Musketeer Draft Challenge Tips (Clash Royale)

UPDATE: Scroll down to see how the pros play this draft challenge if you want to get some visual tips on how to get 8 wins at this challenge.

Due to an extraordinary rise in popularity, I decided to create a special section for Clash Royale, Supercell’s real-time multiplayer game. Not only that this game is popular, it’s now and eSport and honestly I believe it’s a very complex game. I say that knowing that there are over 85 billion card combinations in Clash Royale. Yes, billions. If you don’t believe me, just do the math. There are 91 cards right now (and constantly growing), and you can have a combination of 8 cards. So the exact math looks like this: 91! / (8! * 83!).

In some ways this is more difficult than chess, not only due to its many combinations, but because it all happens in real time. You have to act fast, oversee 2 different lanes and try to outsmart your opponent.

There are some not-so-good parts about Clash Royale, mainly the fact that for players that don’t want to pay any money for in-game purchases, it’s very difficult to stay competitive. So the F2P score is quite low.

Anyway, occasionally they organize challenges, tournaments and all sorts of special events, where you win cards/coins. The next upcoming challenge is called the Musketeer Draft Challenge and starts on March 13th, 2019. This month they continually had events for “ladies of Clash Royale”, so it’s somehow expected to have this one – the musketeer is a hunter-lady.

Here’s what you can get in the Musketeer Draft Challenge, depending on how many wins you get before losing 3 times:

1 win: 2,500 coins
2 wins: Golden chest. The golden chest, gives you a 1/200 chance to draw a legendary and some decent cards.
3 wins: 5,000 coins
4 wins: Lightning chest. This is a great chest, because it lets you choose what cards you want to replace (up to a certain number of changes/strikes). Gives around 125 cards and a 1/100 chance for a legendary.
5 wins: 7,500 coins
6 wins: Giant chest. You can get a lot of common and rare cards, however no chance of legendary and most cards are those you don’t use anyway.
7 wins: 10,000 coins
8 wins: A special Musketeer Emote.

So that’s it, the 8 rewards you can obtain. And also, all cards are level 9 to be fair play for everybody. As with most challenges, you lose 3 times and you are out. However, you can pay diamonds to reset your losses and continue without losing your progress – most of the times it’s not worth paying the diamonds for the rewards though. The challenge lasts for 4 days.

In Draft challenges, you get to pick 4 cards and your opponent picks 4. It takes some experience to know which cards to pick, however here are some general tips for Draft challenges:

The challenge last 4 days. Don’t start playing right when the challenge begins, because that’s when most professional players also play it. I usually try to play in the last day of the challenge.
Be sure to pick a win condition-type of card. This could be the Miner, Goblin Barrel, Golem, Hog Rider, Giant and others of this type.
Pick cards, if possible, that could easily counter a previous card you picked. For instance if you chose the skeletons, pick arrows/spark if given the chance.
Pick cards that can be difficult to counter without a specific other card. For instance get Sparky, princess, balloon, etc – these require specific cards to be countered correctly, otherwise you got an easy win.
Pick a spell that could help you win in the end if your opponent’s tower has only a few hitpoints (i.e. fireball, rocket, …).
Don’t pump lots of elixir in the beginning, until you know what deck your opponent has.
Last but not least, everyone will get to choose between a Musketeer card. Most of the times I recommend picking it, because it is a great back support card.

If you want to see how the pros play the Musketeer Draft Challenge, here are some gameplays from Surgical Goblin and Clash with Shane: