Chaos Control! - Using Chaos Knight in Battle!

This week's Share Your Battle challenge features Chaos Knight! This week's challenge was fun for me, because although it is a free to play card and I use the Life splinter semi-regularly, Chaos Knight is not one of the cards in it that I commonly use. So this week I got to learn a little bit about how to use a new(ish) card, which is always fun!

Chaos Knight is a Life splinter tank. For 6 mana, at level 1 you get a decent amount of damage output at 2 melee and 2 speed. The bulk stats appear a little underwhelming at first - just 3 armor and 4 health. However, Chaos Knight's Shield ability helps a whole lot - especially when you expect to be taking some ranged or physical attacks, since those will get reduced by half! On the other hand, using Chaos Knight against a magic damage lineup is something to be avoided.

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!

First up: the ruleset. This was a pretty good ruleset to bring along Chaos Knight because the splinters which most commonly use magic, Water and Earth, are both banned. Also, the relatively low mana cap is good because (at least from my experience) life tends to do well in low mana cost battles.

Chaos Knight is in the Life splinter so we're going with a Life summoner. I went with Mother Khala because the additional HP would give our Chaos Knight even more bulk to work with. Also, my other main summoner option was General Sloan and Mother Khala's cheaper cost gives us an additional point of mana to work with - it might not seem like much of a difference, but going from 10 mana to spend on monsters to 11 mana is a 10% increase!

I started my team with my main tank and our guest star of the week - Chaos Knight! As mentioned in the introduction, Shield should do a great job of increasing Chaos Knight's durability, and even more so with the additional health point from Mother Khala. Chaos Knight was particularly good in this ruleset because it costs 2 mana less than Shieldbearer, which is the other tank that I would usually consider. "Saving" 2 mana on my tank allows me to spend more mana on the back end of my lineup.

My next card was Gargoya Scrapper. It's gold and therefore can be a slightly higher level, but got downgraded to level 1 because my Mother Khala is only at the base level. I didn't expect Gargoya Scrapper to dish out much damage in this battle, but it was important because of the Explosive Weaponry ruleset - all monsters get Blast, and while Chaos Knight may be able to take some punishment, I didn't want the last monster of my lineup to take as much damage.

I rounded out my team with Venari Crystalsmith. While her attack is just going to be a single point since I'm not using General Sloan, her Tank Heal ability should be able to keep Chaos Knight healthy. And with Chaos Knight's Shield, healing 2 HP is almost like healing 4 per turn, assuming that I'm not getting hit by magic damage.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent has brought a relatively simple lineup with Cursed Windeku and Dark Astronomer. Chaos Knight's Shield will be able to help with both the melee/ranged damage and the Thorns from the Windeku, and my Crystalsmith will be able to attack and deal Blast damage without taking counter damage from Thorns.

round 1.png

In the first round of battle everything goes according to plan - my monsters are able to start chipping away at the Windeku and nearly take out the Astronomer. My Gargoya Scrapper dies nearly instantly, but does a commendable job of saving 2 points of damage from hitting my Crystalsmith.

round 2.png

One more round and my monsters are able to take out the Astronomer with the splash damage from Blast. Chaos Knight is able to stay at full health thanks to Tank Heal. It isn't going to last forever though, because with Gargoya Scrapper gone, my Crystalsmith is beginning to take damage from Blast.

round 3.png

As you may be able to tell here from the round counter, Chaos Knight attempted to give me a heart attack by missing 2 rounds in a row in rounds 3 and 4. You might notice that there's only a 1 speed difference, so the chances of 2 consecutive 10% chance misses is 1 in 100. Thank you, RNG. Luckily, my team was able to pull off the victory. You can't see it in this screenshot, but at the end of this battly Chaos Knight stood alone, with just 2 HP remaining. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

round 5.png

My strategy in this battle was a success - Chaos Knight held the front line, Gargoya Scrapper provided just enough of a buffer, and Venari Crystalsmith brought the heals and ranged damage. Explosive Weaponry battles are always tough to predict and play properly for me, and I was very happy to see that this one worked out.

Chaos Knight played its role to perfection in this battle - tanking damage from attacks and Thorns like a champ, and dishing out just enough damage to win the battle. I personally would prefer a few less misses from my team next time, but that's just me!

I enjoyed using Chaos Knight a lot in this challenge, and will probably be using it a lot more going forward. Previously I was primarily using Shieldbearer as my Life splinter tank, but this week's battles have taught me that Chaos Knight can work very well as a slightly lower cost tank. Less mana spent on a tank means more mana spend on a damage dealing back line, which sounds great to me!

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:

Splinterlands Economics: Elasticity - A introduction to compound interest, and how it can help you out in Splinterlands.
I Know What you Did Last Summer - Using Goblin Psychic in Battle! - This week's battle challenge, featuring Goblin Psychic!
Splinterlands Economics: Marginal Analysis - An introduction to Credibility, and insights it gives us into Splinterlands.

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