I'm not super sure people are observant enough to notice that you're not playing while they rent your Gold foil cards... I imagine they'd be mostly worried about their ROI on that investment (tournaments and ranked play) and just be so happy your cards are available to them.

Personally I've gone heavy with Rebellion because I didn't participate in Chaos Legion and have been struggling to win many games since. Rebellion has given me a boost in wins already, and I had some spare cards which I'm selling to buy the more powerful Chaos Legion and Riftwatcher cards. I'm really just aiming to be competitive and make the game more fun for myself... it hasn't been all that fun losing ground each season.

I've only got the 7 plots of land, and so they're all producing stuff, but I'm still not sure if the resources generated are better than the rental DEC I could be getting... I guess we'll see how much valuable that Research ends up being.