In this post we go over the win rates of the Chaos Legion Rare cards. We look at overall win rates in Bronze, Silver and Gold league, and for Silver and Gold we also look at how the cards perform when they are at their highest levels.

There are 23 Chaos Legion rare cards and 8 Chaos Legion reward rare cards. Each element has five rare cards (4 chaos legion, 1 reward), except for the Dragon elemtent which has only two rares, and both are reward cards. There are also four neutral cards.

Several people have asked for Chaos Legion Reward cards to be included in these posts. Therefore, we have done so this time. Most players have access to these cards after playing for a few weeks, and so it makes sense to include them. However, as you will see below, the play rates of these cards in Bronze, and to some extent in Silver, are very much lower than the those of the base cards. In Gold, access to these cards are not problematic for anyone (in fact, they are cheaper to level than most of the other cards), so they are played when they fit in the teams.

We have also included an additional way to judge the strength of each card. This new method compares the win-rate of each element for all matches when a certain card is included, and all matches of that element where is it NOT included. The result is an indication of the strength of each card, but there are factors that must be considered along this data. This will be discussed below.

This time we have limited the dataset to matches collected after the beginning of the general sale. At that point, many people started leveling their cards, and so we expect that the stats shift at that point. Using data only after the general sale began makes the statistics more representative of the state of the game right now. Therefore, the current dataset is slightly smaller than the one we used in the previous post. This post is based on 3.2 million matches in Bronze, 4 million matches in silver and 530.000 matches in gold.

Sorry for the wall-of-text. Lets get into the good stuff:

Bronze league

In Bronze, pure stats and card variety is key to winning. Some reliable abilities are also effective, as you will see. The chart below shows the win rates of each rare card (averaged over the available card levels).

We can notice that the eight reward cards are the most effective cards here. It is likely that this is not directly related to the strength of the cards themselves, but rather that in Bronze, having more cards than the base set gives you a much greater chance of winning simply because you have better ability to adapt to each match configuration. Among the Chaos Legion cards, the three earth cards are very effective, and perhaps surprisingly, the two non-magic cards are the best of these. Both cards have good stats and abilities that are often useful (Blast, Shield). A whole bunch of cards lie just around 50% win rate, while at the bottom we find the three non-melee fire cards (although Tenyii Striker is just slightly better).

Bronze level 2 rares

Leveled cards in bronze reflect the decks of players working their way out of bronze in the beginning of each season, or players fighting for the top positions in the league.

The stats are pretty interesting: All cards except portal spinner have positive winrates, and some of them are sky high. Celestial Harpy has 78% win rate, which is unbelievably high. This is likely an adaption of the Lorna Shine melee build which we have covered in earlier posts. Death decks are apparently also pretty good in Bronze. We find Life Sapper, Cursed Windeku, and Soul Strangler at very high win rates. Venari Wavesmith is also very very good as expected.

Silver league

In silver league we do not see the same effect of the reward cards, although some of them are still pretty good. The chart below shows the win rates of each rare card (averaged over the available card levels).

Venari Wavesmith is the best rare card on average. The order of cards is pretty similar to what we found for bronze, but the death cards have dropped to the less successful category of cards.

Silver level 4 rares

Level 4 rares often gain an additional ability, and therefore the cards should shift up and down in the order, while gaining positive win rate increments relative to the average stats. Below are the statistics for level 4 rares in Silver leauge.

Venari Wavesmith is still very good, and so are Celestial Harpy and Time Mage. Both life cards work well in fast life strategies. Diemonshark is very high on the list here (while it is pretty far down in the average chart). At max level in silver, it gains Enrage, and once that is triggered, the card gains huge speed and will dodge a lot of incoming melee and ranged attacks.

The neutral cards are not very good on average here, but these are also pushed towards 50% win rate because they can (more often than non-neutral cards) be present in both a losing team and a winning team in a single match.

Gold league

In gold league, we still find Venari Wavesmith taking the highest win rate position. It is one of only five rare cards that come out with positive winrates on average. Otherwise, the relative order of cards is pretty similar to what we saw in silver and bronze.

Gold level 6 rares

Once again with leveled cards in gold, we find the same cards at high win rates and the same cards at low win rates. When leveled though, most of the cards are at positive win rates.

Card effectiveness relative to average winrate of their element:

This section contains a type of data that we have not presented earlier. Here, we look at the average win rate of each card, compared to the win rates of all teams of the corresponding element WITHOUT that card. This gives supplementary information as to which cards are actually strong, and which cards have skewed win rates due to strong or weak decks.

However, you should be careful when interpreting these data. Some cards have enormous effects because they are played mostly by players with very strong decks. This is not so important for the rare Chaos Legion cards, since most players have access to them, but when considering legendary or epic cards this way, some cards look insanely strong

Also, a card that comes out "neutral" here, might actually be pretty good or pretty bad depending on the base win rate of the decks that play that card.

In the chart below, all bars are upwards-directed, but the coloring indicates wether the effect is positive (blue) or negative (red). So blue bars indicate cards that are better than the average cards in their deck, and red bars indicate cards than are worse than average in their deck.

Bronze

In Bronze, we still find that using the reward cards is a huge improvement. The two largest increments are in fact found for Exploding rats and Venari Crystalsmith. Exploding Rats has Blast, which is probably the most powerful ability in the game, and it is very very good in the melee favored rulesets. Venari Crystalsmith enables you to play a healing setup with life decks, and is typicaly combined with Shieldbearer. Apart from the reward cards, we find that Time Mage is the card that stands out as the card with the largest positive impact.

On the negative side, we find Molten Ash Golem, and Dhampir Stalker. It is not very surprising that the Molten Ash Golem is pretty bad, since it has little synergy with the starting fire summoner abilities. More surprisingly, Diemonshark takes the third lowest position. Diemonshark is definitely a powerful card, but looks like it is often played in the wrong situations in bronze league.

Silver

For silver league, the cards shift around somewhat but many similarities with bronze league can be found. Regal Peryton and Venari Wavesmith stand out as the two most important cards. This corresponds well to the discussion above, and our Obsidian guide, where we found that Regal Peryton should be included in most Obsidian teams. Time Mage is still good, and Mycelic Infantry also has great uses.

On the bottom side we find again the Molten Ash Golem, and Diemonshark also remains weaker than average water cards.

Gold

In Gold league, most rare cards are worse than average. This is likely because it is often better to use mostly epic or legendary cards in each team at these ratings. A few ones remain effective: Celestial Harpy, Naga Assasin, Venari Wavesmith, Time Mage and Scavo Firebolt. It is also interesting to see that Molten Ash Golem is now among the best cards. Probably, it is played along with Yodin Zaku at these ratings. Yodin great use for the ranged fire cards, in contrast to Tarsa who prefers the melee cards.

On the weak side, we find Portal Spinner as the clearly worst one. Mycelic Slipspawn is also down among the worst ones, which is surprising. Again, this is likely a case of players considering it to be better than it in fact is. It has a huge downside in the very large mana cost, so it looks like it is often better to use mana on other cards than the Slipspawn.

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Closing Remarks

We have analyzed rare card win rates across Bronze, Silver and Gold league. A general observation is that rare cards are effective in general through bronze and silver, but begin to be inefficient in Gold league.

Throughout all leagues, Venari Wavesmith stands out as an extremely good card. Protect is such a great ability, and with the Wavesmith it comes with magic damage and for a reasonable amount of mana.

Two rare cards in the life deck are also great. Celestial Harpy and Time Mage are both effective in most leagues. While they can be played with General Sloan, their fit better in other life styles, especially the fast melee setups with Lorna Shine, Tyrus Paladium (and to a less extent Mother Khala).

Naga Assassin is a very good backline card, which is so cheap (2 mana!), and has 6 speed and Backfire. It can be very annoying for teams that try to go for backline cards first.

Let us know if this guide has helped you, and if you have any other comments or suggestions please let us know

Please also check out our other content:

Beginner Guides
Beginners guide - Choosing the best Chaos summoner for your match
Beginners guide - Kelya Frendul
Beginners guide - Obsidian
Beginners guide - Thaddius Brood
Beginners guide - Tarsa
Beginners guide - General Sloan

Summoner and Card statistics
Chaos Legion EPIC card statistics
Chaos Airdrops 2-6 Match Statitics
Best Legendary Cards of Chaos Legion - Week 1 statistics
Chaos summoners - Week 1 statistics

Rule set strategies
We are also creating guides for specific rules. You can find them here:
Strategycorner with Mammuter #5: How to WIN in Reverse Speed
Strategycorner with Mammuter #4: How to WIN in Melee Mayhem
Strategycorner with Mammuter #3: Noxious Fumes

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus