The main objective of this research is to design an optimized 'coating system' that extends die life by minimizing premature die failure. The concept of the multilayer coating system with desired combinations of different kinds of single-layer coatings was introduced. A pulsed closed field unbalanced magnetron sputtering (P-CFUBMS) deposition system has been used to deposit Cr-CrxNy-Cr1-xAlxN compositionally graded multilayer coating structures. In this study, three power law scenarios have been adopted to vary the aluminum concentration in the graded Cr1-xAlxN layer: (i) p = 1, the aluminum concentration was increased linearly in the Cr1-xAlxN layer. (ii) p = 0.2, the Cr1-xAlxN layer is an aluminum-rich graded layer, and (iii) p = 2, the Cr1-xAlxN layer is a chromium-rich graded layer. It was found that all the graded coatings exhibit lower residual stress and higher adhesion strength than the homogeneous Cr1-xAlxN (x = 0.585) film. However, different power law grading architectures have significant influence on the hardness and wear resistance of the films. When p = 2 and p = 1, the graded films exhibited relatively low hardness values (24 and 26 GPa respectively) and high COF (0.55 to 0.60). When p = 0.2 the graded film exhibited both high hardness (34 GPa) and good wear resistance (COF = 0.45) due to the structural consistency in the graded zone. The paper discusses the correlation between the pulsing parameters and coating architecture with the resulting nanostructure and tribological properties of this Cr-CrxNy-Cr1-xAlxN coating system.