I think there is nothing more fun to write and talk and debate about than game desing/balance, and a good place to start with Axie infinity is based in comparison of similar skills. And there is no best set of cards to do this than the Energy steal cards.
What is so special about stealing energy from your oponent in Axie Infinity? The short answer is that is something powerful to do, but why? Because taking energy from your oponent limits what they can do. And in a psychologically way, it force them to play outside of their comfort zone, you force them to choose between spending the energy, probably in an unoptimal way or to risk losing it without spending it.
This, without a trace of a doubt, is powerful. Is so powerful that warps the matches around it, like having the ability to "backdoor" your oponent or being able to heal your axies.
And with that in the table comes the funny part about all of this, that is the comparison of the skills that steals energy.
If they do the same, why they have different stats? Are ones better than the others? Well, yes, but not based in wich deals more damage or gives more armor. And this is the point where we can learn something of the world of game design.
If you are not aware of this fact, imma clarify it: based on the race of the card, it gives you different base stats.
And this is the reason why Night Steal gives you more damage than Vegetal Bite. Because it gives you speed, and stealing energy is the only instance in wich going first is bad for you.
But why you might ask? Well, because of energy steal. Because if both players tries to steal energy from the other, the one that does it last it's the one who actually keeps the energy, something that was naturally risky to do is now even more risky.
How does it balance the cards itself? By giving more stats to the one who does the same but "technically" worse.
And now you might be thinking "But chuntar does not give speed and have more stats than the other two, what's going on?".
Well a few things are happening, the first one is that Bug Signal gives less hit points than Vegetal Bite (the one i'm saying is the universally strongest one) and in Axie infinity if you are tied in speed with another axie, the one that goes first is the one with less hit points.
And second and most important, it has more restrictions. In fact is the most restricted effect in the game, because it's requires you to have multiple axies with the same skill and ask you to play multiple copies in the same turn. It ask of you to warp your entire team composition and playstyle around this one card.
So in many ways, it's forcing your hand insteand of your oponnets in exachange of one of the strongest effects and the extra stats it gives you.
Let's do another example, a really quick one to cement the game design concept of compensating situational effects vs universal ones.
Drain Bite and Vegan Diet both heals you when attacking, but one have more damage and armor than the other because it only heals you if you attack an specific type of Axie. There will be a lot more of situations where Drain Bite will actually heals you, but it always have less stats. You have to chose what skill you prefer based on your necessities.
Now coming back to Vegetal Bite, it has a hidden restriction that maybe you didn't noticed. To guaranteed (or to be more specific to have the chance) to go always last, there is only one way to be always the slowest axie in the match, and is to have all your parts to be plant parts. Because they don't give you speed and they give you HP. So the worst case scenario is that you are equally slow and tanky so you have a 50% chance to be the last Axie to act.
If you don't want to commit so hard to that idea (or maybe you don't have the budget) maybe going with Nigh Steal is the better option, you just surrender that premium position of being the last Axie acting but you still forcing your oponent to play differently for the nature of you being able to steal energy nonetheless.
It's not so terrible after all, if both of you spend all your energy at the same time and both try to steal from the other, Night Steal will do more just by the nature of having more damage (and if it hits a plant it will be even more).
So... wrapping this up imma leave you with my opinion and my experience: Stealing energy, thus having the capacity to manipulate a limited resource it's incredibly strong in Axie infinity, but it's not mandatory to have it in your team to even stand a chance.
Don't fall for the wrong concept that you can't play without it, but if you want to. Just be sure to know what and why you want to use. Thank you for reading ♥
If you want to talk with me, hit my DM's in twitter: https://twitter.com/ChuntaroDS