The Chaos Knight is a new Common Chaos Legion card for the Life Splinter. Despite being a common card, the art and portrayal of the Chaos Knight is one of the more interesting pieces in this set. The armor features a golden Chaos Legion emblem on the chest plate with gold accents adorning the dark armor elsewhere. With the shield and battle axe, it's clear this is going to be a melee attacker with some good frontline potential. The lore snippet of the card backs this up as well too:
Chaos Knights are most often found at the front line of the Chaos Legion's invading forces, although they are sometimes enlisted to defend garrisons, leadership, and other high-value assets. They are heavily armored and wield massive battle axes that are able to cut down even the mightiest of foes.
Seems like it's perfect to be a giant killer right? Taking a look at the level four variant:
We can see both the shield and battle axe translate nicely into stats of 3 melee attack with 3 armor and the Shield ability to cut melee/ranged damage in half. So how does it fare on the frontlines?
In a pure Chaos Legion card only match, it's General Sloan commanding a Chaos Knight, Celesetial Harpy, and a Stitch Leech against a Scorch Fiend and Grum, lead by Tarsa. It might appear odd that I chose General Sloan over Mother Kala or Lorna Shine here, though it is the highest leveled Life Summoner I have currently - trading the extra hits for slightly better leveled cards.
The Chaos Knight opens up the action, quickly cutting through the Scorch Fiend, while the Celestial Harpy and Stitch Leech strip Grum's armor in Round 1. Grum's slow speed helps him here, as he gets the last attack of the round, hitting the Chaos Knight for all of the armor points. Round 2 is much like Round 1, with Grum being the sole target. The shield ability on the Chaos Knight saves it from being completely destroyed by a second blow from the buffed Grum, only delivering 3 of the 5 melee damage. Round 3 is a short one, with Grum finally falling.
The Chaos Legion definitely injected more playable strategies into the Life Splinter. Previously, I tried to avoid playing it as much as possible and didn't feel as though I understood the inner synergies of it. There's still a good chunk for me to learn depth wise here, particularly at the higher levels, but it's certainly more enjoyable to play.