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This will be a bit of a long rant so just bear with it or ignore it entirely and secondly, if you don't know a damn thing about football, feel free to skip my opening statement.

Imagine an NFL game where everyone has to start on the 1 yard line of their own endzone and as we all know, the goal of American Football is to get the ball to the endzone of the opponent in a similar manner that the goal of Clash Royale is to take down the towers of the opponent with the usage of win conditions, spells, troops, etc.

While it is tough to get the ball from your own endzone to the opponents endzone, it can be done and furthermore... both teams are playing on a fair level.

Sure, one team usually has better players but the overall core of the game remains fair and we can assume that under the pretense of two equal teams, this boils down to execution and skill.

But imagine if the rules were suddenly altered which would shift the fundamentals of the entire sport, lets use an example such as this.

Suppose that Team A is operating under the regular rules of American Football which is that they can only have 11 players on Offense or Defense on the field at one time.

So when Team A is on offense, they bring out their 11 offensive players and when Team A is on defense, they bring out their 11 defensive players.

Throughout the game, Team A can only have 11 players on offense or defense on the field at the same time.

But now, lets introduce Team B which is operating under a different set of rules which allows them to play 15 players on defense until their opponent crosses the 30 yard line on their side where they can only have 10 players on defense while the opponent has 11 players on offense.

What this means is that for 70% of the field, Team B will have 15 players on offense or defense while team A can only have 11... sure, once Team A breaks it into the 30%, they have the numerical advantage... but it is miniscule compared to how powerful the 15 to 11 advantage is for Team B until the downsides/weaknesses begin to show.

With 15 players, you can run constant blitzes while also having 8 players in the secondary to cover while team A has to strategically choose when to blitz and when to play man, zone, etc.

In a blitz, you can chose to rush 5 or more players at the Quarterback... but in exchange for less protection in the back as you can only have 11 players on the field... you can theoretically play 11 players upfront to rush the QB but if the QB gets rid of the ball fast enough to a wide receiver, it's essentially a guaranteed touchdown.

With 15 players however, there is no risk.. you can go Leeroy Jenkins on the Quarterback and STILL have adequate coverage to prevent a touchdown.

Now, people are probably wondering what the fuck does this have to do with Clash Royale? But this is essentially what playing against Dagger Duchess is like with the Princess Tower.

The Dagger Duchess is extremely effective for the first couple of seconds, then becomes weaker after the initial burst... except by the time the Dagger Duchess has lower DPS than the princess over time, the push has already ended and you've probably wasted a shit-ton of elixir to have the push defended by a couple of well placed cards and even then, the difference between the Dagger Duchess without any daggers and the princess tower isn't all that much, similar to how the Football comparison listed above where Team B's drawback isn't drastic while its benefit can be oppressive.

Lets take spear goblins for example, imagine if we have two hog players and like the football comparison... lets give them names.

Team A has the princess tower and Team B has the Dagger Duchess.

Team A places down the hog rider which is doesn't land a single hit on the Dagger Duchess of Team B who defended it with goblins or spear goblins.

The spear goblins are at full health and make its way to the princess tower where the Team A has to use a cheap spell such as Log, Arrows, etc or the spear goblins will land a couple of hits for around 300+ damage in total.

Now we switch roles

Team B places down the hog rider and it lands one or two hits because of the lower DPS of the Princess Tower in the short timeframe this interaction takes place, even if it was defended with the exact same troops in the exact same position.

Now the spear goblins who are at full health, head down to attack the Dagger Duchess... but they are subsequentially one-shotted very quickly before they can even land a single spear and Team B doesn't even have to use a spell or troop.

This interaction goes down as a benefit for Team B because despite them having defended the same exact way, one side saves elixir by not having to defeat the spear goblins and ALSO getting two hits despite both sides using the same exact elixir.

Now play this onto a wider role and the oppressive nature of the Dagger Duchess becomes clear, it simply doesn't have enough drawbacks for it to be balanced... especially since this game is mostly centered around short interactions

And this scenario is not just with spear goblins, it can apply to Mini-Pekkas, Wallbreakers, Minions, Goblin Barrel, etc.

Part 2: Decks

Very few people like Cycle Decks such as Hog Rider for example, but they're also a playstyle and a staple of Clash Royale and add to the variety of opponents and playstyles that one might face while playing and while repetitive, this is mostly due to Midladder and F2P players who usually only have one viable deck in Ladder.

Dagger Duchess essentially destroyed Cycle Decks and Hog Rider in particular because it can be easily defended without much elixir cost and by the time the opponent can ramp up their cycling, the person with Dagger Duchess has enough elixir to counter and defend the push which with Hog Rider, isn't particularily effective because it doesn't have enough HP to outlast the Dagger Duchess.

Furthermore, to counter the Dagger Duchess and make her ineffective... you NEED her to use up all her daggers which is tricky because most cards die to it very quickly and the person playing Dagger Duchess doesn't need to use elixir which allows them to store some to defend a bigger push.

Because you need a long push to defeat the Dagger Duchess, this essentially makes Single Elixir worthless and leaves it as a stalemate because unless your opponent is BAD, you won't be touching that tower and if you're playing princess tower... Single Elixir is literally a disadvantage which as stressed above during the football comparison, prior to the Dagger Duchess... single elixir was an equal game mode.

With Hog Rider out of the picture, players have switched to the current meta which is either Giant or Lavahound because both decks can tank the Dagger Duchess.

That's the thing, if a Tower Troop is so unimaginably broken that Giant, GIANT has people thinking that it's overpowered because it happens to counter Dagger Duchess... then you know something is wrong because outside of the Dagger Duchess era, Giant was a fairly balanced and average card.

Oh, and cycle decks were never truly dead... it's just that they evolved to become Giant-Evo Bomber cycle decks and drill cycle decks.

Prior to Dagger Duchess, the Giant was present in exactly three decks during the and Lavahound only twice, additionally Princess Tower accounted for 4 of the top ten while Cannonneer accounted for 6... fairly even and balanced with the Cannonneer having clear drawbacks and strengths.

is an entirely different story with Giant/Lavahound accounting for 7 out of 10 of the top ten spots, the only others being Miner/Drill Poison decks while Dagger Duchess is accounting for EVERY Top Ten spot.

This isn't Mega Knight, Fire Cracker or Hog Rider problems where its strictly a Midladder issue, The Dagger Duchess is affecting EVERY facet of the game and has managed to propel a card such as Giant to the top because it happens to counter it, the same happened to Elixir Pump which received an unnecessary nerf because Dagger Duchess single-handedly propelled it.

Part 3: Draft Mode

Dagger Duchess has ruined draft mode in its entirety because if you don't have Dagger Duchess, you're fucked.

Part of the fun of the Draft challenge was the inherit randomness that comes with Draft mode, there are no meta decks, braindead cycle decks, Firecrackers, Lavaloon and even terrible cards such as Rascals get to shine because of the inherit randomness which was present when playing Draft mode.

That was until Dagger Duchess which eliminated the fairness and skill which came with playing draft mode and being forced to adapt to unorthodox decks.

As stated in Part 2, the Dagger Duchess single-handedly propelled Giant and other high HP Win Conditions because they happen to counter her.

The problem with Draft challenges is that chances are, you won't get any high HP win conditions and since you can no longer counter-push, you are immediately at a disadvantage which cannot be played around.

This is one of the fatal flaws of Dagger Duchess being overpowered, it cannot be played around whatsoever and this leaves you in a terrible position in Draft Mode.

Evo Bomber is stupid and cheap for example, but can be done in by a barbarian barrel, Firecracker is annoying but can be erased from the battlefield with arrows and the barbarian barrel.

Mega Knight is a hated card, but can be countered with a Knight or Valkyrie in the middle, or kited with an Ice Golem.

Dagger Duchess is a tower troop which cannot be countered and remains the entire match and it can't be erased from a match like arrows would to a firecracker.

Sure, you can theoretically place an Ice Golem to have the Dagger Duchess waste her daggers... but this merely leaves you predictable and a good player will punish that.

But with Draft game mode, there is a chance you don't get any tanks which means you have to overcommit to offense which in turn, gets punished and counter-pushed by the defense.

Conclusion:

The conclusion is that Dagger Duchess is terrible for a game which relies solely on short-time interactions and has caused numerous problems simply by existing... and I tried to like the Dagger Duchess because she has an interesting design, a fun personality and in theory was an interesting concept.

But that can only get you so far and the Dagger Duchess simply has too much power over a single match to make the game fun.