In our game, he just ran away with it. To be fair, the player was on fire with the dice most of the time, but still, he just seemed over powered. He was advancing his threat dial twice every turn but one. Basically, he would spread out with a cultist and put a single warrior in a territory with another unit in it or two in it. Even if his warrior died, he'd still usually roll at least 1 hit and since most of the other units, even warriors, only have 1 hit point, he'd be able to meet his threat dial requirement even if his warrior died. He'd spread out and use cards that let him teleport/move two units and it wasn't uncommon for him to kill a unit in 4 territories a turn.

Why were the other Gods letting him get double-ticks early? Khorne goes first and has 7 Power, meaning 3 Blood Letters (or Bloodthrister + 2 BL) on the first turn. If Tzeentch has a Teleport Chaos card or Slaanesh the no battle dice for figures Chaos card, avoiding giving Khorne double-ticks on the first two turns shouldn't be a problem, even if those cards aren't available, stalling + smart play should limit Khorne to just 1 tick, possibly 0. Allowing Khorne to only get a his first Upgrade (2nd tick) card into play on turn 2 (or even turn 3) helps a great deal. Khorne has his 0-cost 2 battle die Chaos card, but Tzeentch again has a counter in Changer of Ways and Nurgle can protect his figures with the +1 hp card.

The best strategy against Khorne is often to run away. Look at it like this: The only god who really benefits from a fight anywhere is Khorne. All the other gods do not want to fight unless it's unavoidable - their warrior demons even all have only one attack die, so even when they fight, they're not really good at it. The only chaos god who occasionally wants to stop Khorne with actual combat is Nurgle, because his Plaguebearers are so cheap.

If Khorne attacks you in a non-important space, consider moving out your figures. Or protect them (as was mentioned) with Field of Ecstasy, Rain of Pus, Warp Shield. Banish Khorne to a spot where he doesn't benefit (so nowhere that he isn't already - place his warrior in a region where he's too strong, or one where he has stuff that is useless by now) with Teleport. Threaten him with The Final Rotting, making it costly to place his warriors because they'll die anyway, or stop him from coming for your regions with Temporal Stasis. Slaanesh can somewhat quickly get the cultist upgrade, making them twice as tough to kill. Tzeentch can Power Drain or use The Meddling of Skaven to annoy somebody. Slaanesh can use Dark Influence to send Hero tokens Khorne's way, or Sophorific Musk to screw Khorne's expansion plans if he's using cultists (because they're cheaper) in intermediate regions.

And then there are the Old World cards that make some regions more attractive for non-Khorne players, because they limit the number of battle dice in a region, or kill stuff from the highest-threat player (which usually is Khorne if he's on a roll like that).

Khorne often dominates early games, because he has to be actively stopped by the other chaos powers. Now, the same is true for all the other gods, but Khorne's focus on battle (and the traditionally established fact that in games that allow battle, battle is usually a good thing for everybody) makes it easier for him to win if the other gods don't actively avoid combat with Khorne while also pursuing their own victory objectives.

Particularly once a player is somewhat close to winning, the other players should try and stop them.They all do have the tools

I just wanted to add: That Khorne often dominates early games is something I heard - for us, it was Nurgle, because everybody concentrated on dominating regions and Nurgle is best at that

In the game we played, on the first summoning phase, Khorne put a unit in Bretonnia. From there, he was adjacent to all but 3 locations and all he needed to do was put a cultist down adjacent to all but 1 region. After a couple of turns, he can have a unit in nearly every populous region can enable him to summon warriors into many different regions on a turn. All he needs, for the most part, is to roll a single hit to get a dial upgrade token and if he's getting single hits in 2 and 3 regions a turn, he will likely be getting 2 upgrades a turn.

I keep saying this - but if you aren't leaving the region, are you fighting back? Nurgle in particular can afford to dump down a couple of plaguebearers or use rain of pus etc. to help defend himself. If khorne's units aren't there next turn, they can't fight again for free...

Bataar said:

The primary reason why Khorne and usually why Khorne runs away is that everyone is in their own little area minding their own business. Khorne will have little to no resistance and gets more DATs more than anyone.

Have you thought about working together against Khorne?

Slaanesh slaps down Fields of Ecstasy and that area becomes a safe haven for everyone. The more you stick together in the same region, the less regions he will have for DATs.

Tzeentch can teleport Khorne to areas with no one, to break his connections, to no/min. battle dice areas, or to Nurgle who might have a fighting chance against Khorne. (You might want to do this just to prevent the bonus dial even though it doesn't directly benefit you.)

Once Slaanesh gets 2 defense cultists, Nurgle puts down Rain of Pus, Khorne will want to move elsewhere to get his easy kills.

The Final Rotting will make Khorne spend more power if he wants kills in Nurgle's territory.

Temporal Stasis is a deterrent for Khorne.

Sometimes, it is worthwhile to 'run' from Khorne to prevent him from getting a DAT instead of leaving it up to the dice.

Be careful not to screw Khorne over too much. He has the second longest dial track. On an average 4-5 turn game, preventing him a bonus dial 2-3x is enough. Most likely someone else will run away with the game if you focus on Khorne too much.

Once you know how to deal with Khorne, you'll be complaining that Khorne is too weak. =P

Bataar said:

running is key: Barring Chaos cards, khorne can only place 3 warriors on his first turn.

consider this (assuming you are 100% unable to stall with chaos cards):

khorne :point 1 - cultist

You: point 1 - cultist

khorne: points 2/3 - warrior

You: point 2 - move your cultist to an adjacent region

khorne: points 4/5 - warrior to chase you

you: point 3 - move your cultist to an adjacent region

Khorne: points 6/7 - warrior chases you

you: points 4-5: reposition cultist to where you want to be

you: point 6: 2nd cultist to score dial advancement

I think your group was probably not interactive enough with the game as a whole. Playing the game like solitaire is begging for one power to just run away with it. Just avoiding combat with khorne for 1-2 turns is enough to stop them from getting a dial victory.

It seems to me that the name of the game should have been "Prevent Khorne from winning".

Because honestly if the other three Gods dont concentrate in the first turns on keeping Khorne at bay then there will be only one winner in all games. Sure there are chaos cards for all other Gods that make life for Khorne harder but only when all are knowingly punishing Khorne with them. On top of that the ability to stop Khorne in the beginnig depends heavily on the starting hand of chaos cards. If your hand does not contain a teleport or "immunity" or "cancel fight" or "take control of enemy figure" or other such things then by the end of the first turn it is clear that Khorne wins and it would make sense to start a new game.

I love the theme of this game and I love the game itself but, honestly, it is a bit too predictable:

1. Khorne always starts in the center of the map

2. Nurgle always starts in a populous region which is close to center of the map

3. Tzeentch has three possible starting regions

4. Slaanesh has two possible starting regions

Depending on the placement of the OW tokens on the map Khorne either has very easy time or a bit less easy time and thats all. It a bit ruines the game as there really is no other strategy as you either stop Khorne or you dont. In latter case you might as well as not play the game because the winner is already known.

From my experience with the game I could sum it up as this: Khorne does not care, Nurgle does not have a choise, Tzeentch and Slaanesh depend on the lucky (or not so lucky) placement of OW tokens.

Melonball said:

Yes, but after one turn you are covering one region with 2 cultists but Khorne is covering 3 regions with its warrior. I'd say that Khorne really did not loose much in this turn.

I don't believe that any god is more powerful than the others. The game is perfectly balanced. The number of so many different experiences by so many different groups of players indicates this.

If you have a god that wins a lot in your games then change your style of play and you may be surprised. In our games Nurgle has the most victories and Khorne the least. He just can't beat Slaanesh, Nurgle can protect himself and Tzeentch teleports him away.

Actually I have to confess that our group misinterpreted the rules in a very stupid way. Well, as I was the only one bothered to read the rules then the blame is entierly mine.

Namely I got it from somewhere (clearly not from the rule book) that each DAC equals a tick but of course this is not the case . And as Khorne is usually the one who gets most DAC's then he got easily the upperhand in our games.

Back to gaming then.

And please ignore my other posts in this thread.

FragMaster said:

In our round Nurgle wins more often then the others. Sneaky little God. In the beginning hes allways weak and no danger. Suddenly he's one step away from winning the game...

LeaderOne said:

He still wins by VPs though, right? If so, then he really shouldn't be able to sneak a win as VPs and corruption tokens are open information, you can calculate how many VPs he is getting. Nurgle win by dial shouldn't happen, period. He needs what, 11 ticks to win. In a 7 turn game, that requires him to double tick 4 times and after the early games, game going 7 turns without another God winning by dial or getting to 50+ VPs has become rare. Usually dial and/or VP is reached no later than turn 6. Which would mean Nurgle double ticks 5 times! And he is the most limited as to where he can get his ticks from, it's always the same four Regions. Not to mention you can totally snake Nurgle's hope of any dial win by ruining those two or three regions in the first three turns. No more ticks for Nurgle.

Every time we play Chaos in our group, it's always Khorne or Slaanish who wins, and the Slaanish victories were from before the errata, and once when I was seeing if you could win through VP with Khorne *Hint: Punch face is better than VPs.* The biggest problem with Khorne is... he dictates the game. You CAN stay in a region and fight him, giving him VPs, or you can run away, which is probably counter-productive to your own strategies. It's especially annoying because I mostly play Tzeench or Nurgle, and every game I've managed to get over 50 vps, is the same turn that Khorne wins through dial turns. Honestly, our group really can't see any effective way of dealing with Khorne short of just running away constantly, and even then Khorne will still be killing your models more often than you'll be filling corruption conditions, because he's usually so spread out that there's really nowhere to run to.

I'm actually surprised Khorne slipped through playtesting. I've played with several different groups with very diff play styles and it does seem, moreoften than not, the game becomes about "How to deal with Khorne." Perhaps an expansion or some HR's could help even the playing field, like the way the Doom expansion did.

RB

Bataar said:

You're misreading the board and I think others might be doing the same. Adjacent zones are ones connected by arrows. The most adjacent zones that one zone will have is 2 and the corners each have 1. I'm not sure if other people are making the same mistake (believing that almost all zones are adjacent outside of the corners). A Khorne player moving from one corner of the map to the other with no cards would take 8 steps, not 2.

Khorne has only won 1 game in my group. We've played a total of 7 times thus far. Slaanesh - 3, Tzeentch - 2, Nurgle - 1, Khorne - 1.

I am afraid this is not correct. Adjacent regions are simply that: those that share a border.

Rules page 11: "To place a figure on the board, the player places a figure in one of the nine map regions. The only restriction on a figure placement is that the figure must be placed in a region where that Chaos power already has a figure, or in a region adjacent to such a region. (Adjacent regions are those that share a border.)"

The arrows are just there to show the region order for resolving battles, placing corruption etc. (see rules page 25.)

Koroviev said:

No, those arrows mark the combat, scoring, dominating and corrupting order, nothing more. Adjacency is done by borders.

That's strange because we've found it to work very well the way we're playing it (and it seems as if there are natural borders on the map like mountains and rivers where the arrows would make sense).

We weren't even sure on this rule when we first began (because the rulebooks are sometimes disconcerting) and began playing it the way where all borders equal adjacency. After looking closely at the map, we went with the way we've been playing and it felt better.

I would have to agree with Myrm and Nomad. The arrows are used solely to denote the order in which the regions are resolved, not for purposes of adjacency. It might be an interesting variant, but it is not as intended in the rules.

Adjacency is marked by the red-hued mountains on the board. The arrows just dictate the playing order of the territories.

Koroviev said:

Essentially this home rule makes all areas like a long corridor.

Playing this way screws Khorne considerably and helps Slaanesh too much. Moreover the balance is completely destroyed since Khorne would have to go to either end of the area "corridor" to stop Tzeentch or Slaanesh and the other will rule.

IMHO you should play the game right instead of playing it with a way that "looks right". It probably looks right because you are now familiar with playing that way.

Broken games need home rules. Chaos is not broken.

Just my 2 cents.