Hey there Splinters,

as promised in my last entry, I will have a closer look on Doctor Blight, the first Chaos Legion airdrop card that has been given away to purchasers during the presale phase 1. There have been a number of reviews since the card had been announced prior to the Chaos Legion presale.

However, as long as the card was not yet available in the game, it was not easy to forecast for any reviewer how good or bad the Doc would perform in actual match-ups. Now, Doctor Blight is ready to rumble - and I directly send him to war. Well, let us see how often and in which rulesets he left the battlefield victorious.

Can the Doc fight his way into the Meta, or will he rather be a sidkick within the hords of the Chaos Legion? To give the lawyers favourite answer to basically any question: it depends....

Doctor Blight Basic Version (Level 1) - Key figures

The basic version of Doctor Blight comes with the following stats:

As you see, the Doc will do 1 magic damage, he also has only 1 speed and 4 health. His starting abilities are "Afflication" and "Camouflage". Based on this let's make a list of the card's strenghts and weaknesses so far:

Strengths:

• It's a neutral card, meaning we can use it universally together with any summoner (as long as the ruleset does not restrict use of neutral or legendary cards).
• It only costs 4 mana. The Doc is pretty cheap in terms of mana costs. We can even use him in fights where the little league ruleset applies (and you will see, he can do fabulous there).
• He does magic damage, what usually is superior to melee or ranged attacks as it ignores the opponent's armor (unless your are in a weak magic ruleset).
• Affliction is a great ability to counter your opponent's Healing abilities. As healing, particularly self-healing is certainly among the top abilities a card can have, Affliction can remove this significant advantage your opponent might rely on when staffing his forces.

Weaknesses

• The Doc is slow as hell. With only 1 speed you should expect that basically any strike on him is an auto-hit.
• 4 health is ok for a level 1 card which costs 4 mana, but it is definitely not enough to ensure a long life on the battlefield (the equaliser ruleset certainly helps the Doc to become more powerful than he would be normal)
• Doctor Blight's second ability Camouflage is often not that useful. It can of course counter to some extent your opponent's Snipe, Sneak and Opportunity abbilities what helps to booster the Doc's suboptimal health condition. However, the ability will only deploy its full potential in combination with another ability Doctor Blight will learn when climbing up the card levels. 😉
• Although the magic damage, the Doc does can be considered one of his strengths, one have to acknowledge that only 1 basic damage is not much. And it can become a significant issue when facing cards with the Void ability, as the Doc will not do any damage to them at all.

Conclusions for the Vanilla Doctor Blight

The Level 1 Blight is a good card. It is nice to play specifically, when the setup for the Doc is right. The Doc likes opponent's which rely on healers, he is particularly strong in little league fights and also has its advantages in equaliser rulesets, where he can be used along any summoner - although he of course prefers fighting side by side with Obsidian, Delwyn or Alric (or Valnamor and Arius if you should ever get your hands on them 😉). He is however certainly no universal weapon that can auto-win a significant part of your battles (like you would e.g. expect notorious Llama/Kron combo to do).

If you now find yourself totally disenchanted as you had previously fallen in love with Doctor Blight, be advised to not stop reading here. Maybe the maxed version of the Doc can met - or even exceed - your expectations. 😁

Level 4 aka a Doctor on steroids - Key figures

The maxed out version of Doctor Blight is presented with the following stats:

He has the same speed and basic health like his basic version, but he doubled his magic attack. However, it is of course not the increased magic attack that makes the difference: the Doc has now learned 3 new abilites - Poison, Scavenger and Weaken. Let's see what impact these changes have on the strenghts and weaknesses of the card and on our overall evaluation.

Additional Strengths:

• As mentioned, the Doc (already with reaching level 3) gained a second magic damage point. This alone is great. Keep in mind: the increase from 1 to 2 damage for a 4 mana card has way more value than e.g. a 8 mana card with a damage growing from 2 to 3. Also, the damage is now not anymore nullified entirely by the void ability.

• The additional Poison ability is great. Once the poison is applied it produces ongoing damage even if the Doc has been wiped from the board already. With its constant effect, poison of course grows stronger, the longer the battle is on - which means that it might become your preferred strategy to just try to keep your troops on the field as long as possible (instead of agressively going all in on the attacking side). And when we talk about ways to keep your cards on the battlefield, we should directly have a look on Doctor Blight's next new ability...

• Scavenger can often be a nice ability which is capable of enervating your opponent. In case of Dr. Blight however, Scavenger becomes a real game changer as it perfectly matches with all the cards other abilities: As mentioned for Poison, the effect of the ability increases with every round fought - Scavenger now perfectly helps that the Doc survives turn by turn, applying more an more of his poison on the enemy. Camouflage in addition becomes super valuable as it ensures that the Doc will be the last of your cards on the field, meaning that his health has increased thanks to scavenger with every single of your cards who have left the battlefield before (in this connection, the new 0 mana cards - and good old chicken - are of course super helpful as they boost Blight's health for free; and be kind to your opponents saying thank you as they will also use 0 mana cards which help the Doc to survice another round).

• On top, the Doc with level 4 learns Weaken, meaning he gives minus one health to all your opponent's units. So, to put things together: the Doc will instantly deduct 1 health from every enemy card, he will deal another 2 damage per turn regardless of any armor, he can deal additional 2 damage per round thanks to poison - making in 5 damage in the first turn and 4 damage on any following turn. At the same time he is increasing his health and prevents your opponent from healing. To be very clear on this: THIS IS JUST INSANE 😅

Remaining Weaknesses:

• Yes, the Doc is still incredibly slow. With only 1 speed you should expect that basically any strike on him is an auto-hit.
• 4 health is ok for a level 1 card which costs 4 mana, but it is definitely not enough to ensure a long life on the battlefield (the equaliser ruleset certainly helps the Doc to become more powerful than he would be normal) Scavenger fully fixed this
• Doctor Blight's second ability camouflage is often not that useful. It can of course counter to some extent your opponent's snipe, sneak and opportunity abbilities what helps to booster the Doc's suboptimal health condition. However, the ability will only deploy its full potential in combination with another ability Doctor Blight will learn when climbing up the card levels. 😉 As outlined above, in combination with scavenger, camouflage becomes a great advantage for Doctor Blight. He cannot be easily sniped or sneaked. Position him well and will fight until the very end.
• Although the magic damage, the Doc does can be considered one of his strengths, one have to acknowledge that only 1 basic damage is not much. And it can become a significant issue when facing cards with the void ability, as the Doc will not do any damage to them at all.

Conclusions for the Maxed BLight

Let's face it. I do not find any significant weaknesses when looking at the maxed Doc except for his lacking speed. But well, he has that brilliant taker qualities due to Scavenger and Camouflage that he can easily swallow a whole bunch of hits. On the other hand, there are only a very few cards out there whose single abilities supplement each other as well as in case of Doctor Blight - making the Doc a real beast on the battlefield.

Right now the price of the Doc is a bit over 100 USD. I would assume that it will still go down a bit for a few days. However, different than for the other Chaos Legion cards no more Blight's will be given out in the future. As a consequence, the price of the card should go up in the next months already. If you get your hands on a copy of the card for less than 100 USD I would consider this a good deal (of course no financial advice, but just a noob's humble opinion 😉) If you want to try out the Blight to get your own impression on the card, renting is currently a great opportunity as the card is increadibly cheap to rent (appr. 2,65 DEC as of today).

Well, Splinters... now it's your turn. Have you tried out Doctor Blight already, and if yes what do you think: Fully overrated or absolutely priceless? Happy to discuss your first impressions and thoughts on the card.

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