Clash Royale Reading Your Opponent Guide

Clash Royale Reading Your Opponent Guide by Valentine_CR

Hello, my name is Valentine. I like to consider myself a strategist. I love the mental factor that comes with strategy-based games. I love breaking down top quality gameplay and tactics and applying them to real life standards. So, it’s still true now, even if it’s not to as extreme of a degree as before.

[Disclaimer]

I wanted to make a completely new strategy that has never seen light yet. I’m writing as I go, so please excuse any grammatical errors you see, as I will fix them, if there are any.

I want to provide out-of-the-box strategies that can be applied to ANY strategy game, such as Clash Royale and real life scenarios, if such thing occurs. I want to prove to the community that I’m dedicated to making quality work to give detailed information about key elements of becoming a top player, to help the community grow in experience and wisdom and that I can be trusted when it comes to my work.

The first topic will be “Breaking your opponent”. Let’s hop right into this, shall we?

Breaking Your Opponent.

Now, with any strategy game, comes having to know your opponent. What’s the one way that you can guarantee a victory, forever, all the time and never lose? I’m talking– Tournaments, Wager Matches, or even Casual Matches. You need to be psychic

If you were psychic you could break your opponent down with ease because you know their every move, countering them to the extreme. Even if they knew what you were going to do, you could do the exact opposite and totally debase their physical solidity– causing them a mental breakdown and winning by default.

Well, in actuality that’s impossible. Although a few people would disagree, I’m here to demonstrate the concept of “Breaking your Opponent”.

At tournament levels, not everyone you come across, will be a top player, good player, average player, or even a bad player. How can you break down your opponent to find out what type of player they are? You need to understand what a top player exceeds in, when it comes to physical qualities and attributes

• Critical mass of knowledge
• Amazing Offense and Defense
• Knowing when to attack
• Reading their opponents patterns
• Being able to tech against specialized meta decks
• Playing smart
• An ability to integrate all of this knowledge and examine it as an interactive dynamic system

These are no-brainers. You’re probably wondering to yourself “I know all of this information, why am I not considered a top player?” To answer your question, I made up my own motto that can be applied TO ANY SITUATION IN LIFE.

My Motto: You’re better than everyone you play against, you just have to prove it.

We as humans have a very powerful skill embedded in our brain called Pattern Recognition

What is pattern recognition?

n. pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory.

When playing Clash Royale you may see your opponent making simple plays or patterns. For instance, when you play hog rider, they play barbs and you can’t get tower damage. It’s really frustrating being countered to the point where you want to just close the app. It may also feel like they’re psychic. You need to force their card rotation. This takes time and practice.

Example

In order to force your opponents card rotation, you need to play a group of cards, (or card) that forces your opponent to play his card that counters your hog rider. They play barbs to counter hog? you play Prince + AOE. This opens leeway to getting a huge advantage over your opponent because they don’t have the proper card up in time because you messed up their rotation.

Of course that is only one example, there are plenty of other ways depending on your deck that can force card rotations. That is where balanced deck-building comes in to play.

Another example, would be to use pre-emptive spells such as fireball at the right time. This is high-risk, high-reward and pays off super well, almost leading in 1,000+ damage with hog + cheap troop, if done properly.

Small Break-Down of Forcing card rotations

So, let’s say you’re playing the common Miner, Princess, Spear Gobs, Minion Horde, Zap, Cannon, Pump, Mini Pekka

There a few scenarios that could happen if you want to break their rotation.

• Your starting hand: Pump, Zap, Spear Gobs, Princess
• Opponents Starting Hand: Hog, Goblins, Zap, Princess

Scenario 1: YOU wait for your opponent to make the first move They pig push you with all their elixir and get 1000+ damage, due to horrible RNG. They now have Cannon up along with Mini Pekka, Spear Goblins, and 3 elix Minions. You most likely reacted to their push with zapping their hog and gobs. Your next card in rotation was Cannon so you were forced to play that in the middle– to lock on princess and then hog rider. You’re now in reset mode, You have the option to, at 5 elixir play the pump. Mind you, with horrible card rotation, that’s a horrible idea because they can push you now with mini Pekka + gobs and zap is back in their rotation. It’s a rinse repeat cycle that keeps going all game until you forcibly change it. Never play pump until you have a card or two to defend with.

Scenario 2 You start the opening hand with spear goblins at the bridge to get some chip damage (I also referred to this as poking in my write-up.) they can either react to it or let them get damage. He chooses to ignore it and pig push. You now have Cannon and zap in rotation– you play Cannon in the middle 4 tiles from the river and zap their combo. You now have a better rotation just by playing 1 card.

KEEP IN MIND forcing your opponents card rotation WILL be a lot harder than just playing 1 card. It can be a lot more deep than this, you have to understand how certain cards make other cards react. Once you know that, you can put in hundreds of thousands of different scenarios to help exercise your brain. I just simplified to the easiest proportion to understand and get a grasp on. Sometimes to force their card rotation– you need to play wacky combos that don’t work but force a reaction, or you cycle cards that can possibly leave you at a deficit, but this is all practice and can be learned through Experience and Time.

Understanding Your Opponents Strategy

There are plenty of strategies in Clash Royale. Knowing your opponents, could lead to an automatic win, or force a draw if you’re countered, if you play smart.

You need to know your meta, and tech against it. If your opponent plays Dark Prince to stop a push, chances are they’re either running a Double Prince Pekka Deck or a variation of a beatdown deck. You should never overcommit at the start of the game, wait for your opponent to make a play first.

Two examples of when to play first

• You have every card in your hand for a strong push and they play a pump or when they play the counter in the opposite lane.
• You want to get a good card rotation, so play cheap troops to get the desired rotation you need.

Pattern Recognition: Experience and Time

The first key element, is Experience– Experience is exposing yourself to multiple situations. With experience, you need to watch for patterns in your opponent and adapt to it. If something worked in one situation of a game, and a similar situation comes up, it’s a good idea to try what worked, isn’t it?

Another key element, is Time– Time is a necessary factor. Every player is completely different, no two people are the exact same– So you need Time to study a person’s individual patterns. If you’ve ever played on ladder, and faced a gimmicky deck and just got destroyed– Well, it’s because you didn’t have enough time to study their patterns or read them because it happened so quick. That wouldn’t have happened if it were a best of 3 because you could read their patterns after the first game.

If you combine these two key elements you will start to make more successful reads and it just becomes natural

What to do when you have these techniques down?

Well, in order to know your opponent, you need to know yourself. You have to know the borderline on when to play your odds against High-Risk, Low-Reward and Low-Risk, High-Reward. You need to also practice this, so you know when the optimal time to make a play is, so just incase you misplay, you can still come back from it.

Study top players to dissect their strategies and how they play against certain cards to get their tower damage. Most often than not, they’ll play certain combos after you play their counters. If you study your own deck and study your own patterns you can counter them when they arise during battle and alleviate them. So, if you can get in their mind and read their every play, you’ll be golden.

Secondly– start poking at your opponent. Poking is referred to as low-risk, low-reward moves– you don’t get much damage doing them and you don’t take much damage doing them. This process is just to gauge your opponents reaction and trying to get a read of how they play against certain combos.

Next step– Start playing longer matches. Trophy ranks are nothing but a number that can be gained back in a day or so. Losing a hundred trophies in the process of making yourself a better and stronger player, is well worth it. Anybody can do this–

Finally– It’s not about making reads at all times. You just need to make reads when you need to get big damage in. That’s why it’s always important to play predictable in the start of the game and start mixing your patterns as you play. This scrambles your opponent and it’s hard for them to focus. If you can’t get an exact read on your opponent, just take a guess. Consider their patterns and take into consideration the risk vs reward they get when they make an action.

Conclusion

When you know your opponents patterns and their strategy, you need to disrupt their motive. You should never play passive and allow them to get their troop combos off, always force them to play a card in their strategy to counter your cards and you’ll most likely walk away with a win. There’s no such thing as counter-decks– that’s all in your mind. If you force their card rotation you automatically have an advantage. Every strategy has a counter, you just need to find it and tech against it, with the best of your ability. Disrupting their card Rotation will put you at an advantage right off the bat. It’s better to read their cards and wait for your chance to setup an opportunity to force their card rotation in your favor, right before double elixir– you can walk away with a win 99% of the time, when you master this technique.