So our group finally got aorund to playing the Horned Rat expansion. Pretty unanimous that we liked it more than the base game. Every faction was encouraged to partake in a little combat, they did a good job of keeping dial/VP victory option open to everyone, and a lot of the cards/upgrades that didn't work were removed (Slaneesh and Tzeentch used to depend entirely on how many fields of ecstacy/stasis cards they had, slaneesh's 2 defense cultists stagnanted the game, power point upgrades were boring).

One thing we ran into though was deja vu to our earliest base games where Khorne appeared overpowered. While every player gets some good upgrades, Khorne's just seem entirely better. Free Bloodthirster every turn in any contested area? 2 victory points per bloodletter kill, moving you towards a VP victory while pursuing dial victory? Cultists that give a HUGE boost to dominating?

Needless to say, Khorne won pretty hands down. We looked through each other's upgrade cards and pretty much agreed that Khorne's were flat out better (I was Slaneesh; it's like they wanted to give Tzeentch's old cultist upgrade to him, but nobles don't work the same way).

The other thing is some new cards hugely favor some people and the luck factor of them coming up seemed too great ("the warrens erupt" is an insane Skavenn boost, getting it the first turn seems like an unfair boost).

What's the vets' opinion? We're no strangers to countering old Khorne, but now all his upgrades have been boosted while all the counters to him have been weakened/removed.

Also we were wondering what a good 4 player setup was. We wanted to try the skaven so we left out Nurgle. Seemed like you kind of needed to save the Skaven for 5 player only games; without them it seems like there's not enough corruption to ruin at regular rate and doesn't give the Skaven enough opportunities to move in on ruinations.

I think I have yet to see a Nurgle victory with the expansion, so in a 4 player game he is the one I would leave out.

His ability to score VPs has been reduced, and his new Dial-Up powers aren't powerful enough to counter his INSANELY long dial, and the fact that he doesn't get an upgrade card until the third tick.

Another thing that seemed overpowered about Khorne was his chaos cards that immediately conducted a battle in a region during the summon phase. If we read that card correctly, that means Khorne would get TWO dial tokens for that one region if he killed something both with that card and during the battle phase.

Checked the FAQ and it doesn't mention anything about NOT granting two dial tokens for that card, so I guess it does? I do see that it mentions the base game version of that card (roll two dice before anything else at the start of the battle phase) and it only grants one dial token since it all happens in the battle phase. But I guess the new card clearly states the battle happens in the summon phase.

Kind of makes Khorne seem overpowered now. I realize he was the weakest god in the base game, but I think they overdid him a bit while at the same time weakening all the counters to him.

What kind of win percentages are veteran players getting with the different gods?

That card isn't so bad, as Khorne's total killing power has been decreased somewhat (his cultist no longer fight).

Khorne wins regularly in the expansion, but with VPS rather than Dial ticks.

Yes, with the new expansion, Khorne is a BEAST. If you don't shut down a competent Khorne player quickly, he will rapidly build momentum and obliterate his opponents since he can easily win by dial or VP. It's best to warp portal (if there's a Tzeentch player) the 1st Khorne unit that appears to somewhere he can't do any damage and thus delay him for a round or two. Keep this in mind for future games that you play, and Khorne might not be win so regularly.

That's the thing, the crushing Khorne victory happened despite the Khorne player making huge mistakes in the first turn. He forgot that domination only counts number of figures (not total power point value) and put his first 2 bloodletters in empty one point southern regions before realizing his mistake.

It looks like our group is going to go ahead and house rule it that his bloodletter upgrade only grants 2 VP per region with a kill. The other option is have it only apply to actual dice from bloodletters (not all kills as long as a bloodletter is present).

We're all unanimous in agreement that the card wording (2 VP per kill with bloodletter present) is way too powerful. Khorne was already lined up for a VP win (his 45 vs Slaneesh's 40) without it; that upgrade just put him over the top (final score about 64 vs 52).

Is there a call on his Rampage card though? Does it really provide an additional dial token outside of the battle phase? The FAQ doesn't say and while the literal wording indicates it does, I'm imagining that the original "for every region he scores a kill each phase" was written back when you couldn't really kill anyone outside the battle phase and maybe they just forgot to ammend that?

Rampage can indeed give Khorne 2 DACs from one region if he is lucky, yes.

It can also create som interesting synergies with whatever card keeps the dead figures around until end of Battle phase for extra points (corruption? can't remember).

I think Khorne has certainly received a major boost from the base game, but he is not invincible.

We played a 5 player game the other night, and Slaanesh won.

I do think Nurgle could do with a boost in the expansion though. We tried with letting him skip the useless "remove 1 corruption" dial-step and it didn't seem to unbalance things (he still lost)

Yeah it definitely seemed like poor Nurgle got the short end of the "every god has a chance at both victory paths now" expansion stick.