This is the second post in an ongoing series where I implement the method I recently posted to evaluate the ROI of a single card in Ranked (here). I have a number of cards I want to test using this approach, and want to share my results with the community.

The first batch of cards I'm testing are the Legendary Chaos Legion summoners. They're relatively cheap, but with Lux Vega acting as a good general purpose summoner, they need to have a strong enough niche to be worth it. The first card I tested, Commander Jacek, wasn't.

As a reminder, the method is to rent a card for 48 hours and see how often that card is used in a winning team (where each win is worth ~$0.33) and determine a card's APY based on that. To be worth it, a card needs to beat the ROI I could get in other methods, such as renting the card out, or putting the money is a Liquidity Pool.

The Card

Today, the card I'm evaluating is Grandmaster Rathe, one of the legendary summoners from Chaos Legion. Whereas I did not expect Jacek to be worth it due to his questionable scattershot ability, Rathe is generally seen as the most useful CL legendary summoner, so I expect he will prove his worth.

How did it do?

I rented Rathe at level 4 on January 26 for 48 hours, during which my bot played 96 battles. Rathe was only used in one of them but I won that battle. This hit up against the sample size issue I outlined in my previous post. With only 96 battles, 1 win was on the cusp of being worth it. So to add to the sample size, I rented Rathe again with the start of the new season on Jan 31 for another 48 hours, during which my bot played a further 128 battles, used Rathe in 1 of them, of which I won 0.

So in total, I rented Rathe for a total of 224 battles, used him in 2 of them, and won in 1 of them. Based on this, the APY of Grandmaster Rathe would be 9%, well below the ROI my deck is currently making and well below the ROI I'd get from putting $220 into a LP or staking SPS. So unfortunately, Rathe does not get added to my deck.

Conclusions

I was somewhat surprised by this. Rathe got used and won a battle pretty early on, so I thought he was going to show his worth pretty quickly. He is also generally seen as one of the better CL legendaries, and I generally think the broad consensus is pretty accurate. But then he hardly got used moving forward. I think a lot of the reason is that I do have an Imortalis, which often plays to the same niche as Rathe (very good when magic monsters will be heavily used), but does the same niche better in general.

Next time, I'll be trying the current cheapest CL Legendary Summoner - Possibilus, and see how he does!

Referral

Interested in Splinterlands? Want to start collecting cards like this one and join in on the fun? Use my referral link here and shoot me a message. I'll set you up with some early cards to get you a good start from day one!

https://splinterlands.com?ref=badrag