In our last post, we covered the initial performance of the Chaos Legion summoners. This time, we look at the Chaos Legion Legendary Cards in different leagues. The dataset now includes 350.000 matches in Gold, 900.000 matches in Silver and 900.000 matches in Bronze.
We analyse the cards in different leagues separately. The strength of Legendary cards change drastically with increasing levels, and most of them gain a new ability on each level. Therefore, we analyse cards of levels 1-3 in Gold league, but only level 1 in Silver and Bronze. While level 2 Legendaries can be used in Silver, this is so rare that we have not obtained sufficient data on it to draw any conclusions. However, the performance of level 2 legendaries in Gold should indicate how they would perform in Silver.
We sort the cards by win rate: The best performing cards are shown to the left and worst to the right. When the blue bar is higher than the pink bar, it indicates the card is selected by winning teams more than losing teams.
Note that these are all preliminary results! As we figure out how to use the Chaos cards efficiently, we will discover new combinations, which can alter the win rate of the cards over time.
Gold League
Level 1 Legendaries
Chaos legion brings about surprises!
In our first look at the Chaos cards, @mammuter noted that River Hellondale was probably the worst of the legendaries, since he has poor stats for a 7 mana card. At level 1, River Hellondale is currently the most successful legendary card in Gold league. His strength comes from the Resurrect ability, which is rare outside the Life deck. Previously, the only monsters outside the life deck with resurrect were Spirit Druid Grog and Ancient Lich. Having resurrect available in the water deck is therefore new and can be extremely powerful in combination with cards such as Djinn Oshannus, Torhilo the Frozen, Kraken, and Sea Monster, to name a few.
Next to River, we find a bunch of the Fiend Cards. Fiends are obviously great at low mana where you can just add them to any setup if you have not used all available slots. Including a fiend is almost always better than not (just watch out for Scavenger). Apart from the River and the fiends, only Void Dragon and Queen Mycelia have positive win rates at level 1 in Gold League. Void Dragon is a junior version of Djinn Oshannus for the Dragon deck, with lower damage and less HP, but with Flying, which provides more protection against melee and ranged attacks than Oshannus has.
It is also pretty clear that Dr. Blight does not hold up at level 1 in gold league. He has a somewhat high play rate but terrible win rate. The worst one out is Desert Dragon. It only has Trample at level 1, which is not very strong alone.
Level 2 Legendaries
At level two, River Hellondale is still the strongest one, but a number of the other legendaries have gained positive win rates. Level two River gains Inspire, and is therefore great in melee focused water decks. With the new powerful water melee cards, it is no wonder that River Hellondale is strong. Next up is Queen Mycelia who has Protect and Amplify. This combination is a nightmare to face in a Mylor Crowling deck, and it can also make Failed Summoner very annoying for magic users. Adelade Brightwing also gains Resurrect at level two, and jumps massively in win rate as a result. From level 1 she has Flying and Repair. Repair and Resurrect together make for a very powerful support card, that can keep cards such as Shieldbearer alive much longer than they have any right to be. Chaos Dragon is about destroying the opponent. It has three magic damage Scattershot and Blast. Doctor Blight has gained a slight positive winrate at level 2, with his new ability Poison.
Level 3 Legendaries
Doctor Blight completely completely dominates in terms of play rate of level 3 legendaries. He also has a pretty good win rate. The key factor is that he gains Scavenger, which in combination with Camouflage makes him pretty difficult to deal with. Below is the same chart zoomed in so the other card stats can be seen:
Void dragon is now the best card. With Phase, it is an extremely efficient and cheap anti-magic tank. Second up is Chaos Dragon, followed by River Hellondale, Adelade Brightwing and Queen Mycelia. Pretty much the same cards that were already very effective at level 2. At level 3, the only card that manages to have a less than 50% win rate is Legionnaire Alvar.
Silver League
In Silver league, there is only sufficient data for analysis of level 1 legendary cards. The order of cards are pretty similar to those of the level 1 cards in gold league. However, the actual win rates are higher in Silver. Another difference is that Adelade Brightwing is much more successful as a level 1 card in Silver than it was in gold. Doctor Blight also has a positive win rate in Silver, but is still the fourth worst legendary card.
Bronze League
In Bronze, simply having a legendary card is pretty rare. Having one of the ones with powerful abilities such as River Hellondale or Queen Mycelia pretty much locks in the win for you. Most fiends are hugely successful, and the same cards populate the worst positions in terms of win rate. Ifrit Rising is pretty underwhelming at most leagues and ranks, and so is Legionnaire Alvar.
My personal thoughts on this is mostly that the abilities Giant Killer, Trample, and especially Recharge are so situational abilities that they are rarely worth it. Any time a card gains an ability, it has to be balanced with less stat increases. Those three abilities are not worth their cost in this sense. To contrast that, when a card does not have any abilities, its base stats are pretty huge. Take for example Nerissa Tridawn. She does nothing fancy, but has great damage and health. It is as reliable as a card can get, and you can build a team around it that you know will work. To sum that up, I think at least Ifrit Rising and Legionnaire Alvar would be better off without their current abilities. Legionnaire Alvar seems to have a single purpose in this game: To one-shot the annoying Llama-Kron combo in Diamond and higher, but they didn’t even give him the base damage to do that.
TL:DR
Closing Remarks
This post was created in collaboration with Splinterlands Guide . Please check out their Youtube channel for more great Splinterlands content.
Rule set strategies
The data shown here include all rules. 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
