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.

Good point. However, the picture I'm getting of Chaos is that they are the "devil may care" faction. They aren't fancy, they are going to come right at you, multiplying damage by any means necessary and not be overly concerned with anything else. Obviously, this is Chaos' background flavor. I think booored's theory may be correct in that he will rely on doing as much damage as possible before the same can be done to him and/or having the threat of other heavy hitters to make an opponent think twice about where to attack. Chaos tactics look like they are geared towards frontrunning, not so much towards playing even or from behind for too long.

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.

Can I ask why you feel that speed is a weakness in these sorts of games? Part of what I'm looking forward to is that the game seems to have a very set turn limit and the limited time you have to win the game. I've been playing AGoT for a while now - when I started games took forever to play through (partly due to limited card pool) but as the little meta I'm in got more experienced we tended to find the game takes 5 turns at the outside - and I far prefer it when it's going quickly.

It's probably just a preference thing, but still, I'm interested in your feelings on this matter.

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.

Good point. However, the picture I'm getting of Chaos is that they are the "devil may care" faction. They aren't fancy, they are going to come right at you, multiplying damage by any means necessary and not be overly concerned with anything else. Obviously, this is Chaos' background flavor. I think booored's theory may be correct in that he will rely on doing as much damage as possible before the same can be done to him and/or having the threat of other heavy hitters to make an opponent think twice about where to attack. Chaos tactics look like they are geared towards frontrunning, not so much towards playing even or from behind for too long.

I agree with this. They definitely will be the hyper aggression deck. To hit you fast and hard as soon as possible but how long will that last? That is my concern with Chaos. The decks that plan for the long game will be able to easily dispatch Chaos.

Scenario: Chaos player is working to hit hard and fast as mentioned. He dumps several cards on the first planet for a quick victory and a takes the planet. Now all of those units will go to HQ. Next turn, you send your warlord to the first planet again but now all of your units are exhausted. If your opponent planned properly, he could have an AOE effect that will demolish the units that now cannot attack until combat turn 2. Zarathur is now in a vary peculiar position.

Of course this just a theory but I can see games turning like this. I am especially a long game player for games like this.

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.

Can I ask why you feel that speed is a weakness in these sorts of games? Part of what I'm looking forward to is that the game seems to have a very set turn limit and the limited time you have to win the game. I've been playing AGoT for a while now - when I started games took forever to play through (partly due to limited card pool) but as the little meta I'm in got more experienced we tended to find the game takes 5 turns at the outside - and I far prefer it when it's going quickly.

It's probably just a preference thing, but still, I'm interested in your feelings on this matter.

As far as quick games and planet distribution. I will give you this.

take all of the planet cards. Print them out, sleeve them up. Then shuffle them and distribute them like you were going to play a game.

Do this 20 times and tell me the icon distribution. In all of my tests, They are varied considerably. Now put someone else fighting for these same planet distribution.

I am really not worried about any quick games being an issue.

I agree with this. They definitely will be the hyper aggression deck. To hit you fast and hard as soon as possible but how long will that last? That is my concern with Chaos. The decks that plan for the long game will be able to easily dispatch Chaos.

That's the million dollar question isn't it? I recall Chaos had some problems for a while on Warhammer Invasion, though later on it got much better. It looks like they are banking on aggresive board control by eliminating enough units quickly, and taking out the rest with big hitters, so that they are always outnumbering an opponent. A "snowball" tactic, if you would. Piling on damage, turn after turn. That way, other shortcomings become less relevant. Will they be able to sustain it? They are going to have to do it consistently or else this will be a poor faction. Hopefully their playtesting bears this out.

Agreed. Soul Grinders are basically made for that kind of 3rd or 4th planet attrition during the command phase.

Oh yeah. That's a guy who says "I'm staking out this planet, and when it becomes the First Planet, it's mine. Feel free to drop on by before then. Lunch."

ktom got me thinking a little bit. I went a did a quick head count on command icons across the factions. This is what I came up with:

AM- 16 icons spread across 9 units
SM- 18 icons spread across 11 units
Chaos- 18 icons spread across 12 units
Eldar- 18 icons spread across13 units
DE- 14 icons spread across 9 units
Tau- 16 icons spread across 12 units
Orks- 13 icons spread across 10 units

A bit surprised. I thought Chaos had less, yet they are tied for largest total amount of icons and tied for second in most units. So, it seems like they may yet be able to represent fairly well in command struggles. AM, intrigues a bit because they concentrate their icons on a few units. They may need less units to win struggles, but drawing them will be more difficult. Eldar, Chaos, SM and Tau seem to have a more flexible approach. DE and Orks may have some trouble.

Great stats, Titan. Thanks!

The one thing I would add for representation in the command struggle, though, is the cost of the units. For example, it looks the average cost of a unit in the Chaos Core Deck with a command icon is 3.4 (with 6 of those 17 units - counting multiples - costing 4 or more resources), Meanwhile, while the average cost of an Eldar unit with a command icon is 2.9 (with only 3 of those 18 units costing 4 or more).

So despite having roughly the same number of units with command icons, Eldar will probably be better able to represent in command struggles because they can probably get more icons out (to more planets) during deployment. Of course, they might suffer for it during Combat, so who can tell in the long run?

yeah unit cost is huge.. as the faster you get them out the better. I also felt chaos was weak on command struggles, but after read the post above me a bit I saw it was just as the chaos units are so expensive.

Dark Eldar look far more aggressive to me than does Chaos. There really isn't much in the way of late game potential, but it's interesting to note that they have a healthy amount of command phase control. Between exhaustion and routing techniques, the DE should have no problem claiming additional cards while depriving the enemy of the same.

yeah, Dark looks like it can run out of steam pretty fast. I have been testing a Dark / Elder deck and it seams to be doing fine with Ranges and Area, Routing and Mobile. The weaker units are able to be replaced as you are winning commands and drawing more cards.