First Look at Electro Giant

Hey guys! Today we I will be talking about the newest card coming in Season 16 of Clash Royale: The Electro Giant! This is also the 100^th card to be added in the game! Woohoo!!

Without further ado, let’s jump right in!

Card Overview:

• The Electro Giant is an Epic Card which costs 8 elixir.
• It’s a high HP troop which targets only buildings making it a Tank..
• If a troop/building is within a 3 tile radius of the Electro Giant, and attacks him, the troop/building is zapped.

Stats:

“A hulking hunk of man and metal. Zaps nearby enemies when attacked.”

General:

Per Level:

Comparisons:

• The Electro Giant’s HP (3192) is between that of Lava Hound (3150) and the Giant (3275). This makes it the troop with the 4^th highest HP in the game.
• The Electro Giant’s damage (159), which is same for his normal attack and the zap attack, is equivalent to 1 Barbarian Hit or the Zap Spell.
• At first glance, it might seem less for a tank but the Electro Giant deals both the normal damage as well as the zap damage which effectively doubles it against building. This is equivalent to (drum roll) 2 Barbarian Hits! (just kidding :p). The total damage (318) is somewhere between that of 1 hit by and eBarb and 1 hit by the Prince, which is higher than all tanks in the game bar the almighty P.E.K.K.A.
• The Electro Giant’s Hitpoints per elixir value (399), which is the lowest for a tank in the game. To put things into perspective, the previous lowest was that of the Royal Giant (424) and the current highest is that of the Golem (748).

Note: All values mentioned take into account the stats at Tournament Standard aka level 9.

So what makes the Electro Giant stand out?

The Electro Giant (let’s call it the eGiant from now on) will clearly occupy the role of the win-condition/tank in your deck. Other similar cards are, well the Giant, Goblin Giant, Royal Giant and the Golem (or the Rock Giant XD). However, he has the unique ability to zap enemy troops/buildings! Let’s take a bit deeper look into it.

First, the important thing you need to remember is that enemy troops/buildings are only zapped:

• After they attack the eGiant
• And are within 3 tile radius of the eGiant

If either of these conditions is not satisfied, the eGiant will not zap them!

The eGiant’s zap is identical to the normal Zap Spell! So all the normal Zap interactions are valid for the eGiant as well.

This makes him immune to cheap swarms as he will easily kill them if they touch him.

Since he also stuns the troops it also makes it immune to Inferno Tower and Inferno Dragon. But, they both have a longer range than 3 tiles, so this only holds true when he is close to them, otherwise he will be melted away. A good tip is to use cards like Bats or Goblins with the eGiant as they can distract the Infernos till the time eGiant gets within the range.

Contrary to your intuition, eGiant is not a counter to Sparky. In fact, Sparky is kind of a counter to eGiant, which makes it fairly different from the other ‘electro’ cards. The reason behind this is that since eGiant only stuns the Sparky after the Sparky has already attacked him, which makes the stun pretty much useless.

The constant zap increases his ‘longevity’ while facing buildings and crown towers, and it can actually deal a significant amount of damage if it reaches the tower when you least expect it to.

How do you counter the Electro Giant?

As mentioned above, eGiant can easily take all cheap swarms which makes him fairly tricky to counter. The only swarm that could potentially counter him are the Barbarians as they are healthier than other swarms (and qualify more as ‘fireballies’), but aren’t that dependable as with even minor support the barbs will die rather quickly.

This leave us with two groups: Buildings and High DPS cards.

Buildings can distract the eGiant and high DPS cards (like Mini P.E.K.K.A.) can dish out loads of damage. But neither of them can effectively do it 1v1 as the continuous stun will skew the result in the eGiant’s favour.

The solution to this problem is using Range troops in tandem with the above cards. Ranged troops can help take down the eGiant quickly as they attack from far away, safe from the zap. A good example is Ice Wizard + Cannon combo.

A thing to note her is that even though you are using two cards, since the eGiant costs 8 elixir you still end up at +2 elixir advantage as you spent only 6 elixir defending it so don’t be too afraid to support your defence with ranged troops!

Don’t use the Hunter to counter the eGiant! Hunter’s attack consists of him firing 10 pellets from his shot gun, and when the Hunter attacks the eGiant, each pellet counts as 1 hit, which results in the Hunter being zapped 10 times! which vaporizes the him instantly.

My Opinions:

This part is rather speculative and I will be discussing what I personally feel about this card.

First of all, props to SC for coming out with this new card with a unique concept, instead of a reskin of an old card or a new swarm (see: Skeleton Dragons).

However, we should also notice the power creep in the cards as we are getting cards which can do multiple things at once and more dynamic, which makes the old cards seem a bit bland. I understand that SC has to add new and different content otherwise the community will outrage due to the lack of unoriginality (again see: Skeleton Dragons).

So, I feel that SC should slow down a bit in the department of new cards and should focus more on new features to add into the game and QoL improvements.

With that been said, the eGiant could potentially be a meta defining card, and maybe even change the way decks are built (at least for the upcoming season as there is a good chance that this card will be on boost).

The meta has been filled with bait decks since ages now, and this card easily counters bait. If this card becomes popular bait will see a decline and people will shift to other card which don’t rely so much on spells.

This kind of meta is IMO better than the bait meta and this might be personal bias against bait but you can’t deny that it does bring freshness in the game.

The two drawbacks I see right now is the high elixir cost and that the zap range is a bit small. They should either decrease the cost to 7 elixir or increase the range to maybe 3.5 tiles, so that the eGiant is more viable as I believe that the eGiant only gives value for it’s cost when swarms are used. This opinion however might change when the card finally comes out.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading guide!

Sayonara,

Blaze Stone.