The best card of each faction of all time (of 2021).

I was just thinking to myself as the year is almost over and spotify giving me an overview of my music taste, what where the most played cards of each faction ( ignoring neutrals of course). So giving it a little bit of thought I'm gonna mention what I think are the staples of each faction for the year, patches, nerfs and buffs nonwithstanding. My own metrics for this is relevance in meta reports, ladder and tournament (opens and masters) appearances, feel free to correct me, disgree with me and stuff:

NR: It's a no-brainer, Amphibious Assault has been THE NR card since release, one of the best cards in the game pre-PoP and probably afterwards too. Makes any bronzie have the same impact as a goldie. Close second place would be Raffard's Vengeance, but i feel it has not carried NR as hard as AA has for the WHOLE year.

NG: The best performing card from NG has been Coup De Grace just because of it's consistency both in ladder and tourney matches. I would argue other cards like Masquarade Ball pre PoP or Artaud Terranova have much more impact in the game but the only Coup has the year long presence in meta decks.

SY: The state of SY has been interesting to me since I started playing the game (april 2020). From the reddit threads to playing it myself, it has always felt like the hardest deck to play in gwent no matter the archetype I chose. Then a patch in early 2021 came and changed the meta for more than half a year. TUNNEL DRILL GOT BUFFED All of a sudden, SY was consistently tier 1 in every meta report, helped with newly added Cleaver and Whoreson Jr. For most of 2021 the biggest question was how to play around Tunnel Drill, there where answers to that question for sure, but no where as consitent as TD, whether it be with lined pockets, jackpot or pirate's cove. After TD's nerf, I can't say what other card could take it's place as the most played SY card of the year and probably the best card in the game's history.

ST: I don't play ST, but it's Simlas FOR SURE.

SK: I think SK has the best score in Meta Reports representation after SY and after Tunnel Drill got axed, SK still remained strong with Reckless Fury being the Red coin abuse deck to beat. To top it all off, PoP gave this faction so many ways to interact with graveyard, it almost made me have a punchline for this sentence. Fucusya is SK's AA and will probably stay that way for the forseeable future. I also wanted to mention SK's amazing bronzies too like bear witcher, raging bear, any type of bear really. Skellige just has the best bronzes man.

MO: This faction is tough, specially since it's my favorite faction. Monsters started with 3 good decks this year, Viyspits, Aracha's Swarm and Kelltulis. Viy got nerfed the early in the year while AS and Kelly got powercrept by buffs and expansions. But there was a card. A card that did not deserve a nerf. A card that got a nerf and afterward its ability changed to given to a new card recently revealed this Gwent Masters. I'm talking about my main man Caranthir, who right in the middle of PoPs second expansion, gave everyone a headache, double mammuna, double genri, double koshjey. Monsters got the gwent scene trembling and Caranthir was a key card on that small but definetively impactful timeframe.

TLDR; Arachas Queen has a DUMPY.