Clash Meta Breakdown - August 6th, 2025
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With the initial week past and the leaderboards shaping out with 2 players already reaching the heights of Omnipotent, Clash’s metagame is off to a powerful start. While most of what we’ve seen on the ladder so far has been reminiscent of whispers of the physical metagame prior to the July 29th Tartarus Update, a few decks have stormed forward, whether by meta shifts from said changes or from card pool gaps, to be go-to strategies in this newly evolved landscape. This is going to be an overview of what decks the top players are currently using to climb the leaderboards and how you can best take these decks and apply them to your own gameplay. With that said, lets dive in.
JacKyomu - Drakking 5s
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Ending the first week at the top of the leaderboards is no small feat, especially with the caliber of player that aimed for the coveted top spot throughout this first week. JacKyomu claimed that spot atop Omnipotent this week, doing his early grind with Pig Terror before swapping to this Drakking 5s list later on. The deck aims to take the standard 5s gameplan of efficient trades and combine it with the Foamee Schnark line, acting as a floater similar to that of Hydrake that ends on Drakking, which if able to get an attack in can snowball a game completely out of control, but also with the option to toolbox into one of the Whales for a wall or even Eddy for extra offense / defense. Very notably he also opted to play Cryoblast in the main here, which has come up more and more with the majority of the meta on floaters of some kind.
Ari - Pig Terror
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Leave it to the master of Penterror to climb with Penterror. Ari’s Pig Terror list is very much reminiscent of 5s decks that we saw prior to the July 29th changes but notably has a fall back plan of the all powerful Penterror, which alone causes fear in the hearts and minds of the unprepared, able to whittle the opponent’s resources down through a constant war of attrition between all of the 5s that have been good for a long time now. From the Base Set staples of Vysceris, Soarlet and Astrabbit to the Firestorm newcomers of Galaxea Champ and Soarlet / Chrysoar Champ, you won’t be at a loss for guys in the deck barring a bad opening hand keep. Choose your trades wisely, play for efficiency above all else, and you’ll go far here.
Ari - Fire Artifact
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
For those familiar with Fire Artifact at this point, this list should be nothing that you haven’t seen before. We’re playing all the good Fire Elestrals (Necruff, Kindleo, Lavalith, and Volcaries Champ), the searcher for the Fire guys in Smoltuga, and stacking the rest of the guy line up with the expected 5s. A trend that I’ve seen more and more in more-dedicated strategies is the dropping in counts, or in this case entirely, of Poison Tipped Arrow in favor of more specialized backrow, in this case Altar and Argo. Argo specifically here does an incredible job alongside Volcaries Champ, allowing you to pay 2 fire to use it, then re-use those 2 fire from the underworld to cast out the Necklace you no doubt chose to stick off of it. Fire Artifact is all about knowing your little interaction points and how best to pull value from them, so don’t be afraid to lose a little with this deck at first while you’re learning its ins and outs.
WinTheCent - Krakatuga
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
The king of Best-of-1s returns! For those unaware, WinTheCent was a massive player back in the early days of Elestrals, back when tournaments ran Best-of-1 in the Swiss Rounds, going undefeated on multiple occasions though swiss. Well now he’s back, and he’s dominating the Clash ladder with his take on the burn king, Krakatuga. It aims to play all of the powerful 1-drop Waters we’ve come to expect from this current meta, but rather than going the route of Glauby Champ or Drakking, aims to drop Krakatuga onto the board to burn out the opponent in record time. Definitely check this one out if you’re looking for a change up in your deck choice.
RyBot - Stat Swap Heal Control
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
So notably this list is not from a player in the Top 25, but I still want make a mention of it. This is RyBot’s 2nd Place Stat Swap Heal Control list from the August 2nd Premiere, and it is fully legal in Clash. The utility provided by the various stat swapping Elestrals makes it so that no 1-drop is safe at any point of the game, with Galaxea Champ, OG Galaxea, and Plucky Champ all able to swap stats on a dime. On top of this, Argo now also poses a Stat Swap threat, as with access to Lyre of Apollo on a dime, no Elestral is safe. It also has the added benefit of running Helialith natively, which is one of the few reliable outs to Towers Elestrals in addition to just being a fantastic board breaker.
I would also be recommending Perky’s 1st Place Nyximera Kyrovyrn list, but sadly Kryoling to Kryovyrn is still bugged at the moment to force the destruction of your Kryovyrn on ascension, so until that’s fixed it’s simply not playable
Conclusions
Overall we’re seeing a very value driven combat oriented meta game arise from the changes and card pool, which is very in line with what we’ve seen previously from the banlist adjustments. Whether or not these will hold remains to be seen, but for now its safe to assume we’ll be remaining in a 5s meta for at least the next week or so until we receive our next card pool wave / bug fixes. Hopefully my boy Kryoling will be playable by then.
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