The Happy Quokka - A cute killer. (Conclave Arcana card presentation!)

Prologue

There was a challenge on X the other day, hosted by the Splinterlands-Team, inviting all players to participate and get a card assigned in order to make it public. I never thought I'd get one, but Blaze just sent me the artwork and Stats via twitter. It's so much fun, I immediately got inspired and wrote a personal lore for it. As well as a quick anlaysis of this card. I hope you enjoy it!

The Happy Quokka - Lore

(Not the real lore! That's still inbound. This is my creation 😝)

Gilbert always was a happy Quokka. Nothing could wipe that big, friendly smile of his face. Some said he didn’t really understand the world. Others thought he was just dumb. No one understood that he was actually just happy. In everything he did, in everything that was done to him, he found joy. Life was always that big beautiful mystery, so much to discover, so much to taste, so much corn to steal and stash away for bad times that would never come. Unfortunately for those who actually are empathetic, Gilbert was not. He was a master of manipulation, a cruel dread to those that fell under his spell; that slow moving, wobbling walk, those big eyes and nose, sniffing here and there, as if he was just another cute animal. Until he was close. Until the guard noticed that that that cob he was carrying so casually, in fact, shimmered, and was not a cob at all.

Gilbert soon found out that there was more to steal if he just had followers. It wasn’t hard to find them, just as it was easy to lure his victims, and in a way, they were the same. His brutality against his followers didn’t lack that he showed against his other victims. But nevertheless, they kept following. Because he did teach them how to be happy, no matter what. A happy little band of lethally cute creatures.

Stats and Abilities

So. That’s the Happy Quokka. A life card, of course, what other splinter could be something like happy in the turmoil of the Conclave Arcana. Very interesting is the fact that it doesn’t have Weapons Training from the beginning – you have to level it up to intermediate (former Silver, Level 4) to get that extra. What makes this card even weirder – even though it gives weapons training, it also gains Oppress at level 7. Meaning, it does double damage to creatures that did not have any attack initially, including weaponed trained monsters. A treacherous little beast it is.

As the real Quokkas, a marsupial native in Australia, the Happy Quokka is not the fastest monster. And yes, it is a monster, I know, it doesn’t look like it, but you don’t want to know what it does to you with that cob. Anyhow, even at maximum the speed is only 3 – that is not enough to reliably hit most of the other maxed monsters. It reminds me of the Stich Leech, a similar Life-Monster, especially in the early levels.

The low mana-cost makes it eligible for the Little League ruleset, just like the Moxian Rebel, another monster that offers Weapons Training. The Life splinter has some great trainable monsters, and with both Zyriel and Sturgis dropping out of modern, it's good to have another monster that can take their place. I can see the Quokka training the reward card Nimblehook Explorer, as the latter then would have melee attack, Armor Strike and Heal. Though I'm sure that there will be new options and combinations emerging.

Artwork

I especially like the Black Foil version of the Quokka. It's the same cute animal, but there's some danger noticeable in this version, something lingering in the shadows. Besides that, the art is juts really, really cute. Nobody would ever think of this little creature to be a monster, nor to do any harm at all. It's smile seems so genuine, and there's even some sparkle in the eyes. It's a "Rare" card, so it's lacking some detail like more structured paws, but that's being really, really picky here. To me, it's kind of perfect as it is.

Conclusion

This made me even more excited about Conclave Arcana. There are cards popping up everywhere on Twitter now, being shared and discussed, and some are really awesome. And I'm honored to be allowed to present this little fellow, who inspired me to write some lore instead of going to bed yesterday, resulting in being incredibly tired today. So, there might be some spelling mistakes in this post, sorry about that 😅

The card seems to be right on the same road as the rebellion reward set - very balanced. It's not overpowered, but will absolutely find a few niches to be played regularly. In this case, it's the speed that balances out the high damage and opportunity. Oppress isn't the most powerful skill, but can come in handy, again, balanced. And melee weapons training is most useful in some rule sets (melee mayhem comes to mind), but not so much in standard matches.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!

If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)