How to counter YODIN ZAKU - Yodin match strategy for each of the f2p summoners.

During this season transition, we're trying out a new type of match analysis. In the middle of the last season, we sampled matches from 25000 players in the rating range 1400-2200. Here, we look at all matches in that dataset where Yodin Zaku is played, to see what his weaknesses are.

This is going to be a longer post, but feel free to skip to whichever summoner you are most interested in. We will provide card performance statistics for each of the f2p summoners. If you want graphs for other summoners, please let us know and we can do a follow-up post with those.

We wont discuss every detail of each graph, so if you want to get the best use of these data, you might have to take a minute to extract the strategy for yourself. If you find additional strategies based on the data here, please share them in the comments.

First, here is Yodin's win rate against all summoners in our dataset. Summoners on the right side are your best options.

Its pretty clear that Yodin Zaku is a very strong card. He has only five losing matchups in this dataset. But the matchups he loses, he loses pretty hard.

Notes on the data
Below, we will present card statistics. The graphs will shows which cards are played in winning and losing teams against Yodin Zaku. They will be sorted based on the ratio of play in winning teams to the play in losing teams. The numbers above each bar shows the average level of the card for the winning teams. Each summoner will have two graphs, where the first graph shows cards that win more than they lose, and the second will have cards that lose more than they win.

Malric Inferno


Malric is often picked against Yodin, but does not win that often. Some cards that can boost his win-rate can be found in the top graph. Flame Monkey is very successful, as are Elemental Phoenix and Exploding Dwarf. Another strategy that can be used is to go for one huge giant: Magnor. That one in particular doesn't really worry about blast damage. Serpentine Soldier is at level 4 is a very good option with dodge and 5 speed. Like with Brighton, miss chance is very effective against Yodin. Avoid the slow and expensive fire monsters like Living Lava and the expensive and fragile ones like Spark Pixies and Fire Elemental.

Pyre
(Pyre's artwork is awesome!)


To exaggerate a little bit; Pyre wins if he picks a level 2 Elemental Phoenix. Good damage, blast, high speed, and flying makes this a very strong Yodin counter. Serpent of the flame actually has an even higher win-rate with huge speed and the retaliate ability. With Fire Demon and Elemental Phoenix you can blast Yodin right back, and with Pyre's speed you will have the advantage. Flame imp is successful for the same basic reasons as Elemental Phoenix, and can further boost your speed if you get a level 5 one. Pyre should avoid picking Fire Elemental and Spark Pixies even though it is apparently pretty tempting for many players.

Bortus

Poor Bortus has one of the worst win rates against Yodin. Bortus has to use pretty powerful cards to win these matches. Phantom of the Abyss has 6 speed, flying and dodge, and is therefore very hard to hit with ranged and melee attacks. Bortus can also blast Yodin back with Ruler of the Seas and Pirate Archer, or heal through Yodin's blast with Sea Monster. Frost Giant and The Kraken can simply be too big to blast down. All in all, Bortus has several options, which leaves more room for skilled players to select the best approach, for example to accommodate the ruleset. Axemaster, Pirate Captain and Captain's Ghost are not very effective against Yodin though, and should be avoided.

Alric Stormbringer

Alric has the best win chance against Yodin of the ones we cover here. Yet again we see that Blast can be used effectively against Yodin: Ruler of the Seas is very effective with Alric. Other good options are the high miss chance obtained with Phantom of the Abyss, or Kraken can direct hits where you want them. Kraken and Lobstradamus together make for a team that resists non-magic blast quite well. We also see that Alric can win with cards that are easily to every player, such as Djinn Oshannus and Venari Wavesmith.
Alric's losing teams use more non-magic monsters, or the standard low-cost magic damage monsters that are so effective in the lower leagues.

Wizard of Eastwood

Wizard of Eastwood is not picked a lot against Yodin, but he has access to cards that work very well against him. Spirit of the Forest, Pelacor Mercenary and Brownie have very good stats. These rely on dodging Yodin's attacks. Self-healing with Flesh Golem is a good option, and Screeching Vulture is good for taking out the squishier monsters. There are not that many cards with Wizard that do badly, but they are picked quite a lot. Avoid Wood Nymph and Unicorn Mustang, and think twice with the more expensive ranged cards such as Beatrix Ironhand, Venari Seedsmith and Mantoid.

Lyanna Natura


Lyanna has a better win rate in the dataset, but the cards do not have as high win-loss discrepancies as Wizard has. Some of the same cards are present, but with Lyanna's one extra health, there cards shift around a bit. Swamp Thing is very successful, and so is Kron the Undying and Spirit of the Forest. Flesh Golem is a very popular option, and does well. Again, on the losing side is Wood Nymph, Unicorn Mustang and also Earth Elemental.

Tyrus Paladium

Tyrus Paladium has access to the fast and hard-hitting life cards such as leveled versions of Feral Spirit and Silvershield Assassin. These are very successful when combined with Silvershield Knight. A leveled Defender of Truth is a great boost to the survivability of this team. If mana allows, additional melee monsters such as Battering Ram, Silvershield Warrior or Uraeus can be added, and generally do quite well. A healing setup with Shieldbearer does not work. Do not try it.

Mother Khala

Mother Khala can adapt the same strategy as Tyrus Paladium with fast, hard-hitting melee monsters. It looks like Mother Khala might be even better with this strategy, seeing as these monsters have much more play in winning than losing teams in her deck. Legendary cards such as Kralus and High Priest Darius also do well if you have access to them. The losing cards look similar to Tyrus's stats. Don't go for the healing setup.

Zintar Mortalis

Zintar has one of the worse win rates against Yodin. The card statistics are not very encouraging either. Zintar, like many of the others, does better when he goes for speed or other ways to dodge hits such as flying monsters. The number of cheap monsters in the winning card list indicate that Zintar probably has the best chances at low mana. Zintar's ranged cards generally do quite poorly, so avoid those.

Contessa L'ament


If you want to play death cards against Yodin, you should rather pick Contessa than Zintar. She has a bunch of cards that do well, and can adapt several strategies. High-speed flying cards do the best, and this has been the case also for many other summoners. Missing hits are very bad for Yodin, so you should try to make this happen. Therefore, Fallen Specter and Phantasm are great with Contessa. Here, Phantasm is generally played at level 5, where it has return fire. Contessa does not do well with the basic death cards. Haunted Spirit, Twisted Jester, Dark Astronomer etc. are all on the losing list, so you might have to acquire a larger card set if you want to play her.

Drake of Arnak

Drake of Arnak is the final summoner we will cover here. He has an overall bad win rate, but being a dragon summoner, he has access to options that can bring you out on top against most summoners. Using the legendary dragons is one option. Another one is including Soulstorm or Phantom Soldier. Common for all most of the best cards for Drake is that they are flying monsters. Drake of Arnak can also adapt the strategies of many other decks, and we can find the Life strategy with Feral Spirit, Silvershield Assassin, and Silvershield Knight on the winning list. Some fire cards are also present. Djinn Chwala is actually not very good, nor is Robo-Dragon Knight. The losing list mostly consist of f2p monsters from various decks, which generally indicates that Drake should not be played without a somewhat larger card collection. There are good indications that Drake is not a bad option against Yodin if you own or rent some of the high-speed flying cards.

General conclusions
Play high speed flying cards, they really do very well. Blasting Yodin right back is also successful, and reminds me of a statement I heard just after started playing Splinterlands: "If you want to win against Yodin you need to play Yodin". Now we know that this can be modified slightly. Alric can out-damage Yodin, especially if he uses his own blast cards. He can also use Phantom of the Abyss, and laugh while Yodin misses every hit. This can also be done with other decks, and Pyre is a good option for this with Elemental Phoenix and Fire Demon. Pyre will have the speed advantage, which is very important vs Yodin. Life can win by hard-hitting fast melee monsters, and dragon decks can win because they can fit as many flying monsters as they like. Nature decks can outlive Yodin's blast damage, or dodge the hits, whatever you prefer.

Closing remarks

If you like these statistics and analysis, you can check out our other posts here:
Win rate and play rate statistics #5: Silver 1
Win rate and play rate statistics #4: Silver 2
Win rate and play rate statistics #3: Silver 3
Win rate and play rate statistics #2: Bronze 1 and 2
Win rate and play rate statistics #1: Novice and Bronze 3

The data shown here include all rules. We are also creating guides for specific rules. You can find them here:
Strategycorner with Mammuter #4: How to WIN in Melee Mayhem
Strategycorner with Mammuter #3: Noxious Fumes
Strategycorner with Mammuter #2: Earthquake
Strategycorner with Mammuter #1: Super Sneak.

If you would like to see more of this content, please let me know, like and share the post. Also, if you have not yet started playing Splinterlands, you can join and support me and the same time with the following link

Join Splinterlands

Another way to support us is through card delegations or donations. If you want to do that, we are @kalkulus and @mammuter.

Best of luck in Splinterlands!

Kalkulus