Goblins are crafty creatures and their movement patterns often confuse novice smitemasters. One useful thing to remember is that they hate your sword and will try to stay away from it. They will only move to a tile adjacent to your sword if they have no other choice.
To help visualise the last point, all the images on this page use alternate floor texture that shows all the tiles adjacent to the player's sword, like so:
Note how this goblin doesn't step near your sword while also trying to get as close to you as possible.
No matter how many goblins there are, they still won't step near your sword.
Basic goblin manipulation[]
If a goblin is right in front of you in an othogonal direction, you can move forward and backwards to "push" and "pull" him in that direction.
You can also pull him diagonally like this.
You can also push a goblin diagonally like this...
...or this.
Killing goblins[]
To kill a goblin you have to push him against a wall in such a way that all the tiles available for him to move to are adjacent to your sword.
Since it's easy to force a single goblin to stand still, you can make him stop on a spike trap to kill him.
Multiple goblins[]
When dealing with two goblins it's best to get them close to a wall like this. In this position you can safely move the goblins back and forth.
Similarly, you can also stand one tile away from the wall, like this.
You can easily switch between those two positions like so.
When you get two goblins cornered you can easily kill them in a variety of ways.
Narrow corridors[]
1 wide[]
To kill a goblin in a 1 tile wide corridor you pretty much have to pin him against some obstacle, such as a wall...
...or his own friends!
2 wide[]
If there are more than 2 goblins in a 2 tile wide corridor, you can just keep killing them until only 2 remain.
3 wide[]
In a 3 tile wide corridor you can kill a goblin anywhere you want.
Or, if you're traveling from West to East, you can just safely switch places with the goblin. This is impossible if you're going in the opposite direction.
You can also switch places if you're going from North to South, but not in the opposite direction.
3 tile wide corridors are perfectly safe as long as you know what you're doing.
In fact, you can even safely fend off a huge horde of goblins!
4 wide[]
In a 4 tile wide corridor, defending your position against multiple goblins is much harder, you will likely have retreat a few times. 5 tile wide corridors might as well be considered open spaces when dealing with multiple goblins.