This week's Battle Challenge is dedicated to the Chaos Knight, a Common Life Splinter card with a 6 mana cost. In my Battle Challenge, I used a level 1 card because I don't have access to a higher Summoner. Starting at level 5, the card gets the Giant Killer ability and at level 9 Inspire. I don’t see an improvement in his own strengths with these abilities (i think they are quite unconnected). Either way it’s really nice to have a new Inspire for the Life Splinter in the Modern Format but i think level 9 is way to high. Imo Inspire should be switched with Giant Killer and the card would be great. Here you can see the stats of the Chaos Knight:
The Chaos Knight is a Life tank. With her Shield ability she's quite a nice choice against Melee attackers and also deals solid 2 Melee DMG herself. She has okish Shield and Life stats but she’s a bit lacking in speed (which is also ok for a tank). She is actually part of the life splinter meta in bronze and silver because everyone has access to her but the life splinter isn’t quite meta itself. An especially good use for the card are in the Melee Mayhem, Up Close & Personal and Super Sneak rule sets (everything where Melee is the main attacker). Earth Quake, Lost Magic, Weak Magic and Fog of war also benefit her quite nicely cause they add to her defense. Unprotected hurts her a bit cause she’s getting too little defense for a tank.
In the following match you will see how well Chaos Knight compares to Fire Splinter's Living Lava (at least in bronze). Living Lava is a very popular tank and often more valued compared to Chaos Knight. Where Living Lava has Life stat, Chaos Knight has Shield stat, which comes down to the same thing in many matches (not all, of course. So life points are still better against Magic attackers). The rule set Reverse Speed did not play too big of a role. Here’s the match:
Here you can analyse the battle yourself :)
My opponent went for a fire setup with Living Lava. He focused his setup on Melee attackers tho Scavo Chemist is an odd choice. He would have done a really good job in Noxious Fumes for example. A better choice would have been Chaos Agent before his Serpentine Spy and Radiated Scorch* behind. That way he could have dodged Sneak and Opportunity attacks the same time. His Serpentine Spy died to fast because of my Celestial Harpy. Meanwhile the Protect from my Truthspeaker gave me enough shield to dodge most of his attacks. Pelacor Arbalest is the main Damagedealer in my setup but his main problem is his low life points. That's why my setup is better than his though, because my main attacker is protected by sneak, opportunity and snipe. This way, and because of the range damage boost from General Sloan, he was able to take out Living Lava very quickly, despite its Shield.
My strategy worked relatively well. I was able to show that Chaos Knight can work as fine as Living Lava in the tank position if he gets good support by the rest of the team. I like Chaos Knight even tho Life Splinter seems to be harder to play or is just weaker atm. I'm looking forward to the legendary splinter. Maybe he'll carry life to the top :D
