EVERY TIME I SEE THIS BIG BLACK FAT KNIGHT I JUST LEAVE, I DON'T CARE OFF LOOSING SOME STUPID TROPHY

I love how mega knight was made to be a counter to the elite barbarians, yet as time went on, people just made decks that combined both atrocities to ruin the entire game. I still see it to this day

As a megaknight, I can confirm I am literally ruinng the game with joy

It would be funny if they added an interaction where if two MKs jumped at each-other, they would just chest bump and proceed to ignore each-other from that point on. Wouldn’t do much just aside from being a tad goofy to see

One thing he doesn't mention: Decks designed to counter Mega Knight. I remember back when it was added, 6-7 out of 10 games, you either faced the MK, or faced a counter MK deck. Frustrating times.

Overeleveling makes cards like Witch, Wizard, Mega Knight so hated. SC could have level-capped card levels to King Level since 2016, but that goes against their monetization policy.

I still remember beating the 12 win challenge to unlock the megaknight and my friends were crazy about it ... Getting a legendary doesn't feel the same anymore

My perfectly crafted push when my opponent plays Mega Knight for the first time with 40 seconds left:

My problem was always how Mega Knight contradicts the rock paper scissors of the game. AoE beats swarm, which beats tank killer, where the last two beat tanks, where the last two beat AoE. Mega Knight is both a tank AND AoE, meaning they can place an Inferno Dragon or Prince to cover the Mega Knight's tank killer weakness

Thank you Inferno Tower, if wasn't for you, this mid ladder menace would still haunt me

As someone who constantly plays 2v2, I always see many megaknight teammates sitting on full elixir to wait for an opponent card so they can use the megaknight spawn. So not only megaknight is an annoying card to face but also it encourages bad play for players who rely on it. That's my biggest gripe.

I agree that MK is probably perfectly fine to bad in a vacuum. In any testing or high ladder environment, he will seem fine because his mechanics are relatively easy to counter. Unfortunately, and the thing I think you underestimated in your analysis, most ladder players do not play under ideal circumstances and MK is probably one of, if not the best card when it comes to exploiting suboptimal circumstances. Lag, device faults (like placing a unit one tile off) are far more prevalent in mid ladder and MK, especially due to the huge difference between him jumping and walking to a target, punishes the "mistakes" that are outside of your control harder than almost any other card. So while he is simple to counter with good timing and placement, the margin for error with him is so small that his power on attack varies wildly with the circumstances that you play under. For example, a hog rider comes in and you place your barbarians on him, but they are delayed by 0.5 seconds or placed in a slightly wrong tile. The hog rider might get 1 or 2 more swings than he should. If you place your barbs on a MK, those 0.5 seconds or that 1 tile off is suddenly the difference between him being fully countered and him killing them all and taking half your tower.

I as a low level player encounter really often opponents with Megaknghts at lvl 15. For me it's like a Pekka that does splash damage, can jump, has spawn damage AND has the healthpoints of a Golem. It's ridiculous in the river race. I have to always use an Infernodragon, Infernotower AND Sparky.

I think a huge issue why MK is considered overpowered is that, even though it can be easy to counter him in defense, the countering process relies heavily on the princess towers. Yes, you could theoretically play any mini-tank in your half and melt the MK for 2-4 elixir, but that is where the pay to win factor plays it's role. The big issue is that most players in midladder have way higher card levels than tower levels. If the MK is level 14, but your princess towers are level 11, you can play as many tanks as you want, it might take the entire 6 minutes of the match to get the MK killed. In itself, the MK really is balanced. Maybe not in low-midladder, but as soon as the players start gaining game sense, it's fairly easy to deal with it in theory. The big issue, as always with Supercell, is the pay to win

I hover in the 5700 trophy range, and Mega Knight used to be an absolute menace in this range. It's faded a bit recently, but a few months ago there were days at a time I would go without facing a single deck that didn't have a Mega Knight. It was horrendous.

A mega knight jumping your tower feels just as bad as it did 6 years ago

I remember back when it was added, in order to win, you either had a deck designed to counter it, or you had Mega Knight in your deck.

Mega knight isn't hated because it has no counter...it's hated cause it counters like 50 cards and promotes chipping with another troop and just defending with mega knight. You know what's infuriating, not being to play like 100 decks because a single commonly used card completely counters them... hog rider is busted overpowered, but at least it doesn't directly counter 50 cards☠️

I think the biggest reason it's so hated is because of how easy it can counter. I remember before this card, there were a bunch of different strategies to win (mostly ground level) such as xbow, hog rider, etc. Then this card came and basically made 90% of those methods worthless. Everyone had to switch gears because of this card. MK was really impactful in the competive scene, but in a *really* bad way.

Megaknight is the sole reason I have an inferno tower in my deck.

Mega Knight I think has such a cool design. I remember when he came out, you literally couldn’t go a game without seeing him.

megaknight is the ultimate crutch card easy to use and gives great results on defense, pretty naff on offense, and not all that viable in high level play

Could you do a video about the differences between midladder and competitive play? I'm curious how the same cards can be viewed so differently.

I haven't played clash royale in a while now, but I've never had problems with the mega knight, I however have seen a lot of people struggle to play against him. I'll give a little guide, I'm not pro don't get me wrong, but I hit leagues at level 8 so I'm alright at the game. I'll start with attacking against a mega knight player as I think that is what most people struggle with, the key is to change your playstyle once you see that your opponent is using mega knight. You need to make sure to not attack with big grouped up ground based pushes, you need to be splitting your pushes into smaller cheaper more often rushes, attacking both bridges can also be quite strong against mega knight players as the player has to either choose a bridge to drop 7 elixir on which makes them majorly vulnerable on the other side, or they have to try to kite your two pushes into the middle, which at the midranks, can easily be done wrong and result in a tower going down. I cannot stress this enough though, stop giving the mega knight value. I see a lot of mid rank players sending the same push multiple times, despite the mega knight simply countering. On the other end of the arena, you need to be able to kill it as well, the general kill mega knight strategy is to distract it with something high health like an ice golem and then kill it with something high damage like bats. Another strategy is a very simple pekka, inferno tower or inferno dragon. Also a great counter to the mega knight is to distract the mega knight with the tank of your counter push, such as placing a golem to distract the mega knight with something high damaging to kill the mega knight, which then turns into it's own push. You have to be careful with this though, if they have a spell that can kill your backup, the golem will just kite the mega knight back, giving the opponent time to cycle back to another megaknight, then you have to deal with two. I hope this helps some people.

I joined Clash Royale about early september, and I've since gotten to 5k ladder rating without spending a cent. I've literally had to make entire decks around how to counter that single card. I used to like Witch because of the handy stall that the skeletons provide - same reason I liked tombstone, actually. That all changed when I got into the arena that had mega knight. Mega Knight singlehandedly changes the nature of the game in such a way that I'm not exactly happy with; I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that at the point in the game where you unlock it, it's unbeatable. It's fine later on; you finally unlock cards that counter it and start to appreciate other cards that you'd had before. But there was a good 2-3k rating there where I just knew that every time I saw that card, I'd lose. Edit: the 'card that counters it' is literally just Little Prince lol.

I've always felt that Mega Knight is the most powerful over-leveled card in the game. 1 level difference greatly affects how much elixir you need to spend in most interactions to deal with this card.

I’ll never forget when the Mega Knight was *the* hard counter to the Elite Barbarians. He was *very crucial* in my eyes in the events of stopping them. Not anymore.

I remember using Mega knight during it's first release and all the way until fisherman was added and I have to say he was good before and I really didn't see an increase in effectiveness. I was consistently top 50K and in master rank those seasons with a deck consisting of Mega Knight, Barbarians, Balloon, Rage, Skeleton Army, Freeze, Electro wizard, and Wizard I never even knew he was considered broken💀

Been playing off and on from high school, to now. I am playing now in ladder arena 18 and still using mega knight, balloon, witch and lumberjack at max 14 level. lambast me all you want but i just honestly love playing him, ive learned every way to counter him showing up against me even im not running him by using bats, inferno tower surrounding him with my own barbarians hell gunning him down with musketeer or wizard if i have space and he's low. The one change i would like to see is a change to the lava hound, maybe drop him to 6 ex and give him less overall health but more speed because hes a dps check if your opponent has range or not. He's a little uninteresting to see pop out.

This card was literally the reason I quit the game back when it was released. I was f2p so I would constantly play against legendary cards I didn't have and cards that are way higher leveled than mine with occasional delays when deploying cards (so the game was already mildy frustrating to play) but the Mega Knight was the last straw because it just felt impossible to counter with my lower leveled cards and with it's stupidly overloaded kit and stats.

The problem comes from the mega knight usually always being insanely high leveled. Of course there are good counters, such as a knight for example, but if the knight is slightly underleveled then you have to aid it with additional elixer which can often be the losing factor

Distract everyone with an insane goblin giant buff, you’re better at predicting the future than the simpsons

I think the main problem with this card in mid-ladder is that being a ground splash tank, it really restricts the kind of decks you can play. I for example was a cycle player(I quit in 2021) and cycle decks' game plan is to maximize the value of lower elixir cards by kiting and using specific placements to stall for the princess tower to do enough damage to defend and therefore hope to have gained a positive elixir trade and get to counter. More often than not the MK will be higher level than my king tower and most of my card, which means my troops will die a lot easier and my princess towers simply don't do enough damage to counter it due to it being underleveled. This makes it extremely frustrating since I know I could have countered it if not for it's level. The nature of MK being a ground splash tank makes trying to defend against it really hard for cycle decks since most of those deck don't really use MK counters but rather rely on stalling/kiting and princess tower damage, which are unreliable while underleveled. So if I wanted to win against these overleveled MK decks the simplest answer would either be to join them or play decks containing cards that are able to specifically counter it even if underleveled which made the game unfun for me so I quit.

Mega knight is balanced, but only in a state when you’re equally levelled with it, my alt is currently at 5500 and nearly 90% of games I play on there contain an obnoxiously overleveled mega knight who just spawns on your push, killing all your cards due to its high level, then pair it with something like zap to counter inferno tower and it becomes an absolute nuisance to defend, requiring much more than 7 elixir to defend without taking much damage

Gratz: *tries to explain why mega knight is actually balanced and only a problem in mid latter* Also Gratz: *shows a clip of a mega knight countering a mosqueter, barberian, mage, frost mage, eletric mage, witch and 2 skeletons all at once, a 24 elixir push, by himself and still getting out alive multiple times in the video*

Mega Knight is my main card in my deck, I use it the least out of every card in my deck but it brings it all together. I use it defensively mainly and if my main strategy to hit tower works I may not use it at all. It’s definitely a cheese card but I personally love the versatility. My whole strategy is to sit around 6-7 elixir as much as possible so I can use MK to push/counter. Mega Knight, Bats, Witch, Skeleton Barrel, Zap, Skeleton Horde, Lumberjack and Flame Spirit is my deck

From my experience: I started playing in 2016, in march 2017 I had to go in a foster home where i couldn't use phones and similar, in 2020 I started playing again and the game was so different from what I remembered it like, I immediately noticed how strong MK is and i had no choice but to use it myself, my deck is a literal cancer but I just adapted to the new game

The only thing that bothers me about the MK is it’s Mid-Ladder career (and it usually is 2-3 levels above your entire card collection)

In my experience there’s a few things that make a card attractive to people that aren’t very good at the game (high health, splash damage, and instantaneous damage/ high one shot ability) Look at things that are objectively not very good but remain popular on ladder and you’ll find one or more of those things in basically all of them. Valk is a high health splasher with a basically instant first attack, E barbs are relatively high health and often can one or two shot things, wizard is a high damaging splasher, etc… mega knight is a very high health splasher with a lot of instant damage so it checks all the boxes. I think it will always see use because of that. And just because splash cards and cards with a lot of health make defense very easy.

the only 2 bad things about MK, are the easy accesibility and many ways to level up in mid ladder, like, I'm actually at 6k and many people has MK at level 14, but the rest of the deck at 12 or even 11, and the spawn damage is also a bit annoying, cuz if the MK level is higher than some of your cards, many of them can't reach the tower or even kill a troop behind the MK, also, it has good synergy with hogrider and bandit, I used to use MK, Bandit and Hogrider combo and I swear it's annoying asf, in mid ladder you find, that, MID LADDER PEOPLE, usually u can't get with people who can easily defend MK, like I used to defend MK with Bandit or even I think u used to with goblin gang, but with the 1.1 to 0.9 jump time change some of that easy defenses were gone, and many people just play it from nowhere cuz in many decks simply there's no strategy behind using the MK, it's a balanced card and it's ok, I just think they need to revert the jump time to 1.1, the card isn't unbalanced, the fact that you can easily level up it it's annoying

Wow This brings back memories This game was a different game in those days I got Megaknight from the challenge, i stopped playing for a couple years and started playing it again recently This guy is right about the old CR, it was a different time

Even till this day the card is very annoying. You either have to carry high dps troop/building, or use many cycle cards to counter it, which puts you at a negative elixir trade

"Never underestimate the community's influence" hasn't aged so well 😬

This card was one of the main reasons why i stopped the game entirely. Because i just hated facing it in almost every single ladder game over and over and having to build my deck around specifically being able to counter the MK because of it just being omnipresent back when i still played making it just very unfun as either i choose to have counters for the MK and have no counters for other threats, or i dont have specific MK counters and just struggle to deal with it. It took me almost a month of constantly losing to MK until i would even find viable ways of countering it that dont just make me instantly lose to other cards. And that really killed the fun and joy of the game for me. Because at least on ladder which is what i primarily play, MK became like the only thing you face. I dont know how it is now as i dont play CR anymore. But that was my experince a few years ago back when it was still new and i had to fight it as a casual ladder player. And it still is my most hated card even now

The way I see it is whenever someone says “bro he’s not that bad just use X” but I think they forget a big part of the reason he’s a “mid ladder menace” is because we don’t even have half the cards the top ladder players do unless they already hit the top arenas. It’s best counter early is inferno tower but it isnt like that doesn’t have a dozen ways to reset or distract it’s not. Perfect response like a troop might be

It's not about mega knight being too strong. It's his rock paper scissors nature. you can either counter him with 4 elexir, or you can't. Certain decks are a free win, others are a free loss, because you don't have a mini tank.

I’ve played Clash Royale on and off since launch, and dealing with overleveled Mega Knights was literally impossible. Because I stopped playing consistently, my cards are still all underleveled, but it was more egregious back then. I would face level 12/13 Mega Knights with level 10 cards, and it was just impossible to win those matchups. Especially when the entire opponent’s deck is two-three levels higher than mine.

that challenge in 2017 made me cry. i was very young and i wasnt good at the game, however, i managed to get to 11 wins. ended up losing 11-3 and i had not enough gems to replay. i was so angry because it was a hard challenge and i still managed 11

Returned to Clash after a break and got the knight and added it to my deck - worked out well.

The biggest problem with this card is that it just countered pretty much every card in the game in one way or another. Even if the win rates were balanced, everyone hated it because it took the fun out of the game.

I think the bigger reason why Mega Knight is so good in mid ladder is because he destroys the unorganized non-meta decks mid ladder players generally use.

3:25 bandit megaknight backshots is wild 💀

I played CR when it rolled out until 2019 . Just played it again in late 2023. This video bought back my memories

The thing is that it can easily be defended IF you have a counter. But there are a lot of cards that don't counter it. Most of the time you are caught off guard, that's what makes it so strong

My biggest problem with MK is not how strong it is, it's fairly balanced in the competitive scene and barely gets use in there as well, but it's the reliance of so much ladder climbers to the guy. MK's problem isn't how strong or annoying it is, it's how much people in the ladder have to rely on the fact that their enemy has or doesn't have an MK to win.

man i love you so much, might be a bit too drunk, but anyways, your vids are great

Lol I remember those pre released tournaments back in the day. I won the Mega Knight, Night Witch and Royale Ghost before they dropped. Good times. Took a few years off CR but I'm back

The Mega Knight ended an era where you didn’t have to change your deck past arena 3. Strategies were a lot more diverse, the game was a lot more fun because you never knew what type of deck you were going to get.

The biggest problem is the overleveling of the card. Its why top ladder dont see the terror. Facing a level 13 mega knight when you have a single lv 12 in your library makes so many of the interactions a nightmare. This combined with e wiz made any counter but mega knight pretty much pointless since why wouldnt you spaen a pekka with fireball dmg to defend

Well see you said it yourself, it’s very difficult for a midladder player to really switch decks because they’re so invested, so if someone has a level 13 witch and they have MK it’s basically over because of how much damage he used to do on landing. Yes it affects a number of people, but it helps so much more that it just makes sense. Yeah it sucks for top ladder players who like him, but those people have the luxury of just switching decks

sooooooo, nerf miner?

The problem with mega knight that I hate so much is if you misplay your elixir a little bit or if you use your counters before knowing they have it then it’s almost impossible to mitigate massive amounts of damage on your tower. That’s why I hate it.

the thing is that I hate it because it's in 90 percent of the decks I run into, which forces me to to build a deck to counter it or it forces me to completely stop attacking and out everything into defending against it which always makes the games go into over time and one of them always manages to slip by and jumping onto my tower killing it

Love the osrs music in the back 😍

I’ve a day 1er. Idk if it’s my luck or sheer spite for the MK, but I’ve collected every card but him. Feeling blessed

Back when the card was still fairly new, I found out that I've been facing him so much to the point where I built a deck to SIMPLY COUNTERING THIS ONE SPECIFIC CARD. It ended up being super effective in the long run, I managed to climbed out of mid-ladder itself just because of my deck is made specifically for beating mega knight alone with nothing else in mind.

My problem with megaknight is that it has a low skill ceiling, it just felt like i played better than my rival yet still lost

As a mega knight user I don't use it as a win condition I use it defensively when a massive push of strong or weak cards occur like it was meant for

i remember getting this card when it came out and it springing me to the higher leagues when i wasn't good enough to. it speaks for itself

I actually love your effort you put in the videos. Searching their history, speech, editing, just perfect. Keep it up sir!

Have you ever thought about making a video about when Supercell completely reworked card placements in arenas? I remember when certain cards were in lower arenas like mirror. Now it's on arena 15.

I just came back to clash royale two days ago i was playing before the mega night existed and from the first encounter i saw that this card is just overpowered , that's why am already searching about it😂

I remember being super frustrated with the card back a few years ago. The spawn damage is just such an irritating thing to deal with because you could have tons of cards going for a push on your opponent and then that single card would completely reverse the situation in a way that hadn’t really been the case previously they would wipe that push and then also get a very tanky card on the field for their own push. It encouraged a lot more poking with low commitment stuff. It wasn’t broken but personally if adding a card makes a significant chunk of the player base not like the game as much and get frustrated I would rather it be nerfed or heavily reworked than make a more toxic environment

Your history of card videos are very entertaining to watch, because of the amount of effort and dedication you put into them. It seems like you spend days or maybe weeks just researching all the facts and writing your script for these videos. Just gotta give you a round of applause. Your hard work is paying off! You will have a million subscribers in no time, no question about it.

Brooo I remember when E Barbs came out, that was my jam lmao.

I was upset about the elixir cost at first but u just have to use that card enough times to figure out how it can work the best. My favorite thing to do with it is wait til the other teams witch spawns a bunch of skeletons and then take them all out at once lol.

I had to build an entirely new deck to progress on ladder because I went against mega knight every single game. After months of levelling a WHOLE DECK to level 14 I was finally able to break through. Now that I'm above 6k there aren't as many mega knights. He really is a ladder gatekeeper

i remember when the MK came out me and my younger brother were trying it out in a 1v1. The confusion was priceless when the MK survived the rocket that was thrown at it

Mega knight has alot of cards that counter it that's why most top ladder players just use bandit or mini pekka or pekka or even goblin gang

I remember back when MK came out, he was fun to play but not necessarily broken or too overused, mainly as you pointed out because it was WAY harder maxing out legendary cards back then, I mean hell it was a challenge to even get one to begin with. So around in late 2021 I came back to the game, having lost my previous account that was decently leveled up, I started fresh, many new cards, many new features, it was basically almost a new game to me. The meta plays were WAY more different and difficult to learn and play against, and then there was the MK, stupidly versatile as a solo card and even more ridiculous to face against when over leveled and supported by an over leveled wizard or a witch. It was a NIGHTMARE in every sense of the word to get to 4k trophies, then slowly I maxed out a few decks, climbed to about 6.5k and remained there due to the gap in skill level. It was definitely an experience having to go for about a year and a half without being able to do anything against a card that was found in roughly half the decks I played against, which were basically identical: Have MK in them, some anti-air support high damage card, cycle cards and a spell.

Truly doing gods work mate, Clash Royale video essay's were well needed, glad someone took the plunge to get it done.

conclusion: mega knight was just a mid ladder menace

The problem has always been that the card is oppressive when overlevelled. Back when my cards were level 9 and 10, a level 12 Mega Knight was virtually game over. As a FTP player, facing it sucked, even knowing how to counter it the interactions are just awful when it kills everything with a jump, when it wouldn't at the same level.

You should do a video on the miner! That card feels like it never falls out of the meta

I love this channel man, swear I’ve rewatched so many of your videos multiple times, the detail is amazing. And it’s such a laid back ride we get taken in time every episode to the OG days of Clash. Huge props to the research you must put in. Keep it up 👍

Mega knight basically changed the way how I begin a battle since if you start aggressive with costly cards and your opponent counters with mega knight then you better hope to have a tank killer and that the opponent doesn’t drop something else

Well, I am one of those people who play Mega Knight. It was my one of the first legendary cards. And I can confirm it is very OP. Especially when u have mirror. Imagine two Mega Knights together, that is like 2 non-stop fireballs.

The problem with the card is that there is no skill in it. When a card has insane stats and low skill, it becomes super easy to counter but super punishing if not able to counter. Its the same with E barbs, where it had high hp and high damage, speed etc, easy to counter if you have skeletons or smt but super punishing if left alone on your tower. Same for wizard as has a huge splash radius and high damage

From the day that card appeared in the game,I have never stopped wishing that it never existed

I love using MK. He makes the game so much better. Also love the Mother Witch

I need a video on the knight. I think its the best card in the game, being an amazing counter for literally anything, super solid, and 3 elixir cheap.

Basically he was easy to use, took very little skill to apply effectively. However it took more skill to beat him than it skill to use. Once you figured out his timing, how to abuse his jumps and learned a little more about the interactions... he was actually fairly easy to deal with. Obviously this is why in competitive play he wasn't used, cause he was never really THAT good. But when lower level players that don't want to learn how to get better, refuse to change decks or learn other ways of playing; a card like this gets abused

these vids are incredibly unique, and even nostalgic. i broke an ipad over how broken some cards were, and and looking back…it takes me back to a simpler time when my biggest fear in life was ebarbs zap. great video.

Imma be honest, Prince was my first epic and i haven't taken it off since. If you use prince, dark prince, and mega knight, you can have 2 copies on the field off each during overtime which if you can pull off is almost always an instant win

The thing ive learned with mega knight is that if you cant beat it join it

As someone at 6000 with a level 13 mega knight seemed perfect the issue is over levelling It’s unfortunate that he’s getting the porygon treatment and being scapegoated for what is essentially a pay to win issue

The only frustrating part for me with mega knight is not the spawn damage but the jump.

i remember seeing its reveal trailer and immediately thinking "Wow thats op" and then i didn't ever think about it again

I use archers, giant, knight, barbarians, musketeer, fireball and rage spell. Never needed anything else. Been playing since the game came out lol. I hated when they nerfed rage spell though, it hasn’t been the same. But it does help me be more flexible since rage spell does damage now

This was a great video. I would love to see more like this on the Ice wizard, golem, and elites tho. The first two have always felt really underpowered while the latter feels broken. Again, great video