Hello! Recently, we have been given an announcement of a new partnership for Splinterlands. One between them and a rapper Waka Flocka Flame. This has lots of implications and is an interesting move that everyone seems to have an opinion about. So do I, so the plan is to present that opinion in this post.

The way I will do that is I will first talk about the promotion itself: the choice of the partnership, the execution of it - and by that I mean the way it is being distributed, the cost and everything surrounding that - as well as the summoner card - Waka Spiritblade - itself. I am curious what other people's opinions are on the matter - I know that there are many hyped, but also quite some sceptical people.. I think I am somewhere in between, but tilting towards the scepticism.

My View on the Partnership

First of all, I'd like to say that I absolutely love the idea of partnering with celebrities. While there will obviously be tons of backlash most of the time, you need to get through to those people who have open enough minds to try something new and on the riskier side from a non-crypto user point of view. The more people see the message, the higher the chance someone will join, especially if the celeb that is "shilling" SPL is one already associated with NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

I'll be completely honest: I have never before heard the name Waka Flocka Flame or any of the songs he has created. That said, brief research led me to find out he did dabble into NFTs, so he does seem like a good person to approach. Definitely good job there, Splinterlands!

There is more to it than the choice of the person and I am not sure everything was done very well in those regards. The only thing that has happened so far on Waka's side was a tweet. While he does have a ton of followers, his tweets generally do not generate much engagement. On Instagram, he's been mentioned in a tweet by LOAK, so hopefully that has some better results (though so far it is not looking great).

Finally, we move onto the distribution of the promo card, Waka Spiritblade, made in the likeness of Waka Flocka himself. There is some confusion on my side when it comes to this. On one hand, this partnership is made so that we can turn more eyes towards Splinterlands. On the other hand, the promo card is made as a reward to long-term players with an extremely exclusive print run, as well as a fairly large cost (around 2-3k bucks, depending on SPS and Voucher prices). I feel like that is quite a big disconnect, and it simply feels quite odd.

I do hope that at least there will be a way to either limit the amount of purchases per person, or prevent bots from purchasing the card. Especially the latter, as if that happens, it is gonna be the worst of both worlds - not only will it not be anything for the new potential investors or Waka fans; it will also not be for the long-term stakers. Instead, the best bot will get themselves the cards.

Waka Spiritblade - The Card

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I ranted quite a bit about the distribution and the partnership, despite loving the idea in itself - so now it is time to talk about the card. Waka Spiritblade is a 3-mana summoner that gives your whole team the Poison ability and there have been some overreactions to his power. Personally, I believe it is a situational summoner that will in no way be a must-have for leaderboard races. On a scale from Vera Salacia/Qid Yuff to Mylor Crowling, it is much closer to the former. Let me explain why in the next few paragraphs.

The best way to look at Waka's power is to check what kind of teams he might be powerful and weak against, as well as which mana caps would have him as a desirable choice. Let's start with mana:

• In high mana battles, you will almost always prefer to have legendary summoners - their abilities are extremely powerful; even just death's Mimosa, though situational, provides tons more value.
• In low mana battles, the game is unlikely to last long; units have fairly low health, leading to quick death on both sides. This leads to Poison being difficult to spread - and even once it's applied, it will rarely get more than a single tick.
• Mid mana battles is likely the way to go - having a 3-mana summoner gives you lots of flexibility with your team choice, while poison can work wonders against tanky units, provided there is no Cleanse on the enemy team.

Alright, we got mana out of the way - let's move on to strengths and weaknesses:

• There is one big strength that Waka - and poison as an ability - has. It deals true damage, meaning it goes past any potential damage reduction, such as Shield or Void. This means that Waka can be a great choice if you are expecting a tank with those abilities, such as Lord Arianthus.
• It incentivises you to play with multiple attack abilities. While normally spreading your damage too much is not great, Waka turns that into an upside, having the potential to catch your opponent off-guard.
• The main weakness is that Poison is a unique debuff. You cannot apply more than one poison to the enemy, so it will always just take one tick of 2 damage. This means that the potential upside I mentioned in the previous bullet point might actually be a huge downside - you are sort of forced into playing a certain team.
• Taunt units mean that Poison will not be spread and the entire upside of Waka will be a 2-damage tick at the end of a round.. On a tank. That's like playing Owster against a team with one magic unit. If on top of that, the opponent has a low-speed Cleanse, you're essentially just playing a more expensive Jarlax.

What is worth noticing is that this is the first offensive summoner in Death. While that does not mean it automatically becomes insanely unique, it can carry some weight letting you pick death without necessarily worrying about opponent's damage profile.

Closing Words

Overall, Waka promotion is.. alright. It is a first of its kind, so it is understandable the team is testing the waters. While I have some criticisms, I believe in the team and know they will make sure to address anything that didn't work too well, while carrying through whatever worked. I am happy Splinterlands is in a position where it can partner with a fairly known person and hear complaints - it just speaks volumes about how far it's come.

As for the card itself, I believe it will not be very impactful on the meta - it can be situationally good and that is something I find perfect for this kind of promotion. Card that is this exclusive cannot be game-breaking, or the entire supposed competitive scene would be in shambles.

All the images are screenshots from Splinterlands, while the image in the thumbnail is the Splinterlands banner as well as assets from the Splinterlands game.