Minion Horde

Minion Horde is a 5-Elixir card that swarms the field with six flying Minions at once, each one able to shoot both ground and air targets from a short range. Individually every Minion is fragile, but together they open with a very fast first strike, letting the horde dump a huge burst of damage onto a single target almost the instant it lands — which is why it has remained a classic defensive answer to slow tanks since Clash Royale's earliest days. That same six-bodies-in-one design is also its biggest weakness: a well-timed small spell can wipe out several Minions, or the whole horde, for a fraction of its Elixir cost. An Evolution added in 2026 pushes back on that weakness by making each Minion briefly invincible and untargetable the moment it first takes damage, buying the swarm a window to survive hits it used to auto-lose to.

• Minion Horde costs 5 Elixir and deploys six flying Minions at once in a loose hexagon formation, each one able to shoot both air and ground targets from 2.5 tiles away. At tournament standard (level 11), every Minion carries 230 hitpoints and deals 107 damage per hit on a 1.2-second swing timer, for roughly 89 damage per second.

• Each Minion fires its first shot just 0.5 seconds after it locks onto a target — far quicker than its normal 1.2-second swing rate — so a freshly deployed horde unloads its opening volley almost instantly. That burst is a big reason the card has long been a favorite defensive answer to slow, high-value targets like Golem, Giant, and Lava Hound.

• The tradeoff for that burst damage is fragility: with the horde's hitpoints split across six separate bodies, a well-placed small spell such as Zap, The Log, Barbarian Barrel, or Giant Snowball can knock out several Minions — or the whole horde — in a single cast, instantly turning a 5-Elixir play into a full loss.

• Minion Horde is one of Clash Royale's original cards: it debuted in the game's first limited regional soft-launch on 4 January 2016 (iOS only, in a handful of countries including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), about two months before Clash Royale's worldwide release on 2 March 2016.

• Minions and Minion Horde used to be much shorter-ranged. An official balance update nearly doubled their attack range from 1.6 tiles to 2.5 tiles specifically because they were struggling against splash-damage troops and their projectile attacks weren't obvious to players — the wider range let them start trading hits with ranged enemies instead of dying before they could fire back.

• EvolutionReleased 6 April 2026, Minion Horde Evolution gives every Minion an ability called Horde Immunity — the first hit that doesn't outright kill a Minion instead makes just that Minion invincible and untargetable for 3 seconds, during which it also shrugs off status effects like Freeze.

• EvolutionWhile that invincibility is active, a Minion also moves and attacks more slowly. At launch that meant a steep 50% slower attack speed, but Supercell eased the penalty to 33% slower in an August 2026 balance update after finding the original slowdown too punishing for the card to be worth playing.

• EvolutionIt only takes one regular deployment to charge — play a normal Minion Horde once and the next copy drawn comes out already evolved, making it one of the cheaper Evolutions to keep active across a match.