What’s going on everyone, its VJ here. Welcome to another article (Article 3) of the Bad Matchups Series. Today we are going to take a look at the very orthodox archetype of Clash Royale, and that is Graveyard, or to be more particular it is Splashyard. Since there have been changes in the meta, balance changes and new cards, this specific deck, Spalshyard, has been changed and improved all way since 2017. We’re going to analyze the latest working in – meta version of it.
Deck:
Deck Overview:
Graveyard:
The win condition of this deck as you’ll know is Graveyard i.e. a total Game Changing Card. It can be played with anything which is a bit tanky, but at the right moment.
Baby Dragon:
The one and only air unit in this deck is baby dragon. It deals a good amount of splash damage and is quite tanky.
Ice Wizard:
The Ice Wizard does what it name means i.e. Magic. He magically slows down the units by 35% due to his freezing powers. Just like Wizards and Muskets, the Ice Wiz doesn’t die to fireball alone. Therefore, it helps a lot in defense.
Tornado:
When talking about defense, the Ice Wiz – Nado synergy can’t be forgotten. Tornado is a very useful card specially after its pull strength buff. It is a single 3 elixir counter for cards like Goblin Barrel, Hog Rider and even Golem (If Nado is paired with The Log). King Tower Activation is super easy with Nado in your deck.
Knight:
The most tankiest card of this deck is the Knight. It is a 3 elixir ground unit that can pretty much counter every ground unit. It will Ultra Synergize with GY due to his tankyness and high DPS.
Goblin Cage:
Goblin Cage is the defensive building in this deck. Before it, Bomb Tower was more popular in this deck. The only reason why Cage is better thnBomb Tower is because of the Body Builder Goblin Brawler that it spawns upon getting destroyed. Goblin Brawler is quite useful in defense and offense as even he is tanky enough with high DPS.
Poison:
When playing with GY, there will always be the need of a spell like Poison in it, in order to take out all the units (especially swarm) defending the GY.
Barbarian Barrel:
In basically every deck there is a need of a small spell. Here, that role is played by the Barb Barrel. It is just similar as The Log except that its range is a little shorter than Log and even its width is a bit smaller than it. But on the bright side it spawns a nasty looking Barbarian when it travels as much as its range is.
Gameplay and Strategies:
Graveyard should never be placed on the central tiles of the princess tower. It should always be placed 2 tiles towards the non – King Tower side. And when playing on the King Tower, it should be placed on one of the 2 central tiles of King Tower.
With this Splashyard deck, our main strategic plan to to win is:
- Not being too aggressive in the starting.
- Playing passive and defensive and trying to build a big push to play GY.
- You can rush with GY if you see something heavy like a Golem or Lava Hound played at the back and if you are in a good position in terms of elixir.
- Always trying to counter attack after defending things sent by the opponent.
- Being too aggressive in 2x and 3x elixir time and creating a streak of continous GY pushes.
- GY can also be used at defense when there are just a few seconds remaining and you are up in crowns/damage and there is a big push coming your way. You can directly place the Graveyard upon it or to be safe a little before it so that nothing connects to you tower because sometimes if there are a lot of units, the behind units might push the front ones and if they reach close enough to your tower some units might start targeting your tower.
- So in this way all the enemy troops and buildings will be distracted to the GY for complete 8 seconds, and the advantage here is that they cannot use any spell on it to completely kill it and stop it from distracting. Even if they use poison (the deadliest hard counter to GY), still the skeletons would spawn and keep distracting things as even Poison takes 1 sec to kill skeles.
- A King activation is always healthy against GY.
Bad Matchups:
Log Bait:
- Log Bait in my opinion is the most hard counter to Splashyard. And these days, except the classic Log Bait, the Log Bait archetype has developed into a lot of new variations like Mega Knight Log Bait, Prince Log Bait, Mortar Bait etc.
- Never be too aggressive else they can punish you hard.
- Try to keep the Cage on the map most of the time to avoid chip damage from Princesses and Dart Gobs.
- Usually a King Activation is unfavorable for GY, but in this case sometimes it is ok. Because we don’t do that, they will keep placing Princesses and Dart Gobs at the back of the King to defend the GY.
X-Bow:
- Focus more on defending X-Bows in single.
- Always try to keep the Poison ready whenever you attack with GY.
Miner WB Cycle:
- Play passively in single.
- Be ready to defend Dual Lane pushes.
- Never hesitate to switch lanes.
- More than defending the Miner, focus on defending other cards like Spear Gobs, Bats, WB or Knight as Miner alone won’t do much damage compared to when paired with these units.
THANKS FOR READING!
