Share Your Battle: The Goblin Psychic!

This week’s "Share Your Battle" feature is the Goblin Psychic.

This card is another mainstay within the Chaos Legion starter deck. Sporting a magical attack power of two and the tank healing ability, it fits into any earth team that can accommodate its 6-mana cost. But it’s especially powerful when paired with the starter deck summoner Obsidian who grants a +1 magic attack bonus giving the Goblin Psychic the ability to blast its opponent’s team’s tank while simultaneously healing its own. In its starter deck, level-1 configuration the Goblin Psychic is hampered by its low health value of three and very slow speed, which makes it vulnerable to enemy attack.

While the Goblin Psychic never gets any quicker, its health does progressively increase up to seven as it levels up. Further, at level four it gains the affliction ability, at level seven it gains the silence ability and at level ten it gains the dispel ability. So a fully leveled Psychic heals its own team’s tank and renders the opponent’s tank unhealable and without positive buffs. And if that wasn’t quite enough, it reduces the magical attack power of the opponent’s whole team.

Recently, I used the Goblin Psychic in an interesting match while playing with my “Spellbook Only Challenge” account. The match had a mana cap of 16 and was played with standard rules.

My opponent had used light teams in all of his last five matches, leading me to suspect they were working on a light daily quest. Or perhaps they just really liked playing the light splinter. Either way, his recent teams called attention to themselves as surely as a lighthouse.

Naturally, I decided to prepare for a battle against light. At the relatively low mana cap, I didn’t think that archers would play heavily into the match, but instead expected to face an armored up team thanks to the Truthspeaker and its protect ability.

To counter, I decided to play an earth team headed by the Wizard of Eastwood for the -2 armor debuff it places on my opponent’s team.

Knowing that low mana cost light cards tend to have low attack power, I decided to use a beefy tank supported by a healer, hoping to keep my tank strong as it mowed down my unarmored foes.

I chose to lead my team with the Wizard of Eastwood. As I’ve already noted, I made this choice for the -2 armor debuff to counter my opponent’s expected play—light with the team armor buffing Truthseaker.

My choice of tank was all a matter of mana. I wanted a beefy tank and the Goblin Psychic as the tank healer. The match had a 16-mana limit. So 3 mana for my summoner, 6 mana for the Goblin Psychic. That leaves me with a max of 7 mana for my tank. The best fit for the mana I had seemed to be the Venari Knifer at 6 mana. That this card has the thorns ability was not in the front of my thinking, but thorns sure are deadly especially to unarmored opponents.

My secondary tank was the Goblin Psychic. And after the Goblin I am down to one mana left. I could put a 1-mana cost card before or after the Psychic. I figured I was in more danger of running into light’s sneaky Stitch Leech than I was of my tank falling quickly, so I placed my healer here and followed with…

The Mycelic Morphoid guards my rear flank. It’s there to consume my one remaining mana point and give one round’s worth of protection from a possible sneak attack.

Fire! Well that’s a surprise and not a pleasant one. I wouldn’t have chosen an earth team if I suspected I would be facing fire. But all hope is not lost, 16 mana is low for a winning, bronze-league, fire team so who knows exactly what my opponent played.

My immediate reaction was “whoops.” Serpentine Spy takes out my healer in round 2 before I have seen any healing (as my tank takes no damage in round 1 before the Psychic acts,) and fire burns my forest to the ground. But after giving it a closer look, I have a 70% chance to win, and I find myself rooting for my opponent’s Living Lava!

Let’s have a look at why. My opponent’s Living Lava is going to act last in round 1. Before it does, my Knifer gives it a swipe for one damage, the opposing Spy crushes my anchor, and my healer blasts the Lava for 2 magic damage.

That brings us to the position shown above. Now, the hulking Lava has a 70% chance of whacking my Knifer for 4 points of damage, and I want to take the hit!!

If the Lava lands, it is throned down to three health. Next, my Knifer chips it for another point of damage and it’s down to two. Then the Spy is forced to make a kamikaze run at my nearly depleted tank. Yes, the Spy probably (90% chance) finishes it off, but the attacker meets its thorny end as well. Finally, My healer turns the opposing tank into a no-longer-living lava. From there, the healer cruises to victory. It will take a couple of hits along the way, but will heal itself and get its revenge thereafter.

However, if the slowly flowing Lava misses, my Knifer will chip it down to three health. Then the Spy destroys my healer as I feared when the match was first revealed! From there, both the Spy and the Lava have three chances to land one blow each. The combined 7 damage finishes me off with fire’s unused back two ensuring its win. It’s not guaranteed, but the Spy should land 90% of the time, and the Lava 70% of the time, so getting three misses out of either is a close-to-3% long shot.

I have to wonder if my opponent was rooting for his Lava to miss at the end of round one. They should have been.

How did it turn out? See for yourself here.

I’ve never been happier to take a four-damage shot to my chops.

In Splinterlands, sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war. And in this war our hero—the Goblin Psychic—is the last combatant standing.

Although this match was nothing like I envisioned when I was building my team, it turned out to be an interesting battle. My Goblin Psychic may not have provided as much healing as it usually does in matches and it may not have had its magical attack amped up by Obsidian as is also often the case, but its presence in my lineup was still critical to the success of my team. That’s no surprise. With its healing ability and can’t-miss, magical attacks the Goblin Psychic is a powerful addition to any earth team that can keep it protected well enough for it to do its thing.