🏆 Splinterlands “Create an Ability” Contest — Winners Announcement!
The time has come!
After reviewing all of the incredible submissions for the Create an Ability Contest, we are excited to officially announce the winners. First off, a huge thank you to everyone who participated — the creativity, strategy, humor, and game knowledge shown in these entries truly made judging both exciting and incredibly difficult.
This contest was all about imagining new mechanics that could shake up battles, introduce fresh strategies, and expand what’s possible inside Splinterlands combat — and you all delivered.
🌟 Contest Highlights
We received a fantastic variety of ability concepts, including:
- Clever counter-play mechanics
- Unique risk-vs-reward abilities
- Lore-friendly designs that felt like they already belonged in the game
- Some wildly creative (and hilarious) ideas that made us wish they were real immediately
The level of effort put into explanations, balance considerations, and visual mockups did not go unnoticed.
🥇 First Place — Ehmaywuntee
Ability: Pocket Knife
Ability Effect: Ranged cards gain 1 melee damage upon reaching the front position; melee buffs do not increase this damage.
Why Fun/Useful: Ranged cards have historically been some of the very last cards to consider playing and a big part of this is once they reach the front, the majority of them become a no attack meat shield. They are also typically placed in the very rear of the lineup because of this no attack situation. In some form of reality though, they should be able to smack you with their bow, poke you with an arrow, or pull out a small knife and still attempt a tiny amount of damage. Keeping it at 1 and limiting it to only receiving the melee once in the 1st position makes it not become a full on dual attack card and also means shield cards take 0 damage to help balance things.
👉 This entry stood out for its originality and strong strategic impact. The ability introduced a fresh gameplay interaction while still feeling balanced and true to Splinterlands design philosophy. The explanation clearly showed how it could influence team composition and battle outcomes without becoming overpowered.
🥈 Second Place — Losgemanos
Ability: Holy Strike
Ability Effect: (Much like Wingbreak) Always targets enemy units with a corrupted ability first regardless of abilities or rulesets. +2 damage if the target has a corrupted ability.
Why This Ability Would Be Fun or Useful:
A great way to stop the corrupted healing ability.
👉 A fantastic concept that combined creativity with mechanics. This ability offered meaningful tactical decisions and opened up new counterplay possibilities, making it both fun and competitive.
🥉 Third Place — King-Arminius
Ability: Necromancer Heal
Ability Effect:
Siphon 1/3 of your tank’s HP (rounded down) and heal self by that amount.
Tank gains +1 Attack (up to a max of +2).
If the siphon kills the tank, it returns as a 1 HP Undead Bloodline unit retaining all stats and abilities (except HP), and triggers any Undead Bloodline Dominion effects.
Necromancer Heal cannot target Undead Bloodline units.
Why This Ability Would Be Fun or Useful:
This mechanic inverts the traditional Tank Heal by redirecting sustain to the caster while converting tank HP into offensive scaling (up to +2 Attack). It introduces meaningful risk-reward decisions and enables a conditional Undead transformation when the tank is sacrificed by the siphon.
The Undead Bloodline tag further expands design space, allowing future synergy with Undead Dominion Archons and other Bloodline interactions.
👉 This submission impressed us with its imaginative design and strong thematic fit. It demonstrated clear thought toward gameplay balance and added an interesting twist that could create memorable battle moments.
⭐ Honorable Mentions
Several entries came extremely close to placing and deserve recognition for their creativity:
- Cscable — Short Circuit
Ability Effect: heal abilities when activated have 50% to deal damage instead.
- Youloseagain — Elope
Ability Effect: 1 card from each team run away from the battle together
- OFG — Inebriate
Ability Effect: When hit this monster deals 1 damage to attacking monster and gives the attacking monster scattershot.
Why This Ability Would Be Fun or Useful: This ability would come with the new twitch drop card (Arena Bar Maiden). She's a beauty and would be a support card with this inebriate and the strengthen ability. Why this because how will our arena fanatic get his beverages... 🤷♂
Your ideas were outstanding and helped make this contest a success!
🎁 Prize Distribution
Prizes will be sent out shortly. Please allow a little time for transfers to be completed. If you do not receive your prize after the distribution window, feel free to reach out.
❤️ Thank You to Everyone Who Participated
Community creativity is what makes events like this so special. Seeing players think like game designers — imagining new strategies, mechanics, and possibilities — is exactly what keeps the Splinterlands spirit alive.
If you didn’t win this time, don’t worry — there will be more contests and opportunities coming soon!
Until then… keep battling, keep creating, and we’ll see you in the arena.
🔥 VONAK
Thanks Buns!
Make sure @davemccoy and @royaleagle see this top tier ability to consider adding it to the game :)
Cool job here Buns! Love the contest, glad @ehmaywuntee tagged me here, so I could check them out!
Congrats to the winners too @ehmaywuntee @losgemanos @king-arminius and the honorable mentions too @cscable @youloseagain and @ourfadedglory ...
Great minds guys and @blazekos should also add these to the lists of ideas we have been given from community. That's where we are pulling our ideas from, so thanks for keeping things fresh!!!
All good
Mine's suited for Valentine's for sure. Also to get rid of that pesky HH spam ahaha
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