Alright, with the release of the 12th Haze RL (I counted 11 last Haze when I thought about how many Hazes I've seen), I became curious about how it compares to the rest of the RL selection. So I've combed through the archives of every Raffle Lioness released since 2013 and tallied up all of the special bases and how many of each currently exist. This took a fair bit of time LOL, there was a total of 285 special bases (excluding the applicator based Inferno and Hematite from 2014-15) to sift through. I maaaay have miscounted somewhere, so feel free to point out any mistakes and I'll double check!

In terms of breed-only specials (and ordered from earliest release to latest), we have:


So, our top 5 most common bases are as follows:
Sepia - 29
Pearl - 26
Lilac - 19
Orchid - 18
Haze - 12

I wasn't around for the releases before September 2016, so I wasn't aware of all of the Sepias and Pearls that we have! Though, in my defense, many of them aren't really around anymore ^^; They along with Lilac must have been the only special bases to pull from back then. And once Orchid released in mid-2018, the base was released pretty frequently, getting released on 9 RLs within the next year. Granted, that can be partially attributed to the total pool of BO special bases being rather small at the time.

Since I hadn't bothered to count them before now, I was a bit surprised by the number of Citrines there are, as well as Madagascars and Olives. And there were a LOT of Bushveld releases compared to other bases released at a similar time. I'm guessing that was because Bushveld was pretty unique among BO bases as essentially the only truly green BO base (Olive is close, though!) and so it should get a decent amount of new lines introduced, to have some variety.

It's a bit of a pity seeing some older bases with a pitifully small amount of RLs. I suppose some of those bases are rather boring - at least when looked at next to some newer, more popular base releases - such as Qahir or Black Rose. I think Cairngorm (with 3 RLs) is a much prettier base than Arabica (with 6 RLs), but I'll admit that that's just an opinion :D

Cloudburst, which had 3 RLs released since 2018, had its rarity updated along with Smog (3) and Nadir (4) from "Common" to "Special" in accordance with the Special Base Pass Rates update in June 2022. Smog had 2 of its RL releases happen after the change, Nadir has had 1, but Cloudburst hasn't had any (latest was April 8 2022, 2 months before the update) which is kind of a bummer.

Month-restricted combo bases, as of late, tend to not release outside of their respective months. Temporal's first RL was actually released in March, outside of its restricted month of October, and there are a couple Pulsar RLs that were released in June and December of 2020. Could we maybe get some more of that sort of thing? I know of at least a few people that were very disappointed to not receive a new Temporal RL in October 2023, and while the Witch one was stunning, it did leave some Temporal fans a bit upset. Since 2021, they've only been released during their special breeding month, so now players have come to expect that if a RL with the base they want isn't released during the month that year, they probably have to wait another year. Kind of lame.

Overall, I think it'd be great to see a few more of the lesser-seen special bases pop up on RLs! Ukame was released in 2020 and only has 2 RLs, the last of which was released over 2 years ago at the end of January 2022. As a result, many of the few Ukame studs have a lot of the same features from those RLs. Elysian is a popular combo base released at the end of 2018, yet it only has 3 RLs. I know there are an assload of bases, so some are bound to get neglected, but when you see multiple of one base release in one year and have to wait over 2 years between Bandit RLs, being a fan of underrated bases becomes not very fun x)

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to share your own thoughts below!