Splinterlands: How to WIN IN GOLD 3 - Win rate and play rate analysis #6

This is the sixth post in a series concerning the overall win rate of different summoners in Splinterlands. The first five were concerned with the win rates in Novice - Silver 1. The latest three of these can be found 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

This time, we look at the win rate for ratings between 1900 and 2200. For players matching the rating and collection power criteria Splinterlands uses for its leagues, this is the range of Gold 3.

Winning summoners:

Gold 3 is the lower range where Yodin is played a lot. In lower leagues, its quite easy for players to climb with Yodin, so they will not stay for long. In Gold 3 he meets more resistance, so he stays for longer and therefore there are more matches with Yodin here. He is still one of the very best summoners overall. Only two summoners have higher win rates than him, but Yodin is played much more than them. Yodin Zaku costs 7 mana, provides +1 health and +1 ranged damage, and gives all your monsters Blast. His high mana cost makes him best suited for medium or high mana matches. Scarred Llama mage does almost as well, and we also find Lorna Shine with great win rate, and there are a few others that also do pretty well. The overall variety of summoners played has increased quite a bit from the lower leagues, and people likely have more refined strategies at this point.

Key takeaways:

• Yodin Zaku and Scarred Llama Mage are still the best options if you want to climb past Gold 3.
• Summoner variation has increased, and many different options are viable
• Of the f2p summoenrs, only Lyanna Natura has a positive win rate.

Losing summoners:

Key takeaways:

• Mylor Crowling is not such a great choice for Gold 3. People know how to counter him to a larger extent than in lower leagues. Also, he does not match well against Yodin Zaku, who is played a lot.
• Summoners that are picked specifically for one ruleset, or to counter one opponent, for example Mylor Crowling, Owster Rotwell and Brighton Bloom, do not do well overall. This is probably due to the larger variety of summoners played here, making it hard to counterpick your opponent.

Which cards do you need to win in Gold 3?
Gold 3 has many options that work well. In general, it is likely that you should have a deck that has a clear strategy, and leveled cards (stating the obvious). You also need to have a good understanding of the rulesets and how they work with your deck. We can not cover all options here, but we pick one winning summoner and one losing summoner and look at how they are played and how they should be played.

This time we look at Yodin Zaku and Zintar Mortalis.

Yodin Zaku
Yodin is your best option if you own or can rent him. He is one of the more expensive options, but might return your investment because you will climb fast. This is what Yodin plays:

Yodin loves the Fire Beetle, although he loses more than he wins with it. He goes for a number of hard-hitting cards such as Lava Launcher, Living Lava, Feraxia General and Ettin Spearman. His most successful cards however, are Lord of Fire (preferably level 2 to get both Strengthen and Silence) Goblin Shaman (Slow at level 5) and Imp Bowman. Other cards that do well are Centaur, Elemental Phoenix, Fire Elemental (weird, but high speed does well against Yodin's worst matchups), and Magnor. Yodin's worst cards in Gold 3 are Furious Chicken (probably means that Yodin does worst at low mana), Cerberus, Goblin Fireballer, Kobold Miner and Pyromaniac. Avoid those, and you should do pretty well with Yodin

Zintar Moralis
Zintar Mortalis is a more difficult choice with his negative win rate, but playing a statistically less successful summoner with the right cards might in some cases be an advantage, since you can catch your opponent off guard.

Zintar plays Haunted Spirit. This is no surprise, but it is also a good choice. It has a slightly positive win-rate and is likely safe for most matchups. At level 4, Haunted Spirit has Magic Reflect, so you don't have to worry about the Alric spammers. Chicken takes second place in popularity and is successful (therefore, low or medium mana is good for Zintar). Zintar's most successful cards are the legendary cards Corrupted Pegasus, Lord of Darkness, and Fallen Specter. Ideally, level 3 for all, to access Strengthen, Stun, and Demoralize. Apart from these, level 3 Shadowy Presence is great, and Dark Enchantress, Undead Archer, Screaming Banshee, and Phantom Soldier are very successful. Several other cards are also good, so there are likely a number of strategies that work with Zintar.

His worst cards are Sand Worm, Harklaw, Death Elemental, Venari Bonesmith, Animated Corpse, Spineback Wolf and Ancient Lich. Harklaw and Ancient Lich are surprisingly bad, but maybe players default to them even when they do not fit the ruleset or the opponent obviously counters it (Like picking Harklaw against Alric Stormbringer. Go for Haunted Spirit instead!).

You want these cards:
The top ten cards (by win ratio in this dataset) in Gold 3 is:

So the king of Gold 3 is the Swamp Thing!

Swamp Thing is a very powerful card that provides Weaken and decent HP at level 1. At level 1, it gains one ranged attack, and level 4, it also has Slow. All in all, a great card that will boost your win chances in Earth or Dragon decks.

The losers list is pretty much the same as for Silver 1, so we wont repeat that here. Elven Defender is still the King of the Losers.

Top cards for Yodin and Zintar

If you want to play Yodin Zaku, these are your top choices:

And for Zintar Mortalis, these are the cards you want:

Closing remarks
Some summoners were excluded from the above statistics. Those are the ones with less that 0.1% play rate. Information about these summoners is not useful for the common player, as they will not show up in your matches, unless you pick them yourself.

Rule set strategies
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.

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!

Kalkulus