About the card: Chaos Knight
Chaos Knight is a common level card from the Chaos Legion. They are a Level 6 card with Shield, allowing them to reduce the attack of ranged and melee attacks. Costing 6 mana, and with 3 shields, they are a useful tank against non-magic opponents, especially in low mana matches where your opponent is likely to have lower attack power cards. I thought they would be a good choice for this battle with its 19 mana cap and the Weak Magic rule set.
Before getting to the battle and strategy, I’d like to use a few moments on this digital soapbox…
Some Thoughts on Representation
Chaos Knight is one of the only cards in any of the editions who is identifiable as brown or black and human. The others are, of course, Waka the poison summoner, based off of an actual American rapper, and Obsidian, the magic nature summoner. You could also make an argument for Theorosa Nightshade. There are, of course, other cards that are red or green or blue with distinctly African or African American characteristics, but, sadly, these are mostly orcs, demons, goblins, and the like. The life splinter and the Gladius cards have a huge number of humans and only The Chaos Knight is brown skinned. Given that, it's sad that Chaos Knight has no name and is, in the lore, one of countless Knights put to the front lines of battle to die. Sad, but also in alignment with the norms, at least of American culture, that does an inordinate amount of military recruitment in low income neighborhoods of color.
My invitation and encouragement to the Splinterlands character development team: Please include more diversity of representation in your humanoid characters - in particular more black and brown skinned characters. Please give at least some of them characters that break with the easy tropes of medicine person/shaman, muscle engorged savage, or in the case of the Chaos Knight lore - cannon fodder. Please take a moment to consider your options before putting red, blue, or green skin on a character with distinctly African or African American features. In all of these choices - lack of representation, or representation primarily through demonic characters, is unconscious racialized programming at work. Please make active efforts to shift these unconscious norms. If you don’t know how, consider hiring a POC consultant to support you in this work. You all are revolutionizing gaming- let’s make consciousness about representation part of that.
Clearly this topic deserved its own post. These were some initial reflections after considering the Chaos Knight. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Now onto the battle…
The Line Up
1. Chaos Knight
I went ahead and put the Chaos Knight in the Front Lines to do some damage while offering a substantial defense...as the lore suggests.
The Weak Magic ruleset in a low mana battle is perfect for this card. Any 1 attack melee and ranged cards get absorbed by the shield ability. Stronger cards will go to armor before health, even if they are magic. Add in a Divine Shield from Lorna Shine, and this is a mighty defender. With them at the lead, I decided I could risk a highly defensive game and have very few attack cards. It was a big risk, and one I immediately doubted. But let's see what happened.
2. Truth Speaker
Ok. Maybe Truth Speaker's name had something to do with getting up the guts to give the representation spiel at the top of the post. Truth Speaker, with her Protect ability gives everyone 2 (now-magic-proof) armor.
3. Scavo Hireling
Scavo Hiereling is to keep building back all that armor Truth Speaker made. Really this should have been an Armorsmith for 2 mana, but I forgot I had delegated it to my alt account. Bus Scavo Hireling is attractive in that everyone has access to them at the moment.
##4. Time Mage
Finally, since I don't have a strong offense, I wanted one magic attack and someone to slow the other team down a bit. So I went with Time Mage.
So What Happened?!
A really long battle is what happened...
Between Truth Speaker's Protect and Scavo Hireling's Repair I didn't losr anyone until round 5.
My opponents Sneak and Opportunity creatures were slowly picking my team off from the back.
By the end of round 9 it was my Chaos Knight against four of their remaining cards.
But the Chaos Knight slowly and vigilantly picking them off from the front..
Until, 17 rounds later(!!!), who should remain standing!
Some Final Thoughts on the Card
Chaos Knight is a great card for a low mana battle, particularly if magic isn't allowed or if Magic hits armor. The extra support from Protect and Repair abilities make this card really shine.
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