Valorant’s Replication mode puts five identical agents on one team

If you’ve been itching to learn how to play a new Agent in Valorant, now is your chance. With the game’s 2.09 update, Riot Games is introducing Replication. Think of it as Valorant’s take on LoL’s One for All mode. At the start of a match, you and your teammates will vote on a single agent you all want to play, as will the other team. As you might imagine, that will open a lot of opportunities for hijinks. Want to use Killjoy to build an army of turrets? You can. How about Brimstone to smoke the entire map? You can do that too.

“With Replication, we are looking to create exciting and novel moments by widening the player theorycrafting space while highlighting Agent abilities,” said Kyle Powell, one of the game’s designers. “Quintupling down on Agents that were balanced around normal Agent restrictions, we’ve created lots of hilarious near game-breaking plays for players to discover.”

Since allowing an entire team to play as one character opens the door for players to abuse the game’s flashbang abilities, Riot is introducing a new “flashguard” status. If your character gets flashed twice inside the span of four seconds, they’ll be immune to the effect for five seconds. That means a team made up of five Phoenix players can’t use their Curveball ability to keep your team blinded, but nothing is stopping them from turning the floor into lava.

Win or lose, you and your teammates will earn the same amount of credits after each round. You’ll net 900 after the first one, followed by 2,400, 3,900 and finally 6,000. Additionally, all your abilities, save your ultimate, will refresh with each round. When it comes to your ultimate, you’ll gain one point toward it at the start of the buy phase. For the two weeks that it’s available in the game, Replication mode will temporarily replace Escalation. All told, it sounds like a fun and low-stakes way to learn the ins and outs of a character you don’t play frequently.