Share Your Battle Challenge Goblin Shaman

In this week's Splinterlands "Share Your Battle Challenge" we've been tasked to fight a match with Goblin Shaman and the Fire Splinter. Will Goblin Shaman help lead the Fire Splinter to glory, or will we go down in flames? Find out in this post!!

The Lineup
This match was played with 22 Mana and no modifications to the standard ruleset which gave me a good ability to evaluate Goblin Shaman's abilities without any special buffs or de-buffs. It also gave me sufficient Mana to field a strong supporting team. Although I typically play Living Lava in first position when using the Fire Splinter, I decided to change things up and played Cerberus. Cerberus only costs 4 Mana, but has a good attack, quick speed, and the "Heal" ability that allows it to repair a bit of the damage it takes each turn.

In second spot, I played my favorite second position in the gam, Fineas Rage. Fineas Rage has high speed, lots of health, and the reach ability that allows him to attack from second as well as first position. Overall, I think he's one of the best cards I own, and I try to play him whenever possible.

In third spot, I played Goblin Shaman. Golbin Shaman doesn't have any attack abilities, but it can use it's "Weaken" ability to reduce the health of the opponent's team regardless of what position it is in. However, once Goblin Shaman is knocked out of the fight, the "Weaken" ability is also removed from play. Thus, I thought it would be a good idea to put it in the middle of the lineup to protect it from taking damage and preserve this effect for as long as possible.

In fourth place I put Goblin Chariot. Goblin Chariot is a good ranged monster, and one of the things that I like is that it attacks the opponent's first position monster. Sometimes it is nice to have the "Sneak" or "Snipe" ability, but sometimes it's also nice to concentrate firepower on a single monster.

Lastly, I put Furious Chicken at the end of the lineup. I usually place Furious Chicken as a buffer between my Melee and Ranged monsters, but I thought it would be good to put it at the end of the formation this time to protect against "Sneak" capable monsters.

The Match
As soon as the match started, I could tell we were going to have a rough time. My opponent played Living Lava which is an incredible tank with the "Shield" ability which reduces damage from melee and ranged attacks. Since I didn't include any magic monsters in my lineup, I knew that it would be very difficult to take out Living Lava since all of my attacks would only be dealing partial damage. At the end of the day, my team was quickly eliminated and I easily lost the match.

Analysis of Goblin Shaman
As always, I like to point out that simply loosing or winning a battle isn't the sole determinant of a card's worth. I did loose this match, but this didn't necessarily mean that it was Goblin Shaman's fault. Maybe I would have won if I played Living Lava instead of Cerberus or if I had replaced Goblin Chariot with Elven Mystic. There are simply too many variables.

That being said, I don't really use Goblin Shaman that much, but I do think it could be a great card in the right scenario. Consider pairing Goblin Shaman with the summoner Malric Inferno which gives a +1 Melee boost. In that situation, you could weaken the opponent's team while simultaneously strengthening your own attackers - seems like a winning combo to me.

Summary
Win or loose, it is always nice to enter into the challenges and try new strategies and cards. Although the primary purpose of this post is to share my battle, I always like to remind players that Splinterlands rewards players for EVERY SINGLE match that they win with cryptocurrency. Players also win from daily quests, end of season rewards, and even get free airdrops of the SPS governance token based on their card collections. It's not financial advice, but if you like trading card games or just earning crypto and NFTs, then feel free to check out Splinterlands or watch my battle replay here
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_af9731fa0571a12e60732a1699675d28&ref=parttimeeconon