Goblins

Goblins is a 2-Elixir Common troop that deploys four fast, dagger-wielding melee units at once. Each Goblin is a glass cannon individually — strong damage for the cost but low hitpoints — and the group gets a quicker opening swing than its normal attack rhythm, making it a cheap, efficient defensive answer and chip-damage tool. It has no Evolution, but a related Hero card (Hero Goblins) adds an activatable ability that calls in a fresh wave of Goblins after the original four die.

• Goblins costs 2 Elixir and deploys four individual, dagger-wielding melee troops at once. At tournament level (level 11), each Goblin has 202 hitpoints and deals 125 damage per hit, attacking once every 1.1 seconds for about 113 damage per second. They're Very Fast movers, but strictly melee and ground-only — they have to run right up to a target and can't touch anything airborne.

• Beyond their normal attack rhythm, Goblins carry a first hit speed quirk: their very first swing after becoming ready to fight lands in just 0.6 seconds, well ahead of their normal 1.1-second cycle. That gives a freshly-deployed pack of Goblins a quick opening jab against anything that wanders into melee range, which is a big reason they're such an efficient, cheap defensive answer to small pushes for only 2 Elixir.

• Goblins has been around since Clash Royale's earliest days — it went live on 4 January 2016, during the game's limited regional soft-launch on iOS in a handful of countries, well before the worldwide release on 2 March 2016. It's one of the original cards that has been in the game continuously since that soft-launch window.

• A January 2024 balance update slowed Goblins' deploy time from 1 second to 1.2 seconds. The goal was to give opponents a brief window to react before the Goblins could start attacking, since landing hits almost immediately after being dropped was proving too strong for a 2-Elixir card.

• On 9 April 2025, Goblins were rebalanced again: their first hit speed was slowed from 0.4 seconds to 0.6 seconds specifically to tone down Goblin Gang's early burst, while their deploy time was sped back up from 1.2 seconds to 1 second to compensate, undoing the January 2024 change. Supercell was explicit that this timing change only applies to the standalone 2-Elixir Goblins card — Goblins spawned by other cards, such as Goblin Barrel, Goblin Curse, Goblin Drill, Evolved Goblin Giant, or Evolved Mortar, keep their own separate timing and aren't affected.

• The most recent change to Goblins landed in the August 2026 update, which raised their damage from 120 to 125 per hit. Supercell's stated reasoning was that the base card had fallen behind its Evolution and Hero versions and needed a push to stay worth playing on its own.

• HeroHero Goblins is a separate Hero card built on the same four dagger-wielding troops, but it adds an in-battle ability called Banner Brigade. Once all four Goblins have died, they leave behind a Brigade Banner; activating it for 1 Elixir within a short window calls in a fresh wave of Goblins on that exact spot. The ability has been toned down several times since its February 2026 debut — it originally summoned 4 fresh Goblins with a 7-second window to activate, and a string of balance updates has since cut that to 2 Goblins with a 5-second window and a 1-second deploy time for the reinforcement wave.

• Because the four Goblins fight as separate melee units rather than one combined troop, they can stack a huge amount of damage onto a single target that all four can reach — up to 500 damage in one roughly 1.1-second hit cycle (4 Goblins x 125 damage each) at tournament level. That makes them a popular way to finish off a low-health troop or chunk a Tower fast, but it's a double-edged sword: no single Goblin has more than 202 hitpoints, so one well-placed area-damage spell or splash hit can wipe out the entire pack at once.