FPS, however on the odd occasions I would play a round or two on a friend's console of something like Mortal Kombat or Tekken, I would always choose the female characters. There is something far more attractive about watching a petite woman, beat the crap out of some beast. And in about 28 days from now, the next female character is going to entire the Splinterlands arena to do battle with the big boys.

Hot.

It's an ugly looking card, but it looks like it is shaping up to be a meta-changing, shield-defiling, Grimbardun Smith-slaughtering, chain-trampling killer.

Venka the Vile is also brings in a new ability, Charge, which means that it has all the fun of Melee Mayhem rounds, inbuilt into its DNA. Sounds like fun. And, this fragile little lady is a neutral, so it is going to be massively overplayed, and is going to likely be combined with Arkane to trigger an ambush attack, and at +5 speed without a boost, it is going to likely get another hit in pretty close to the front of the round. Give it an enrage, and this thing becomes pretty intense.

And it is only 7 mana.

This means that a couple other cards and abilities are going to become more valuable, like anything with Forcefield to cut the damage down to one, Tarsa to give her an additional Melee (as if she needs it) and especially Skargore for the Enrage. Ina lower mana round, if she gets a kill chain going, it could be utter destruction in the first round, piercing through shields, and pounding through no-attack monsters with ease.

As said, this is going to be meta-changing, as with piercing and oppress, it really takes the wind out of the sails of those no-attack tanks. Dealing double damage, means that it will remove 14 and leave 2 HP after hitting Baakjira once. It will also take leave Grimbardun Smith with six points, essentially taking away the blast advantage by offsetting it with oppress. Combined with Akane, she might get two hits in, taking GS out at the start of the first round.

I am guessing there will be a summoner at some point that might be able to provide Forcefield, but it isn't here yet.

What she does is remove the GS/Lily combination that gets played so much, but not only that, she also means that people are going to have to make different decisions on what they are going to protect with. Forcefield will become more popular, but then that means that there will be other combinations to combat that also, so it opens it up to a bit more guesswork. At 5-speed, she really shouldn't miss too much, and with piercing, she might take out some of the combos, like setting up Agor in the backline with Taunt, removing the void armour in one fell swoop, and leaving space for slower magic monsters to do their job. Arkemis is an option in Tank position like it is normally played, but then it is open to magic. Oshannus is another option. Slipspawn is going to get spammed in Earth I suspect.

I am looking forward to this card, and I should get enough to have a max regular version of it. I am unlikely to get any golds as normal, but I always live in hope that I will get lucky enough to get one. What I do think though, is that this card is going to be expensive at every level of it, in every version, as it comes with Charge and Piercing at L1. This means that at lower levels, it is going to churn through a lot of the lineups, and if they ever fix the Trample ruleset (I have never got Trample in it at least), it is going to be hard to stop.

The conflicts Legendaries, are living up to their name so far.

Vile Venka is coming.

It will be interesting to see what is to follow.

6 more to come.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]