Clash Royale Tombstone Uses Guide

Clash Royale Tombstone Uses Guide by mcgray

Hey guys, I wanted to shine a light on honestly my favorite defensive card that I rarely see being used. This is my go to card for dealing with hogs and I know so many hate them and struggle fighting them. For some background I’m currently hovering around 3200, F2P, and have used the tombstone since inception. This little guy costs 3 elixir but counters SO many different cards that are popular with current decks. I’ll explain a bit more, but first want to say the true strength of the tombstone isn’t its constant spawning but the 4 skeletons it spawns when it dies and the ability to sway troops that only target defenses. I’m going to put down why its strong based on troops it counters and where it has obvious weaknesses.

General Play

The tombstone should never be placed behind a tower unless its being used to counter spawners. It should always be placed in the middle of the arena to draw troops into double tower fire. The key in using this is to counter push another lane so these troops don’t have AoE support. AoE is not a skeltons friend. The Tombstone doesn’t like pushes that have back up so the trick really is to get this guy to go 1v1 against their pushes. This can also be used with collectors to either make the troops switch lane or even make the troops activate your king! The if the troops are led correctly they will switch lanes or if the nearest tower to them is the king they will attack him even if hes not activated yet.

Strengths

The gist of what you’ll read is this card is great against slow attacking non AoE attackers.

Hog – This card is an absolutely amazing counter for hogs(which I’m sure everyone is sick of by now). A lone hog(probably used in hog freeze) can be single handly taken out by the tombstone while allowing it to get 0-1 hits if done properly. When you see the hog dropped, place the tombstone in towards the middle of the arena bringing the hog into both towers attack range. It’ll take 2 hits to kill buying some time and damage. Once broken 4 more skeletons will spawn and proceed to beat the hell out of the hog. The benefit of this is the time it saves as well as being pretty nice vs hog freeze. This is because if the freeze spell is used before the tombstone is broken the skeletons that spawn after are not affected by it and if used after it’ll give you time to drop gobs or anything else to take care of the hog.

Sparky – That’s right everyone’s favorite legendary is great against sparky. The beauty is that sparky has to charge up his attack which takes a large amount of time. By that time there is always a knew skeleton out to beat him up. And even if he hits the tombstone you now have 4 more skeletons for him to have to hit again while they beat on him.

Prince/Dark prince – This card absolutely destroys prince/dark princes. The slow and steady flow of skeletons stops them from charging as well as once broken the prince will be exposed to dual tower fired and with his slow attack rate over powered by the skeletons. One tombstone placed properly can easily take out a prince or dark prince and sometimes if done right both together.

Pekka/Mini Pekka – This card deals with pekkas and mini pekkas in the same why but I’m going to focus on Pekka because hes a bigger issue. This is great as again it pulls him into double tower range. The pekka can pack a huge punch but with his insanely slow attack speed the skeltons buy a large amount of time while shredding him up. If there is nothing to assist the pekka a single tombstone will destroy him which is a huge elixir trade.

Giant skelton – Somewhat the same as above but with the benefit again of drawing him away from towers.

Golem/Giant – This is a really effective card if you counter push against golems/giants. As long as the golem/giants is by itself placing a tombstone can redirect the golem/giants buying you time and once the skeletons get to work on him he will be broken in two very easily.

Barbarians – Believe it or not but a single tombstone can take out barbs by itself. Bringing the barbs into dual fire with their slow attack speed and not being able to split focus makes it so they have to kill each skeleton individually which takes them a lot of time. Plus its a great elixir trade. Normally the barbs never reach your tower. This is also great if placed well against barb spawners.

Balloon – The reason this is effective as it is a really cheap way to maneuver the balloon away from the tower into dual tower range. This can be done with any other defensive building but tombstone is so cheap it’s just makes sense for me. I’ve also used it to pull the balloon into my king. (Targets the tombstone, then my collector behind it, then goes to my king and activates him.

Gobs/Spear Gobs/Skeletons, Skelton Army(spawners included) – This one is pretty obvious. These guys are squishy and if you can distract them for a second or two your tower will make short work of them. Obviously this isn’t a good elixir trade if the spawner dies but that rarely happens if done correct. This is also great a slow defense against those annoying spawner decks that like to chip away at your towers.

Witch – Even though this card isn’t used very often anymore it is still very strong against as it doesn’t allow her skeltons to get stacked up while also distracting her shots.

Royal Giant – This one is not super effective so i was hesitant to add it. however since the royal giant is 6 elixir its not too bad of a trade. The benefit of this is in a pinch you can place the tombstone on top of the royal giant to push him away and make him retarget your tombstone which buys a little time and places the skeletons.

Weaknesses

Most anything that flies – This can obviously be used to slow or distract a flying unit but it’s not going to put up any damage so definitely not a counter by any means

Most anything that is AoE – This includes any projectile (zap, arrows, fireball) but also includes wiz, valk, bomber. I only drops this in those cases if I truly need to buy time for the tower.

Any other card I missed was either because of redundancy (knight) or because its kind of hit or miss if its an actual counter.

TL;DR This card is amazing if you can make them not push with AoE backers. It is cheap, a great elixir trade, as well as an amazing counter to hogs.