If you're on a limited budget but want to win as many battles as possible, you ideally want to focus on investing in the best value cards with the most 'useability' and the highest win rates.
What I mean by 'useability' is how many rule sets the cards are useful for - Lord A, for example, is a very useable card because very few rule sets (if any) expose his weakness, whereas The Sleeping Giant is very useful for the 'lose all abilities' rule, but that's about it, so thus less playable. I don't even have a Giant, and I don't feel like I'm missing out too much. My Level 3 Lord A on the other hand, I need him, but he's far from the best 'value' card you could invest in - there are many much cheaper cards with similar useability and win-rates.
By win rates, I mean what percentage of battles a card wins.
You can find out both the use-rate and the win-rate of cards by using @darthgexe's most excellent tool here - and you can sort by splinter, league level and rule set!
I decided to use this tool to figure out what cards I should level up. Given that I don't know what rule sets I'm going to face, I didn't filter by rule set, so I've used the results for all rule sets, but I did filter for Champions League, as I'm in champions 3 ATM.
I sorted by win-rate and then selected out all the cards with a 'use-rate' <2%, figuring these are so niche I'm hardly going to use them.
I also sorted by use-rate and then selected out everything with <50% win, don't want those!
Highest win-rate cards (Champions League)
Highest use-rate cards (Champions League)
I then looked up the current ask rate for all of these selected cards - both at 'price optimum level' and at max level (or did a rough multiplication plus a bit more calculation on the basis of a single card if needed) to see how the prices compared.
By 'optimum price level' - I mean the level at which a card isn't really worth levelling up further - Lord A gets all his buffs at L3, I'm not going to buy another six cards just to give him the single extra health point he gets at L4! So Lord A's price optimum level is the amount of cards it takes to get him to L3.
NB this is a bit subjective on my part!
The results below rank by cost to level to 'optimum'.
And I did a spread sheet in case the pictures aren't that legible.
Best value cards with high-win rate, use-rate >2%
Best value cards with high use-rate, win-rate >50%
Some surprises and changes since the last time I did this
Oh yes, sorry, I did a similar analysis a couple of months ago and have been piling in my Steem PDs to the cards which top both of these lists! Now I've got them all maxed plus plenty of spares I'm happy enough to share!
Initially I didn't expect the Tower Griffin to feature, that and the Child of the Forest (I guess it's snipe and high damage for the mana) both went under my radar, as did the Goblin Chef. And the Bard!
No real surprises in the high win rate section, although I was surprised to see the Pegasus so far up.
Lots of low mana cards in here note!
I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else distinguishes between win and use rates? I'm now wondering whether it's useful, maybe we should all just be piling in on the cards with the highest win rates at first rather than what everyone is using?
OH NB - I know the chicken as a win rate <50%, but it is kind of 'stand out' in the stats, so I've let her off!
Final thoughts
I'm aware there are limitations to this analysis - the stats I've taken don't factor in the levels of the cards being played, but overall I still think this gives me a decent idea!
Another slight limitation is that the value of the cards vary - maybe unsurprisingly many of the cards at the top of these lists have gone up considerably in value recently - I maxed my Khmer Princess out when she was selling for $0.20, now she's going for nearly $0.50. NB she is one of my fave cards - that double heal is awesome for 2 mana.
I definitely have had more success since stacking my selections with the cards at the top of both of these lists, especially the higher win-rate list!
Oh, I also bought about 100 Armourers on the basis of this analysis, and a gold one for good measure - a good value card with a high win rate, nice! I've no intention of levelling mine up beyond level 6, I'm just thinking it's an easy vest, everyone needs an armourer or 100!
If I didn't already feel over-invested in Splinterlands I'd pile in on a few more Gold cards, but I'm happy enough having a deck valued at almost $3K, that's a crazy amount of money in digital cards already as far as I'm concerned!
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This is a great analysis @revisesociology, I'm very glad you can take advantage of the tool this way. And yes, we all need a chicken in our collection 😁.
I know that currently there are very few battles in the database, and only the champion league has enough data to be taken into account for an analysis like this. I was starting to think that I was being a little strict with the level filters, but I see that @splinterlands will make important changes soon, so I hope that the app will improve with respect to the lower leagues.
It's a great tool, excellent work, thanks for making it available! I love tools like this~!
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I read this article in one "sip," and I find it more than useful for me.
Although, my Splinterlands' profile states that I'm "battling since October 2018, in fact, that's not true as I actually started to play just several weeks ago. Therefore, I'm still just a big learner of the game.
However, thank you very much for this article with in depth cards analyzes. I'm bookmarking this post, that's for sure! 😊
Glad you found it useful!
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Nice!
I have pretty much none of the cards on the lists, but can still get to Champion 2 which will do me.
I've never got to C2, I lose interest too quickly!
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That's just doing the daily quests which I'm somewhat addicted to - free cards!
You can’t tell such secrets, especially if you do not own a large number of these cards. Now the price of these cards has jumped again :)
I think in the near future @splinterlands has a great future :)
I should have mentioned that I took these prices a couple of days ago!
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Great writeup! For me the chicken is a no brainer to get & Khmer Princess is also one to look out for but too expensive :(
Thanks for sharing!
curated by @travelgirl
Cheers!
I agree, everyone needs a Chicken!
She certainly has gone up in price,
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I've only started playing a few weeks ago, I find it amazing how you can make a while industry out of a game, not to mention probably write a Phd thesis on it !!!
I'm surprised I've got so interested in it - I was really skeptical at first, I remember thinking I was insane when I spent $200 on 110 Beta packs around the time of SF3.
One of my best investments.
One thing I really don't get is why more people don't jump on @carrieallen's weekly challenges. You just follow a few simple rules writing about your battle, make it look pretty, tweet it, and it's the easiest money you could earn on Hive - the rather unfortunately named @steemmonsters account is loaded with 500K Hive Power, and it's currently at 100% VP.
Easy money sounds good 😁
I haven't written anything about the game so far as I have absolutely no idea what's going on, I mean I know which type of monster should go in the front and back, choose the monsters with the highest stats, which means I always use the same few cards, and can just about make my team. Beyond that I have no idea about the abilities and levels etc as all my cards are pretty crap, bar a few that are lent to me by a friend.
I'm going to give it a bit more time to see if I will grow into it without making any investments
You've got the general idea! It's worth buying a few - The Cube is good, unfortunately its is all about the summoners! They're what cost you the money to level up at the end of the day!
Dyou play under this account, or an alt?
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I play with my main.
Yes, maybe I should look into the summoners, I heard they make a lot of difference
The regular untamed ones are fairly decent! Not quite as good as the Betas, but they're OK!
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Thank you for the lease card!! It makes so much difference!
Oh and I guess if you're not a gamer either, like I'm not really, it's easy to underestimate just how big the gaming industry is!
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Even one year after publishing this is still a great read. Thank you! I would like to know the stats for the current meta but darthgexe's tool doesn't seem to work anymore. Do you know where one could get these data elsewhere?
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Unfortunately I don't think there is anything like it anymore - @Jakecw does a seasonal round up but it's not as bespoke.
Thanks for your answer. Do you know if he got the data via the Splinterlands API?
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I imagine so!
An eyeopening to me. I also looked your profile and now following @hodlcommunity trail too.
Thanks for nice posts!
Hey cheers!