How Graveyard Ruined Competitive Clash Royale

In Clash Royale, there are a lot of skeleton related cards. They're your standard throwaway unit that usually won't do much on their own, but can be very threatening as a group. In 2016, you already had the skeleton, skeleton army, witch, and tombstone. So, it was a bit of a surprise to see that we would get another skeleton-based card. Graveyard would be a five elixir spell added in October 2016, which would essentially spawn skeletons. Why did we need yet another skeleton spawner? We already had two. Well, the other skeleton spawners were a troop and a building. And graveyard would be a spell, meaning it had some unique attributes, like being able to be placed anywhere in the arena. It was five elixir, putting it on the pricier side. And it was legendary, meaning Supercell saw this as a very special card. It may just be another skeleton spawner at its core, but in reality, it introduced a whole new play style with a fresh new mechanic. So fresh, in fact, that it actually broke one of the established norms of Clash Royale. This card is somehow simultaneously considered one of the higher skill cards to play. while also being luck based. There is a lot to go over, so today we're going to go over the entire history of the Graveyard, the decks it's thrived in, all the balance changes it's received, and talk about why it's fundamentally broken. This card was released on October 28th, 2016 as the second and final legendary spell. But what made this card legendary? The Goblin Barrel was already technically a spell that spawned units, so that was nothing new. Unlike the Goblin Barrel, the units it spawned were staggered, so you couldn't just wipe them all out immediately. This meant when countering a splash unit, it would be much more effective than something like a skeleton army. However, this was a big negative as well because this meant you had to wait a while before getting the maximum benefit of the card. If you wanted some quick damage, graveyard was certainly not the go-to. You would almost never ever want to use this card on defense. Just for some perspective, not only were you waiting for your units longer, but when comparing it to something like a skeleton army, the number of units you were getting wasn't good either. A skeleton army gave you 16 units for three elixir, but a graveyard gave you 17 skeletons for five elixir. Just one more skeleton for two additional elixir. It didn't seem great, but this card was never designed or meant for defense.