Goblin Cage

A 4-elixir Rare building with no attack of its own — it passively drains its own hitpoints and always breaks open within 20 seconds even if never hit, releasing a single hard-hitting Goblin Brawler to fight in melee. Its Evolution adds an active Cage Pull trap that yanks a nearby ground troop inside to take repeated damage while helpless, before the Brawler is finally released to fight normally.

• Goblin Cage is a 4-elixir Rare building that never attacks on its own — it just sits there to block or bait enemy troops. At tournament standard it has 780 hitpoints, but unlike most buildings it constantly loses 39 hitpoints per second all on its own, so even if it's never touched it will break open within exactly 20 seconds. Any damage the opponent lands comes out of that same hitpoint pool, so real hits make it pop faster than the passive drain alone would.

• When the Goblin Cage finally breaks — whether from enemy damage or its own timer running out — it releases a single Goblin Brawler to fight in its place. At tournament standard the Brawler has 1,080 hitpoints and hits for 337 damage per swing, which works out to roughly 306 damage per second at its 1.1-second hit speed. Its opening swing is much faster than that: the first hit lands in just 0.2 seconds, letting it punish whatever finished off the cage before that unit can back away. It moves at Fast speed but only fights ground targets, and only in melee range.

• EvolutionThe evolved Goblin Cage gains an active trap ability known as Cage Pull. If an enemy ground troop wanders within 3 tiles of it, the Goblin Brawler reaches out from inside the cage and yanks that troop straight in, holding it in place so it can't move or fight back while taking damage every second. The trapped troop stays put until it either dies or the cage itself is destroyed, at which point the Brawler jumps out and fights normally — hitting exactly as hard as the un-evolved Brawler once it's free.

• EvolutionAs of an August 2026 balance update, the evolved cage's trap deals 366 damage per second to whatever it has captured, and it can grab a new victim as soon as 0.3 seconds after releasing the last one. That same update made the evolution itself rarer to see: it now takes two normal Goblin Cage deploys to recharge instead of one, so only every third cage you place comes out evolved rather than every second one. Supercell's stated reasoning was that Goblin Cage Evolution, like several other Evolutions, had been dominant for over a year and disproportionately strong compared to its base form.

• EvolutionCage Pull only works on ground troops — flying units like Balloon, Lava Hound, or Minion Horde simply pass over it with no risk of being grabbed, and it can't trap buildings, cloned units, or troops that are underground. A ground troop that happens to be mid-jump or mid-dash at the exact moment it enters the 3-tile pull range is also immune to that particular grab. Only one enemy can be held inside at a time, so a second troop arriving while the first is still trapped has to wait until the Brawler is free to grab again.

• Goblin Cage joined Clash Royale on 17 May 2019 as a 4-elixir Rare building.

• In December 2021, Supercell cut the Goblin Cage's own hitpoints by 23% while deliberately leaving the Goblin Brawler's power untouched, saying they wanted to weaken the cage's ability to stall on defense without dulling the payoff unit that pops out once it breaks.

• In October 2023, Supercell buffed the Goblin Brawler's hitpoints from 485 to 510 at that patch's reference level, aiming to help the then-underused Goblin Cage survive a little longer after breaking open and deal more total damage before dying.