Executioner

Executioner throws a wide, boomerang-style axe that pierces every enemy in its path both going out and coming back, letting one throw hit several enemies twice over. His Evolution adds a short-range "Axe Smash" that deals bonus damage and knocks enemies back when they get in close.

• At level 11, Executioner has 1,280 hitpoints and swings his axe for 168 damage on every strike. He costs 5 Elixir, moves at Medium speed, and takes 1 second to deploy. Because the same axe can hit one target on both the outward throw and the return flight, an enemy that never leaves its path can take a full 336 damage from a single throw. The full throw-and-return cycle takes 2.4 seconds (0.9s for the axe to fly out, 1.5s to boomerang back before he can throw again), so his sustained output against a target that eats both hits every time works out to 140 damage per second overall — not the roughly 187 you'd get from just dividing 168 by the 0.9s outbound time alone.

• Executioner's axe is a wide projectile, about 2 tiles across, so it hits every enemy standing in its path rather than just one — both when it flies out and when it boomerangs back — which makes him unusually good at wiping out grouped swarms like Skeleton Army or Minion Horde in a single throw. He targets both air and ground troops. The axe itself can travel out to 7 tiles, farther than the 4.5-tile range needed to trigger the throw in the first place, so it can reach and strike enemies well past whatever first caught his attention.

• EvolutionThe Evolved Executioner gains an ability called Axe Smash. Whenever the axe connects with an enemy within 2.5 tiles of him, that hit deals extra damage — 240 instead of the usual 168 — and knocks the enemy back roughly 2 tiles, and the bonus applies on both the outgoing throw and the return flight. This evolution only needs to be played once before it recharges and is ready to use again, making it quicker to keep active through a match than most evolutions.

• In July 2026, Supercell scaled back the Evolved Executioner's close-quarters bonus specifically so it could no longer out-range Dragons, calling the ability too strong at long engagement distances. The update cut the close-range bonus damage from 268 to 240 (-10%) at tournament level and pulled in the trigger distance from 3.5 to 2.5 tiles, turning the evolution into more of a dedicated close-range punish.

• In August 2026, Supercell trimmed how far Executioner's axe can fly out before boomeranging back, cutting its maximum throw distance by about 7%. The change specifically targeted a quirk where the axe could unexpectedly clip enemy Crown Towers from behind the bridge, letting Executioner chip tower health from angles it wasn't meant to reach.

• Executioner is an Epic troop that has been part of Clash Royale since 27 January 2017, making him one of the longer-running cards in the game.

• EvolutionThe Evolved Executioner form is much newer than the base card, arriving in April 2025 as part of that season's Pass Royale — roughly eight years after Executioner's original 2017 release.