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 - gaining lots of winning 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