Goblin Barrel Freeze Deck for Arena 8 and 9 – 3700+ Trophies Earned

Hello guys, today I am going to show you one of my favorite decks with the Goblin Barrel. I am JesusSlark here, you may remember my Goblin Barrel deck a long time ago, and now I’m updating my deck to the new patch. Ever since Tournaments were released, I joined 8 of them and got first place in all 8, sometimes, not even losing a single game. I’m very excited about the buff since before the buff, I finished last season with 3716 trophies and with the new buff, it may be possible for me to reach 4000 trophies.

Goblin Barrel Freeze Deck

GENERAL GAMEPLAN

Play defensive at first, get a bit more information on what spells they play and adjust your attack strategies accordingly. If you can analyze and remember what cards they have, you can take down a full health tower in a few seconds.

ATTACK STRATEGY

1. Always start every attack with a Princess behind the King Tower if you have it in hand, in my opinion, one of the best defensive troop in the entire game. This could bait a spell usage from the less skilled players.
2. Valkyrie on bridge, throw Goblin Barrel and put Goblins behind the Valkyrie. One of the most powerful combos you can pull off. The Goblins will push the Valkyrie to the same speed as the Goblins, sending your opponent into a panic attack. If done correctly, this can destroy a tower in 4 seconds. This attack only has one weakness, Minions, to counter his minions you can build up a Princess before placing down the Valkyrie and you can even Zap the Minions to kill them instantly.
3. Mini P.E.K.K.A+ Minion Horde + Zap, Very deadly combo if they used a spell on your Princess, since the only spells that will use are fireball, arrows, and poison. Don’t use this attack if they used poison. If they used fireball or arrows on your Princess, congrats you probably won the game. I can guarantee you hardly anyone runs fireball and arrows in the same deck since they are very similar. Even if they use zap on the attack combination, your Mini Pekka will still tank whatever is thrown at your attack.
4. Lone goblin barrel, this will almost always bait a spell from your opponent, allowing you to defend really well or perform a counter attack with minion horde + a tank.
5. Valkyrie/Mini Pekka + Goblins, same idea as a Hog Rider deck, if they place an expensive unit on the other side and you don’t have enough elixir to do a full combo, you can place down this mini counter attack. This will almost certainly force a defensive reaction from your opponent, disrupting their flow in building up a huge attack.
6. After defending an attack with Minion Horde and they used Zap on them, you can freeze their tower, not allowing their tower to kill of the minions. Allowing you to do major damage to their tower.
7. After defending an attack with Minion Horde you can also place a tank in front of your minions, making so that their zap will be entirely useless.
8. If they place down a Princess to counter your Minion Horde, you can also freeze both the Princess and Tower, giving you around 4-5 seconds to do major damage.

AFTER 1 CROWN ATTACK STRATEGY

After you destroy a tower, you can build up a push with Goblins, Mini Pekka or Princess behind the King tower, or Minion Horde at the bridge. You throw a Goblin barrel at their tower and quickly place the Valkyrie at the spot where most people place Royal Giants after they take down 1 tower. This will allow the Valkyrie to tank the Crown Tower and the King Tower. This creates a three pronged attack which is insanely powerful. Most of the time, players will put their Princess in the middle to defend against a swarm of enemies, but with a surprise Valkyrie in the middle, their Princess will be useless.

DEFENSE STRATEGY

Royal Giant – You will need to alter your playstyle if you face against a Royal Giant deck. You need to be extra conservative with your Mini Pekka, try to use Valkyrie for all attack combinations. Mini Pekka + Princess can deal with whatever combination they will deploy. In x2 Elixir, you can place a freeze and not allow the Royal Giant to land a single hit. If you do not have Mini Pekka, Valkyrie and Goblins can be substituted.

Miner – Goblins or Mini Pekka to deal with Miner, Valkyrie on bridge if they put ground troops. Princess in the middle if they put minions, place it so that the Princess won’t target the miner. If they attack your Princess with a miner, surround your Princess with Goblins, Valkyrie or Mini Pekka. If your Princess survives, major damage will be dealt to their tower in your push.

Hog Rider + Small troops –

1. Mini Pekka + Zap
2. Mini Pekka + Valkyrie, Valkyrie in front, Mini Pekka behind.
3. Valkyrie + Goblins
4. Princess + Mini Pekka.

Lava Hound – Counter attack with anything you got on the other side. Save minion horde to deal with Lava Hound, most of the times they will use their spells to counter the Minion Horde on defense.

STARTING HAND

Always place your first troop behind your King Tower and wait for your Opponent to place his stuff first to analyze what he plays and adjust your defense and offense strategy accordingly. Here is the list IN ORDER of what you want to play first.

1. Princess
2. Goblin Barrel
3. Valkyrie
4. Mini Pekka (Don’t play unless you have nothing else.)

TIPS AND TRICKS

1. This is very important if you want to play a Goblin Barrel deck. Keep track of what spells he has used, if you know what spells he has in hand then you will win most of the time.
2. Protect your Princess, if your Princess walks up to the bridge, place a Valkyrie just before she starts shooting. What will happen is that your opponent will play small troops to kill the Princess just as you place your Valkyrie, giving you an elixir advantage.
3. If you are defending against a push with a unit that deals splash damage, place Valkyrie or Mini Pekka to one side to tank their AOE attacks and place your high damage dealing troops on the other side. Or you can just freeze everything and kill them all.

WHY NOT THIS CARD?

Giant Skeleton – High cost, easy to counter, much less versatile than the Valkyrie.

Skeleton Army – Even though that extra skeleton makes this choice super juicy, it dies to literally half the cards in this game.

Spear Goblins – I find this card to be really useless after putting in a Princess, it doesn’t deal as much damage as the Goblins and too much small troops can make AOE spells devastating. If you don’t have the Princess, you can substitute Spear Goblins for them, I hovered around 3300 before buying 2 Princesses from the shop.

Barbarians – Even though this baits a fireball spell and is an extremely good defense card, I find it to be useless when it crosses the bridge. Any kind of range troops will kill all of them without suffering any casualties.

Defense Buildings – After the nerfs, I just find the buildings to be too weak. Why have a defense building when you can just defend with troops and spells that are much more versatile?

3 Musketeers – Now this is a very cool combo with a Goblin Barrel deck. I only use this card in tournaments to counter Lava Hound and Balloon decks since I can see their decks before I battle them. People will generally use all their spells on 3 Musketeers when they see it so my other troops can wreck havoc. Or on the contrary, they will use all their AOE spells to kill my other units while the 3 Musketeers does the work. I don’t use this in my main deck since it brings unstable results.

Arrows – Zap is just better.

SOME TOURNAMENT TIPS

1. Don’t tilt, a tournament requires you to play for an extended amount of time, which will cause most players to tilt and play things that they don’t normally play. If you can stay calm for your matches, you will probably get first place.
2. Scout the top players, after you get around 150 trophies, start looking at the decks of the top players, try to memorize their decks and names. This will give you a huge advantage since you know what they are going to do.
3. Time when you press the battle button after you scouted. See which players has decks that counter yours or you don’t want to play against. Then you press the battle button when they are already in a match.
4. Know when to stop playing. If you gained a big lead, look at the time and calculate if they can surpass your amount of trophies in that time. A match usually takes around 3 minutes and they will probably win an average of 20-25 trophies a match. If you calculated and they won’t be able to surpass you, stop playing.
5. If you are in dire need to get trophies before the tourney ends, wait for the person that is in first to finish his match. Queue right when he finishes, if you win, you will swing upwards of 80 Trophies between the two of you.

That’s all folks, thanks for reading this incredibly long post and I hope you can try this deck that I made. Feel free to drop by my clan A.W.A. if you want.