Deckbuilding has always been hard if you're talking about games where you're competing at the highest skill level. A good deck must have a smooth cycle with very minimal bad hands for it to be at peak efficiency. In this guide, we'll be going through tips on how to make your own deck that's able to compete against other meta decks that may throw off your opponents, due to your deck being quite different from the standard decks that you find on the top of deck-building sites.

Rohin "Messi10" Sharma helped us make this guide and it was constructed using his knowledge.

Primary Win Conditions & Secondary Win Conditions

We have to start somewhere and that's right at the fundamentals of a deck. When Messi10 was asked about this, he told us that it's essential to at least have a primary win condition with other additions that we'll talk about in later segments of this guide.

Primary win conditions are cards that deal the most damage upon your opponent's tower(s) and/or apply high pressure onto the battlefield. Here are a few examples of cards that could definitely be used as a primary win condition:

• Giant

• Golem

• Lavahound



• Graveyard



• Balloon



• Goblin Barrel



• Hog Rider



Secondary win conditions are the cards which provide an additional offensive threat or help your primary win condition as a support card by trying to find an opening and deal a large amount of damage to the enemy. Examples of secondary win conditions:

• Miner

• Battle Ram



• Balloon

Note that in this guide, we've mentioned examples that are generalizations. A primary win condition in one deck could be a secondary win condition in another deck.

Support Cards & Spells



Next up we have the support cards and spells. Support cards are defensive tools which are used to counterpush. Think of cards that deal either high individual damage or are great at clearing a group of enemy troops. Examples of support cards include:

• Mega Minion

• Hunter



• Electro Wizard



• Lumberjack



• Night Witch



• Baby Dragon

In general, almost every deck will have one big spell and one to two smaller spells. There's one main exception to this rule and that's the Three Musketeer decks, which normally only have one small spell. Big Spells are spells that have an elixir cost of four and smaller spells are often swift spells with a smaller impact costing you two to three Elixir.

Examples of big spells that are used in this current meta:

• Poison



• Fireball

• Freeze

Examples of small spells that are used in this current meta:

• Log

• Zap

• Barbarian Barrel

Average Elixir

Average Elixir cost is a very important asset of your deck. If you have too many high-cost or low-cost cards, the balance of your deck will be disrupted and you'll become an easy target for counters if you put all of your eggs into one basket.

When we asked Messi10 about the Elixir sweet spot, he told us, "Decks which sit at a range of 3.5 to 4 Elixir seem to be working the best at the moment. Cycle decks aren't doing very well in this meta. Therefore, decks like 2.6 Hog Cycle and 2.9 X-Bow Cycle are suffering. On the other hand, slightly heavier decks such as Lava Miner Prince and Golem Night Witch Nado are doing very well. Since there are many heavy decks in the meta, they require heavy responses. In addition to this, it is very easy to make mistakes with cycle decks which is why people tend to stay away from them. With a well-constructed push, you can easily come back if you're using a heavy deck.

General Card Tips

We asked Messi10 about tips for players at every level, no matter if they've just started playing or are high up in the ranks. He provided us with two tips for newer players the first one being about levelling up your cards. He said, "Cards which are level dependent are often those that you want to keep on par with your trophy range. It's a horrible feeling when your Goblin Gang or Goblin Barrel are instantly zapped away by an opponent with an overleveled Zap. Cards which you should focus on upgrading are any sort of Goblin-based troop, Musketeer, Archers, Hunter, Barbarians, Hog Rider and Giant.

Cheap variants of Goblin-based troops

When asked what players in lower arenas should do when trying to prioritize cards, Messi10 told us, "Focus on building a strong deck that is mostly made up with cards of common rarity. Decks such as Mortar Bait, 2.6 Hog Cycle, etc. are the best options. Try to stick to your deck as long as possible so that you can focus your resources on levelling this deck up for when you hit the higher arenas. Being underleveled is a huge issue and spreading yourself too thin in terms of decks could cost you dearly."

Finally, Messi10 gave a tip for high-level players that doesn't have to do with deck-building. He said, "Try to watch how some professional players use a deck that is similar to yours. This will help you navigate some difficult matchups and allow you to pick up a few tips and tricks from their gameplay. Watching over your own replays is also important, it will allow you to review points in the game where you have misread the situation and gone too aggressive or too passive."

Example of a Deck

In this part of the guide, we'll show you what applying this knowledge can result in. Since Messi10 obviously doesn't want to give away his current decks for a mere example, he decided to provide us with the details of an old deck that worked against a different meta. He said, "A year and a half ago I made a really good Graveyard deck which did well against the meta. The deck list is Knight, Ice Golem, Tombstone, Night Witch, Electro Wizard, Log, Poison and Graveyard. At the time, Bridge Spam was very common and Night Witch was very strong. This deck was made to counter that deck specifically and it also did well against a lot of other matchups. The primary win condition is Graveyard and there is no secondary win condition. The support troops are Knight, Ice Golem, Electro Wizard and Night Witch that provide a strong defense and great tanking ability for the Graveyard. The big spell in this deck is Poison and the small spell is The Log. In conclusion, this deck had very strong answers to the meta decks and had great synergy which allowed it to be very strong back then."

Conclusion

Making a successful and competitive deck requires a win condition, deck synergy and balance of cards in your hand. At first, it can seem hard to get creative and try out new things but that's also the fun part of playing a card game.

We want to thank Messi10 for his great input towards making this guide and wouldn't have been possible without him participating.

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