Hey guys! Today, I will be talking about the Barbarian Hut Graveyard deck that has been dominating ladder, challenges as well as CRL! I found it to be extremely successful in this season’s Global Tournament as well!
Without further ado, let’s jump right in!
Deck:
Card Overview:
Graveyard:
Graveyard is the win-condition of this deck. Over the past few seasons, GY has slowly crept up to become one of the best, if not the best win-condition in the meta. A single well-timed GY can deal a lot of damage to enemy towers and can easily turn the tides in your favor.
Poison:
It is difficult to have a good GY deck without Poison in it. The reason behind this is that Poison synergizes pretty well with GY as it can clear out most of the counters to it. Always make sure that you use Poison when you know you can get some value out of it, don’t use it just for the sake of it.
Barbarian Hut:
The barb hut is an extremely tanky building and can be a real pain for the opponent to deal with. The stream of barbarians can deal ton of damage to enemy towers, so the opponents need to spend a good amount of elixir to keep them at back. The barbarians also are very helpful on defence in tandem with the barb hut’s high HP, and with some support from other cards, you can stop most pushes rather easily. The barbarians also act as tanks for your GY, so you can also have strong counter pushes.
Replacements: 
Any of the spawners can act as a replacement for the Barbarian Hut, as a cheaper alternative. However, the barb hut does provide more value and defensive potential that the other spawners, making it better in the current meta.
Knight:
For just 3 elixir, you have a mini-tank with good HP, good damage and great utility. It is easily the best mini-tank in the game at the moment, no doubt. You can use it as a tank for Knightyard pushes or just use it on defence to take care of enemy support troops as an assassin.
Replacement: 
Ice Golem is a cheaper alternative so you can have GY pushes more often, yet you trade a bit of defensive potential for the ability to kite troops. Valkyrie is an expensive alternative so you can’t have GY pushes too often, but you get the additional splash in the deck, so you have a better defence. Battle Healer is also an expensive alternative, similar to Valkyrie, but it increases the offensive potential of the deck rather than the defensive potential. Once you get it 2x and 3x elixir, you can have 2 or more Battle Healers on the map, which is impossible to stop.
Electro Wizard:
eWiz is a good ranged support card and is strong on defence with his forked stun attack. It can also act as a spell with his spawn zap, giving him overall a lot of utility. On offence, his zap changes the enemy tower’s focus from your troops to GY skeletons, allowing your troops to deal more damage, which is pretty neat.
Replacements: 
Musketeer is probably the best replacement to eWiz, however you do lose the stun ability. Archers might work as well as a cheaper alternative, but they are quite fragile, which isn’t a good thing to have in this deck.
Baby Dragon:
The Baby Dragon is a good aerial troop with splash attack. It can help clear swarms, and it has pretty good HP, so it is a decent tank for your GY. When locked on to a tower, it’s splash can deal damage to enemy troops defending the GY if they are close enough along with damaging the tower, while tanking for the GY at the same time. This may seem situational but you’ll be surprised how often it happens.
Replacement: 
Skeleton Dragons are the best alternative to Baby Dragon, but you do lose the health of the Baby drag which is an important to have in this deck, as opponents can get lot of spell value, especially with Poison.
Mega Minion:
Mega Minion can be considered as the aerial knight. It doesn’t have the HP, but hits hard and provides a lot of utility. It is not a good tank for the GY, but actually the skellies can distract the enemy tower while the Mega minion attacks. This is also easy to achieve with the eWiz’s stun.
Barbarian Barrel:
The Barb barrel is a good card to round off any deck, and here it does the same. It is the best cheap spell in the game at the moment, as it can clear out swarms and then have a Barbarian to kill the other support cards. You can also do BarbBarrel + GY pushes if necessary.
Replacement: 
Royal Delivery has a similar function to the BarbBarrel, but it is outclassed by it. You do have more air defence. The Log doesn’t really need much introduction, only reason you don’t want to use it is because the single Barbarian can be really useful. Snowball is if you think you need more air defence, with knockback and slowdown as an added benefit. I didn’t zap as you already have eWiz for stun, and Snowball introduces more versatility in the deck.
Game Plan:
In the above section, I broke down each card individually in the deck. Now, before I talk about the game plan, let’s talk about the deck as a whole.
The deck has a very strong defensive core. With the right set up you can defend any push with ease. The only strong offensive card in the deck is GY. At first glance, it might seem that deck has an unbalanced composition, but you have to realize that the GY is the biggest offensive threat in the game, which you need to pay attention to ASAP, as the skellies can start to pile up within a blink of an eye.
Another aspect of this is the Poison bait. The barb hut, eWiz and Mega Minion can bait out Poison, and then you can push with GY. In real matches, this won’t happen too much as the opponent will safe the Poison for your GY, which also works in your favor as then these three cards will stay on the map for a longer amount of time.
1x Elixir:
Study the opponent’s deck. Set up your barb hut if you consider it safe enough to do so. You usually should not use GY during these 2 minutes, as it easily put you at a disadvantage if your push fails.
Also, this is a point to mention that the GY wouldn’t be used a lot of times with this deck, and mostly have a very defensive playstyle.
2x Elixir:
It 2x elixir, you can attack with GY with more comfort, however still you should focus on gaining elixir advantage with good defence. Once you have gained enough elixir advantage, and you have troops left alive after a defence, start counter pushing with the Graveyard. In most cases, this would seal the match by taking down the tower, or at least bring it down to spell cycle HP.
3x Elixir:
If you reach the final minute of overtime, don’t panic! This is actually the time when your deck will be the strongest. First of all, you can place a lot of troops on the map as well as the barb huts, so it won’t be possible for any thing to actually reach your towers.
On the other hand, you can do a lot of GY Poison pushes and mostly don’t worry about the number of troops, as each attack guarantees the whole Poison damage as well as few skelly stabs. It is very easy to overwhelm the opponent during this minute.
In essence, the basic idea behind this deck would be to set-up your barb huts, defend with positive elixir trades, do chip damage with poison, and once you have enough elixir advantage do an all out GY Poison counter push.
This deck can handle most meta decks with relative ease. The only bad matchup as such would be against other GY Poison decks.
Both players would be saving your Poison for the other player’s GY so you can’t use it on offence, on the other hand since they also can’t get the GY damage. As long as no one makes a major mistake, this match up would result in 5 minute matches.
The player who wins the game would be dependent on who can win the bridge battles more often (if a troop crosses the bridge and can take for the GY for as low as couple of seconds, it gives the skellies enough time to get a few extra stabs in), who can cycle GY and Poison better (if you are able to out cycle the opponent, the one extra GY Poison will put you at the lead) and well, luck (GY is a RNG based card, so more often than not, you won’t be able to control the amount of skellies that get a hit on the tower).
That’s it folks! Hope you guys enjoyed reading this guide and have fun playing with this deck in the arena!
Sayonara,
Blaze Stone
