Let me explain myself before I'll get tons of "OMGBBQ you are sooo wrong". Khorne is the ONLY god that completely relies on dice. No luck with the dice = no advancements = no upgrades = loss. My group LOVES the game, but nobody wants to play Khorne anymore, because it really deosn't matter how good and cunning is your strategy if you'll get no lucky rolls - you will lose with no chances of actually doing anything in the game. Frustrating.

We are working on a house rule right now (for Khorne only!) that if he has X battle dice (right now we are testing 5) and he misses all of it, he still scores a hit. So basically, if he rolls 10 batlle dice (not that easy) and misses all of them, he'll still get two hits.

The other suggestion (not playtested yet) that Khrone will score hits on 3, but I think that will fail due to being too OPed.

If you have any suggestions for us, please explain and we will playtest it. I'll post the results.

PS: We will be doing 5 playtest for the first option.

If you are playing Khorne and hate rolling dice for your dial condition . . . then why not try to win another route? . . . Khorne has power cards that perfectly suit the power for a domination/VP style win. It is actually quite easy for Khorne to hold all of the border lands and just frighten everyone else into coming to him to take the domination from him.

Just sayin . . . . there are other ways to win, and it is actually possible if you play your cards right.

Oh, and I do think any god and win or lose via luck. It may not be from dice, but it can be from the Old World cards, Chaos Power cards, or just how your oppenents place the tokens in the beginning of the game. I've also been on the receiving end of a Plaguebearer exploding 3 times in a row to wipe out all my Tzeentch cultist in one region . . . . so really in this game anything can happen.

I wouldn't go an make house rules for this, just play harder/smarter and you can pull out a victory with Khorne.

You are absolutely right, except one thing:

Khorne won't be able to playget that many cards with 0 upgrades. Other Gods will probably get 1-2 advancements at least. Thing is, that if everybody knows what are they doing - Khorne will never be able to pull out his Domination strategy. And this is exactly what is happening right now. Temporal freeze and cards like this will screw Khorne in a split second. We'll give it another 2 games (5 so far), but it seems to me, that we will have that issue.

Khorne will just have to play his upgrades as "incidental." Instead of trying to force it to happen, make folks come to you have it just happen.

Another fun thing to do is just throw your cultist into areas where players are milking their token advancements and just work to rot out the region faster to lower the number of spaces they can run to that is beneficial to them.

I played Khorne last night. I got a total of 4 (5? it was enough to get 2 upgrades) dial advancements in 6 turns (we got Franz's decree). I never got more than two dial advancement tokens (except for turn 6 when it didn't matter). Even when I did get two tokens I was always tied with Tzeentch and/or Slaanesh. Everyone lost, but Nurgle was at 49 VP. I had the lowest VP, something like 24. The only player with fewer dial advancements than me was Nurgle. It was a very frustrating game. Here are the issues I observed not only from my turn as Khorne but playing against Khorne in other games.

The only way Khorne has to force someone to be in the same region as you are is to play Field of Carnage, which costs 1pt. Add a bloodletter and you're up to 3 points. That's half your points gone for the chance to kill one figure. Of course if it's the first turn there's a good chance that you'll have played a cultist as your first move so hope that the other players are dumb enough to summon someplace you can actually get to. Even on later turns there is a good chance that you'll have lost figures to combat or hero tokens so this is a frequent issue.

You can't play upgrades as incidental because you need bloodsworn and Power of Blood just to make sure Tzeentch and Slaanesh can only make 4-5 moves after you've spent all your points instead of 6-7.

Of course you could use your card deck to try to herd the opponents where you want them. Let's see how that works.

Battle Frenzy: This is a 0 cost card. Unfortunately it's not a good effect to play at the beginning of the round as a delaying tactic (what every other 0 cost card in the game is useful for) because the other three players will simply have enough power to move into an adjacent space so you can't attack anything there. You need to try and hold onto it until later in the phase

Ritual Slaying: This is entirely chance based. You might get more cards if you can kill a figure there. It shares the same problem as the dial advancement issue.

Field of Carnage: This is good. The only problem is that you need to play it somewhere and then summon a unit with an attack value to that location. In the meantime Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh have an opportunity to play Rain of Pus (Nurgle) Changer of Ways, Warp Shield, or Temporal Stasis (Tzeentch) or Field of Ecstasy (Slaanesh) before you can summon a bloodletter (because, remember, we're either on turn one or last round Tzeentch and Slaanesh had enough power to fully evacuate the region you summoned to). If Tzeentch really wants to be a jerk he can wait for you to summon a bloodletter and just Teleport it away. Number of copies of this card in your deck: 3 Number of copies of cards in your opponents' decks that can effectively be used to cancel this: 22

Battle Cry: This card is good. You basically make a region useless to all other players this round. The trick is when to play it. If you play it early you can herd opponents' figures out of the region so they can be used to corrupt adjacent regions. Unfortunately the region they evacuate to can still be hit with any of the cards that are effective against Field of Carnage. You'd think if you play it late you could trap a bunch of soft, juicy cultists in that region to nail with a bloodletter, but Tzeentch and Slaanesh will most likely each get to take 3 additional actions after you run out of power. If you try to play it late chances are there aren't any slots left to play a chaos card in the region you want to. So play it early, but it doesn't help you hunt down figures to attack.

The Skull Throne: This would be good if you wanted to consolidate power in one region. You don't, because even to reliably get one dial advancement you need to spread out your combat so people just don't run away from you. Your guys are also dying a lot because you keep fighting, so you're unlikely to have a power base in one region to capitalize on this. This card is useless for cultists. By playing this card and a bloodletter, you get a total of 3 points against the region's domination value. Compare that to Slaanesh's Insidious Lies which will net him the same 3 points in a region for the with a noble or hero token, or possibly many more. Insidious Lies costs the same amount as The Skull Throne, and Slaanesh didn't have to waste two points summoning a warrior there. In fact, since it's a card, he can play it on the opposite side of the map he's on. You can't do that with The Skull Throne.

The Blood God's Call: This is another good card. The problem is the same as with every other Khorne card. Assuming you manage to play this late in the turn, Tzeentch and Slaanesh will still probably have many power points to simply get out of the region you played this on.

Reborn in Blood: In addition to being vulnerable to anything that makes combat not happen or more difficult, this is usually going to be inferior to Battle Frenzy. The only time this would be better than Battle Frenzy is if you want to clear a region out completely, which is only ever going to happen against Nurgle because nobody else consolidates as much as Nurgle.

So here are the overall problems with Khorne:

-He has the most need to be in the same region as other figures, but plays first

-He has only one 0 cost card in his deck while all other gods have two. Furthermore this card isn't good for delaying like all the other 0 cost cards can be.

-Even though he has one more starting power, Tzeentch and Slaanesh will both have more power to spend than he does due to a combination of more 0 cost cards and better power accumulation options (power of pleasure + power of pain for Slaanesh, power of magic and drain power for Tzeentch) so they can always force him to spend down to about 2 or 3 points before they start making their actual moves. This compounds every other power effect in the game. Drain Power hurts you more, and losing units via combat or hero tokens hurts you more.

-Even Nurgle can be good at running away from you with Lepers.

-Dial advancement is based on a dice roll. Yes, Old World cards can randomly mess with other players' dial advancements, but they do so just as often to Khorne. Elector Counts Sue for Peace is agony for Khorne, especially if it doesn't cycle out, and Hero Tokens impose a greater power tax on Khorne than other players because you'll want to be playing warriors in areas where you don't have any of your four cultists. Other players don't care if they lose a warrior, but you have to pay two to summon the poor fellow again next turn.

-You need to herd the other players' figures into regions, but they are actually better at herding your figures due to a combination of Teleport, Warp Shield, Temporal Stasis, Rain of Pus, and Field of Ecstasy.

-Basically you need to spend 2 points (a bloodletter) to get a chance at a dial advancement. All other players only need to summon two cultists and try to keep them alive. Keeping them alive means messing with you, so your chances go down.

Khorne needs something. Khorne needs one or more of the following: More points, cheaper cards, better cards, cheaper units, a way to kill units without rolling dice.

Cheaper cards would be my vote. When I was playing khorne, herding was tough. I could drop three bloodletters in a turn, after using the first/second turns to stall with either a cultist or a 1/0 point card. Using bloodletters is dicey though. They will usually pull down a kill in an area, but on one turn I only mananged one kill out of five combats. Really bad. And hero tokens screwed me hard.

I think the best early game strategy is to squat on the nobles, warp stone and populous areas in that order. Slaanesh's easiest path to victory is nobles, and even if you end up not fighting, you can probably make him burn some very good cards early on. Slaanesh NEEDS the nobles. Of which there will be only two at the beginning of the game. Nurgle has to many locations to choose from and Tzeentch has way too much fuckery. Home in on Slaanesh and ruin his day.

Gorehammer said:

Cheaper cards would be my first vote, too, but bloodletters are still pretty **** pricey for what they do. Playing Magic taught me that if you have a minimal or no amount of control in your game (like Khorne) your stuff has to be cheaper and hit a lot harder, neither of which Khorne does.

Regarding one kill in five combats: This was me. I had a bloodletter and a bloodsworn in a territory ripe with cultists and I don't kill anything. In the territory where I had one bloodletter and there was only one opposing cultist I got 3 kills on two dice. Brilliant.

Slaanesh isn't actually that easy to deal with. Once he takes Seductresses you're pretty much done. If he puts 3 cultists in a region you'll need to play something like three bloodletters and a bloodsworn to generate enough attacks to kill two of his cultists. That's if you roll average or above. Trying to kill 1cost units with 2HP with 2cost units with 1HP is a fool's errand.

One of the issues is that extra nobles, heroes, and warpstone are often added through both Old World cards an through dial advancements. This means instead of just wanting to kill stuff on turn one, you really want to kill stuff on turn one. If you camp a bloodletter on a noble you're just asking for Dark Influence, which costs one. Then it costs you 2 to summon another bloodletter to the location they moved the token to, if you can even get there. Sure you could play The Blood God's call in response, but since you want to play that late in the phase so that they won't just run away you stand the chance that both card slots are filled.

As for directly attacking Tzeentch it's not a good idea. However, he can do everything he wants to in a turn and still drop a couple of those effects on territories he's not even in just to make sure you don't get your dial advancement. You don't even have to go after his cultists for him to teleport you to an empty region just to keep you in check.

I know it sounds like I'm just bringing up counters to every move (and there should be a counter to every move, that's good design) but you actually have to expect at least any combination of two of the cards I mentioned in my first post to affect you every turn, because there are soooo many of them. When you can only do maybe three things in a turn and your opponent can do six, is he really sweating blowing that last summon just to mess with you?

with the correct dial advancement conditions (1+kill in a region) and with 4 players, it is the other way around, it is very hard to prevent Khorne from killing at least one cultist.

Note that getting their own dial condition relies on Khorne not rolling too god to kill their cultists so it relies on dice roll for the other gods too.

I think I need to play a few more games before I make any definitive statements, but Khorne needs 9 dial advancements, which means he needs the extra tick on at least two turns in a 7 turn game. It seems that those extra ticks are easiest for him to pick up in the first couple of turns. Other players can't afford to spread themselves too thin in the early rounds, while Khorne can and should. I'm not willing to work out the probability, but a Bloodletter rolling two dice should score a hit better than 50% of the time since 6's grant a reroll. With 3 Bloodletters deployed, you've got a better than average chance of scoring a kill in 2 regions, while it's harder for the other powers to get multiple advancement markers in the first couple of turns. Drawing Battle Frenzy early on is great since it gives you a shot at another region or 2 extra dice in a region where you already have a Bloodletter, which might even allow it to live, saving you summoning cost the following turn. In the game I played and won as Khorne I got and used all my Battle Frenzy cards in the first two turns. Once other players get a power base established, they can more easily force ties for dial advancement, so if Khorne gets out to an early lead, he just needs one kill per turn thereafter, but if he can't score double ticks early, his job becomes much harder.

I don't think he needs cheaper cards or changed in any way; I almost think the 1 or more kills in a region is TOO EASY to get. His dial rewards are by far the most useful. You just need to make sure you get the two ticks in the first round in order to get the Bloodsworn upgrade and you're in a fantastic position, having 10 units in the next couple of rounds inexpensive enough for you to cause havok across the board.

Not only is your dial advancement criteria beneficial to you, but it can hinder other people's dial advancement progress. Prevent one player from getting one dial token and you're pretty much set. Everyone else will be lucky to get just one token. If you can manage 3 tokens in your first round the tick is almost 100% yours (only NURGLE can get 3 ticks with 6 cultists first round, and you should kill at least one of his guys anyways)

Battle Cry in Bretinia is probably the best start, because it means that there are only 3 places Nurgle can score, and they are now separated from each other, so you can focus on the Empire as your starting spot. Then you have 6 points left to distribute Bloodletters. Ignore Tzeentch and focus on Nurgle and Slaanesh. Then 3 Bloodletters and there is your 7 points and 4 turns, or add a few Fields of Carnage and 2 bloodletters.

If you have one of your four Blood Frenzy's (5 in 8 chance) then that's like a free Bloodletter.

Using a Bloodsworn ,you have a 75% chance of not only you getting a dial token for each region you have a Bloodletter and an enemy cultist in. Plus you have a 75% chance of wrecking their dial advancement chance. You have a 25% chance of getting TWO hits, and a 33% chance of rolling a 6 as part of your one or two hits, which leads to even more wreckage, but does not advance your dial.

The odds are definitely in your favour, not only to advance your mileu, but to hinder someone else. IMO Khorn is meant to keep others in check. Otherwise there would be little need for interaction, as everyone could just hide away in their corners of the board.

If you want a perfect information game, play Puerto Rico. This game is about Chaos, and none of the other play styles reflect this as much as Khorn, even though the dice are on your side; what cards you draw, and what cards others draw also have a significant impact on the game. Would you rather everyone started with one of each of their cards instead of randomly drawing? What if, as Tzeentch you start with a hand of 3 Dazzle and 2 Meddling Skaven? The cards are not really going to help you that much the first turn, and chaos cards are your main power.

I don't think there is anything wrong with Khorn.

I think Khorne is harder to learn to play well, and suffers from being the most obvious 'God that is going to screw me over', so gets picked on. That said, he's probably my least favourite God to play. This doesn't seem game-breaking to me though

If you're so unlucky, well, maybe you should get other dice?

Consider the odds, for every warrior you have a 75% chance to get at least 1 kill - so for the first round, getting out 3 warriors (with one more PP to spend) that adds up to a total of 98,44% chance to kill something - and a chance of 89,06% for at least 2 kills! And everytime you kill you boost your chance for 2 dial advancements, because you would preferably slay cultist, don't you? (and that's only the first round, I won't even start about upgrades and 'Blood Frenzy' and stuff)

So quite in the contrary, if you have any normal dice luck, >Khorne rocks< !

Since Khorne won 2 of the last 4 game we played, every one of my friends is eager to get him next time. Perhaps we should exchange some players?

Started playing CitOW last night for the first time, first two games Khorne won.

First game (I got Khorne), I managed to win by abusing Dial Advancement. 1 kill a region for that DA token is not particularly hard, especially when I can just allocate towards a random cultist unit. And considering all Khorne's Chaos Cards are semi-alright field control, I didn't have a hard time of it.

Second game, I was Tzeentch and went in for Ruining everywhere. Our Khorne player won by being a sneaky git, only summoning Bloodletters when and where necessary, Ruining a region secluded from everywhere else and using a Bloodthirster to keep us away from his region.

Considering that any game involving dice boils down to being a game of luck, I can't see a complaint about Khorne's relial on dice being a problem -_-'

Trothael said:

I think this is what the OP is talking about, and perhaps they and their group don't like dice games and they are looking for a way out of relying on probability.

The counter to this argument, is what happens when a Khorn player totally wipes out a region due to GOOD dice rolling? It is just as likely as having bad rolls.

Khorn, I think, is perfectly balanced based on his place in the game, which is to keep everyone in check, and prevent runaway leaders and turtling. The threat of Khorn is as much part of the strategy as dice rolling. You could totally whiff dice rolls in a round, but still be just as effective in laying down a psycological beating, as well as laying the foundation for future, more successful, rounds.

Actually, after six or seven games, I've played three times with Khorne,and won all of them with dial victory. I'm thinking that it is extremely easy to get double clicks in the beginning of the game, just by spreading three Bloodletters and one Blood Frenzy to four regions with cultists or other enemy figures. Because all you need is one kill, and at same time you can effectively prevent other players from getting their clicks, as most players don't necessary have more than two cultists in the same region during the first couple of turns. Just last night I got four kills for first two rounds, that got me clicking away towards the vital upgrades, and managed to keep Nurgle and Slaanesh at bay (Tzeench has never been a real threat in our games thus far, hope that will change someday...). Ok, Khorne relies on good dice rolls, but the two battle dice are more than enough most of the time, and the sixes keep rolling constantly.

It's also hard for the other players to prevent Khorne getting those advancement tokens, 'cause he hits first, and needing only one kill. If you don't draw good defensive cards in the beginning, it's practically impossible to stop Khorne in the early going. The drawback for Khorne is that the Power points get drained quickly, especially when you want to play some cards.

pahapasi said:

You Khorne players! You can never get enough, can you?

Just a small clarification:

Topic was started with 2-kills per dial advancement. Now it is pretty pointless, cause since that time we played lots of games and Khorne is now pretty balanced against experienced players. Every time Khorne is trying to rush to victory he will be stopped by 1, 2 or even all 3 players working together. Yes, it is a little bit harder to play him, because every other God is afraid of him, but now it's balanced. Against new players he still wins instantly though, but it is not a balance issue but more of a temporary alliances issue.

Best regards.