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