What is Clash Royale?

Clash Royale is a real-time strategy game where players use cards to summon troops, buildings, and spells, battling opponents to destroy towers, manage elixir, and win crowns for victory.

Basics and Core Principles

• Elixir is the most important resource in Clash Royale; learning how to manage it is the key to victory. When defending and attacking, be mindful of how much elixir you use. This is crucial because if you use too much, your opponent will easily punish you and deal major damage to your towers. This is called a negative elixir trade (bad). However, when your opponent uses more elixir than you used when attacking or defending, you receive a positive elixir trade (good). You have a maximum storage capacity of 10 elixir at a time, most players when they reach the capacity, they feel its fine to wait until its strategic to place a card, rarely this is a case, and in most cases doing this will just lead to leaking elixir which can cause you to lose interactions as the opponent has placed more cards and has more elixir worth of troops on the board than you can afford
• Knowing your win condition and building around it is key to winning; all other cards should be used for support, protection, or to facilitate the win condition (and some purely for defence).

Card types and their uses

There are four main types of cards: troops, spells, buildings, and tower troops. Spells are usually temporary and can be cast anywhere in the arena (with an exception of the log, barbarian barrel and royal delivery) while buildings can only be placed on your side of the board and have decaying health and do not move unlike troops that can also only be placed on your side of the board yet they can move, these are most often your win conditions. Tower troops are a special type of card, as you receive 2 of them for free at the start of the game, and you will spot them on top of the two towers you receive to the sides of the board (not the middle one). These troops cannot move, and there are only 4 as of October 2025. There are 5 types of rarities, each identified by different colours: Common (grey), Rare (orange), Epic (purple), Legendary (shiny rainbow gradient), and Champions (bright yellow). You need different resources to upgrade each rarity, and as the rarity increases, it gets more expensive to upgrade them.

Deck types

• Beatdown: Relies on a heavy tank as well as strong support troops. Tries to get a tower within one push and becomes an increasingly powerful late game. 
• Control: Relies on countering its opponent with as little elixir as possible. Constantly tries to get an elixir advantage on its opponent by attacking and defending with low-cost troops. 
• Bait: Tries to make the opponent play a card that is a counter to the deck’s win condition. Usually burns down the opponent and forces them to use offensive cards on defense. 
• Siege: Uses buildings as win conditions. Burns down the opponent with spawners, x-bows, and mortars, forcing them to fight on your side of the arena, giving you the tower advantage. 
• Cycle: Has an extremely low average elixir cost and usually has one win condition. Can play the same card over and over again and puts the opponent’s deck out of rotation.

Noticing an opponent playing one of these types and knowing how to counter them can sometimes be the key to victory.

Placement

Placement of troops is one of the key aspects of the game; when defending, your placements will for sure lead to a successful defence or a loss of a tower or all three. 

• Kiting is when you place a win condition (a troop that goes only for towers) close to the middle yet to the other side of the board from which a troop is coming, this will cause the attacking troop to follow the win condition and give time for your towers to snipe it and either do serious damage or eliminate it whilst you are also building a counterpush with your win condition. The following image shows an example of where to place the win condition if the troop is coming from that arrow, as shown.
• An important aspect of placements is that it’s very important to stay calm and strategically think about where to place anything. A pretty fun way to throw off your opponent is to use BM (bad manners) emotes to get them angry and irritated (full-on psychological warfare right there).
• Placement can be used to activate your king tower as well as its usually dormant until you lose a tower, yet if it receives any damage, it will awake and shoot at troops attacking your side towers. Tornado is great for king activations

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Here are pitfalls many players fall into:

• Leaking elixir: avoid sitting at full 10 often. 
• Overcommitting: using too many troops with no backup. 
• Playing aggressively when weak: forcing pushes when you lack support. 
• Not spacing troops: placing multiple troops too close, dying to one spell. 
• Wasting big spells on low value: dropping Fireball on weak targets only. 
• Switching decks too often: not mastering one before chasing the meta. 
• Panic plays/tilt: making decisions in frustration. 
• Not adjusting mid-match: stubbornly sticking to a plan even when failing. 
• Not watching replays/learning: missing opportunity to improve. 
• Ignoring meta changes: using outdated or weak decks.

Summary and “Cheat Sheet” for Quick Reference 

Here’s a condensed checklist you can revisit during/after matches:

• Don’t leak elixir 
• Always aim for positive trades 
• Know your win condition and support it 
• Defend with minimal resources 
• Don’t overcommit 
• Build pushes from safe points 
• Track what your opponent played and infer their deck 
• Use predictive plays and bait counters 
• Be flexible & adaptive 
• Watch your replays & learn 
• Avoid tilt, manage mental state 
• Stay current with meta 
• Test incrementally 
• Use friendly battles and challenges

One last tip

The main objective of any video game is to relax after a long day. Keep this in mind when playing: don’t make it a top priority, and honestly, most of these tips are used above 9k trophies. If you are under that, you don’t need to worry too much.