CitOW should be hitting shelves and gaming tables next week. I thought I would just point out a couple of definitions and game concepts that seem to trip people up (myself included).

The object of the game is, of course, to win. You do that in one of three ways: Advancing your threat dial, scoring points, and ruining regions. You advance your dial by doing certain actions related to your Chaos Power. You mainly score points by dominating regions. Your ruin nations by corrupting them.

When determining if you Dominate a region (the Domination Step under the Corruption Phase), three things come into play: Domination Value, Resistance Value, and Conquest Value. These are interrelated and can be affected by other effects. So what are these?

Domination Value - This value represents the strength of each Chaos in each Region. It is a sum of the Printed Value of cards played in a Region plus the Quantity of figures in that region. That means a lowly Cultist bears the same Domination Value as your beefy Greater Daemon. Some cards (Chaos and Upgrade) adjust this (for example, the Khorne Greater Daemon Upgrade card makes your Daemon worth 3 Domination Value instead of 1).
DomV = Sum of Chaos Card Values + Quantity of Figures + Other Effects

Resistance Value - This value represents the strength of each Region. By default, it is the printed value on the board. It is adjusted downward by the number of Skaven tokens in the region. In addition, some cards (Old World and Chaos) alter this as well (for example, an Old World cards adds 1 Resistance for every Peasant token present).
ResV = Region Value - Quantity of Skaven Tokens +/- Other Effects

So when determining Dominance, only the player with the most Dominance Value compares his Domination Value to that of the Resistance Value. If he exceeds that value, he has Dominated the region and scores the Conquest Value as Victory Points.

Conquest Value - This value represents the value of each Region. By default, it is the printed value on the board. It is adjusted upward by the number of Noble tokens in the region. To my knowledge, there is no other effect in the game that increases the Conquest value.
ConV = Region Value + Quantity of Noble Tokens

You try to build up your Domination Value by placing any followers and playing Chaos cards. You try to reduce your opponents' Domination Value by beating them in battle (which happens before the Corruption Phase); so you will want to beef up your warriors and play Chaos cards.

The second step of the Corruption Phase is determining the Corruption of each Region. While Domination is an individual thing, Corruption is a group project.

Corruption Value - Each Region has a corruption value of 12. This never changes. So the amount of Corruption that needs to be placed must be equal to or greater than 12. All players' Corruption tokens add to this value along with Warpstones, which act as an unassigned generic Corruption token.
Corruption Value = Sum of all Players' Corruption Tokens + Quantity of Warpstone Tokens

When a total of 12 Corruption is gained, that region is Ruined. Ruining a region gives you 3 benefits:
1) It contributes to one of the end game conditions (5th ruined region signals the end of the game)
2) All those that contributed Corruption the round it was ruined gain bonus VPs (so whoever has Cultists present in the region at the time it was ruined, gains these quick VPs)
3) At the end of the round, those that contributed the most corruption throughout the game in that region score more VPs

You place corruption based on the number of Cultists you have plus through the play of Chaos cards. Since Cultists contribute to both your Domination and Corruption Values, they are important pieces. But they are susceptible to battle and so are easy targets as well.

• Originally posted on BGG: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/437082

Just one note on this since it has come up.

Domination VALUE is calculated under the Domination STEP of the Corruption Phase. Whoever has the highest Domination VALUE (no ties allowed), then compares his Domination VALUE against the Region's Resisitance Value. If that Domination VALUE is higher, then the Player DOMINATES. Dominating means you score the points for that region and you trigger any effects that work off of DOMINATION - such as Nurgle's "The Stench of Death" Chaos card.

So in order to DOMINATE, you must score points for that region which means you must have the highest Domination VALUE of all the gods there AND have a value higher than the Resistance Value.

Excellent overview, really helpful for people who want to play first game by correct rules(we didn't =( ).

One note though - Under Domination value is says Domination Value summary it says Sum of Chaos Cards - it might bit a little bit confusing for new players, can you maybe change it to Sum of Power Cost of Chaos Cards or something like that?

TheDarkSun said:

Sure thing. AS soons as the "edit button" reappears, I will do so.

I am curious if anyone else uses this method of explaining Warpstones. I debated whether I should add it in the original post above but decided against it in case it presented issues and it is, of course, not the offical explanation for how it works. But I ran into this again (after hearing stories of it): People want to claim teh Warpstones as their own personal corruption - especially Tzeentch if he carries them to a new region through his Cultist upgrade.

So, do you find it easier to explain that a region's original corruption goal is 12 and that Warpstones reduce that amount?

It is the same net effect but here is my reasoning:

1. You already have the Skaven tokens which lower Resistence and the Noble tokens that increase Conquest Value so the concept of a token altering the target number is firmly established.
2. You don't get into the confusion of who "owns" the warpstone - as I did tonite explaining the game and as I have heard otehrs say as well.
3. It just seems easier in my mind that a Warpstone would lower the "resistence" of teh corruption target than seeing it as contributing towards the total corruption there. So in my mind, it seems more obvious when placing Warpstones to see myself as weakening that region than padding our corruption
4. I can't think of any card or effect int eh game that would care about this change in philosophy.

Thoughts?

CF,

I think that is a great way to explain them in the same vein as the Skaven and Noble tokens. Warp stones function the same way and allows you to explain them at the same time.

Also its makes thematic sense as contact with the Warp in the Warhammer univerise always makes it easier for Chaos to enter your mind (much like The King in Yellow facilitates Hastur).