Goblin Shaman ~ Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge

The Goblin Shaman of the Smoldering Forest are especially skilled in slowing and weakening their enemies with enchantments. Many of them can hypnotize with a simple gaze from their blood-red eyes. --- Splinterlore

WEAKEN is a decent debuff skill. It lowers ALL enemy monsters' HP by one. Cards with this skill usually belong in the two to three mana range, so it's easy to slot these cards even when battle's mana pool is tight. One such card is Goblin Shaman, this week's Battle Challenge featured card.

I'll be sharing two strategies using Weaken. These tactics aren't meta. Far from it. It's hard to meet the conditions so these tactics aren't really efficient to use. So instead of a "winning strategy", it's more like a personal quest or fun trick to perform.

Fun Trick #1: Headshot Sniping

On lower leagues, you could expect to encounter enemy monsters with two to three health points, especially if the battle's mana pool is very limited. For an unprotected back-line monster, Weaken skill might just allow you to kill an enemy monster with one snipe hit.

I've lined up these two cards to team up for my Headshot Sniping operation. My aim is to use Goblin Shaman to bring down an enemy ranged monter's health points to one or two, then have Fire Beetle kill it with one snipe.

The first battle: No chance for sniping

This battle had all-melee opponents so there's no room to experiment on the one-hit sniping tactic. Nonetheless, Weaken skill proved to be incredibly handy as it paved the way to easily kill the opponent's tank, Cerberus. That one magic attack from Goblin Shaman isn't crucial for this specific matchup but it helps a lot in most other battles. So try to upgrade your Shaman at least to level three to unlock its attack skill.

My own Cerberus and Goblin Shaman teamed up to knock out a weakened enemy's Cerberus. Battle #1 Link

The second battle: Snipe locked-on

The next battle matches me up with a Life Splinter team. That Armorsmith at the back with three health points is a juicy target for the Weaken and Snipe combo. Good thing the summoner is Mother Khala which raises health points by one and not Tyrus Paladium with armor-up. Or else this sniping trick will likely fall apart with that one point in Armor. See how impractical this tactic is?! Lol.

That Shieldbearer had me worried at first but my team's total attack power overwhelmed the tank card. And once that Taunt-type monster was out of the way ...

Headshot sniping done, finally! Battle #2 Link

Fun Trick #2: Weakened + Poisoned = Instant Knockout

This next trick won't ask for a lot of setups. You'll just have to wait for a specific ruleset -- Noxious Fumes where both friends and foe receive an unblockable two health damage on every round after the first. This tactic works really well on the premise that monsters have low health points in the lower leagues and low mana matches.

The third battle: Poison Triple Kill

We kind of see where this is going, right? Two three-health monsters and that extra Furious Chicken will make for an instant tripe kill at the beginning of round two ...


But, no, it didn't go straightforwardly as I initially assumed. I just got lucky with this match. A Magic Reflect skill downed my Goblin Shaman's health to two so if the Poison started on my side then I would have lost my Weaken skill and my opponent's back-line monsters would get their health back to three points, making them exempt for this early round kill.

Fortunately, Poison started affecting my enemy's side so I was treated with this spectacle. Battle #3

To end

Again, I admit that these strategies aren't really reliable. But I hope you agree that it's somehow fun. I was surely entertained when I was building up my team for these tricks and seeing it succeed ... and fail. Splinterlands has managed to mix things up quite well so it's mostly always fun to battle. And this is the main reason why I'm looking forward to Chaos Legion! I can't wait to see how it will shake up the current game meta.

Finally, Is Goblin Shaman a good card to play?. Yes. Its Weaken skill is quite effective for most cases. And if you have it on Level three at least, you'll have it actively attacking enemy monsters. But there are other rarer and better monsters with Weaken skill. You might find it more difficult to get a hold of these but these two cards are far more convenient to use with their two mana cost.

Comparing low-level monsters with Weaken:
Death and Earth counterparts beat Goblin Shaman in mana cost stat