My journey to legendary with a deck no one else plays

TLDR: The deck I made legendary with:

Arena 9, 3024

Just made legendary yesterday with a deck no one else plays. I’m a F2P player - I started playing on US release and only upgrade the cards I use and rarely change them. All but 10 of my cards are lvl5/3/1 or below. Starting in Arena 4 or 5 I pushed through to Arena 8 (pre-Frozen), about 2200ish with this deck:

Royal Arena (pre-frozen), 2200ish

I played this deck because I decided I would only upgrade the cards in my deck and at it becomes cost prohibitive to catch the other cards up. It was my deck, like it or not.

Royal Arena (pre-frozen), 2714

• All in one week I bumped to lvl8 King, lvl6 mini-pekka, lvl9 barbs, and lvl7 rocket, and immediately shot up to 2714.

Stuck on the Royal/Frozen border

• But then trophies reset, Royal Giant got its range fix and buff, and I just couldn’t cope with it and hog. Hog has always been a problem. I dropped down to around 2200ish and pretty much got stuck there, mostly in and out of Frozen Arena.
  

Back to high Frozen

• I needed something for royal and hog, so I went to the dark side and did something I thought I’d never do. I used a hated building. I swapped cannon in for spear gobs. It took me a little bit to get the hang of it, but eventually with a bump to lvl6 Mini-P, lvl7 arrows, lvl3 Baby drag, I got back into the 2500-2700 range, but even getting musketeer to lvl 7 (offset a bit by the last cannon nerf), I still couldn’t pass my previous high of 2714.
  

New trophy high

• So I traded out 21 skeletons for 3. Skeleton army, while great for containing multiple big troops, like giants and barbs, or double prince, is just too vulnerable to zap, which almost everyone runs, especially my biggest problem, hogs. Not only is that a big negative elixir swap, but it is so easy for the opponent to regen 2 elixir for zap to follow up their big troop push, and i’d take massive when prince or barbs were suddenly turned loose, or both ends of a miner and chip troops . Skeletons gave me better cycle to my other cards, more opportunity for crazy elixir positive swaps, and more predictable defense. Once I got the hang of skeletons and a bump to lvl9 crown tower, I found my self in the 2600ish-2800ish range pretty comfortably,

Lucky Legendary

• I thought I’d need at least a lvl8 rocket to have a shot at legendary. But yesterday, out of the blue, i had like a 6 game win streak that put me in the 2900s within reach of legendary, and with another 5 up and down games managed to push through. To be honest, I played a bunch of not very good players I think. The range of abilities in a trophy level really surprises me sometimes.
  

Deck comments

• Really, for the most part, if someone has a specialty deck they play well, and don't drop anything near towers, I can't beat them.

• I've never see anyone else play this deck, not even close. I think it's probably a pretty bad deck. There’s really almost no synergy, it has poor options for starting cards, it’s very vulnerable to air decks, and gives the opponent chances for crazy elixir swaps for almost every card that enters into opponent territory. It’s also has big probs with valks, royal giant, ice wizard, air based princess decks, and miner. Because it is all about defending into overwhelming counter punches, it’s very vulnerable to fireball and building decks and hog decks that force your troops down and then just clobber them as they head to the other side. Bomber just rips this deck apart. It’s pretty good against sparky decks (rocket), giant decks (cannon), spawner decks, and prince decks (because of elixir swap opportunities -I always love seeing princes on offense). It does much better when the opponent slaps down cards next to their towers. I don’t know why people do this. Actually I do, because I do it too. Not a lot of rockets out there, and it can actually be really bad for the rocket player to do a crown/troop combo early.

• Rocket is pretty tricky. Basically, if you mis-use rocket - miss the troop on troop/tower combo, or even get a favorable trade but at the wrong time - it’s fatal. You can’t make a mistake with rocket. I’ve seen people play zap really skillfully, i think it has a higher skill/creative cap, but you just can’t survive a mistake with rocket against a good player.

• The key to this deck is musketeer and rocket. Basically, you do anything you can to keep musketeer alive. Just keep throwing troops in front of it (smartly), and then rocket-combo tower/troop if you can (but not at the wrong time). Rocket/arrow finish is pretty devastating if you can get a tower low enough, but it has to be the finish. Getting musketeer to 7 is nice because most people don’t have a high enough fireball, and a protected musketeer can be deadly even with a sliver of health.