Has anyone played enough to come to some conclusions about the balance of these two races? It sure seems like the Dread Ritual is just crazy good. With a few cultists (that they can get through combat cards!), you can get a Level 2 unit every turn for next to nothing. I certainly respect the fact that there's more to the game than simply producing units, but if you get 3-5 Material every turn, it seems like you're going to have an advantage over the last 5+ turns of the game.

Thanks for your thoughts...

In the few 1v1 match-ups I've played, positioning has been a lot more important than faction asymmetry. When Ultramarines have placed tiles second, they've won. When Chaos placed tiles second, they've won. (I think there's a significant advantage to placing tiles second in a two-player game. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1407082/tile-placement-and-late-mover-advantage )

Having said that, it seems to me that Chaos relies on its economic advantage to make up for some apparent tactical disadvantages. Their cards are often highly conditional, and it isn't hard to play one and not benefit from any of its effects at all. (If you have fewer morale dice, for example, you'll be missing a lot of card effects, which in turn trigger other effects.) Chaos also needs to put a lot of work into routing units, which trigger a number of their effects. Ultramarines can reliably unrout units. So I think there's also a nice asymmetry built in here, where chaos puts a lot of work and thought into triggering a rout...and then the ultramarines reliably cancel the effect.

It's interesting to compare Mark of Nurgle with Hold the Line. If Chaos wants to effectively cancel out attacks in the earl-mid game, they have to sacrifice shields/morale for a card that just does one thing: gives them shields. For all of that, you can block really effectively for one round (5 shields, or maaaaybe 7) at the cost of a die. Hold the Line, on the other hand, is a more flexible card that can reliably give you 3-4 shields as needed, 1-2 morale as needed, AND rally a unit (which cancels out a lot of chaos stuff, and can easily give you 3 morale if you had a routed space marine.) Hold the Line is probably a better, more flexible card overall that sets you up nicely for a morale victory...and more importantly, it works better if you're slightly behind on dice because it gives you a die. Mark of Nurgle kind of assumes that you're probably full on dice and need to clear one out so that you can trigger your cards that give you dice.

Ultramarines are also able to retreat pretty easily, which lets them preserve units and then move them around the map as needed, with drop pods. They and Eldar both focus on doing more with less by preserving their units and positioning them strategically. Overall, I think Chaos is designed to do a bit less with more.

One other thing: if the Ultramarines have a persistent economic disadvantage, they can also focus on playing on planets with fewer skulls. Their ability to upgrade also fits with this focus on quality units in fights with fewer units. These fights also benefit more from bastions, because the bastion ends up being a larger share of the fight...and a lot of their cards have good interactions with bastions (which can also function as factories, or get turned into cities). So I think a successful Ultramarine player will try to avoid setting 4 and 5 skull worlds near their objectives, throw up a bunch of bastions, and use their cards to make sure their smaller forces are in the right place at the right time. That should help them mitigate the zergier tactics of Chaos and Orks.

I'll have to play a lot more games with comparable positioning to see if it plays out this way. But on the face of it, I can see how they could be well-balanced.

I just finished a chaos vs ultra-marines match-up. Dread Ritual was very useful, but largely for the frontline manufacturing option rather than a longer build-up option. Chaos summoned a Hellbrute on round two and used it very aggressively...and also lucked into a free hellbrute upgrade card. (He would've bought it before the combat anyway...but the Chaos deck has nice synergy.) Still, it came down to positioning for the most part. Things would've gone differently if the ultramarines hadn't left their factory planet vulnerable in the initial tile placement.

I'm focusing on two-player balance and tactics, because I think the balance is probably close enough for the game's soft political systems to address other imbalances that come up in a multi-player game, due to faction, positioning, etc. Basically, if a Chaos player is in a position to exploit Dread Ritual a whole lot, the other players can respond by fortifying more of her objective token locations and prioritizing her areas as targets for their own objective token searches. Basically, they can form a temporary alliance of convenience. I really like the way that works in this game...it isn't a simple matter of hosing a player into the ground, but opponents can (and should) adjust the "difficulty setting" for any player with a large apparent lead. Given that, it seems to me that the balance is almost certainly good enough for a 3 or 4 player game to be fun and fair, if the players respond appropriately.

I'm focusing on two-player balance and tactics, because I think the balance is probably close enough for the game's soft political systems to address other imbalances that come up in a multi-player game, due to faction, positioning, etc. Basically, if a Chaos player is in a position to exploit Dread Ritual a whole lot, the other players can respond by fortifying more of her objective token locations and prioritizing her areas as targets for their own objective token searches. Basically, they can form a temporary alliance of convenience. I really like the way that works in this game...it isn't a simple matter of hosing a player into the ground, but opponents can (and should) adjust the "difficulty setting" for any player with a large apparent lead. Given that, it seems to me that the balance is almost certainly good enough for a 3 or 4 player game to be fun and fair, if the players respond appropriately.

My experience is...well...the opposite. 4 player games seem to be balanced. 3 player games not so much. 2 on 1 action has a nice ring to it, but is horrible in a game like this.

Yeah, I think 3 players involve some balance issues around the politics...and my sense so far is that most of those have to do with early game set-up. I'm curious: in your 3 player game, did you have someone stuck in a corner?

We've got a simple house rule that works pretty elegantly with the games rules to produce a 3 player map that is reasonably fair and, I think, discourages teaming up like that to a degree. I wonder if it is helpful in your group We say you can't set home systems next to each other, unless there is no other option.

Here's some of the reasoning:

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/20101646#20101646

To the analysis here, I'd add that having a secure home system in a corner without objective tokens is nice. But so is having a system that is farther from the other two players. The benefits here include the possibility of having a relatively safe place to put cities. The last 3 player game I played, the early capture of a city made a pretty huge difference...

I've played 3 player games more than any other and it definitely makes politics a more important part of the game. I don't think they're unbalanced however unless its 2v1 the entire time.