Clash Royale from Clash of Clans makers

It spits out two barbs at a time, which is rather powerful. Roughly 10 barbs in its lifetime. That would cost 12.5 mana, if summoned using the barb summoning card. The usual pros/cons of a spawning card.

I use it in my spawn deck.

I can’t stop playing this. I hit rank 800 and a new battle field opened up. I ADORE the way this game plays, and demand a $10-20 Steam version to play with my friends that strips out the micro transaction bullshit.

Ah ok it sends out two at a time, that makes it feel better. I was thinking of trying out a spawner/building deck for fun and see how it goes. Have the Barb hut, the goblin hut and the tombstone. Then add in the bomb tower, cannon and X-Bow. Thats all my buildings so two slots left. Maybe goblin barrel (which I love) and arrows? Or Arrows and spear goblins so I have some kind of anti-air at least. Will try it out and see, certainly can’t be doing worse than I have been last few days.

I’ve been having a good time with this as well. Not so much of a fan of the defensive structures, as they only serve one purpose… Defense. I like my units to have multiple uses.

I guess I’ve been pretty lucky with my epics, I’m currently only using the baby dragoc (lvl2) and witch (lvl2) - and will rotate in/out the price (lvl1)

skele army (lvl1) , gob barrel (lvl2), baloon (lvl2), Giant skele (lvl1) are all on the bench.

No purchases - so the RNG just smiled. That being said, I’d rather some additional copies of the non-epic cards instead, so I can upgrade those!

I think I’m done with this. I’m at the point where the people beating me are higher level/have better cards so it’s impossible to say how much of a factor player skill is anymore (I go with “almost none” when I lose to someone with better cards to make me feel better). More or less the same reason I never got into any type of constructed deck games (though Arena is fun in Hearthstone). Also, there’s no endgame so I’ve pretty much seen everything the game has to offer already. Maybe I’ll come back if they add stuff in the future since the core gameplay is pretty fun for a mobile game.

I got 5 gold for donating some trash that I think costs 3 for first purchase and 4 for second, so you can make a tiny amount of gold on it. Not sure if that holds true for more expensive cards.

The trophy system is 100% guranteed to stall you out, if your cards stay static. Where you stall out using a certain set of cards (e.g., at 1000 trophies vs. 1100) can be affected by skill, but you will stall out. The “point” of the game, arguably, is to upgrade your cards when you hit a stall point so that you can creep up a bit more on the trophy system. Key new features kick in when you open a new arena and access a bunch of new cards.

As you climb the arenas and card variety increases, you start getting more and more of a rock-paper-scissors effect where you come in with the wrong (or right) deck against your opponent’s specific deck. One card (e.g., having Arrows against a weenie deck) can make a huge difference, depending on what you’re going against.

But overall, you can’t “beat” this game. That’s just the way it is.

On gold for donating: you’re right. It seems to be set at 3rd purchase price.

true!! the lack of an end game outside of trying to grind up levels to get in to higher ranks, feels a bit empty. when I get soundly beaten, I always look at my opponents deck to check the levels of the cards (you can get an idea of the levels of cards during the match, but sometimes it’s harder to know)

Some of my great draws has been against opponents with stronger decks that just couldn’t pull the win off!

My biggest pet peeve is that the nature of the matchup doesn’t seem to affect the reward. I’d prefer it if a win against an objectively stronger opponent (e.g., by deck value) should give you a better reward, and vice versa. I like that the arena system disinsentivizes intentionally dropping trophies, but it’d be nice if there was at least some recognition of a tough win.

I’m assuming, because they don’t let you dump chests, that making rewards more linked to matchup would be annoying if the system matched you up with a weak opponent. This could be addressed by letting you dump chests or, only providing a bonus for tough wins without penalizing easy wins.

The trophies values seem to go all the up to 4 or 5 thousand, I think? People in the ranked section have accounts with thousands of dollars or even 10 thousand spent on them to level up the rares and epics, even with the game being so new. You’ll stall out on the trophies eventually.

In Hearthstone I did feel differently because it was possible by spending 20 or 30 dollars a year on the fixed cost expansions and simply playing regularly that I could make numerous pro decks card for card. And when I couldn’t make them it felt like bullshit. But here, there’s just no chance so… whatever I guess. It makes me not worry about chest timing and just open whatever when I happen to feel to feel like playing. The bar is so far away I know I’ll never get there.

Clash Royale is obviously a treadmill, which makes it 100% certain that I’ll never spend money or engage in any of the social features. What’s the point in doing that, when anything you gained will be obsolete in a week? If this was using a Hearthstone / LoL model, I’d happily have put in $20 to get access to all the existing cards, and probably more later.

But… To continue my career as a CR apologist, the key to enjoying the game seems to be ignoring both the rewards and the “unfairness” of matchmaking. Just enjoy the superb core gameplay.

Ignoring the reward systems is the right thing anyway since really you should be playing games for the engaging gameplay, not the dopamine hit from receiving digital trinkets. Just step out of the Skinner box! This will also make the chest timers less annoying.

What about the unfairness of being matched against players with a better card pool? One thing to note is that from their point of view it’s equally unfair that they’re being matched against a much more skilled opponent… These two wrongs end up making a right. The nature of the rating system and the matchmaking basically guarantees satisfying match no matter what. Everyone will tend to a 50% win rate. (The rating system appears to be a raw Elo system except with a fudge factor to deal with people starting at 0 rather than the actual expected average rating, and the fact that the rating scale is in practice totally uncapped. The biggest rating difference I’ve had to another player was maybe 125 points, which still implies a 33% win rate for the lower rated player). If I can get a good match against a worse player with a 5 second matchmaking delay, why worry about the details? It’s surely much better than a multi-minute wait for someone with a similar power level and skill.

The bonuses for being a level or two ahead are actually pretty minor compared to the massive cheating that you’d see in a typical strategy game AI. So just pretend you’re playing against uncannily humanlike AIs that just need a tiny 5-10% power boost to be competitive with you.

The Baby Dragon is silly. It’s like a musketeer that has flying and does AOE damage… for the same cost. (I know damage and health numbers are different but it works out closely due to the extra health the Dragon has.) The units you play to counter it other than the musketeer almost get one shot as a group by it, and the musketeer only equals it. It has less range than the musketeer which might be something except that flying units don’t really need that range to stay safe like the musketeer does.

You can only do general stuff that you would do against any unit – wait for it to look on to something super tanky and then play your archers on the side outside the AOE. The AOE kills so many of your units by accident even when you get it locked onto a building it’s infuriating.

It’s just absurd that the dragon absolutely smokes almost every unit that can even target/counter it.

The Balloon seems kinda of ridiculous too but at least it only targets buildings so you can theoretically lose the battle but win the war with a counter push with your surviving troops. It should probably move slower though.

Well put.

I agree with essentially all of your post except this part. Paying attention to the reward system is important for opening new cards, and therefore complexity and options, in the game. You’re absolutely right that new cards won’t manifest as any sort of long lasting advantage because of the matchmaking system. Rather, it is a fundamental part of bringing in more options, while doing so at a gradual rate which is good.

Balance changes incoming: https://clashroyale.com/blog/release-notes/balance-changes-coming-3-23

Almost all of these feel like improvements. In particular defensive buildings are too strong at the moment, I’m probably getting over 50% draws in the 1600-1700 range, and it’s not uncommon for both players to have plopped a Tesla down at exactly the same sweet spot in the middle. The way they did the nerf is maybe not quite the one I would have preferred, since the main strength of the defensive buildings is the way they draw units away from the lanes, even when placed in the middle. And unlike units they don’t move, so it’s a super cheap way of guarding against split pushes. I would have preferred the buildings stay as strong as they were, but actually required committing to a lane rather than almost automatically defend the full map. That’s still unchanged, even if the buildings are less appealing overall.

The exception is the Balloon buff. That’s just total bullshit. It’s just had its main opponents nerfed, and it’s main combo-partner Rage buffed.

I just started playing today. My cards window has a 2 over it which makes it look like I have two upgrades to make, but damn if I can find them. Any idea?

Is there a good general strategy site for noobs?

The card window will also have a number for new card types you’ve received. Click on “info” to read the description, and it’ll be dismissed.

Ah ok so you actually have to dig in and look at the info. Got it.

Gah fuck this game. I just did a 200ish point slide and dropped from Arena 4 back to arena 3. So frustrating.

I actually like how the match-making system gets you a challenging match, almost every time (e.g., what’s been discussed above). Clash Royale is probably the most concentrated “fun” I’ve had in a mobile game in a long, long time. 2-10 minute gaming sessions, but excitement almost every time.

Plus, there’s almost no real “loss” in the game: you never lose cards or other resources, and you can quickly win back the one thing you can lose (trophies) by winning. Admittedly, the grind is very real, but the grind itself (playing challenging matches) is fun. My eyes almost did pop out when I saw the 1000 gold price tag for taking a card from lvl 6 to lvl 7. That’s going to hurt. I wish there was a way to grind gold, even slowly.

It’ll be interesting to see what additional clan-centric features (e.g., wars) they can add to the clan side of the equation.

well the grinding of the gold is kinda getting those “hourly” freebie chests, and the crown chests, and holding off upgrading anything you don’t currently use, and of course, never buying cards.
it’s slow anyway you look at it. (and it gets slower when your 6 year old think he’s helping by upgrading all those units that “need” to be upgraded - ugh) :)