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Warhammer

Chaos in the Old World

Chaos Gods fighting for dominance

Chaos in the Old World from Fantasy Flight Games is a strategic game of divine influence. Every player assumes the role of a different Chaos God in the World of Warhammer. They are fighting for dominance while laying waste to the Old World.

What is in the box?

Keeping with the theme, the map on the game board is designed to look like it has been printed on flayed skin and the 45 plastic followers that come with the game also look very unwholesome.

The game map shows just nine areas, each with one number for its resistance and conquest value. There are the threat dials and room for old world (event) cards, the ruination cards and the victory point track. The map is huge but designed so badly that it´s very hard to know at all times which units and counters belong to a certain area.

Each player has a deck of Chaos cards that allows him additional options during game turns plus five unique upgrade cards to make their units stronger or give them additional actions. The upgrade cards become active during the game by turning the threat dial.

Lastly there are a few sheets full of counters. They are colorful and printed on the super thick stock typical for Fantasy Flight games.

The rulebook is large and colorful and has 32 pages. The rules are presented in such a good way that learning the rules is not very hard. There is some flavor text and some examples and there were barely any questions left unanswered by the rulebook. But with that number of pages it is definitely necessary for one player to study the rules beforehand and teach the game to the others.

All in all, the square box is well filled but not overflowing.

How do I win?

There are two goals in the game. A common victory track where the first player to reach 50 points wins, and the Threat Dials that are turned by reaching a different goal for each player.

How does the game work?

Each player picks a god to play. The choices range from Khorne who loves bloodshed to Nurgle the plague bearer, Tseench the mage and Slaneesh the god of ecstasy. These powers play very differently and in my opinion are not entirely balanced - at least for inexperienced gamers, but I´m getting ahead of myself.

The players take the followers, chaos cards, upgrade cards and corruption tokens for their power.

In the initial setup each region on the map gets a token. Either a noble who increases the victory point value, a Warpstone that makes a region easier to corrupt or a peasant who can be killed but is only relevant in conjunction with certain event cards.

Each turn consists of the following phases:

Event phase:

In the event phase one Old World = event card is drawn. With four players there are only seven event cards, and if there is no winner by the end of the seventh round, no player wins. The event cards generally place additional tokens on the map and have effects like giving victory points to the players for killing peasants or are removing followers from certain areas of the board.

The tokens that are placed have effects during the game. The hero tokens kill one follower of the most threatening power in their region. Threat is determined with the Threat Dials, they give a number relating to how close a power is in reaching the end of their Threat Dials. The least threatening player gets to make the decisions on where to place the tokens for the event cards. This gives some advantage to players who have fallen behind or to Nurgle, who does not have to rely on the threat dial to win the game.

The draw phase

Each player draws two cards in this phase, except Tseench who draws until he has 5 cards (or six if he chooses a certain upgrade card).

The summoning phase

Each player has some followers that he places on the board to further his goals, but the strengths and weaknesses as well as the mix of these followers differ greatly. Each power has a few cultists. They are very important for gaining victory points and, in all cases but Khorne, to turn the threat dial. On the other hand, cultists are the cheapest, weakest followers and are in danger to get killed by others.

Each player also has some warriors and a single demon whose role is to remove enemy followers from areas. The figures are sculpted nicely but look ugly to "please their god" according to the rulebook.

The summoning phase is the main phase of the game where each player takes an action, then the next player until no player has any power points left. The players have six to seven power points to spend during this phase (or more with upgrade cards). Summoning a follower onto the map costs one power point, no matter if he comes from the reserves or from anywhere on the map (moving). As long as you have any followers on the map, you can only place into or adjacent to areas where you are present. Warriors usually cost two points and Demons cost three. Since the game goes only for a maximum of seven turns, you only have about 40 action points for the whole game. That means placing the demon is a big commitment!

Instead of placing a follower, a player can also play a chaos card. Chaos cards have certain effects on the area they are played on and cost from zero to 3 power points to play. Each area on the game board has only two slots for chaos cards so you have to be quick to play on into a contested area. Some card effects prohibit combat in an area – which hurts Khorne a lot, while others make it more expensive to summon into an area. There can also be a magic symbol on the cards which help Tseench with turning his threat dial.

Strategically it makes a lot of sense to wait by playing cheap cards and units until the other players have committed most of their power points before tipping your hand and putting down units. This is especially true for the first turn in the game because you might be able to find a nice spot on the map for yourself. If a player decides that he does not want to do anything during his turn, then his power points are reduced to zero.

The battle phase

In this part of the round dice are thrown to kill other players followers. Warriors and Demons throw a number of dice. Each four or five is a hit and every six is an explosion which is a hit and gives an additional die to roll. Usually fighting is simultaneous, but Khorne the blood god has certain upgrades and chaos cards that allow him to attack first. The attacker looks at how many hits he has rolled and then decides whom he kills. Each unit has a certain amount of hit points. All the stats of the units like attack dice, hit points and summoning costs are found on each players power sheet but can be changed by upgrade cards. The main decision in this phase is, whether you want to remove an opponent´s cultists to make sure he gets no dial advancements or his warrior units to win this region over.

The corruption phase

In this phase each cultist on the board places a corruption marker in his area. At this time it is checked if the total number of threat tokens plus the green warp tokens in the area reaches twelve which ruins the region. Also domination is checked for each area. Players count the number of units they have plus the cost of their chaos cards in the area. The player with the highest total checks the resistance number of the region which is printed on the board. Some markers modify those values, Skaven markers reduce the resistance value, noblemen enhance the conquest value.

If his total is higher than the resulting resistance, he gets victory points. These victory points are marked on the victory point track.

The end phase

In the last phase of the turn a lot of cleanup has to take place.

First, Chaos cards are removed from the board.

Then, each hero token kills one follower in his area.

Third, old world cards are resolved if it says so on the card.

Fourth, ruined regions are scored. Each player who put in a corruption token into a freshly ruined region during this round receives a number of points which rises from one ruined area to the next. Then the players with the most and the second most tokens receives a lot of points for corruption. Then the ruination card is placed on the region. No more points can be earned in this region while combat can still occur.

Fifth, the treat dials are advanced. During the battle phase, Khorne has received one dial advancement counter (DAC) for each area in which he has killed an opposing follower. During the corruption phase the other players received a DAC for placing two corruption tokens into an area which fulfils certain conditions.

Nurgle needs the expensive central areas to turn his dial. Tseench needs two magic symbols (from cards) and/or warpstones, while Slaneesh needs two nobles or heroes in the area. So each player except Khorne has certain areas where they have to be to get DAC. In the end phase, each player who has a least on DAC on his dial turns the dial one step. The player with the most tokens on the dial (usually Khorne) turns his wheel twice.

The wheel gives boons like additional chaos cards, victory points or allows a player to pick an upgrade card.

The very last thing in the turn is to check for victory conditions. If a player reached the end of his threat dial (with 8-12 turns needed) he has won. Else, we have to look at the victory point track. If a player has 50 VP he wins. If five areas have been ruined during the game, the player with the most VP wins. Or, if at the end of seven turns (for four players) no one has won, then the population of the old world wins and all the players lose.

How is the game?

I was very interested how this game would work out after a few games, because our first couple of tries ended extremely close between all the players who made no glaring mistakes. We had a couple of games where three players reached the victory conditions in the same turn and we had to use the tiebreaking procedures (threat dial winner with the most VP wins the game).

In my opinion the game is a very basic abstract unit placement game with some chrome and a lot of bookkeeping. As I noted before, you only have 40-45 action points during the entire 2+ hours game and placing a warrior costs two points already. I am not entirely sure if there is no fail save strategy for one of the powers that wins most of the time, but so far I have not found one.

Khorne plays very differently from the other powers, almost as different as the overlord in Descent or Sauron in MEQ does. While the other players try to secure one or two areas on the map for themselves, Khorne has to go full out on confrontation. If the other players don´t act together to work against Khorne then he will win every time in my experience. Especially Nurgle has to be very careful of Khorne, because he has to remain in the central areas to get the VP he needs to win and his units have the least amount of hitpoints so they are a favourite of Khorne´s to attack.

The other powers mostly differ on their chaos cards and the victory conditions they can reach. Khorne will only win with the threat dial. Nurgle and Tseench win only via victory points. Slaneesh can win with either but has to choose very soon in the game which victory condition to pursue.

There are a few design flaws that detract from the game for me. The map is so big but so crowded in certain areas that it invites mistakes. If there is one experienced player in a group who does all of the bookkeeping tasks in the end phase the game plays twice as fast and with the limited number of decisions you make in a game I think it might be possible to play it in less than an hour.

On the other hand if you sit down and start to read the rules on game night, you will be lucky to play one game during that night.

The game is fun and easy enough once you understand how everything plays together, but the first game will discourage most players from giving it another chance.

Overall, I think the game appeals to people who liked my old favourite Campaign Trails (or the new Road to the White House). In both games you have a very simple game underneath, hidden by a lot of bookkeeping chores to make it look like a complex game.

Spieler         : 2-4

Alter            : ages 13 and up

Dauer           : ca. 90 min

Autor           : Eric M. Lang

Grafik          : Kevin CHildress & Team

German title : Chaos in der Alten Welt

Preis            : ca. 50,00 Euro

Verlag          : Heidelberger Spieleverlag 2009

                     www.hds-fantasy.de        

Genre                    : Fantasy Adventure Game

Zielgruppe             : With Friends

Mechanismen         : Use markers, cards and units

Kommentar:

Attractive components

Heavy rule-book

Basically simple mechanisms

Lots of administration needed

Vergleichbar:

Descent, Middle Earth Quest and other fantasy adventure games with varying abilities of characters

Atmosphäre: 5

Christian Grundner:

A simple game at heart, masked by lots of administration, plays faster with every game you play – it pays off to play several games!

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