Splinterlands Social Media Challenge - the best Rebellion reward card is not the one you're thinking

Most people will think about Olivia of the Brook when talking about the best Rebellion reward card. That is a great card, with a unique and powerful ability: Mimic. It often wins games in flashy ways. However, it's not a card that fits every team and every type of game. To use her properly, you need to make the game last long and protect her. If your team is built with the idea of getting a fast win, why would you play a unit that gets better with each passing round? The thing with Olivia is that people will remember the games they won or lost, and she had 2 or more rows of abilities. They don't remember the games she did nothing.

If Olivia is not the best, which one is? Is it Arachne Weaver with another unique ability (Corrupted Healing)? That's not it either. To me, the best one is Halfling Refugee. But, before I talk about it, I'll try to explain how I'm evaluating "the best card". This isn't easy to do. There are several ways to look at it, and none of them are perfect by themselves. We can look at the win percentage. If a card wins a big percentage of the games it is played, it must be very good, right? But what if most other replacements would have won those games, regardless? It can also be an extremely niche card that does wonders in a combination of rule sets, but it's never played outside of that. Should we classify a card with a huge win percentage in these situations, the best card, or even a great card? I don't think so. We can look at which card is getting the most kills or the most damage. That can also lead to false conclusions. The support cards or the enablers might be the ones doing the most important and unique work, even though they are not getting the kills themselves. What about the most used? That can be a good indicator, as long as we consider some things. Availability and price obviously affect usage. There are many more Pelacor Bandits than Venkas. Even if we're comparing a splinter-specific card to a neutral one, there's no doubt that Pelacor Bandit is much more used because many more players have access to it. This doesn't make the Pelacor better than Venka. In fact, availability and price can affect any of the ways we evaluate a card. If a card is very expensive, it will be mostly whales with access to it. Since those accounts own most if not all of the cards, they can combine with many cards others don't have. It can very easily affect win percentages. What I like about the most-used evaluation is that it works well for cards in the same set and rarity. Most players should have Halfling Refugee and Olivia of the Brook at the same or a similar level. When drawing epic cards, the chances to get one or the other are the same. Regardless, I think it's important to combine these and maybe even other ways to evaluate cards.

With all this in mind, why do I think Halfling Refugee is the best? It's a 1 mana neutral card. That means, as long as the rule sets allow, you can play it in every game. There are better options for 99 mana games and even most 50 to 60 mana games. However, for low mana games, it is usually a must-have. Even in mid mana games, it can be very strong. Similar tanks that can attack will often cost 3 to 4 mana, which can be used in other units. In fact, if you want a 5 attack melee unit that isn't Halfling Refugee, you'll have to spend at least 5 mana. It can also be a great Sneak Attack damage absorption. Because of the low mana cost and it being easily available, it's common to see it on both teams, which doesn't help identify a good win percentage. When this happens, it just makes the win percentage get closer to 50%, whether it is above or below that number. There are many games in which I start building my team with it because I know it will be a solid choice and will just cost me one mana.

I also took a look at my most recent 20 Modern games, which include some tournaments in there, and also the 20 games in the top battles tab for both Champion and Diamond Modern. Here's the usage and wins/losses for both Refugee and Olivia:

I know this was a small sample, but Halfling Refugee was used in 22 teams out of 120 (60 games with 2 teams each), while Olivia was only used in 12 teams, almost half. The Refugee's win percentage is slightly higher, but it's not relevant in such a small sample. To me, this shows that it is so easy to fit the Refugee in any team that it makes it the best since it is the card you'll end up using the most out of this set. It also helps that you can use it even at level 1, regardless of your summoner level. I can see it being useful even at level 1 when using max-level summoners in the same situations. For new players, a level 1 Refugee will fit their decks very often. The same can't be said about Olivia. You need a level 2 for the Mimic, and lower level matches often won't have enough abilities and sustain to make Olivia good. Being neutral makes it automatically more useful than belonging to a specific splinter.

What do you all think about Halfling Refugee and my analysis? Do you find any flaws in my reasoning? Do you agree with me? Let me know in the comments! Thank you for reading!!