Clash Royale The Board Game - A Journey

How It Started

First things first, I love Clash Royale. I've been playing the app almost since launch. The game
has had its ups and downs over the years, but I've stuck with it. Another love of mine is
woodworking. A year ago, I thought of transforming Clash Royale into a board game. I thought
this was a unique idea, but I soon found other renditions. Unlike others, I wanted to create the
board game completely out of wood, and so I did. About six months ago, I began the project.
Little did I know how long it would actually take to complete it.

After one month of working 5-6 hours a day on it, I made a functional board game. It was
complete enough to play, but not near completely finished. I joined Reddit and posted a
progress post to share what I had done so far. This post can be found at the following link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClashRoyale/comments/7v5ay2/in_progress_clash_royale_board_gam
e/?st=jjrt8mxy&sh=995ebda8

I took a break at this point, first because college was starting again and second because I just
needed a break from it. It was put on hold.

This summer, I picked it back up and kept going. I knew I had to finish what I started. It took
me another two months to fully finish the board game, working on it here and there when I
had the time. In total, I estimate I spent 300 hours. A lot of time, but I had fun doing it.

I am making this document to share with you the journey of this project. I hope you find this
interesting to read.

How I Made It

As stated earlier, I made the board game completely out of wood, baltic birch to be exact. This
type of wood is pretty strong and isn't very expensive. I mostly used a jig saw to cut the wood,
then sanded the wood. I painted the wood with acrylic paint, and I finished everything with a
semi-gloss varnish. Every piece has some wood showing, mostly underneath them to keep the
true essence of the wood alive.

I'll touch on a few key parts of the project - how I made them and challenges I encountered.
The Board

I decided to make the board as much like the Legendary Arena. There are differences between
mine and the app, but generally it's the same. I first had to get the measurements correct and
to scale. Then I cut out the wood.

To make slots for the towers, I cut one board out as the bottom, then with a second board I cut
holes where the towers would be placed. I glued the latter on top of the former, thereby
making slots. I used this strategy for other items such as the battle deck and info card holders.

I marked out in pencil each place to paint, then I used the acrylic paint to fill the spots in. Some
areas I painted freehand. For straight lines such as the golden border, I used painters tape.
While painting is usually done with a brush, my most used tool for painting was my trusty
paper clip. Yes, a paper clip. I probably used this in 75% of the project’s painting. I filled in
smaller sections with this tool and did touch up painting with it.

I won't go into all the details of the board, but I want to talk about the most difficult part - the
spaces. Hokey smokes people, there are a lot of spaces in this game and a lot of different
shades of grey. There are 10 or so shades, so I had to mix colors to get the shades I wanted.
The problem with mixing paint is once you get a color you like, you can never get it back if the
paint runs out or dries. It took me several tries to get the shading to be dark in the back and
progressively get lighter near the middle, all while matching the actual colors in the app. I also
had to match everything on the opposite side. Overall, the board was the most time
consuming, but I think it's the most beautiful part of the board game.

The Cards

The cards were quite easy to recreate. I printed off images of each card the size of the wood. I
traced the image in pencil on the back side, flipped the image over on to the wood, then used
a plastic card to press the lead on to the wood. This process is easier shown than told, but it’s
very efficient. I touched up the transfer and then painted. For all the cards, I used my trusty
paper clip.

I glued the elixir pieces in each card’s corner. The problem is that now the cards don’t stack on
top of each other as easily. I knew this would happen, but it was the simpler thing to do and I
didn’t mind a slanted pile of cards. I do wish I had cut out some of the card and glued the elixir
pieces here to make them flush with the rest of the card, therefore making them more easily
stackable. I can always undo my current work and make this change if I ever want to.
The Units

The units were a bit more difficult than the cards. I measured out the size of each unit on the
wood, making them as much to scale as possible from what I saw on the app.

I wanted the units to be looking forward, and, if not, as much forward as possible. This was
hard because there aren't clear images of this. I had to screenshot gameplay in the app of units
facing forward, zoom in, then pencil the outlines onto the wood pieces. I also looked up other
images online to get other ideas. Following that, I painted, again with the paper clip.

The Chips

For all the circular chip pieces, I cut wooden dowels of various sizes. I painted and varnished
these as usual.

The struggle with this is there were so many chips to cut and paint, specifically for the hitpoint
ones. Actually, I made double of what I needed for these. Initially I had the towers’ and units’
health twice as much as it currently stands. Therefore, I needed a lot of hitpoint chips. Then I
balanced the stats after play testing the game, and I decided it was best to cut the health in
half for everything. But hey, I'll still keep them all since they're already made.

The Rules

The rules weren't so much physical work, but they did require thought and time to make them
work fluently for the board game. It was difficult to make the rules similar to the app while still
making the game simple enough to easily play. Because of this, there are some odd rules, such
as ground troops not being able to be pass underneath air troops. Yes, it makes sense for them
to, but it's a lot easier to remember that no troops can pass each other except by going around
it. I tested the rules out a few times and finally decided it was good enough.

The #1 problem with the game right now is that there isn't a variety of units. Each player
basically has the same deck. In the app, the mirror challenge made it so you and your
opponent had the same deck. This game mode was usually a standstill at the bridge. Well, the
same holds true to my board game. The units are balanced, it's more so that I need to make
different types of units to create diverse unit interactions. I estimate it to take 12-15 hours to
make one set of new units, which includes the 2+ units themselves, the 2 cards, and the 2 unit
info cards.
There are two Reddit posts I saw, both of which gave me inspiration and ideas for my rules,
specifically with various dice for movement speed, movement qualities, and adding special
abilities. Credit here goes to u/Annoyingpoisonuser, u/iStinkley, and u/-C-Dub-.

Wrapping It Up

In all, I loved making this board game. I'm glad it's all finished. However, there is always more
work to do on it. Next time I pick up this project, I'll be making princesses and kings to set on
the towers. Then I'll start making more units (and spells!). But, for now, I thank you for your
time in reading this and appreciating the work that has been done here.

See you in the board game arena,

FlipThePancakes