Green flame blade is a great horde killing spell while still feeling cool. IMO everyone picks booming blade because it’s more useful against single targets, which is more fun against a larger range of enemies, from bosses to your equals, plus thunder is rarely resisted compared to fire.

Some people implement minion rules where overflowing damage from killing a weak enemy flows on to the adjacent enemy, which of course is simplified and incorporated into green flame blade. One of the hardest things to capture in the standard D&D rules is that in fantasy, the warrior (Aragorn, Holga, Achilles) typically cuts down hundreds of mooks while the mage battles the giant powerful monster who cannot be defeated by a sword (Gandalf Vs Balrog). In D&D, either it’s totally inversed or the mage is better at both, largely because spells like fireball suit both situations better.

Green flame blade is a very easy option to balance this scale, albeit via magic.

So we’re at the start of a war where, thanks to saving a GOO Warlock and getting help from her connections, we’re coming up from the sewers closer to the middle of town while allies attack from opposite sides of the Drow capital.

While our 160 soldiers went off to secure the borders of the market district as our safe house/staging point, my party (5 level 12 characters, a Half Orc Berserker Barbarian, an Eladrin Celestial Warlock, a part panther Halfling Scout Rogue, a Kobold Rune Knight Fighter, and a Half Goblin/Half Yuan Ti Glamour Bard) stayed behing to go through the 50 CR1/4 Drow warriors in the area we’re in as the war is kicking off.

Yes, I know they’re they’re only CR1/4, but because their HP was just high enough, this actually did end up being more efficient as I was trying to conserve resources as it may be a bit before we can short rest.

As it stands, my Eldritch Blast is 1d10+4 per dart, and these guys had 13 HP, so any given dart on it’s own had a high chance to not secure a kill if I was going one dart per enemy.

With Green-flame Blade, my initial attack would be 1d6+4+2d8 and the rider would be 2d8+8 (since Radiant Soul can add my CHA to fire damage spells when cast, I could have added it to either but kept it to the rider). This just ended up being a more consistent damage in the amount I needed, and the total max is about the same, just split between two targets