In this week Share Your Battle Challenge is a Alpha / Beta Fire Splinter monsterin the spotlight. The Goblin Shaman.

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GOBLIN SHAMAN STATS, ABILITIES and MY OPINION

Goblin Shaman is a 3 Mana Cost minion of Alpha and Beta Card series.
It's a FIRE splinter monster and at Lvl 1 Goblin Shaman has 4 HP, no attack and the ability weaken, what reduces the Health of all enemy monsters by 1.
With lvl 3 he gets 1 magic attack and at lvl 5 the second ability Slow which reduces the Speed of all enemies.

At the start of my Splinterlands carreer I played this card a lot, but since some time I barely play it, because I only have it at lvl 1 where it has 0 attack. I prefer playing other monsters which can benefit better from the Fire Splinter Buffs (+1 Meelee Attack / +1 Speed) and are not so dependend on the opponents card. In some cases the Weaken ability don't give any advantage because the enemy monsters are already at the lowest health 1 HP ( would be cool if it would reduce to 0 HP... ;) ) or already at the HP where they would be a one hit anyways. It doesn't matter if it's 2 HP or 1 HP if my attacking monster deals 2 Damage.
But in the correct lineup it could be a game winner if you are able to reduce the enemies monsters HP from 3 HP to 2 HP, to get into that 1 Hit range.

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BATTLE LINEUP

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RULESET

This Battle was right after Season reset in Silver III at 1015 rating.

• 29 Mana
• No Water Splinter.
• Weak Magic: Magic Attacks hit Armor before reducing health.

With this Mana setup and no Alric and Venari Wavesmith allowed I picked the Fire Splinter Malric and played Goblin Shaman to reduce the health of the Backline to kill it fast with my Sneak and Opportunity Meelee monsters.

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PLACEMENT

1. Living Lava: Is a great tank and with the Weak Magic ruleset he also has 2 additional health against Magic monsters.

2. Fineas Rage: Great Offtank with Reach Ability, High Speed and Large Healthpool.

3. Goblin Shaman: The Monster of the weekly Battle Challenge. With his weaken ability he reduces the health of my enemies backline so that my Sneak and Opportunity monster can kill them fast. Placed in the third spot behind the 2 Tanks to have another 4 HP as "Shield" for my attack monsters.

4. Serpentine Spy: My favorite Card in Fire Meelee. With his Speed and Opportunity it is able to take out the low health backline of the opponent. Placed in the middle to not get hit first by an enemy Sneak Monsters.

5. Kobold Miner: Sneak Monster in the 2nd last spot in front of Uraeus.

6. Uraeus: Top neutral Sneak monster with 1 Armor. Placed behind Kobold Miner at the last spot because with the armor it can survive 1 Sneak hit.
   
   
   My Opponent picked Delwyn Dragonscale a 5 Mana Dragon Splinter with +1 Magic buff. With Robo-Dragon Knight he has a really good Tank in the first Spot.
   With his Splinter and Tank he has already used 16 of the 29 mana. In the backline he has 3 Magic monsters: Goblin Shaman (already lvl 3 with Magic Attack), Dragon Whelp and Beetle Queen.

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BATTLE

Click this link to watch the battle.

ROUND 1

Fineas Rage with 5 Speed was first to hit and hit the Divine Shield of the Robo Dragon Knight. My Serpentine Spy killed the Dragon Whelp before it was able to hit my Living Lava.

All other enemy monsters hit my Living Lava, but because of Weak Magic and Shield ability my Tank survived with 1 HP. This shows how important it was that my Serpentine Spy killed his Dragon Whelp.
My 2 Sneak monsters Uraeus and Kobold miner killed the Beetle Queen and only Robo Dragon Knight and Goblin Shaman were left.
Living Lava also hit with 4 Damage and reduced the Armor by a lot.

ROUND 2

After the 2nd round I have killed Goblin Shaman and did a lot of damage to Robo Dragon Knight. My Living Lava died, but took the additional hit with his 1 HP.

ROUND 3

After Round 3 I have won the battle with only 1 dead monster on my side.

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STRATEGY, LEARNINGS and IMPROVEMENTS

As written before I was confident with picking fire, because Malrics Meelee Buff is so strong and with no Water Splinter the hard counter combo Alric + Wavesmith wasn't possible.
I didn't suppose to get Magic enemies, but luckily the Delwyn + Robo Dragon Knight Combo used so much mana that there wasn't enough left to fill the last 2 spots at the enemy side. I guess with a lower mana cost tank and more magic monsters it would have been a closer battle.
Djinn Chwala would have been a great tank in this battle for my enemy. Only 8 mana cost and with the Thorns deadly to my meelee monsters.

My Goblin Shaman was useless in this battle because of the 2 HP and 4 HP enemy monsters the Weaken had no effect and didn't gave me a faster kill or an additional hit. In that case I could have played another Meelee Sneak monster. Like the Elven Cutthroat, which was the monster in the last Share your Battle Challenge.

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What are your thoughts about this Battle and strategies?
For any Suggestions or thoughts please leave a comment below!

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