Right so the spoilers are up... We have the current Warlord as well as his squad.. but now we also have the full card list on CardGameDB

Signature

UNITS

The Cultist Token dose not have a image yet.. but it is

Interrupt: When you deploy a Daemon unit, sacrifice this unit to reduce its cost by 1.

Events

Attachment

Support

So.... what you guys thinking... I was surprised the lack of events. We have 3 for the entire core set for Chaos... massivly army centric, as are all the factions it seam to be...

I'm going read though and come back with some thoughts in a sec!

The neutral cards seam pretty darn good... I would say these are nearly must include in ANY deck.

Fall back lets you recur you best elite units for 1 cost, bypassing deployment costs and The mine is a 4 turn mana acceleration.... seams legit.

Fall back is "obvious is being obvious" type card. I mean look at Vicious Bloodletter. Not only is bypassing the drawing of the card, it is also accelerating it by 4 resources. That is pretty crazy.

Meanwhile mine looks great on paper, but I have a gut feeling this is a "early or a waste" type card. I talk about it a bit below, but I am unsure of the value of resource acceleration. Like it is always good, of course, but there looks to be a satiation point. Chaos has sac reduction effects up the whats-it. So is mine going to take value form those more integral chaos factioning effect? I like to work on the principal , if your good at it.. make that ting your good at better.. rather than trying to do everything.

These guys were spoiled, but I am not sure they are worth it yet, I'll have to get some game time to properly evaluate how the command struggles go. They seam to be pretty neat global deck smoothers, but slots in this game look precious, and I ma not convinced at his time.

Chaos for example has a lot of acceleration in it already. I mean we do not have Calto or anything, but still there is a lot of cultist spawns and sac effects to reduce costs.

I think I just do not have enough info on how the game plays yet, we are drawing 2 cards a turn + any command wins at draw planets. That is a ton of smoothing compared to most games. Is 1 extra card worth loosing the 3 slots it occupies?

This one is the kind of card I dislike, but may be needed once a small meta evolves in my group. I dislike card that rely on conditions from your opponent. 1st you have to wait for them to cast a shield, then you have to in fact have the card in hand when they do, usually from a early draw, so it is causing a dead slot. So in almost all cases this is a dead draw, a dead slot, or absent when needed.

The thing is shielding is the mechanism in this game I am the least comfortable, and if it is a huge thing, then it is a obvious include. Remember by default you can only discard 1 shield card. So your talking about 2 card value. You spend 1 card, they loose 2 cards. They loose board position, and any resources the unit cost, while you retain board position and spend nothing.

Here are some Orcs I think have synergism with the warlord... remember no loyal or sig cards can be used. Remember we are looking at Chaos with a Orc splash.. but while looking I am thinking Orc with a Chaos splash looks pretty neat. To be honest I am not really giddy about Chaos / Orc. Most of their effects targets Orcs only and they seam to have a TON of loyal cards, making most of the set unable for Chaos. I haven't got to Dark yet so this may be the norm though.

I am not convinced there is a lot of decent Chaos / Orc stuff going on here... there is a few.. but not many..

These both look like the best options. Gaining flying is a big deal, even more so if you consider AOE effects like Bloodletters, units you want to hang around.

Burna Boys have a clearest synergy with the Chaos warlord. 5 attack then +1 from the warlord + then 1 from the reaction to any unit then +1 from Warlord again to go with it. That is a 8 point attack right there, with 2 points of it targeted! Pretty boss.

Rokitboy basically negates a entire type of attack, the cool thing is that it negates flying.

These 3 are my picks really.

Still lets keep going!

Chaos dose seam to have a lot of high cost cards, and I'm not sure.. but it looks like it is a little weak on command struggles. Chaos has no problem wounding things, in fact there are plenty of ways to put damage on your own units (maybe why it would be good to use a Orc / Chaos and not the way this thread is trying to do it). Yeah, pretty sure 2 command icons is the max for Chaos.

Protecting Cultists might be a big deal so Snottling Attack my be a good thing. Giving you plenty of fodder for a damage soak, so you are not using the cultists for soaking.

EDIT - Missed this one .. so thought I would add it here for continuity!

This Kannon has nice synergism with the Chaos Warlord. Each 1 point of damage it dose, hits for 2. The thing isn't unique so you can have 3 of them in play to bombard the enemy for 6 damage a turn before even the command struggle resolves. That is pretty boss. The draw back is of course the fact it hits both sides, but Chaos has these Hell Hounds that can be fully healed at action speed to soak that **** up. Also there is a brutal unit in Chaos as well.

Dark seam on the surface to have the most direct synergy as a Chaos splash. On face value there is just so many more card to even consider, let alone some of them being pretty boss..

Coliseum Fighters has to be a standard card in most Dark decks and I think it could be part of the back bone for Chaos / Dark. Chaos only has a few events, but powerful ones, and Dark has a **** ton of them. This little beauty fetches events of any type. Remember events seam to be the main place we find shielding icons (and attachment), and Chaos seams rather low on shields to me. A full tilt chaos army with Dark event support, using this guy to recur shields looks to be a thing. In fact I think this could be the deck I initially build.

Area Effect is a thing. No **** it is a thing! Remember the warlord for chaos is adding 1 dmg to every create as well so this is 3 area damage, along with the Bloodletter hitting for 6.. 9 area damage? ... say whaaaaaaaa?

There are so many good Dark cards for chaos, that unlike Orc were you just take all the good ones, you need to make sure your not reducing your Chaos army to much. Here are a bunch of unit cards that can all go in the deck and all have awesome effects.. Both of these cards also have command icons... and as noted Chaos seams a little lite on them.

The Haemonculus is a interesting one... pumpable.. so he could hit for crazy amounts if you have the resources to use it. Could be a very good way to take out large threats.

Looks like one of the events I was looking at was in fact loyal... but still there are two events

Power from Pain is ok.. basically it is "kill their worst guy".. so not that cool, but it dose have a shield on it. in contrast you have Terror, which is "remove their best guy" .. . not bad at all. + it has a shield (and I expect shielding to be a huge thing in this game) and of course it is recurable though the fighters.

In truth Dark was not as obvious a choice as I thought, not seeing Lyal on two cards really made a huge difference

Tzeentch's Instinct

Chaos / Dark

Warlord

Zarathur, High S orcerer

4x Zarathur’s Flamers

1x Shrine of Warpflame

2x Infernal Gateway

1x Mark of Chaos

3x Alpha Legion Infiltrator (1c)

3x Vicious Bloodletter (E. Area)

3x Chaos Fanatics (2c)

3x Umbral Preacher (2c, Oppon No Retreat)

3x Splintered Path Acolyte (1c, -2 Demon Cost)

3x Baleful Mandrake (1c, Range)

3x Vile Raider (2c, Mobile)

2x Sybarite Marksman (Ranged)

3x Kabalite Strike Force (Area)

3x Coliseum Fighters (Event Recursion)

2x Rune-Encrusted Armour

3x Warpstorm

3x Tzeentch’s Firestorm

3x Archon’s Terror

2x Fall Back

Deck: 50

​For my 1st attempt at a Chaos / Dark I decided to go for a demon light version build. Instead focusing on Combat Specialities. Almost every thing has some kind of combat keyword. Area, Mobile, Ranged. Supported with Event damage to control the board.

The lack of demons freed up slots from Cultist Spawning as I didn't need the sac effects so much. Though this did lose mana acceleration for those Bloodletters whom are pretty key. So in gose the mine. Now I wasn't 100% happy with the mine. It dose pay off over time, but how long will a game go I still do not know this. It is not unique so you could be looking at +2r at some point in any given game. Sounds great. Though in the end I decided to just go with the Splinted Path Acolyte. -2 makes the Bloodletter a 3 drop, this should be acceptable to drop in any given turn after they come into play. Meanwhile they have a Command Icon so help with resources and card draw as well.

There is a heap of events to damage things and even routing them. These can all be used as shielding as well, and on top of that there is event recursion with the Coliseum Fighters. I'm only running a single Elite so no need for 3xFall Back... though with fall back your basically getting 5 Bloodletters instead of 3

I only put in 2 armour as this makes 3 attachments in total. I often do this in LCGs. 3 is the best way to grantee a draw, yet we are limited to 1 in the signature set. Drawing 1 attachment "chance wise" is negligent , but now I have 3.. so attachment targets seam more of a threat, yet the Armour is not so impressive to me. The Range units would be the targets if the Armour.

Scratch

Promethium Mine

Fall Back!

This deck is kind of relying on Area and the ability to attack first with Range. DD effects form event drops are sorta the edge of this entire thing.. shielding could be a real problem.. but I need to play to see how much

(ork deck incoming)

Murder of Razorwings is going to be a Dark Eldar staple. Too bad nobody else can use it.

'Ere B Dem Demons

Chaos / Orks

Warlord

Zarathur, High S orcerer

4x Zarathur’s Flamers

1x Shrine of Warpflame

2x Infernal Gateway

1x Mark of Chaos

3x ♦ Xavaes Split-Tongue

3x Splintered Path Acolyte

3x Chaos Fanatics

3x Umbral Preacher

2x Ravenous Flesh Hounds

3x Vicious Bloodletter

1x Black Legion Heldrake

2x Soul Grinder

2x Burna Boyz

3x Goff Boyz

2x Rune-Encrusted Armor

2x Rokkit Launcha

2x Promotion

3x Promise of Glory

3x Snotling Attack

3x Fall Back!

2x ♦ Fortress of Madness

2x Murder Cogitator

I'm a little less sure on this one, the idea here is to get large Bombs on the table. In truth this could possibly be done better as a Mono deck, but I wanted to try and get a Chaos / Ork ting running.

This one is all about the cultist spawn and demon pounding. The core of the deck is really the Flesh Hounds. Using Cultist sacs to heal them to full health they should be very heard to take down. Unfortunately they can not take attachments. Even so I think these will be pretty hardcore to kill. The heal is at action speed though, but with raw 6 dmg.. . . .

Xavaes is unique but we want him asap to start spawning cultist tokens to heal our hounds and get the heavy duty Demons out fast. These cultists also heal the hounds, along with the Fanatics, Acolytes and even in a pinch the Priest. Though he is really there to trap units to be eaten by the hounds and latter the Soul Grinder.

Speaking of speed 1 drop Goff Boys for fast control of the 1st planet seams pretty awesome to me. 3 of them as we also want them as early as possible. Once they retreat they get stuck with the warlord and this could telegraph are warlord assignment if we need to put them back on the 1st planet. Still I think with all the high cost stuff in this one some ultra cheap-o things seamed pretty good.

The Burner boys are a "meh". I think they synergies so well with the Chaos Warlord I want to try them. Though these guys could be swapped out for a utility unit as we should have so much damage on site. Bad Dok might be a could alternative.

Heldrake only has 1 copy, this is to team it with Soul Grinder (a better card it seams) to make a total of a 3 cards draw chance for a ultra hard hitter.

Once we have the demons out lets load em up. Get Ranged on Soul Grinder for ultra "wtf" and Armour on Xavaes to prolong the cultist spawns as much as possible. Promotion is something I want to try, but at the last min removed it for "Murder Cogitator". The idea was to get it on soul grinder or black legion and have a huge 5 drop sitting on a planet just soaking up the command wins. I still think this is viable.

Fall Back to remove elites, but the real target is Xavaes or Legion. We need those cultists. Still Snottling Attack is a cool little damage soak. Shields are limited in this deck, so damage soaks are a thing we want, and while we are creating cultists we really have other uses for them. Promise is just a cultist spawn, it also might be taken out.. it really depends on how effective Xavaes is.

Finally some deck soothing with Cogitator. We have a lot of Chaos units, so this seams a good bet, and mana acceleration though cost reduction on all chaos units with maddness is a nice way to save cultists for healing.

Scratch

Bad Dok

Tankbusta Bommaz

Rokkitboy

Alpha Legion Infiltrator

Possessed

I like the idea of Bad Dork. Why use cogitator or promotion when you can just win command struggles all natural like

I took out Tankbusta in the end as this deck should not really car if you are a armoured tank or w/e.. it should do enough damage.

Rokkitboy seamed a great way to remove flying to increase the damage output.

The problem was that cultist generation seams sorta key to getting demons out, but if you removed enough demons to fit in all the other stuff, then you didn't have enough demons to warrant the cultist generation. So I ended up going heavy demon..

Now in addition to the scratch cards, I think "amount" tweaking could be a real thing. Probably remove attachments and allow for small faster units like Alpha Legion.

Anyone else surprised by how fast this guy put out a deck idea? Anyhow, i would try out Ork Kannon. Along with some Brutals from the Orcs and Zarathurs Ability it should be a good option. Maybe No Mercy works fine too with all the damage dealing effects.

The more I look at the Chaos / Ork deck the more I think it might not really work. Like I think the deck will function, but it doesn't really take advantage of the Warlords ability. The elite demons by nature hit super hard.. so that 1 ping from the warlord is not a huge deal...

I dunno.. I think this deck needs work.. but I am pretty happy with the Dark one. After dinner I'll have another crack at it.

I would try out Ork Kannon. Along with some Brutals from the Orcs and Zarathurs Ability it should be a good option.

All Brutal have Loyalty and can not be used. Orc Cannon pings for 1 damage. I havn't really gone though the other cards to much... so I am not sure what effect a 1 pinger will have, but with out brutal the only ork chaos can use that damage is Bad Dork. There is a chaos unit with brutal though. Khorne Berzerker but I was thinking he would be for Ork / Chaos .. which at a glance seams much more viable at this stage.. most of the ideas that came seamed to fit that deck better.

Dem's Da Khaos Boyz

(Chaos / Oks)

Warlord

Zarathur, High Sorcerer

Signature (8)

4x Zarathur’s Flamers
1x Shrine of Warpflame
2x Infernal Gateway
1x Mark of Chaos

Units (26)

3x ♦ Xavaes Split-Tongue
3x Vicious Bloodletter
3x Ravenous Flesh Hounds
3x Khorne Berzerker
3x Splintered Path Acolyte
3x Burna Boyz
3x Bad Dok
3x Goff Boyz

2x Rokkitboy

Attachments (2)

2x Rune-Encrusted Armor

Events (11)

3x Warpstorm
3x Promise of Glory
3x Snotling Attack

2x Fall Back!

Support (3)

3x Ork Kannon

Here is my 2nd attempt at "Chaos / Ork" I think this one turned out much better. I took the advise and looked at the Kannon and put in some utility to keep it running, as at full tilt we are looking at 6 damage a turn to each side of the fence as the 1 dmg can be increased to 2 by the Warlord and the Kannon is not unique so you can have 3 out at once... 6 dmg.

So it comes to how can we survive that and again I think it comes to Hounds and the full heal ability. The Kannon is at action speed so you can sac a cultist to heal the hound between rounds. Allowing it to soak up tons of damage while it piles on the other side. With Xavaes you can even generate the healing cultists during the 1st barrage.

Until you get that combo up, you have the Berserker and Bad Dok as alternative locations to soak up Kannon damage. Bad Dork could be a great way to win commands easily.

Put the armour on Xavaes to increase his longevity and you also have Fall Back to help with keeping those high cost elites demons in play.

The events give us shielding as well as Snottlings for damage soak, Promise of Glory to get out cultists fast for fast hounds or healing hounds and Warpstorm is just wtf!

Scratch

No Mercy

Promotion

No mercy seams great, but maybe there is enough dmg in this deck along with healing we do not care? Still might be a good swap for Fall Back.

I like the idea of Promotion but have to play with it to see how it works. The idea of having this and armour on Xavaes for cultist generation and 4 command icons seams pretty boss. Gain those draws and creds from the planets rather than cards... . .

Anyway, I think this is better than the last deck for Orks I made.

These guys were spoiled, but I am not sure they are worth it yet, I'll have to get some game time to properly evaluate how the command struggles go. They seam to be pretty neat global deck smoothers, but slots in this game look precious, and I ma not convinced at his time.

If I'm reading the rules correctly, these guys give you extra cards and resources when you win command struggles. With the stats of most planets, that means these guys effectively double your take on most command struggles. As such, I'd call these guys your "basic resource" cards and you should be looking at using them to fill support slots, not unit slots.

As mentioned in the "cards vs. resource" thread, I really think the importance of the Command Phase cannot be underestimated. It not only gives you the opportunity to control your own card/resource production, but to control your opponent's (since every command struggle you win is a resource/card your opponent doesn't get). My prediction is we will not only find these guys "worth it," but virtually required in any deck.

I am not so sure.. while I agree with everything you said, I think it is to early to really understand the value of the command icons. It is very easy to over (or under) estimate the required number of icons we will need for these struggles.

These guys gain you extra stuff form the planets, but they do not aid much in winning those things. As far as advancement of your win condition these cards basically do little. They smooth the deck and accelerate your mana, for sure.. great effects.. But.... To win the command struggles you still need to use deck slots for command icon units, exactly the same deck slots that you would use without these two neutral cards in your deck. With 1 command icon they are not really contributing much to winning those command struggles.. and they do nothing else. So with or without your ability to win commands is barely altered.

You would probably either run 3 of 1 card or 4 by having 2 of each. That is a sizable filler in the slots of your deck. If they had stronger command icons it would be a no brainier.. but at this time I am under the impression that you are better off putting in the exact same command icon cards you would have to use anyway, regardless of if they are in or not and then those slots that these neutrals would have taken up are free for other things.

Meanwhile "normal" command struggle cards have duel purpose that not only wins the struggles also advance your win condition, while these neutral cards do nothing if you are not winning the command. So instead of using these slots for the neutrals and pull extar cards per struggle, use those slots for ways to control the struggle with DD or attacking units with command icons and just win MORE struggles over the course of the game.

So basically my thoughts on these cards is that the effect is very strong, but until I witness how the command struggles work I am not prepared to sacrifice functioning win condition slots in my deck for smoothing, when we are already burning 2 cards at default in a draw as well as and command pulls, and chaos has resource reduction up the whazzo with cultist sac'n and stuff.

..

Coliseum Fighters has to be a standard card in most Dark decks and I think it could be part of the back bone for Chaos / Dark. Chaos only has a few events, but powerful ones, and Dark has a **** ton of them. This little beauty fetches events of any type. Remember events seam to be the main place we find shielding icons (and attachment), and Chaos seams rather low on shields to me. A full tilt chaos army with Dark event support, using this guy to recur shields looks to be a thing. In fact I think this could be the deck I initially build.

Nice ability but you had me with the artwork. Drooool...

I don't know just yet how much synergy Dark Eldar and Chaos will have. In typical Chaos fashion, they aren't going to be all that fancy. Stack damage, sac cultists, play some heavy duty daemon units for a lowered cost, get some recursion and have at it. So, I was thinking stuff like spamming Khymerae and cultists plus routing/damage might go very well together. But it seems with most of the cards that do those things being loyal, it is mostly a no-go for now. Though from the dark eldar point of view you could certainly bring in chaos cultists units easier if you're going for spamming tokens or play with tons of cheap expendable ones.

I do like combining the ranged/area effect with Zarathur. You can have Sybarite Marksman and the Mandrake getting double the damage before an opponent can swing at them. Kabalite Strike Force can also work well for the area effect. Following any combination of those with your own warlord could easily have a bloodied opponent warlord, and if you have something heavy around(Possessed, pumped-up Berzerker) the warlord will have to run.

Btw, it looks like the Bloodletter's area effect ability will get more play than his actual attack and it may be the hidden ace of Chaos.

It is going to be interesting to see how well Chaos, aside from actually fighting and winning the game, can go for some outright wins by putting a warlord down. If nothing else, it may force an opponent to change tactics by having to run his warlord away from massed damage or risk losing the game right there and then.

I am not convinced that this card is worth a slot. Unless you are running multiple elite units, I cannot see this getting lots of play. The card specifically says "After an ELITE unit is destroyed " That means you have to pay for it first, put it into play and have it destroyed before this card is of any use. That is alot of to happen to toss this into play.

your right, there is a lot going on with this card, but lets look at what it actually dose.

Its is basically increasing your elite card counts from 3 in a deck to a max of 6 in a deck. At this stage healing is limited to the Hounds, and Chaos has a ton of elites. These guys ARE going to die at some point. You will not be able to stop that, I believe the army counts is going to fluctuate a lot. Your not going to be placing a card and it being there until the end of the game.

Think of it like a "heal all wounds".. or think of it as a joker to "re-play" an elite.

You might note I am only including 2 in my 2 decks (that 1st orc one can go jump) this is not to create a slot, the idea is that you do not want to draw this before your elites. You ideally want to draw it after. So by having only 2 and your elites using 3, you are in a better position to draw the card when it is valuable.

So...

• Artificially increases your draw of elites from a max 3 to a max 6
• Is in essence a instant heal on your most powerful units for 1 cost,
• Can be considered resource acceleration by a minimum value of 4 (elites are all 5+ cost I noticed)

I dunno.. seams pretty legit to me?

I don't know just yet how much synergy Dark Eldar and Chaos will have. In typical Chaos fashion, they aren't going to be all that fancy. Stack damage, sac cultists, play some heavy duty daemon units for a lowered cost, get some recursion and have at it. So, I was thinking stuff like spamming Khymerae and cultists plus routing/damage might go very well together. But it seems with most of the cards that do those things being loyal, it is mostly a no-go for now. Though from the dark eldar point of view you could certainly bring in chaos cultists units easier if you're going for spamming tokens or play with tons of cheap expendable ones.

This might defiantly be something to try for Dark / Chaos but Chaos / Dark it is not possible. All the Dark token spawns come Sigs or Loyals. There is a support, but it only triggers of Dark events. At this time events are few and far between

It is going to be interesting to see how well Chaos, aside from actually fighting and winning the game, can go for some outright wins by putting a warlord down. If nothing else, it may force an opponent to change tactics by having to run his warlord away from massed damage or risk losing the game right there and then.

Well the nature of the game looks to me like Warlords are really the deciding factor in deck themeing. I do not know about range quitting when you see the warlord come out. Still, when you win.. in any faction, it will be from exploring the warlords ability.

It is going to be interesting to see how well Chaos, aside from actually fighting and winning the game, can go for some outright wins by putting a warlord down. If nothing else, it may force an opponent to change tactics by having to run his warlord away from massed damage or risk losing the game right there and then.

Sadly, Zarathur may be one of the Chaos factions biggest weakness. Sure he is pretty strong, but you need to keep him at a planet for his ability and He has the lowest HP (I believe anyway) of all of the warlords. It takes one good slam of 3 damage for the chaos player to really play timidly, which could destroy your strategy.

This reminds me of all the rampant speculation that goes on as cards are being spoiled for the next Magic set. It's always amusing to watch people flex their creative muscles when they have absolutely no idea what they're doing with cards they haven't played with yet.

exactly.. it called having fun. This is arguably the most exciting time in a games history. When the players are free to imagine the "perfect" game and just be creative and have fun with cards and stuff. Soon the reality of the game will kick in and this very creative time will be over. It is like reading a book and loving it, but by the end when everything is revealed you realise your imagination was better than the story ended up.

This is all in flux for sure. The big mystery is the speed at what this game runs at and the value of certain icons. Like Command and Shield. How many do we need, what is a average struggle going to be like. I have a suspicion that this game will be lightning fast. It is a weakness in Eric Lang's card design, you can really see it in Star Wars. Once we play a few games and get a feel for the pacing, a lot of stuff will change.. probably involving the command struggles.

Still Deck building is the part that appeals to many of us the most, much more than even playing the game in some ways. Discussing cards and abilities is the entire point this forum exists. It is madness not to.

Sadly, Zarathur may be one of the Chaos factions biggest weakness. Sure he is pretty strong, but you need to keep him at a planet for his ability and He has the lowest HP (I believe anyway) of all of the warlords. It takes one good slam of 3 damage for the chaos player to really play timidly, which could destroy your strategy.

Yeah, he is really weak. Also there are not as many shield icons as you would like. His advantage is that he can do direct damage before the combat begins to clear the board. Though he maybe retreat quick smart after the first few rounds.

I see him as needing a ton of support, moving with large damage soaks like the hounds and Xavaes or with large demon escort.

no idea what they're doing with cards they haven't played with yet.

Oh BTW, I have made a lackey plugin (for private use I won't be releasing it to much work and kinda uncool for FFG) and have been thrashing the game pretty hard.