New Splinterlands Voucher Card: Kelan Gaines

We have our next Voucher Shop card: Kelan Gaines!

He packs a punch with 3 magic damage and double strike at max level, and he's evasive with 6 speed and phase, backfiring for good measure. Finally he snipes, making him an interesting combo with some existing summoners.

In this article I'll have a look at the card's power curve and then give some thoughts on synergies and counters, focusing exclusively on Rebellion.

Power Curve

Kelan starts off with Snipe only and 2 magic damage, gets Backfire at Silver, reaches 3 magic damage at Gold, and gets Double Strike at max. Simply put, the power curve here is perfectly done in my opinion. Of course to get full value out of him, you'll need a max level copy, but he's still viable at lower leagues with the speed and abilities. Well done team.

In terms of cost, it'll be 100 vouchers / BCX, so 11500 vouchers to max him out.

Synergies

Kelan+Nidhoggr

The first very clear pairing is with Nidhoggr. Blast will pair extremely well with Snipe as well as with the 3 magic damage (2 residual damage on both sides) and of course also with the Double Strike.

However I think Speed/Execute will pair even better, getting Kelan up to 8 speed and giving multiple chances to trigger the Execute.

Overall, Kelan's a great boost for Nidhoggr.

Kelan+Cryptic

Kelan's also going to be great with Cryptic, for a variety of reasons. The Blind pairs and speed debuff help Kelan's evasiveness in all formats, and particularly in magic-only. He doesn't have Forcefield, so he doesn't exactly emulate Oshannus as far as Cryptic tanks go, BUT his speed and phase put him in contention.

Snipe also pairs very well with expose, allowing Kelan to double strike expose a back line unit.

Kelan+Lorkus

With Lorkus, Kelan's magic damage bumps up to 4, and with the Double Strike and Life Leech he'll be sucking up 4 health every turn!

Boosting Kelan's evasiveness

Making Kelan highly evasive not only preserves his life, but it also gives you a chance of dealing damage with backfire.

In Rebellion, outside of summoners, you can increase his evasiveness by bringing swiftness, slow, or blind (unless you already have that with Cryptic). The units who can help with this, in the splinters Kelan has access to based on current summoners, are Daarg, Ujurak Elder, Chaos Jailer, Meriput Slinger, Endura Brune, Ahna-chei Botanist, Shock Trooper, Ulfga, and Sevaya.

Consider this lineup:

For 41 mana you get Kelan to 9 speed and you have Blind to boot. Putting him in the first position means he can't snipe, but he's your tank here, and can use his double strike/expose to take out the opponent's tank. The additional -2 speed on the enemy lineup increases the evasiveness of your Kelan.

Counters

Magic Reflect

The most obvious counter to Kelan is Magic Reflect.

Daigendark Surveyor is probably the best option, as she fits very well in position 2 (which will be targeted by Snipe) with Daarg behind her to provide Weapons Training and also Triage.

Another fantastic option is the Dark Arborist, who also has Void to boot, reducing Kelan's damage.

Shock Trooper could be an option, but he's always tricky with his Zap. Barash is a kind of prohibitively expensive from a mana standpoint to risk in position #2. Lastly Solace has Magic Reflect but is melee so if you bring him along you'll want to make sure the rest of your lineup is Melee or Camouflaged to draw the Snipe to Solace.

You'll also want to bring Amplify units to increase the reflect damage: Endura Brune, Chaos Animator (also a decent choice against Kelan due to its Void), Sevaya, and Nalara Geinek.

Risqruel

Both of Risqruel's tactics are potential counters to Kelan.

True Strike can be used to ensure you hit Kelan, but will have to be used carefully depending on where he's placed (e.g. if he's in the back and you need to get through lots of others before getting to him).

Taunt could be an interesting option, but only if your units have sufficient speed of their own to stand a chance at hitting Kelan.

Speed & True Strike

Another consideration is simply to bring very fast units. The image above shows the 10 fastest units in Rebellion (you can check this out by going to https://splinterguide.com/list/monsters, filtering by Rebellion, and sorting by speed). Cards like Continuum Seer and Captain Fellblade, who are already staples of the Rebellion set, will be essential against Kelan.

Another option is to bring True Strike units. One of the most obvious choices here would be Mantaroth. Interestingly, a lot of the other True Strike units in the set are very mediocre, as you can see from the ratings. Henchling Enforcer could be somewhat interesting, as well as Kei, but besides that the other units get used sparingly.

Conclusion

Kelan is an excellent card. It has a great power curve, feels like the right price (maybe a bit on the cheap side if I'm being honest...), and has fantastic synergies with several existing Rebellion summoners. I'll be buying several max copies.

Let me know what you think!