In our group the Nurgle player tends to sigh heavily when he gets this dial advancement reward as other powers are busy choosing their upgrades etc. It occurs three times on the Nurgle dial (second, sixth and ninth clicks) and while the later two clicks can be some use, most of the time in our games Nurgle just wants to ruin regions quickly to get get his bonus points for Provender of Ruin (extra VPs when regions are ruined.)

These rewards are obviously put there for a reason and I seem to remember the rule book hints that Nurgle doesn't want to ruin regions too quickly, but I can't really see why. Anyone got any good ideas on how best to use this ability?

Incidentally, this game is without a doubt my favourite so far this year. Well done FFG.

Well, ruined regions can't be corrupted and you need corruption for dial advancement. So you can prevent others from ruining areas before you can get much of a presence there, knock them down to second/third/fourth place ruiner, keep them from getting any VPs b/c they just had one corruption, and (not sure about this one since I've yet to play) since Nurgle goes later you could use it to keep the player before you from ruining the region you were going to put 2 corruption on.

I guess you could remove one of your own in a safe area so you can lay down more corruption but that sounds like a bad idea.

I was just thinking about this, but if you removed the corruption on the populous regions that your cultists are located on, that might give you another chance for dial advancement before ruining the region, maybe postponing the ruination really in turn helps with further dial advancement? Just my two cents.

Thanks for the replies. I agree dial advancement looks like the most likely reason. Trouble is of course that Nurgle's dial is the longest of all the powers and he tends to get his wins by VPs rather than dial ticks.

The two later clicks on the dial allow him to remove two corruption, the first just one. The latter two can be quite useful, as you say, to try and swing the ruination bonuses his way, but in our games the intial one is largely a non-event.

Perhaps it is intended to help Nurgle milk extra VPS by prolonging the agony of regions he dominates before they succumb to his corruption? Thematically it fits. I can't help feeling there is some clever Nurgle strategy I am missing... Ah well, perhaps its something to try next time I am Nurgle.

Just finished my second game of CitOW and first one with a Nurgle player (have only played 3 player games so far). The Nurgle player won hands down with victory points and did remove two corruption from a region which he ruined on the very next turn as the only power with corruption in the region...

From what I've heard and seen vp's is the way to go, unless you can manage a turn or two of getting 2 dial advancements (giving you a bonus one if everyone else is only getting one), If you can get the bonus one I could see a possible victory due to dial advancement, although I'm sure if anyone else is going for dial advancement this would be a tough way to compete although it could be done. Next time my friends and I play, I'll try playing as Nurgle and seeing if using the remove corruption on the populous regions really can help with dial advancement. I'll be sure to let you guys know how it goes.

Scott4263 said:

Nurgle has a 10 tick dial, so he's probably looking for 3 turns of 2 ticks if he wants to get anywhere near a dial win.

Dam,

Honestly I don't think it'd be that hard to do, if everyone goes for their dial advancement off the start, and nobody expects nurgle to go for dial advancement you could probably pull it off? You have 6 cultists if I remember correctly, and if you get lucky you should be able to pop them out on 2-3 populous regions so as long as nobody kills them (You'd have to be pretty lucky) it could happen. I'm just thinking to myself would it be more beneficial to have 3 on each populous region and maybe a plaguebearer or two, as a deterrant and sit on two regions? or would it be better to spread to 3? I guess it all depends on what your opponents are doing, specially if Khornes in the game, since bloodletters should be able to take out a cultist in each region on their own which would negate your dial advancement, and furthering his (possibly giving him the +1, for most dial advancement).

By removing single corruption Nurgle can stop Khorne, who only has four cultists, from ruining a region in three rounds.