Some win conditions include: Hog Rider, Ram Rider, Electro Giant, Royal Giant, Balloon, X-Bow, Miner, Mortar, Golem, Graveyard, Sparky, Goblin Drill, Lava Hound, and Three Musketeers. There are many more possible win conditions.

Beatdown: Beatdown decks focus on overpowering your opponent’s tower through strength. They have a tanky win condition, such as a Golem, or Giant with high damage troops for backup. These decks start by building up a positive elixir advantage and build a huge push to attack the opponent’s tower. Control: Control decks are defensive decks that fight from your side of the map. Control decks have a strong defense, which usually includes buildings, such as Cannon, Tesla, and Inferno Tower. These decks get an elixir advantage from countering huge pushes and chip away at the opponent’s tower until it is destroyed. Siege: Siege archetypes are based around a strong offensive building win condition, either Mortar or X-Bow. These buildings attack from your side of the map and force your opponent’s units to your side of the map to defend, while you defend your offensive buildings so that they can keep doing damage to your opponent’s tower. Mortar is typically combined with a second win condition such as Miner. Hybrid: Hybrid decks combine two archetypes and two win conditions for a deck that can surprise your opponent. A hybrid deck might have Golem and Graveyard for example. Cycle: Cycle decks are very cheap (usually 3. 0 or less in average elixir cost. They rely on quickly placing their win condition faster than your opponent can get back to their counter card. These decks chip away at the other towers, doing damage over time. Any amount of damage matters. Spell Bait: Spell bait is a type of hybrid deck The goal is to get your opponent to waste their spells, and then overwhelm them with hordes of troops when they can no longer counter your attack. These decks have many cards vulnerable to spells such as Skeleton Army, Guards, Goblin Gang, and Goblin Barrel. Those are common in log bait decks while Royal Hogs, Flying Machine, Barbarians, Minion Horde, and Three Musketeers are used in medium and heavy spell bait. [2] X Research source Bridge spam: Bridge spam is an archetype invented by Team Vietnam. The cards in it are usually combinations of Royal Ghost, Bandit, Dark Prince, Ram Rider, Battle Ram, and other cards. It focuses on punishing other players for investing elixir by rushing them with combos that can take a tower in seconds. Don’t play high-cost troops at the back against these decks because there is no way you can defend their rush attack with few elixir. Split lane: With the addition of more cards that can be split (Royal Hogs, Zappies, Royal Recruits, Guards, etc), this archetype has risen to popularity. Both lanes will be taken up by very threatening pushes and your opponent will have to try and defend both sides simultaneously.

If you have an average elixir cost of 4. 0 or above, you might want to consider having the elixir collector in your deck. This card will collect more elixir for you and allow you to play troops faster. However, this is also a high cost card, as it is 6 elixir. Cycle decks go as low as 2. 6 for the AEC since the playstyle requires the player to cycle to their win condition quickly.

Troops have different movement speeds. For fast decks, you might want speedy Hog Riders, Elite Barbarians, or Goblins. A slow deck could include the mighty Golem, P. E. K. K. A, or Executioner.

Musketeer, Minions, and Mini Pekka are some troops that do single-target damage. Wizard, Witch, and Bowler are examples of splash attackers.

For example, you may see a lot of people running log bait at your trophy range. To counter this, run two small spells in your deck. You can choose from Tornado, Zap, Arrows, Barbarian Barrel, Giant Snowball, and the Log.

Some support cards are Valkyrie, Musketeer, Witch, and Electro Wizard. A lot of win condition supports are in the group sometimes referred to as the “fireballies” which means they survive an equal level fireball with a sliver of health.

These include Ice Wizard, Barbarians, Minion Horde, and Skeleton Army.

Cycle cards include Ice Spirit, Electro Spirit, Fire Spirit, and Skeletons. Some utility cards are Spear Goblins, Minions, and Bats.

The Inferno Tower does damage that increases over time. The Cannon is cheap (3 elixir), so you can use it to kill Hog Riders and defend small pushes. Tesla is like a cannon that targets air. Bomb Tower deals splash damage and has a death bomb, pairing well with Tornado. The Barracks spawns Barbarians, Goblin Hut spawns Spear Goblins, Furnace hatches Fire Spirits, and Tombstone raises Skeletons. Mortar and X-Bow are win conditions in siege decks, but they are also used on defense since they can shoot at units from a long distance.

Big spells include Fireball, Rocket, Lightning, and Poison. Small spells include The Log, Zap, Barbarian Barrel, and Giant Snowball. Some spells affect troops. Heal spell heals your troops. Rage increases movement speed and attack speed. Freeze stops troops in place. Clone makes copies of your troops that have only one hit-point.

A Golem, any heavy spell, and most buildings are dead cards since playing them leaves you open to an attack. Three elixir cards or less such as Ice Spirit, Archers, and Goblins are good to include in your deck since you can play them without a large fear of not having a response to your opponent’s cards.