I'm curious to get some people's reaction to Chaos having too much power. I played with Empire, my wife with Chaos and I got creamed. The game changer was corruption. It didn't matter that I set up units to defend, my wife would just wait to get a couple of corrupt cards in her hand, and then take them out via corruption just before the Battlefield Phase. I was left helpless

Just curious what others have experienced. And if you've had success with defeating Chaos, any tips would be appreciated. Maybe other races do better.

Chaos relies on draw power more so than other races in my opinion. Limit the Chaos draw and you can work wonders.

Throw in Blessing of Isha. It's cheap even without any elf icons, and should help a key unit or two stay active. It'll be dead weight facing anything but Chaos, but it'll make it easy to decide which card to use as a development

I'm playing Chaos and Empire with the same rate and sometimes I get the chance to playtest against them with the other two races...I've to say that it's pretty strong for its capability to control the table.

It has a very basic/annoying table control (corruption, direct damaging) and a bunch of weird effects (Shrine to Nurgle, Warpstone meteor - that I really love -)...Than, we have a good pool of Tactics to choose from (Blood for the Blood God, Flames of Tzeentch, Slaneesh's Domination).

Bloodthirster is a wonderful surprise: at the beginning, I used to see it as an almost unplayable Unit...I usually don't like big monsters like that...But, believe me, I play it every match.

With a good Kingdom Zone Building (it's the real cornerstone, IMHO) you let it hit the table at turn 4/5. Tonight a friend of mine played Chaos a couple of times and in our 2/3rd game I had to handle TWO of 'em...Dramatic.

Then, we have Valkia (good Power/cost/hp ratio anyway), Nurgle Sorceror (it's expenisve, but it's strong) and the funny Festering Nurglings.

We have useful effects almost anywhere.

BTW, I won lots of games with Orcs playing against them and it has a "hard" match up with Dwarves.

I don't say anything about Empire cause they're more similar than someone may think...I've to understand their match up yet.

It just goes to show you how different people think, and play, differently. On Board Game Geek, most people were complaining about hwo weak Chaos was. There were people saying it was unbalanced and more than one said it was almost unplayable.

I saw the same posts on BGG about Choas being weak, and I'm a little surprised by it after playing against it.

Now admittedly, I think I played Empire wrong, going too much for resources and not enough card draws, but the corruption is a huge advantage. When you can corrupt an attacker after they are declared or any defenders, it's makes it hard to attack or defend. Also, they have tactics and units that can deal a respectable amount of damage. I will have to give my wife credit for collecting some corrupting cards and using them very well in the games we played.

I will have to play another race against Choas and see how it turns out, I'm not that impressed with Empire right now.

ventura72 said:

DB is not going to like you bashing his precious Empire .

ventura72 said:

This may be the crux of the problem... corrupting a card after it has been declared as an attacker or defender does not remove it from combat, it just makes it ineligible to be declared again until it has been restored. IOW your wife needs to figure out who she is going to corrupt before you declare anyone as anything, after is too late... that also leaves your options a little more open, especially with being able to manuever units into your battlefield to attack after she has corrupted units, or moving them to the zone you need to defend.

To shut Chaos down you need to shut down their draw or their resources... I'd aim for resources and worry about hitting their draw only if they were very weak. Understand I'm not saying attack their Zones with intention of burning it, but get rid of the supports and units that power it. I'd use Forced Mrch to move their most powerful unit from their KZ into their QZ. This denies them resources to play anything and makes them run the risk of being decked (especially if you are running the quest Infiltrate!).

I knew we had to be doing something wrong. You are right, you wouldn't be able to stop them once they are declared, it only stops you from declaring them. I guess we just played it wrong.

She'll be disappointed to hear that you cannot stop them from attacking or defending once declared. Still learning the game I guess, this was the first time we had played either Chaos or Empire. That makes a Huge Difference, thanks.

A answer to your problem might not lie in the chaos deck itself, but maybe in the empire deck. From my playgroup experience , it seems empire just can't cut it, it just doesn't seem to have the speed of ork, the lasting power of dwarf or the control element of chaos. Maybe it's just our group, but thats what it seems like right now....just IMO.

Empire above others needs to rely on all of its pieces working together.

Granted there are some shining stars. Warrior Priest annoys many, and then there's the classic Judement of Verena and Forced March combo (with Will of the Electors if you must)... Kinda nice. Obviously...

Good luck with Empire though. They were the favourite at gencon, but I think either everyone's moved past their tricks, or those that haven't figured that out yet, also haven't faced an opponent that's really been able to weild them adequately... (there's a tiny bit of finesse needed with Empire)

I just had a very successful game playing Empire vs. Chaos, and then a 2nd game that I lost, but it wasn't a total wipeout like the first games I played. The key to Empire is the Quest zone, it has lots of cheap units that work well with each other. So basically, you need to make sure you have cards in your hand first, and then with even 5-6 Resources per turn, you can play lots of cards each hand.

Also, a little luck doesn't hurt. I have more respect for Empire now, but you really have to make every move count, and if you make a mistake, you probably won't recover.

I find myself not agreeing with you, Ventura72.

The key to Empire isn't the Quest zone (though having cards is a must for any deck, really) - it's the Resources. Empire doesn't give you as much straight-up "bang for the buck" as Chaos or Orcs do. Instead, as others have said very correctly, they're all about finesse and combination interplay. So the key is just getting a ton of Empire cards into play (via extra Resources) so that you can intermingle everything and get all of Empire's tricks working for you.

That being said, I do not, currently, run a pure Empire deck. I always mix it with Dwarves, otherwise Empire usually gets whupped up on.

Of course you should build up resources. But the problem I found with the first 2 plays was I quickly had no cards in hand. The cards are generally cheaper, and therfore you can play more of them than other races. So the first zone I concentrate on is Quest, then Kingdom. Otherwise, I have a lot of resources but no cards in my hand to play.

The thing about Empire, IMO, is that you can spend your first turn entirely on quest, and still get out 2 units or supports on the next turn with only 3 resources. I will use a card on my 2nd turn in Kingdom, but I had success with an Empire Only Deck when I put my first priority as setting up my quest zone. I'm still feeding KZ while I set up QZ, but in the beginning of the game, QZ is my main concern.

Well the thing is that you start the game with a decent chunk of cards at 7. So initially you should probably go for Resources via Kingdom build-up then switch to Quest build-up for Cards somewhere between the 2-4th turns, once you're running low on them - although that depends on how many cards you play in the first couple of turns, too.

A good sample start in turn order would be: 1K, 2K, 3Q, 4Q, 5K.... (the number represents that turn and the letter designates the Zone that you'd be trying to build-up.

But just for the record I think that (at least) right now, with not a whole ton of cards available, there really aren't any set builds that work perfectly every time.

ventura72 said:

What about the "chain"? I mean, if you declare a certain unit as attacking, can't the Chaos player play a card in the chain that corrupts your attacking unit? Since cards on the chain resolve "last to first played", the corruption would trigger before you can choose the unit as an attacker...

Executor_Harlan said:

There is no chain-option at that point. The Action window opens only after Attackers have been declared (and again after Defenders have been declared), so by that time they are already attacking/defending, corrupting the Unit then leaves them corrupted, but they are still in the fight.

Dam said:

Thats's correct, Furthermore the declaration does not go onto a stack.