Hey, Clash Royale players from around the world! It’s The JK Landa back at another guide for the new Balloon Festival, tips for beating the challenge, and good decks for it.

But, first, let’s start off with the basics and some general knowledge about the Balloon Festival challenge.

As you all may know that late in season 8, Clash Royale released a new challenge called the Balloon Festival.

• First, with a 2vs2, then, a 1vs1 challenge.
• At the end of the 1vs1 challenge, players earned a limited and exclusive first balloon emote, which sadly can’t be earned anymore :(. If you got it and have it, be sure to tell me in the comments section down below!
• There is no more of a “Balloon Festival Challenge”; however, there is the balloon festival mode, which is only 1 vs 1, not 2 vs 2; this mode still appears in the party mode and during collection day for clan wars, as of now.

About the Balloon Festival Challenge

Now, let’s talk a little about the challenge itself. The challenge is pretty self – explanatory from its name, but let me just give a quick overview to you in case you don’t know.

• After 10 seconds of the game starting (at the point where 170 seconds are left), one balloon will spawn from your side and your opponent’s side.
  • It will be 2 Balloons on your side and your opponent’s side if you are playing the 2vs2 mode.
• After the 2 minute mark, the game will turn into double elixir, and also a new set(s) of balloons spawn every 20 seconds.
• After the 90 second mark, two balloons start spawning on your side and your opponent’s side if you are playing the 1 vs 1 mode, and 4 balloons on each respective side if you are playing the 2 vs 2 mode.

As of today, you guys might not care about the 2 vs 2 mode since it is less likely that Supercell will bring the 2vs  mode for the balloon festival.

Also, if you somehow manage to get into the last minute of overtime, 4 balloons will spawn on each respective side for 1 vs 1 and 8 for 2 vs 2. Woah! Can you imagine how many balloons that must be?!?

Good Decks for Balloon Festival

Now, this section is what all of you have been waiting for, good decks for beating this challenge, which isn’t really that difficult!

Dark Prince Rocket Deck

A 4.0 elixir deck, which doesn’t make it too expensive considering the fact that the game is double elixir for the majority of the time.

Now, the very first thing that you want is to make sure that your cards are all leveled up, this is a MUST!

The only way to beat those devastating balloons is to make sure your air troop cards can deal massive damage to those nasty balloons. Now, yes, you must be thinking, isn’t the balloon festival capped at level 9. Now, this is true for the mode during collection day in clan wars and the actual challenge; however, in the “party” mode, your king level is used hence it is strongly required that you max out those specific cards.

The overall game strategy for this deck is to deploy the air troops as fast as possible to destroy the opponent’s balloons and also at the same time push opposite lanes with the Dark Prince and the Mini Pekka. This will force your opponent to leak a lot of elixir which is very good for you! Next, make sure to always save your rocket just in case your air troops are knocked out ( I will explain how this is possible).

The rocket can easily kill the balloons, it is preferred when you rocket to rocket the balloons when they are crossing the opponent’s princess tower because you can get chip value.

The tesla is a very important card in this deck because it can easily stop counter lane pushes since it will draw the troops from both lanes into the center while your air troops can easily destroy them with splash damage or  maybe you can rocket there if you want to.

The bats will primarily be used to only kill the balloons since you want to bait your opponent into either using their zap or arrows because then you will have the firecracker ready.

The firecracker and the hunter will act as very versatile cards in this deck since they can play both offensive and defensive positions but mainly defensive positions to kill the balloon.

Now, I will explain to you how your troops which attack the air can be taken out, which are your firecracker, hunter, bats, and wizard. Since these troops are not that high HP cards, they can be easily taken out by the lighting spell or they might also play the mini pekka / prince/ dark prince in front of their balloon hence which will take out your troops which kill air hence it is needed to have a rocket in this deck!

Splash Hoard

This is another 4.0 elixir deck but a major difference in this deck and the previous deck is that deck weighs a lot on defense and has barely any offensive potential.

The trick to winning with this deck is to defend really well and use these troops and your balloons to turn it into a counter push.

The overall game strategy for this deck is to take down your opponent’s balloons and turn any remaining or alive troops into a counterpush.

The bats and minion horde will primarily be used to take down your opponent’s balloon.

The wizard, baby dragon, and executioner can be used to get good splash damage. You can also use these troops to turn into a counterpush by supporting your balloons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDb-RybqbY

Now, you have read about some good decks for this challenge, I will now talk about some very good tips that are very handy for this deck and challenge or mode, whatever you want to call it.

I just like to call it a challenge since it was originally released as a challenge and that’s what I have been calling it ever since. 🙂

Best Tips for Balloon Festival

The first tip for this challenge in general (stated earlier) is to make sure all your cards are leveled up if you are playing it in “Party” mode (all cards are capped at level 9 for collection day battles). This is a must since this means slightly more health and damage for your troops.

Another tip is to make sure to Rocket the Balloons if you are planning on doing this is when the balloon is crossing the opponent’s princess tower so you can get value and chip damage.

This tip pertains to the second deck which I talked about earlier. The reason why this deck mainly only has troops that are used for defense is that these will just make your defense unbeatable and you can use them later as counterpush! Also, make sure to deploy these defense troops one at a time ( trust me, one troop can take down swarms of balloons since they do splash damage) since if your opponent decides to lightning/ fireball/ arrows, you always have something else ready. If you place everything down at once, your opponent can take it all down in one spell and get a good elixir trade from you!

Let the balloons do the offensive damage, you just do your part by playing stellar defense and you will win the game. I can say this from first – hand experience.

If you are losing many straight games, consider taking a break and you will automatically start winning. Check out my earlier article for that, which is about tilting. Will, can you link the article by and embed the link. Thanks!

I hope you enjoyed today’s article very much and I hope you found it helpful in your balloon mode/ challenge adventure. If you disagree with anything, be sure to let me know in the comments section and I will sure try my best to edit it.

For now, enjoy, stay safe, and stay tuned for the next articles and be sure to check out the articles from other great authors on this site if you haven’t already!

For those wanting to push their gameplay to the next level, here are some great Clash Royale strategy tips to do so.

Making use of these strategies is essential to enhancing your skills and improving your fundamentals.

Top 3 Clash Royale Strategies for All Players!

Strategic Tip #1: Patience Is Key!

This strategy definitely depends on your deck, but if you are playing a heavier one, like Golem, it is very helpful to wait for your opponent to make the first move.

This gives you a couple of advantages:

1.  Decreases the time until double Elixir, where heavier decks are the most powerful.
2. It allows you to respond to any plays that your opponent makes.
3. Prevents you from being quickly countered. A great example of this is playing a Golem in the back. If your opponent is smart, they will quickly push the opposite lane, and you will have little elixir to defend.

On the contrary, if you are playing a cheaper deck that thrives in single elixir, you want to start the game relatively early. A perfect example of this is bait. The best CR strategy for these decks is to wait a couple of seconds, then make a safe play. This allows for you to see if your opponent plays right at 10 elixir, then react, or start the match early.

Strategic Tip #2: Learn How To Count Elixir

Counting cards is incredibly useful because it tells you when the best time for you to push is. Although counting cards seems very hard at the beginning, it can be reduced down to some pretty simple concepts.

When counting cards, it is crucial to count whether or not you have the advantage, not every single card.

Here are some examples:

Your opponent plays a Musketeer and you Fireball it immediately. This is a neutral trade.

You play a Hog Rider and your opponent defends with a Cannon. You are now at -1 elixir.

These calculations become much more complex when you factor in units that are leftover from earlier pushes.

A good way to make it a little easier is to wait until both players are recouping their elixir. When this is happening, you can assume that both are back at equal, and if they play a card before 10, you know that you are behind.

Card counting can take a while to pick up but can be incredibly useful once you get the hang of it.

Strategic Tip #3: Know When to Stop Pushing

It can be very tempting to contribute to your push with an additional support if you have an elixir lead.

However, making these plays are typically what ends the advantage you have.

It is crucial to not put similar troops together, as this makes your opponent’s job incredibly easy.

Adjusting your deck can also be an easy way to combat this issue. A great example of this is decks with multiple wizards or dragons. All of these cards can be countered easily by themselves, and even easier when together.

I hope you enjoyed this guide and find these Clash Royale strategies helpful. Let us know what you think about these tips in the comments below.

5 Advanced Clash Royale Strategy Tips

Guild by Bailey OP

It can be easy to start playing Clash Royale on a per interaction basis. While this strategy can be effective in lower arenas, it quickly becomes crucial to think about the big picture.

1. What is the opponent’s deck?

If you know your opponent’s decks, you would win every single battle in Clash Royale with ease.

Knowing the cards your opponent is should be the thing you want to do at the start of every battle. And we will discuss all about it in this article.

If you don’t know the most popular Clash Royale decks of the current meta gane, you will have a lot of troubles.

You always want to know what is your opponent’s deck and how to counter the cards.

There are 2 ways to figure out the deck list.

You can just wait for them to play all of the 8 cards out and remember all of those cards in your mind while playing. This strategy is very difficult, especially for people who have bad memory like me haha.

The other strategy is to just remember the key cards. For example, if your opponent is running Mini P.E.K.K.A, you don’t need to remember their other counters to your Hog Rider.

The easiest way to know is when your opponents are using meta decks. And you have remembered every single meta deck of Clash Royale, right?

2. Bait Strategy

Understanding whether the opponent is playing a bait deck early helps you predict the win-conditions of the opponents and assign specific counters to them.

You might think I am talking about bait strategy like log bait here. But it isn’t.

You probably notice that even decks like Golem decks often have a bait card. You want to find out the bait cards they have and always keep the counters in your hand.

It’s extremely important to figure out the bait strategies your opponents have right at the beginning of the battle.

If you use your best counter card and then they hit you hard with the bait card, you will be crying just because you were too eager to play your “hard-counter”.

You want to plan out the most efficient ways to deal with those bait cards. And this would be easy if they are using a meta deck like the one below:

3. Can they counter my win-condition?

No need to say, your opponents always have some sort of counters to your win-conditions.

They can be hard-counters like Rocket vs Sparky or something more flexible like Goblin Gang vs Hog Rider.

Knowing the cards your opponents will use to counter your win-condition allows you to respond fast and deal more damage. Or even sometime, you can predict it and make a “wow” move.

Try to ask yourself what is the opponent’s counter to your cards at the start of the game helps you play easier for the entire match. The sooner you can figure it out, the more damage you can deal.

There are two strategies for this: You can strengthen your push or you can make a predictive move.

Adding cards to support your win-condition and disrupt the opponent’s defensive strategy. For example, we usually support the Hog Rider with Ice Golem in case the opponent uses Minions, this makes them Zap-able so you will be able to counter the counter. The best time to do this is when your push is about to cross the river.

Meanwhile, the best time to make a prediction is when your cards have already crossed the river.

Use the same example as above, but this time you can use Fireball to counter the Minions while dealing some extra damage to the Tower.

4. What’s the best Clash Royale strategy to counter the opponent’s win condition?

Now, let’s talk about defense.

You want to counter the opponent’s win-condition and this is pretty similar to the strategies we mentioned above.

You want to know their win-conditions right from the beginning of the game so that you can counter it the entire battle with the best cards you have. And you want to keep that counter card in your hand all the time to counter their win condition immediately for the minimal damage taken. Unless they use Rocket.

Again, if the opponents use meta decks, it will help you a lot!

If you see a Musketeer & Skeletons at the back, you know that you want to save your Tornado…

Once you have known their win-conditions, keep in mind that they are also trying to counter your counters.

You want to switch up your counters so that your opponents cannot make a predictive move or to counter their bolstering pushes easier. If you don’t have better choice, you can try to change the placements of your cards on defending.

These two strategies make the tricks your opponents wanting to use less effective, giving you more time to react properly.

When countering predictive cards, delay your placements a bit. This trick works very well. Your opponents will sometimes miss the spells and get raged :D.

5. Punish or Invest?

When you have a huge elixir advantage, you might ask yourself this.

Basically, if your win-condition is more expensive than the opponent’s, place it at the back and then start building up a huge push rather than placing it right at the bridge.

If your win-condition is less expensive, you can wait for them to play their card then make a move right at the bridge of the opposite lane.

Hopefully, you have found this Clash Royale strategy guide helpful! Feel free to comment down below If you have any question. Cheers!

Complete Guide to using the Clash Royale Firecracker: Basic information, best tips for defending and attacking, how to counter her and best decks for her!

Firecracker Guide

The Firecracker is a 3 Elixir Common card which can be unlocked from Hog Mountain (Arena 10).

She is a long-range troop, having a range of 6 tiles, but her shrapnel from her bazooka can actually reach much longer than that! In fact, she can even damage the Princess towers when at the bridge, not unlike a Magic Archer.

Her HP is quite low, meaning that in most cases Arrows will be able to kill her.

Her splash damage is deadly and can provide huge positive elixir trades.

Her knockback is her special effect, which sometimes makes her unpredictable and tricky to kill with Spells.

However, all this comes with a weakness: how easily she activates the King Tower!

In fact, in 2v2, she hits the King Tower even when there are no other troops around.

Firecracker’s Stats

Useful Firecracker Interactions To Know

▶️ A firecracker can fully counter a P.E.K.K.A. and Mega Knight (Placement: 5 tiles from king tower, 4 tiles from river path).

Place the firecracker right as the troop crosses the bridge.

Keep in mind, this is difficult to time and hence a risky play if you’re out of elixir as a result of a display!

▶️ She can one-shot any unit with the same or less health than Archers (hence, a Firecracker can one-shot an opposing Firecracker/Archers of the same level).

▶️ When facing the Firecracker, you can activate your king tower easily. Placing most troops a few tiles in front of the king tower when the firecracker has walked 2 steps past the bridge will activate the king. However, this requires precise time and some practice!

▶️ A Log one level higher than a Firecracker will kill her.

Best Cards to Use with Firecracker

Best Counters to Firecracker

Firecracker’s Defensive Utility

The Firecracker is, first and foremost, a defensive card.

Keep in mind the fact that your opponent will probably know how to activate the King Tower with her if you are playing above 5300+, most likely, but of course, there will be skilled players below that trophy range!

Therefore, if you are well above that trophy range, be prepared to be at a slight disadvantage because of your opponent’s king being activated.

This is precisely why the Firecracker should never be sent alone.

You may think that you can just cycle the Firecracker in the back like Archers, Bomber, or any slow-ish cheap troop. But this is just a free king activation and a waste of 3 elixir, no matter what your opponent’s deck is!

She should always be played as a reactive card, for example, to counter split Barbarians or any other swarm.

She can gain huge positive elixir trades through staying alive for a long time, because of her very long sight range, shrapnel range, and of course her unique recoil ability.

Her recoil ability also means that it can be difficult for your opponents to target her with a Miner because you can just place something in front easily to block, and the recoil will make it even more difficult.

Keeping the Firecracker alive in any cycle/control deck, decks in which she will most frequently appear in top ladder and containing cards she synergises well with is very important.

Treat her like a Musketeer in 2.6 Hog, or a Princess in Log Bait. Cycling her over and over again would make sense, as she can be an extremely finicky card to deal with if your opponent does not have a hard counter like Arrows or Fireball.

Even so, it is sometimes difficult to predict where the Firecracker will recoil back to, leading to her often evading spells.

She synergises well with Tornado, like many other splash troops, apart from Hunter, because of the huge damage dropoff as distance increases. She can stay in safety near the King Tower while you clump all your troops up.

She can work like a Magic Archer, damaging troops behind the main tank. But unlike a Magic Archer, placement does not matter as much because she doesn’t fire a straight arrow, so you don’t need perfect geometry.

As a result, she synergizes excellently with a tank buster like the Mini Pekka, an incredibly tanky and hard-hitting card for its cost. Because of how easily she is countered, protect the virginity, as SirTag would say! You can’t let that Knight’s sword near her.

Like the Princess, she has an incredibly slow hit speed but her splash damage and range undoubtedly make up for this shortcoming.

When you are using her, make sure not to place her too far away from the attacking troops because she could switch lane easily and end up ignoring the troop. Usually, her very long sight range compensates for this, but just keep this in mind because she can sometimes lose sight of other enemies

As mentioned earlier, she can activate the king tower with a number of different plants.

She can even lure a Mega Knight to the King, with the Firecracker still surviving! However, usually, you wouldn’t be doing this in regular play unless there’s a naked Mega Knight on the field and your opponent is down elixir. It’s incredibly satisfying if you do manage to pull it off and your opponent will be spamming angry emotes as a result!

A cool fact if you didn’t know: The Firecracker can completely dodge the Bowler’s bowling ball.

Firecracker’s Offensive Utility

Although less of an offensive card due to her slow hit speed, she is still a big threat.

Sending a Hog and a Firecracker is a good combo, with the Firecracker’s huge AoE obliterating Skeletons and Minions alike.

She does not work in the same way as a princess – Don’t just plop her at the bridge because she will get a minuscule amount of damage – 385 damage from 1 hit at max level, whereas the Princess will always force elixir from the opponent which you can counter if you’re quick.

Even if there is an Elixir Pump behind the Princess tower which she can splash onto, do not deny one less elixir from your opponent with that one firecracker hit onto the Pump, having just wasted 3 elixir yourself for very little damage!

Also, keep in mind the obvious- that Firecracker can be tricked into hitting the King tower against a smart opponent.

That having been said, the Firecracker, if protected by the likes of an Ice Golem or a Knight, she can chip the tower from the opposite side of the arena, also opening up for yourself a huge area of denial where the opponent cannot play their swarm cards, especially if there are 2 firecrackers on the field which you will ideally want to get down in a cycle deck.

She is good for opposite lane pushes as well, because she can push herself back into the other lane. Although I said earlier that she does not force as much of a response as the Princess, the opponent still will have to spend quite a lot of elixir countering her if they don’t have the proper spells to counter her.

One of the most important things to note when using the Firecracker, if you didn’t already know- NEVER, EVER use her in 2v2 because she will AUTOMATICALLY activate the king.

Not great.

Best Decks with Firecracker

Deck 1: All-New Hog 2.6 w/ Firecracker

Long live the new 2.6! This deck is undoubtedly the most popular Firecracker deck, used extensively on the ladder by top players like Morten and RUBEN. This being said, it is a very high-skill deck to use due to the fragility of most of the cards. Unlike the original 2.6 (still popular!) there is no defensive building. Instead, Mini Pekka takes the role of tank buster, perhaps unsurprisingly so, due to the rampance of Mini Pekka in many meta decks! Firecracker can provide huge value and works similar to the Musketeer in the original 2.6 deck.

Below is gameplay of this deck from Inigo, a Mexican player who has finished as high as 67th in the world with this deck.

Deck 2: RG Firecracker Cycle

This is a very solid deck, hard countering many of the decks in the meta with meta cards of its own, such as Miner WB (Bomb Tower, Log, Skeletons), XBow 2.9 (RG, Earthquake), Hog 2.6 of either type (Bomb Tower, Tornado), Splashyard (Bomb Tower, Log), and EGolem (Bomb Tower, Tornado). Overall, this is a super strong deck, with a focus on defence and then a counterpush with none other than the mighty Royal Giant!

Here’s this deck being played, but with Barb Barrel instead of Log (shouldn’t make too much of a difference.) It isn’t so popular now, but it is definitely still viable.

Deck #3: MK WB Firecracker

This is an extremely good challenge deck, which is a variation on the MK Wall Breakers Spam deck popularised a few months ago. The Firecracker combined with the Mini Pekka, a staple tank killer, plus dual win conditions Miner and Wall Breakers, such a powerful combo and often leaving your opponent at an elixir disadvantage. Mega Knight, of course, is there to clean huge clumps of troops up!

Here’s SirTag using this deck!

Bonus Deck: 1.8 Bandit Firecracker Cycle

The man, the myth, the legend, Bufarete has used this deck on top ladder before, managing to reach 8000 trophies with ease.

Just kidding! DO NOT try this on ladder unless you want to troll!

I hope you guys enjoyed this guide to Firecracker, and make sure to read more about the card.

This is by no means an exhaustive guide!

Firecracker is a great card with a highly interesting and unique mechanic, plus the benefit is that she is a Common card, making her easy to upgrade. Try her out!