Are there some upgrades you always/never get in a game? I'd say a lot are situational, but there are some that we never seem to get:

Greater demon upgrades- You don't place greater demons in new territories often enough for Nurgle's to seem worth it (or at least you'd never get it before his other upgrades). Khorne doesn't really care about victory points from domination. (Side question: if a khorne unit controlled by Slaneesh makes a kill, does it count towards Khorne's dial advancement?)

Bloodletter upgrade: We didn't see why Khorne would care about saving a unit or two as long as he killed someone. Cultist upgrade seemed more important to cheaply spread out as much killing as possible.

Plaguebearer upgrade: The one hit back wouldn't matter much against high defense low attack Slaneesh or Tzeentch's warriors, and the whole idea against Khorne is to not get into combat (or at least not die) in the first place.

If Slaanesh controls a Khorne Cultist or Warrior, Khorne does not get the dial advancement token for the killing. He is for all purposes (except stats) a Slaanesh follower.

I think it is situational on what is best or worst. But I tent to stay way from the "player upgrades" - the extra cards and extra Power Points. The figure upgrades seem to better shap my strategy in the early rounds.

I usually prefer the Cultist Upgrades over everythign and think Nurgle's and Korhnes are the best. I tend to like all the warriors over all the Greater Daemons. Tzeentch's GD is good if the OW deck hasn't been favorable and there are not many warpstones out.

I quite like the Great Unclean One upgrade. Mind you, I'm usually a high priority target versus my friends so the ability to plop down a GUO and instantly get a dial advancement without having to worry about him dying is priceless.

Moreso, I can recall a game where the other 3 players were ganging up on me really bad and I just plopped down the GUO twice in two different regions, 2 dials without giving Khorne a lot of targets made him fall back upon the other two and saved that game for me.

Yeah, gotta love that GUO update. Insta-Dial Token ist just great.

I don't see the need to upgrade the Bloodthirster, though. This could only be nessessary if Khorne would decide to go for a VP win from turn one... but hy should he even try?

rashktah said:

Denying other people the domination VPs was the only reason we could think of. But it'd still be a low priority upgrade.

rashktah said:

It is a situational upgrade. Khorne will most likely go for the dial advancment win but if he gets blocked from getting double-ticks, VPs may be his only option. If you decide to go a VP route, this definitely helps along with the Skull Thrones once you get some figures out on the board. But even Skull Thorne isn't very effective without the Cultist Upgrade.

Another brilliant update is the 'Lepers' update for Nurgle.

The ammount of turns Nurgle can stall rounds with this upgrade is just staggering.

Most of the time he just summons his Lepers around (yes, totally following the rules of the update) until the other gods have run out of summoning points.

Then he makes his real moves. Eeeevil...

Lepers and GUO are definitely the two best first upgrades followed by Provender of Ruin as a second upgrade. Here's how I see it.

GUO Positives:

• It gives an insta-dial advancement every turn. As soon as the GUO is summoned, you get a dial advancement token.
• The GUO has 3 attack. In comparison to 2 cultists, this is an increase of +3 attack. This means he can be played offensively or defensively! If anyone dares to incur on your Populous regions, summon him to the region. If you decide you want your cultists protected, have him patrol between two ajacent regions you have cultists in. He serves as both 2 cultists and 3 warriors.
• The GUO has 3 defense. Once again, this is a great improvement over two cultists; each cultist has a defense value of 1. So while you would lose two cultists to two hits, the GUO would still be alive until 3 hits are applied.
• It doesn't matter if the GUO dies or not. He has to be re-summoned every turn to reap his benefit, so the only thing that would be lost from his death is having him as an extra figure for domination.
• He can't be controlled or teleported away like cultists.
• He doesn't need support from other units like the other Greater Daemons.

GUO Negatives:

• Costs one extra power point in comparison to 2 cultists. This is largely negated by his other benefits that that extra power point buys you.
• He has to be re-summoned every turn. This is annoying since cultists (provided they aren't killed) can camp in a region multiple turns without costing power points.
• Not much stall time. Using the GUO effectively reduces the Nurgle player's power point number to 3 every turn. This doesn't leave much room to react to game-changing decisions, understand enemy intentions and react to them, or even change your game at all. If you start losing other cultists left and right you're going to need to re-summon units and sacrifice summoning your GUO that turn.
• Can paint a target on your head. Tzeentch and Nurgle are the two powers that benefit the most from looking like they are playing in worse than the other players most of the game. When the other players see how easy it is for you to dial advance and kill off units now, they might come after you.

Lepers positives:

• A very long amount of stall time. With this upgrade Nurgle can stall longer than any other power if the board is right.
• Lets you spread corruption all over the board. This is very helpful for adjusting you game - no matter what, you have a variety of fall-back plans. Some Chaos Cards key off of the corruption you will gain all over the board as well.

Lepers Negatives:

• Can help Khorne dial advance. All those spread out cultists are bound to fall into regions he has units in.
• Can be pretty schizophrenic. Spreading your units out so far can cause you to have to spend more power points to bring them back to where you want to. I'd say this is rare though, since with good planning you can maneuver into the right spots.

That's all I got, but I think that's pretty good.

RE: The bloodletter and plaguebearer upgrades

Yes, Khorne in principle doesn't care much about if his units die - if they were on the edges of the places he could place units. Also, if his unit survives the turn it puts you in a better position next turn because it can fight again without you having to spend power. For power-happy Khorne, this makes a big difference.

The plaguebearer upgrade - if two of them die, they could still take out a horror or daemonette between them. The real strength of this upgrade, however, is the deterrent value. As mentioned above, Khorne does care a bit about whether his units can survive, and the other powers care more. By making your combat units kill stuff in death, you just make it less worthwhile to attack your regions. As the static player, that's a good thing.

On the other hand, I almost always take Lepers or Provender of Ruin first as Nurgle, and almost never get to the second upgrade. So it's not hugely fantastic.

I play Slaanesh in most games and I always tell myself that I'll try the Daemonette or Keeper of Secrets upgrades, but I never do - I always end up with Seductresses + one power upgrade, or both power upgrades... in my experience it's tough to beat starting with 9 power, assuming you get the second upgrade at least two rounds before the end. The choice between those two alternatives really depends on when I draw my Fields of Ecstasy.

I tried the Keeper upgrade once, it only really shines if Khorne is hounding you. It forces him to invest at the very least a bloodthirster or two bloodletters to score points in a region with the keeper.

It is very useless against Tzeentch's horde of cultists and Nurgle's horde of cultists and plaguebearers.

It is quite fun to block dial advancements for Khorne by controlling a bloodletter and then killing cultists and blocking Tzeentch or Nurgle too.

Anyone ever try out the demonettes or horrors upgrades?

GrooveChamp said:

Daemonette Upgrade works well in messing with Khorne. Suddenly, fighting back at him is a solid option, where his figures will get hurt, you won't even lose a single Daemonette in most cases (explosion mass can happen of course). Khorne doesn't like that.

Dam said:

I would think seductress and keeper upgrades are better for messing with khorne.

The demonette upgrade sounds good, but we could never find a situation where you'd get it before the other upgrades.

GrooveChamp said:

Seductress is the Cultist boost, right? That's a must-have. Keeper of Secrets just doesn't do it for me, not enough to go for that upgrade.

So it seems like EVERYONE's best upgrade is their cultist one, with Slaneesh's being the single best upgrade in the game.

That is because cultist are involved in every aspect of winning the game so anything that increases their utility/placement/defense its going to be a better upgrade. Battle takes a second place (except for Khorne) because you cannot hold a region and other players can always place into a region even if they where previously eliminated.

I consider Khorne's cultist upgrade to be his best one simply because it lets him cheaply get attack dice into more regions. If you just happen to pick up some points from ruination it's just a bonus.

Now we're wondering what everyone's second upgrade should be. Probably provender for Nurgle, power point for Tzeentch, but the rest we're not sure on. Warrior upgrades seem too low a priority.

I'd definitely take Provender of Ruin as the first upgrade for Nurgle, cultist upgrades for Khorne and Slaanesh and, hmm, either a power point or Deluge of Magic for Tzeentch (since Acolytes is good for a Dial Advancement victory, and I tend to go for a VP victory as Tzeentch).

No cultist upgrade first for Tzeentch? Really?

Well, Acolytes do help me ruin areas more quickly thanks to Warpstone lowering their resistance, so it's a difficult decision. One power point is always useful, Deluge of Magic gives you access to those killer cards that may enable you to win the game and Acolytes allows you to score advancements while you continue your ruination rampage...

So yeah, if you want to go for a Dial Advancement victory (which is the hard way to win), choose Acolytes. Iif you want to keep your options open for either victory, you may want to choose Acolytes. But if you've decided it's VP victory or bust, choose a power point or Deluge of Magic.

It's a decision you have to make in every game, but I might make the decision against Acolytes just to keep me focused on those VPs. Otherwise, with Acolytes, I may end up doing a little bit of this (DA) and a little bit of that (VP) and losing the game due to indecision.

That's why Nurgle is such a strong contender: it has only one path to victory.

I have to say all but few upgrades are awesome and all are pretty hard to choose!

I am a bit confused as to leper upgrade - can you potentially spawn only 6 Lepers in 6 different regions for free, or can you spawn one Leper for free, then spawn/move him on another sector for free and then shuffle him back for free and so on until the other players have wasted all of their points?!!! Surely not!

Cailus said:

Lepers effectively grants this ability to each cultist figure:

"Once per game turn, in the summoning phase, when summoning this figure into a region that contains no other Nurgle figure: The summoning costs nothing"

So, in other words, lepers let each figure summon once per turn for free. Once that figure has been summoned for free, it costs one to move it regardless. Note that you could potentially do it in the other order - so summon for 1 power into a region that had figures, then decide to summon it into an empty region for free later in the turn.

The important bit is that the target region must not contain a Nurgle figure, and if you don't want to waste power, preferrably a region where you actually want a Leper of yours as well. So while in theory you could summon 6 lepers every turn, in practice you'll probably only summon a few.

Still, the upgrade is really nice, particularly if going for a ruination strategy (which is the only one I knew until I read of the milking one).

Re: the Lepers. In addition to simply allowing each leper to be summoned once per turn for free, the really important thing this upgrade does is give Nurgle 6 zero point cards each turn. Essentially, you get to wait 6 rounds before you have to commit to some sort of action for the turn. This is huge!

My favorite god to play is Tzeench. I always take the cultist upgrade first. Being able to move the warpstones around does a two things: helps in ruination in areas that other gods think are two or more turns off- pile in with 4 cultists each carrying a warpstone, and you've just added 8!!! ruination to the area- and it allows me to decide where I'm going to go for dial ticks, instead of having to defend an area or accept losses in return for ticks.

My second favorite upgrade for Tzeench is usually the extra power point, although I'm a lot more flexible on the second versus the first. I have taken the extra card instead, and considered (but never taken) the horrors upgrade. I have never taken the greater demon upgrade- just not worth it, imho .

The last game my group played, I was Slaneesh. I took the Seductress upgrade first (of course) and took the Keeper of Secrets upgrade for the first time ever in our gaming group (we've played...maybe 50 times or so). I was hugely impressed by this upgrade. Consider that paying for the summons of the KoS once in a contested region gives you 1 extra cultist OR the ability to kill others' cultists from that point forward. After the first couple of times I said "And this figure is mine now..." the other players started avoiding the region my KoS was in. Which was fine- I finished off the Empire alone- 14 points.

The KoS upgrade was good enough that it might be my first the next time I play Slaneesh .

Nurgle: 1st: Lepers, no question. 2nd: Provender of Ruin or possibly GUO <- usually 1 tick/turn is useful but not needed for victory

Tzeench: as indicated above.

Slaneesh: see above

Khorne: 1st: cultist upgrade- too useful to pass up. 2nd: Bloodletters is good to save power later in the game- dead warriors can't strike back. The extra power point is useful as well.