Arena 7 to 8 deck – Legendary Hog Freeze

This is pretty much the only deck I’ve found at Reddit that really works for me at Arena 7 pushing Arena 8. When I first started using this deck I got 5 straight wins around 2000 trophies, and with some modifications I’ve been able to push even higher with this deck.

The guy who originally posted the deck is JustinRiverNg, leader of the US clan The Elite. He got to legendary Arena 8 with this deck as only a level 8 player, so it’s really good. I’ve made one modification to this deck that enables me to do more damage, but it’s very close to the original version.

The cards:

As you can see we only have one epic card in this deck, the Freeze spell. Without this spell the deck won’t work, so find another deck in that case. The Hog Rider is also 100% necessary. The deck is a low elixir cost deck at 3.3, this lets you cycle through the deck fast and use your Hog Rider and Freeze whenever you have a good opportunity.

Hog Rider.
Hog rider is a key card this deck, I suggest you find an other deck to play if you don’t have access to the Hog Rider.

Freeze.
Instead of Tesla we will use Bomb Tower in this version of the deck. In this version of the deck the Bomb Tower works really well due to elixir costs and combinations with other troops. The Bomb Tower has a ton of HP, and even if it can’t shoot down flying troops it will still distract them while your other towers take them down. You’ll place this in the middle of the area in front of your king so it can cover both lanes.

Spear Goblins.
These guys are in most of my decks, I actually ranked these #3 for all time best cards of Clash Royale. They are cheap and decent at taking out enemy flying units. You also use these together with the regular Goblins to distract incoming troops until you can deal with them.

Goblins.
The original version of this deck had Skeletons in them. I choose to replace the Skeletons with Goblins as they do way more damage. Just like the Skeletons the Goblins do a ton of damage for the elixir they cost. This works really well together with freeze as their HP doesn’t matter as long as no damage are dealt to them. Goblins can also do a lot of damage to enemy towers.

Fireball.
This deck doesn’t use arrows, so a fireball is really needed then. You use this to take out minion horde, goblin barrel and other annoying cards. Both Arrows and Zap work as replacements, but Fireball is much better. Most often you will use this on incoming Barbarians, preferably with other troops mixed in there as well.

Tesla.
The main reason for the tesla is to have a good way to deal with air troops. The deck is in general a bit weak versus air troops, with only the Spear Goblins being able to target air. Tesla deals really well with air troops, and is also a great way to distract troops like Hog Riders, Golems, Pekkas, etc.

Cannon.
I’ve not used the Cannon in many decks before, but in this one it works really well. At arena 6 and 7 you will often face players with high level Pekkas or Golems, the Cannon works really well in distracting and taking these troops out. Also, you will face lots of X-Bow players, the most annoying opponent out there. The Cannon is great at tanking damage from the X-Bow while your other troops take it out.

Knight.
The Knight is a great card for value. For only 3 elixir you get a fairly strong tank that does a lot of damage. The knight is versatile, often you will use it to soak up damage while your troops and towers takes out enemy troops that are attacking you. It can fill the same role in offence, tanking the damage from the towers while your other troops take it out.

Card replacements.

There are some cards here you can replace, but to get the most out of the deck the only card you should play around with is Goblin versus Skeletons.

• Hog Rider and Freeze can not be replaced.
• Tesla can be replaced by Inferno Tower.
• Cannon can be replaced by Bomb Tower.
• Fireball can be replaced by Arrows
• Spear Goblins can be replaced by Minions.
• Goblins can be replaced by Skeletons.
• Knight can be replaced by Barbarians.

Opening. (0:00 – 0:30)

My preferred option is to open with Tesla in the area in front of my King Tower. Placing it 4-5 tiles above is a good idea, so that enemy troops that hit it will also face fire from my Crown Tower. Tesla deals well with both air and ground units so I’d rather have that down first if I’m able to chose.

The second best opening would be the Cannon. The Cannon should be placed 3-4 tiles above the King Tower. Often you will then later then place a Tesla in front of it. Once you have both these defences down it’s very hard to get to your towers, especially when you have a Fireball ready to cast as well.

The third best opening would be the Knight. The knight does well against most troops alone and can also do some damage to the enemy crown tower if he is not stopped. The combo with Goblins or Spear Goblins behind him work really well.

My last choice of opening would be the Spear Goblins, I’d rather save them to deal with air troops if possible, but they are better than the other choices for opening. I’ll place the Spear Goblins far back behind one of my towers. If possible I’ll follow up with a Knight in front of them when they reach the bridge.

Midgame. (00:30 – 2:00)

During the middle of the game the idea is to successfully counter push with your Hog Rider and if possible other troops as backup. Remember to have enough elixir left in the pushes for the freeze however, it really makes a huge difference.

When you are close to 10 elixir and nothing is happening drop your defensive buildings. Most of the game I will have both the Cannon and the Tesla up as you can see in the image above. This setup works great as it covers both sides pretty well and the Tesla in front stops air troops from hitting the Cannon without being hit back.

Once you have repelled one of your enemies attacks and have elixir left, it is time to go for the push.

In the situation above I had just stopped one of my opponent’s attacks and the Knight is on his way towards the left tower. I then place the Hog Rider behind him to push him forward into the defending Goblins. This is great, because the Knight will deal with the Goblins while my Hog Rider can go straight for the enemy tower unharmed.

Here my Hog Rider is reached the enemy tower and he drops Barbarians. Now it’s good that we didn’t Freeze too early, because now we will get the Barbarians in the freeze and let the Hog Rider deal out lots of hits unharmed.

It’s important that you don’t freeze too early, as you will miss the troops your opponent is dropping then. At the same time freezing too late after your Hog Rider is dead is even worse, so it requires some skill to get this right. Keep practicing 🙂

Now the Freeze has landed and we got everything in it, awesome! Now the Hog Rider will be able to dish out tons of damage over 5+ seconds while my opponent have to watch in frustration.

My opponent dropped Archers as soon as he could to stop my Hog Rider. Even so, my Hog Rider took his tower down to less than 1000 HP before dying. In some situations it’s good to drop a fireball afterwards to deal with all the troops that have gathered around the tower.

 

Here you can see the result of this last Fireball. The Barbarians are down to “one shot HP” and the tower is down to 764 HP. Unfortunately I missed the Archers, but you can’t get everything.

You don’t necessarily need to kill any of the enemy towers during the mid game. What is important is that you cause more damage to one of your enemy towers than he causes to any of yours. In the situation above we have one enemy tower down to 298 HP which is a great spot to be in.

Try to have both Tesla and Cannon up at all times, it makes it so much harder for your opponent to counter-attack. Most games are won by taking out one enemy tower while successfully defending your own. You do this by being patient and avoid making stupid mistakes. 

Endgame. (2:00 – 3:00)

Hopefully you have brought one of the enemy towers down to 500 HP or lower during the midgame. If you have, you should focus almost all of your effort in defending at this point in the game. That means Cannon and Tesla up at all times and keeping Fireball ready at hand for taking out incoming troops.

Whenever you’ve successfully stopped an enemy attack, try to get your opponent’s tower down to where your fireball can kill it in one hit. Then you can just defend and launch a fireball or lighting at the last second of normal time to take out the tower. I would say at least 20% of my victories come from taking out the enemy tower at the last second.

If you on the other hand have a lot of hit points left on the enemy tower, or even worse, he has killed one of yours already, your gameplan changes a lot. In this case you have to take more risks. Often is this case you will go for all in attacks, that means Hog Rider together with goblins, knights or whatever else you have, in combination with freeze. You can see that in the image above.

General tips.

• Always be ready for the comeback. Even if you lose one of your crown towers early in the game, keep playing, this deck can turn the match around really fast.
• Wait until you are at 10 elixir to place buildings, if you drop them too early you are wasting the lifetime of the building.
• Use Goblins and Spear Goblins to distract incoming troops while your buildings take them out.
• Figure out what troops your opponent has and save the Fireball for where it does the most damage. If they have both Barbarians and Minion Horde, use it on the Barbarians and let the Spear Goblins and towers deal with the minions.
• If you place your Hog Rider behind a Knight it can push him forward, this is shown in the example from the midgame.
• Pay attention to what your opponent has dropped and how much elixir he has left. When he is low it’s time to do the Hog Freeze attack.
• Be careful with your Freeze timing, don’t freeze immediately when your Hog reaches the building. Wait till the Hog is around half health and hopefully you will get troops dropped in the Freeze as well.
• Remember that you can use Freeze defensively too. Especially against tower killing troops like the Prince and Mini Pekka a Freeze will work much better than a Fireball.
• If your opponent has Lightning, try to only have one defensive building up at a time. You loose a lot of elixir if he takes out both building with one Lightning spell.
• Don’t wake up the King too early if it looks like you have to take out both towers to win. Once you take out one tower, the king wakes up and you have to deal with him when taking out the next one. It’s often better to leave the first at low health and then take out both towers around the same time later in game.

Countering decks.

Spawner decks.

These are kind of tricky to deal with. I’ve not played against many spawner decks with this deck, but what you should do is to try to get as much value as possible out of your Fireball. Target both troops and buildings at the same time. When you push against them you can use more troops than you otherwise would, and make sure you time the Freeze perfectly.

 

Pekka decks.

These are not too hard to deal with. As soon as he drops the Pekka you drop your Hog Rider in the other lane and be ready with your Freeze. Your opponent won’t have enough elixir left to defend this and you will end up doing a ton of damage. Your defensive buildings and Goblins will deal with the incoming Pekka.

 

Golem decks.

Golems decks are very similar to Pekka decks. When they drop the Golem or Elixir collector you attack with your Hog Rider. You can drop a Knight behind the Golem to tank other enemy troops while your smaller troops take it out.

 

Prince decks.

I haven’t had too much trouble dealing with these decks. You just want a knight or a defensive building to tank the incoming charge. Then you drop your other smaller troops behind the princes to deal damage and take them out. The best is to take out the Dark Prince first if you can, as the regular Prince is easy to distract with goblins.

 

X-bow or mortar.

I hate the X-bow, and always have a hard time dealing with it. I just posted and article with a video showing how to do it, and I’m getting better at it however. Often the X-bow player will keep attacking on one side, and that is where you have to place your defensive buildings. In these matches you always want to stay high on elixir so you’re able to place down buildings and troops quickly where they need to be.

Conclusion.

At the moment I am switching back and forth between two decks that are really good. The deck I’m playing the most is my Arena 4 deck, but the Hog Freeze deck I’m playing more and more as well. Often when you switch to a new deck it takes a while to play it well, but with this deck it went pretty quickly.

As I stated at the start of the post I had 5 straight victories when I switched to this deck, so it is quite easy to learn. After the modification and getting more experience with it, I keep up a pretty good win rate at Arena 7 with it. If you have any questions or comments please let me know, thanks!