Messi10's Examination: 5 Popular Ladder Decks in Clash Royale
We sat down with Messi10 and asked him to examine 5 of the most commonly used decks to climb the ladder!
Competition for our Clash Royale team in the CRL has unfortunately come to an end as they fell short of making the playoffs, but that doesn't mean that they're sleeping! We sat down with Rohin "Messi10" Sharma, who often grinds the ranked ladder like many other professional Clash Royale players, to ask him about his thoughts on five meta decks that are frequently seen on the ladder.
Messi10 will be examining these decks in-depth and this article has completely been constructed by the #DIGClash professional player himself. The decks shown in this article aren't sorted in any specific order.
1) Giant Three Musketeers
Surprisingly, this very expensive deck is commonly used on ladder and is hated by a lot of people in the Clash Royale community. This deck is known for capitalizing on the mistakes that your opponent makes. The Swarm Troops (Bats, Goblin Gang, Minion Horde) in this deck are used to overwhelm your opponent when they lack the answers to defend your massive push.
Elixir Collector is an essential part of the Giant Three Musketeers deck. It allows you to get an Elixir advantage or it can bait your opponent's spells which lets you freely use your Swarm Troops or Three Musketeers
You could possibly change this deck by replacing the Giant and Bats with a Miner and an Ice Golem. This version has a quicker cycle and is definitely more versatile!
When you're playing with this deck, you don't want to get matched up against the Royal Hogs Three Musketeer deck. You'll be able to easily defend against the Giant and the Battle Ram by utilizing your Tombstone, Hunter, or Ghost. On top of that, you are able to use Poison against the Elixir Collectors, Three Musketeers, or Minion Horde!
2) Lavaloon
Lavaloon has been in the meta for a very long time. This offensive beatdown deck relies on taking damage in order to get an Elixir advantage. By doing this you're able to build a massive push and overwhelm your opponent with your Swarm and high-damage dealing Balloon.
Fireball can arguably be replaced by Poison or Lightning in this Lavaloon deck. However, Fireball offers many advantages thus making it an essential part of this strong deck. Pair Fireball with Zap and you're able to instantly remove most aerial unit counters such as Musketeer, Electro Wizard or Ice Wizard. Fireball is now also able to reset Inferno Dragons which could possibly allow your Lavaloon push to break through.
The two changes that can be made to this deck is replacing Minions for a Flying Machine or an Inferno Dragon. Flying Machine can be used to snipe defensive structures or troops and the Inferno Dragon could be picked up to defeat Tank Decks with more ease. Examples of Tank Decks where the Inferno Dragon excels against are Golem, Giant, or Lavahound decks.
One of the absolutely worst matchups in this game is Lavaloon against the Giant Three Musketeers. Not only does Giant Three Musketeers have four cards that can hit aerial units, but it also has a very strong offense against the frail defense of the Lavaloon deck.
3) Miner Splash Control
Before this deck surfaced in the meta, Miner Poison was thought to be a deck that wasn't viable in the slightest by the majority of the professional community. This Ultra defensive control deck doesn't struggle to defend large pushes and if you're playing the deck right, you can even chip away at the enemy towers with your Miner. Defending with the Baby Dragon/Ice Wizard + Tornado and transitioning into a counterpush with your Miner is very important to master when it comes to this deck in particular. This deck is used by our Golden Boy, iAmJP, on ladder and he hit #1 in the world live on stream with it!
Tornado is one of the most versatile cards in the game. If you're able to manage the high skill cap attached to this card, you'll be able to make some clutch defensive plays by stalling your opponent's troops. If you use it to make an offensive move towards the enemy tower, it'll allow you to focus your splash damage onto one of their towers and take it without breaking a sweat.
I feel as though no changes can be made to this deck that'll benefit it in any way except for switching the win condition from Miner to Graveyard. You could replace the Baby Dragon with a Mega Minion but that significantly weakens this deck.
Despite having Tornado, Baby Dragon and Ice Wizard, Lavaloon is a surprisingly hard matchup for this deck. It is very difficult to kill the Lavahound effectively and even if you're able to kill it, you'll be losing a large amount of Elixir in the process. Another difficult matchup for this deck is the Giant Prince Miner Poison decks since there's nothing in this deck to counter the Prince except for the Tombstone.
4) Pekka Bridge Spam
This high-pressure Pekka Control Deck relies on playing strong defense and counter-pushing with your "Bridge Spam" cards. By "Bridge Spam" cards (in this case), we mean the Bandit, Royal Ghost, or Battle Ram. This decks main defensive cards are the Pekka and the Electro Wizard. You should utilize the Pekka for stopping all heavy ground pushes and Electro Wizard can be used to slow them down or counter cards like the Inferno Dragon.
Shockingly, the Electro Wizard is one of the best ranged-troops in the game due to his amazing stun whenever he attacks and the Zap that gets played wherever you place the card. This card can't be used to stop massive pushes such as a Golem and Night Witch, but it can definitely slow them down and kill the bats that accumulate behind the Golem. The Electro Wizard can also be used reactively to where the Miner is placed by your opponent, which can come in handy towards the end of the game.
In order to keep this deck strong enough, very few changes are actually useful. One of the options that you have is replacing the Battle Ram for the Miner which transform the deck into a more traditional Miner Poison deck.
Another change that can be made is switching your Bandit or Royal Ghost for a Flying Machine. This makes defending against Lavahound decks much easier. However, the tradeoff is that you sacrifice some of the pressure that this deck has to offer.
There are two difficult matchups for this deck, Royal Hog Three Musketeers and Lavaloon. Both matchups are tough because you lack adequate answers to those win conditions. In the Pekka deck, you only have one good answer to Royal Hogs and that is the Royal Ghost. Against Lavaloon you only have Minions and the Electro Wizard, both of which aren't very reliable.
5) Royal Hogs Three Musketeers
A new variation of the old Royal Hogs Three Musketeers has proven to be a very strong deck in this meta. Before the deck carried The Log, Skeletons, and Fireball but they've been switched out for Barbarian Barrel, Tombstone, and Poison in this build. With these new additions, the deck has improved performance against heavy ground decks since you're able to pull tanks such as Giant and Golem with your Tombstone. You'll also have the Poison Spell card at your disposal for countering Swarm Decks and Graveyard. The main premise of this deck is to use your Fireball bait troops such as Hunter, Royal Hogs and Three Musketeers. If your opponent wastes Fireball, you can use your Royal Hogs card as an offensive threat. You could also use the Hunter and Three Musketeers defensively and get a lot of value when using them at the right time.
Hunter is a high-damage ranged troop with a unique mechanic. The Hunter's shotgun has a bullet spread and the closer a troop is to the Hunter, the more damage the Hunter will deal. This is why it's one of the most powerful cards against Tanks and also excels against Swarm units as previously mentioned (Bats, Minion Horde and Goblin Gang). It could also at as a Fireball bait which makes your Royal Hogs and Three Musketeers more threatening and effective on offense.
One change that can be made is reverting to the old version with Fireball, Skeletons, and The Log. It's less effective and popular compared to the new version, but you can always try. Another change that could be made is switching the Royal Hogs for a Hog Rider, this will remove some of the Fireball bait, but it still works since Hog Rider is a high-pressure card.
There aren't many hard-counters to this deck, the only slightly difficult matchup is Splashyard but a decent 3M player can win that matchup. If played properly, this deck is almost unstoppable.
Conclusion
All of these decks have seen use in the CRL, but the difference between high-rank games and the CRL is that a lot more thought goes into each match and that off-meta decks get used to throw opponents off-guard. The element of surprise is strongly present at a professional level, but these decks also get used by Messi10 himself. Messi10 told us, "As a professional player, it is necessary to keep up with the meta and be able to play many different archetypes in order to become a versatile player. As a result, I generally play all of these decks except for Giant Three Musketeers."
We want to thank Messi10 for his amazing answers and extraordinary input and you won't be seeing the last of him. #DIGClash's run in the CRL may be over but you'll definitely be able to see Messi10 and his squad back in the next season!
For now, you can find Messi10 here:
