As I was minding my own battles, I stumbled upon a slightly off occurrence as I am using Coastal Sentry with Possibilus The Wise as the summoner. My Coastal Sentry with Double Strike and Trample, didn't activate the Trample when she killed the enemy with the 2nd strike. At first, I thought I was just getting a mirage moment but when I looked at battle again, the 2nd strike really didn't 'trample' on the next enemy. But why is that? Did Splinterlands quietly nerfed Trample? Let's investigate.

What should have happened is - when the enemy is killed by the first strike, it should 'Trample' to the next one. When the 2nd strike also kill the next enemy (on the same turn), it should also 'Trample' to the next. As far as I know, this was the mechanics before. So now as I tried to recreate the situation, I noticed that:

So with few tries, I come up with the theory: Double Strike is the one that got nerfed or changed and NOT Trample. The new Double Strike mechanic is Trample will only activate once in a Double Strike attack of the same turn.

As for any updates, I didn't see any update about the Double Strike mechanics change. All I see are some related to it:

This was an update regarding some issues on Mimic dated October 1, 2024. Why I think this is related to Double Strike nerf is it might have affected as its says 'Fixed numerous abilities incorrectly triggering twice when a creature had double attack'. Double Strike might have been the one being pertained to as a 'double attack'. I can't confirm this only affected Mimicked abilities but a possibility that non-mimicked abilities might also be changed. Thinking about it deeply the 'double attack' it mentioned might also mean monsters having a combination of Melee, Magic and Ranged attacks. I do hope a team member could clarify this. I tried asking around Discord but they also have no idea. I am not sure if this is an error so I didn't create a ticket.

This post aims clarity and answers. This is not written to throw shade to the team. I believe this showcases how simple yet at the same time complicated the battle mechanics of Splinterlands is. This adds depth and at the same time plainness to the card interactions. Have you encountered this too? Let me know in the comments.