Clash Royale League: China Spring 2019

The first week of Clash Royale League (CRL) China’s Spring Season has concluded this weekend with a total of six matches. Things kicked off with an upset as Gen.G defeated the reigning champions, Nova, convincingly with a 3-1 score. After Nova’s roster changes, including the loss of their star player Auk, their lineup appeared shaky, but in the fifth match of the week, Nova turned things around with a 3-1 victory over X-Quest. The weekend was full of excitement and suspense as three matches took it to the fifth and final set, King of the Hill (KOH).

Newbee

Newbee leads the scoreboard boasting a 2-0 match score, surprising everyone as one of the two new teams to the league. X-Quest is on the other side of the spectrum trailing behind with a 0-2 score this week. It is difficult to make predictions this early in the season, but it is clear that X-Quest needs to go back to the drawing board.

Player Rankings

A few players have shown they are a cut above the rest by dominating their opposition. The top three players in 1v1 sets are Peas (Newbee), Jiu.Bao (LGD), and D.King (Gen.G). You can have a look at the full rankings here (and at the end of the article) to gauge the performance of each player.

Bans

Four cards make up 50% of the bans in 1v1 and KOH, Lavahound, Golem, Miner, and Musketeer. Lavahound leads with 20% of the total bans which clearly indicates it is a matchup most players would like to avoid, probably because of the volatility of the current Lavahound Clone meta deck. The Musketeer ban statistic is skewed because the card was only banned by Newbee versus Gen.G which leans more towards a player specific ban. Interestingly enough Royal Giant was only banned twice but had the highest use rate of any win condition in 1v1 sets.

Royal Giant

Royal Giant was used in over 25% of 1v1 games, followed by Golem at 16%, Ram Rider at 13% and Graveyard at just under 10% use rate. Other than the overwhelming dominance of Royal Giant there was a decent amount of deck variety. We saw 13 different win conditions used, even seeing a handful of Sparky decks and one X-Bow deck! Each win condition has several variations which helped keep the games fresh and exciting.