How to play Clash Royale

This guide is for new players and will teach you the most important parts of Clash Royale. If you want to get ahead in the game quickly, keep reading.

Clash Royale is a game developed by Supercell following inspirations from its famous hit game, Clash of Clans. It is a strategic mini-game that requires building your own set of deck versus the opponent’s deck. It was released globally this March 2016 and recently won the 2016 Google play award.

The goal of this game is simple, to defeat your opponent by destroying their towers. There’s a time limit though, whoever destroy the king’s tower first, wins the game. If however you weren’t able to destroy your opponent’s kings tower within 3 minutes, there is an overtime extension for another minute for the first player to destroy the opponent’s crown tower.

You’ll start the game from the training camp where there is a basic tutorial. It will teach you the basic game play of how it is played. From deploying troops to leveling up your cards, you are given 7 training battles to familiarize yourself with your cards and its uses.  Each game you’ll get a Wooden Chest which where you’ll get your basic cards for your first deck. In the last Wooden Chest, there is a random Epic card that will be given to you. From then, you’ll be on your way to Arena 1, dueling real players.

Fighting real players can be hard for newbies, especially when they haven’t explored the world of Clash Royale, yet. So read through the guide below to get a better advantage against players. Even if you may not have the best cards yet, the knowledge and techniques you’ll learn from here are going to be your best weapon against your opponents. So buckle up, and let’s get it on!

 

Chests

Reward Chests (Wooden, Silver, Gold, Giant, Magical & Super Magical)

Every time you win battles, you get a random chest. Wooden Chests are only obtainable at the first training camp. You can have a maximum of 4 chests available. When it is full, you won’t be able to get more chest until one is opened. Each chest has their own timer. Silver needs 3 hours of waiting, Gold needs 8 hours, Giant and Magical needs 12 hours and Super Magical chest needs one day. Though you can unlock it immediately by spending gems, I don’t recommend it.  The chest drop are given in a pattern. If your chest inventory is full and you couldn’t get chests despite winning your battles, you will still get the next chest in that order. To know more about the chest pattern check this guide.

Free chest

You can get free chest every 4 hours. It can stack up to two times only, meaning every 6 hours you can unlock two free chest immediately.

Crown Chest

Crown Chest resets once a day. You have to win 10 crowns to unlock the Crown chest. Crowns can be obtained by destroying crown towers. If you are able to destroy the King’s tower, it will grant you 3 crowns. Like the Free chest, Crown chest can also stack up to two times.

Gems

Gems are an important feature especially for paying players. Gems are used to unlock chests immediately and purchase golds and chests in the Shop. You can also get gems in Crown Chest and Free Chest. For non-paying players, I recommend to refrain from using your gems for unlocking chests and buying chests in the shop, rather use it for the gold.

Gold

Gold is one of the most important aspect in the game aside from the cards. Gold is needed each time you upgrade your troops to a higher level. You also can purchase cards from the Shop by using gold. Gold can be earned by unlocking chests and winning battles.

The reason why I said it is one the most important in the game, because you can’t make your cards level up if you don’t have enough gold. Plus, spending gold to buy the cards that you want is better than taking chances in buying chests from the Shop.

Shop

The Shop is where you can purchase 3 cards (common, rare, epic) that refreshes each day at 12:00am, chests (giant, magical, super magical), golds and gems by paying cash. Each purchase of card increases its price. For example, common card costs 10 gold for the first purchase, 12 gold for the second and etc. Rare card costs 20 gold and Epic cards costs 2000 gold, for the first purchase.

If you are a paying player and decided to buy gems from the shop, you can either buy Gold or Chests. If you don’t have an ideal deck yet, buying a Super Magical Chest is a great buy. Among all the chests, it has the highest chance to drop a Legendary card. However if you already have a good deck, buying gold is better. Upgrading cards are expensive in higher levels. A total cost of a max leveled common card will be 185,625 gold. Also, if you are planning to get Legendary cards, you can buy them at the Shop exclusively if you are in the Legendary Arena 8. Each Legendary card costs 40,000 gold.

Trophies & Arenas

Trophies are not very important in this game. It is only the basis of what Arena you’ll be in. You’ll get a certain amount of trophies for each win and lose some trophies if you are defeated in a battle. For beginners, it is not advisable to rush your self to a higher arena because you may find it much difficult to fight players with higher level deck. The only reason why you want to get higher is to get as many cards you can get out of the chests given on the arena you are in.

Level

Leveling up increases your crown tower’s health and damage. You can only game level up shards by 3 ways, leveling up cards, finishing an achievement and donating troops in your clan. Also, this is not a major concern and there’s no need to rush leveling up. You can also learn more about leveling here.

Clan

Once you reach level 3, you can now start to join or create a clan. Creating a clan requires 1000 gold, while joining a clan is free, depending on which clan you want to join. Some clans have trophy requirements so choose wisely. It is ideal to have a clan with active members that donates regularly.

Donating is the main purpose of having a clan. When you donate, you’ll get gold and level up experience. I advise to donate as much as you can to earn gold and level fast. Give your clan mates the cards they request especially if those are not included in your main deck.

Replays

The replay consists of videos where you can watch the top player’s gameplays and strategies. Each Arena has its own top replays. If you are waiting for a chest to go on cooldown, you could watch some replays and learn something out of it.

Cards

Cards are the most important aspect of the game. It determines how your game plan will be and how you’ll win versus your opponent. Basically there are 6 cards in a deck and there are 3 decks available. If you want to save other card combinations, you can use one of the available decks if you want to switch out immediately.

There are three types of cards namely, troops, buildings and spells. Troops are the cards that attack and move towards the crown tower. Buildings are stationary units that attacks anything within its range. Spells are cards that can be placed on the ground to damage or create an effect within an area.

There are some classification of troops in Clash Royale. Below are some examples of it:

Swarm – troops that consists two or more when deployed.

Ex. Archers, Goblins, Barbarians, Minion Horde, Skeleton Army

Ranged – troops that can attack in a distance and can target flying units.

Ex. Archers, Spear Goblins, Musketeer, Witch, Wizard, Princess

Flying/Air – troops that can only get attacked by towers, buildings and troops that can target air units. They cannot be attacked by ground troops.

Ex. Baby Dragon, Balloon, Minions, Minion Horde, Lava Hound

Tank – troops that have high health to take damage from the towers but having low attack damage and slow movement speed.

Ex. Giant, Lava Hound, Golem, Royal Giant, Valkyrie, Pekka, Skeleton Giant

Splash damagers – troops that does splash damage to enemies. Effective against swarm troops.

Ex. Witch, Wizard, Dark Prince, Valkyrie, Bomb Skeleton

Building Aggressive – troops that only attacks buildings and towers.

Ex. Hog Rider, Balloon, Lava Hound, Giant, Golem, Royal Giant

Offensive/Strong damage – troops that have high damage. It is most effective when placed behind tanks.

Ex. Wizards, Musketeer, Three Musketeer, PEKKA, Mini Pekka, Prince

Buildings also have some classification. They are usually used defensively but there are certain buildings that are used mainly for offense. Lastly, there are troop generating buildings that spawns a certain troop within its duration.

Defensive/Supportive – Cannon, Inferno Tower, Bomb Tower, Tesla, Elixir Collector

Offensive – X-bow, Mortar

Spawning – Barbarian Hut, Goblin Hut, Tombstone, Furnace

Spells are vital component of having a good deck. Have at least 1 spell in your deck. Listed below are the best usage of each spells.

Arrow – great for countering low hp swarm troops ex. Minion Horde, Skeleton Army, Goblins, Skeletons

Fireball – a strong damaging spell that is great for destroying towers, buildings and ranged troops.

Zap – a cheap elixir cost that briefly stuns and damages a small target. Instantly kills low hp swarm troops.

Freeze – great for offensive and defensive especially if used with building aggressive or splash offensive troops.

Poison – an offensive spell that damages and slows movement and attack speed in a wide area.

Rocket – a powerful spell that damages units in a small area. Great for countering powerful troops like Three Musketeers.

Lightning – an alternative spell for Rocket if you are looking for similar high damage but only damages three highest health unit in an area (including crown towers).

 

Now that you know the type of cards, you are now ready to build your own deck. A good deck should be composed of different types of cards. One type of each mentioned above is recommended but still depends on your playstyle.

Here’s a sample beginners deck that works well for beginners:

Goblins, Archers, Spear Goblins, Arrows, Fireball, Giant, Musketeer, Prince

Feel free to leave a comment if you have anything you’re wondering about. There are a lot of guides to the best decks and lots of other topics here, so please explore the rest of the site as well.