How to Build a Strong Deck in Clash Royale from Scratch

With hundreds of cards available today, building a deck from scratch in Clash Royale can be intimidating. But once you learn the basics, things become much clearer. The first thing you need to do before building a deck is figure out which play style suits you the best.

Are you an aggressive player? Or do you prefer taking a more calculated, defensive approach? Once you’ve got that part down, building a deck matching your style will be easier.

Building a Strong Clash Royale Deck

Here are a few steps to building a strong deck in Clash Royale that covers all the bases:

1. Understanding deck archetypes
2. Choosing a win condition
3. Picking the best support cards
4. Adding the right defensive building
5. Finding the best spells
6. Choosing the correct champion

You can find more information about each of these steps below.

Understand Deck Archetypes

The pros use a couple of different meta-deck archetypes in Clash Royale. You may have heard terms like cycle, siege, or beatdown mentioned when players discuss Clash Royale decks. Here are some of the common deck types in the game:

• Cycle decks usually play fast and aggressively, cycling out its win condition to circumvent the opponent’s counter and build up an elixir advantage. Goblin Drill cycle decks are good examples of this type of deck.
• The siege deck, on the other hand, is passive and uses buildings like the X-bow or Mortar to damage enemy towers.
• Beatdown decks use tanks like the Lava Hound, Giant, or Electro-Giant to build a massive push.

Understanding these deck archetypes helps set a foundation on which you can start building your own deck.

Choose a Win Condition

Now that you know the basics, the first step to building your deck would be choosing your win condition. This mostly depends on how you want to play the game. For beginners, beatdown decks are good since they don’t require as much elixir counting. For beatdown decks, Giant is the most common win condition, along with Lava Hound, Golem, Electro-Giant, etc. Cycle decks are also quite popular in the meta with win conditions like Hog Rider, Royal Hogs, Miner, and Goblin Barrel.

In some decks, double-win conditions can exist, such as Lava Hound and Ballon, Goblin Giant and Sparky, or even Giant and Graveyard. Make sure you choose a win condition with a decent level, as it will be your most important card in the deck. You can use Magic Items on your win condition cards to give them a quick boost in levels.

Pick the Support Cards

Now that you’ve picked your win condition, the next order of business is to pick the support cards. Assuming you’re going with only one win condition card, this leaves you space for seven cards, at least four of which will be support cards.

Support cards in Clash Royale are troops that will help you build up a push or defend your opponent’s pushes. As a rule of thumb, you should pick at least one or two units that deal decent damage, at least one mini tank, and at least one card that you can cycle for cheap defense or distraction.

The Prince is a popular mini-tank choice. A Valkyrie or Mini Pekka can also be a good choice if you’re running an Evo Goblin Barrel cycle or a Giant Beatdown deck. Choose a mini tank that complements your win condition and can handle most enemy win conditions in the meta.

Some decks use very specific mini tanks as they synergize perfectly with the win condition. A Battle Healer with an Elixir Golem is a good example of this. Hog-EQ cycle decks use a Skeleton Giant as a mini tank.

As for your DPS units, you should pick at least one card that targets both air and ground. Archers are a good choice in the current meta, thanks to Evolution. Firecracker is another solid pick in specific decks. Other DPS cards include Zappies, Goblin Gang, Dart Gobling, Hunter, and Executioner.

If you think you won’t need too much air defense, add another ground DPS or mini-tank card to the deck. Make sure at least one of the cards in your deck deals AOE splash damage. Valkyrie, Mega Knight, Baby Dragon, Bowler, and Bomber are good examples of splash damage cards.

Finally, you need to add one cheap cycle card that you can use as a distraction, DPS, or cycle. Bats are popular as cycle cards in Beatdown decks. Cycle decks often run two cycle cards, skeletons, and one of the Spirits.

Add a Defensive Building

Most decks today prefer to run a defensive building to the deck as they are the best counters to Beatdown decks. Defensive buildings in Clash Royale include Tesla, Bomb Tower, Cannon, Inferno Tower, etc. Take a look at the rest of the cards you have so far on your deck and pick a defensive building that complements it. For example, if you don’t have enough air defense, Tesla can be a good choice for the deck.

Choosing the Spells

Most Clash Royale decks reserve at least two slots for spells. There are currently 20 spells in the game, with more getting added as new patches drop. As a rule of thumb, you should pick a big and a small spell.

• Big spells usually cost a good chunk of elixir and can deal with direct damage to the tower. Examples include Lightning, Fireball, Poison, etc.
• Small spells are usually used defensively or to serve a very specific purpose. Zap, for example, is used to reset Inferno or Sparky, Arrows can take down small DPS units like Archers or Bomber, and Rage can boost your cards’ attack and movement speed.

Choosing a Champion

In Clash Royale, there are seven champions available: Mighty Miner, Skeleton King, Archer Queen, Little Prince, Golden Knight, and Monk. Each of these champions can add some extra dimension to the deck, but you can only have one on your deck at a time. Instead of using two DPS units, you can reserve one spot for a Champion you like. Some Champions work well in certain decks. For example, Mighty Miner champion is usually used in cycle decks, while Monk is only suitable for Royale Giant Beatdown decks.

The steps mentioned above can serve as a guideline when building a basic deck. For specific events and challenges like the Void Challenge, players usually run a very specific meta deck in Clash Royale.