Chaos in the Old World

Overview

Chaos in the Old World is a board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games in which the players take the role of one of the Gods of Chaos to take over the world.

Not only must the players contend with one another, but they must deal with random events that the world itself throws up at them, such as the rise of human armies, or Elven Wizards, Norse Invasions and others, each of which can radically change the way the game develops. This coupled with randomly positioned objectives and constantly shifting goals means that no two games will play alike.

Thankfully despite all of the activity happening within a single game, it is not as difficult to pick up and play as some other of the FFG board games, and can be completed in less than a couple of hours.

Gameplay

After generating the random event that will take place that game turn, players take it in strict "god sequence" to spend power points to summon daemons and/or cast spells onto the map.

Once all players are out of power points then the game uses a strict "region sequence" to determine the order that battles and spells are resolved in, beginning at the top of the map and working its way down.

After all of the gets resolved, if the faction has enough daemons and magic remaining in that location to beat the local mortal forces (always a fixed value - with a few exceptions) then they dominate that region and score points Finally, players with any remaining Cultist units get to place corruption in the location which can contribute to the ruin of that kingdom and the eventual destruction of the world - also gaining lots of points, but rendering that region useless for the rest of the game.

The game is not balanced but that is the beauty of it. Each god plays exactly as they should, Khorne is obviously the superior combatant, Tzeentch is the master of magic, Nurgle is the spreader of corruption and plague, whilst Slaanesh excels at turning the players against each other.

Players also get to level-up their god, and each god has different means of doing this.

• Khorne kills people - easy
• Tzeentch places two or more corruption tokens wherever there are two or more warpstone tokens and/or magical "vortex" symbols (found on certain magic spell cards belonging to all players
• Nurgle places two or more corruption tokens down in a "populated" area (marked on the map)
• Slaanesh places two or more corruption tokens down wherever a nobleman objective or mortal hero is currently located.

Levelling up brings obvious benefits to the player, such as improved daemonic abilities / more power points to use each turn / more spells in your hand or even simple things like an immediate score boost.

The players must always keep in mind their factions strengths and weaknesses, so whilst newbies might feel that Khorne is overpowered, anyone with a good head for tactics can win so long as they keep their goals in mind.

An entire game can pass without a single battle taking place (much easier with no Khorne player) and it would still be an enjoyable session.

The game ends when:

• Someone levels up to max - they just win immediately
• Someone accumulates fifty points - then the highest score wins
• the world is ruined - technically the person with the highest score then wins a moral victory, but face it, you've lost
• or you run out of random event cards - everyone loses

Tactics

Khorne

You are going to win by leveling up, plain and simple. You will always play a reactionary game, chasing players around the board trying to kill them. That is why the "god sequence" exists, so that players can see what you do first before making their own moves so you cannot ambush every move they make.

Your job is essentially to spread yourself thinly and try to catch out units in as many locations as possible, as it does not matter how many units you kill, just so long as you kill things in different regions to level up quicker.

Because of this you are unlikely to score many points trying to dominate mortal regions, so you will mostly be behind on the score tracker for most of the game, but once you start getting more and more daemons on the board and it becomes cluttered with more and more ruined kingdoms, you will find that you absolutely dominate locations where you get a huge build up of forces.

Do not ever forget your cultists though, an early level-upgrade makes them into fighting units giving you a small horde to play with. But also if you're clever, a well placed corruption token can tip a region over the edge and ruin it, scoring you big points even after someone else has done all the work.

Tzeentch

You ARE the master of magic, unlike everyone else you get a whole fresh hand of spells every turn, and many of them have a zero value, so you can place them with impunity.

Many of your spells also give you unparalleled mobility, allowing you to move your daemons anywhere on the map ignoring the normal restrictions on movement. But you can also cast the same spell on your opponents units, moving them to remote locations where they get no benefit from being.

You are also the player that everyone else can predict the least, but will require an enormous amount of Just as Planned to pull off, precisely as anyone playing Tzeentch should: Your objectives of Warpstone and/OR magic symbols means that you can create your own level-up objectives anywhere on the board at pretty much any time. Good use of zero cost spell cards can conceal your intentions until the very last moment, where your opponents have started running out of power points you can have plenty left over to position your daemons in freshly prepared level-up conditions as well as locations abandoned by other players which you can dominate easily.

The best upgrades for you are obviously the ones that improve your hand-size and the number of power points you can get, though the cultist one comes in a close third, allowing you to pull warpstone around the map. The pink horror upgrade is also useful if you know how to use it, by hoarding spell slots on the map all to yourself, but you get so few horrors its not really worth it until late in the game when people are competing for space. The lord of change upgrade is never worth it, YES counting him as two warpstone is lovely, but you can create your own objectives everywhere else and all you're doing is creating a target for your opponents to charge at, which is something you should never do as Tzeentch.

Horned Rat Expansion

FFG also released an expansion to the board game, introducing a fifth player: the Horned Rat, which has a completely unique play style unlike the other players.

• They DO NOT place corruption on the table, instead their own units count as corruption tokens whenever a location gets ruined, and is significant when awarding points to the players who contributed most to the ruination of that particular region.
• They level up by dominating mortal regions wherever there exists a skaven warren token. That gives those tokens a second purpose, since to every other player they simply weakened the region they were attempting to dominate.

The Horned Rat is the master of hordes and mobility, once they level up they can move men around with impunity, even abusing the god & region order to hop men from location to location scoring points and steam-rolling your opponents later in the game.

The expansion also introduces a new set of spells for each other god, as well as a new set of level-up upgrades. These are really for advanced players as they do require a complete change in tactics and planning. For example: in this "advanced" set, Khorne becomes less of a combat focussed faction and more geared towards mortal domination.