Chaos in the Old World First Impressions

Chaos in the Old World, an Eric Lang dudes on a map game…

I’m sure this will be good…

Chaos in the Old World makes you a god. Each god’s distinctive powers and legion of followers grant you unique strengths and diabolical abilities with which to corrupt and enslave the Old World.

In this, you win by either scoring the most points after someone scores at least 50 and triggers the end game or by spinning your dial until it says ‘You Win’.

Each player controls a faction of Chaos each with their own deck of cards, and powers.

I played Slaanesh because of Purple. Everyone scores points in the same way really, by doing ‘stuff’. Slaanesh advance those dials you can turn to win by corrupting regions containing Nobles or Heroes.

Others do this in different ways such as Khorne, who do it by killing other players’ units…

Player Dials

These dials give you good stuff as they turn, such as upgrade cards which are really powerful. They can be used to give you special powers or upgrade your units. This was important to me as upgrading the defence on my weakest and cheapest ‘Seductress’ units prevented the Khorne player from killing them easily and turning their dial.

The game is played with cards and you have a handful you draw from a deck. This deck is purpose-built for your faction.

You have a number of points to spend. You Can pay the cost of a card to play it or summon people on the board. Once you have 0 points you can’t do anything. Once everyone has 0 points the ‘Summoning Phase’ ends and you go to combat.

Combat

This is done via dice, rolling equal to your strength and needing a number of hits which you divide among the defenders, killing them off.

After combat, the guys left on the board then work towards domination in the area they are in. You get points and add tokens to the regions of your faction and if a region gets too many tokens it becomes corrupted and can no longer be influenced in the game.

This is where you find out if you get to move your dial. Any region I put 2 tokens in that contained a Noble or Hero let me add a token to my dial.

Each person with a token spins the dial one notch, whoever got the most tokens spins it twice getting both revealed rewards.

That’s pretty much it, you play until you have a winner.

Chaos in the Old World Summary

So, the same designer as Blood Rage and VERY similar gameplay

When being taught this game I felt like I already knew how to play it. The corruption, dials and movement were different, everything else was pretty much the same.

You draw cards from a specific deck rather than a draft. This means each faction has its focus, as well as its own little way to win the game.

Is it better than random cards and the freedom to do what you like? No, but it’s balanced better rather than being forced to be self-balancing.

Overall I like this, and Blood Rage is growing on me when played with more than 3. But I like the structure more in Chaos in the Old World.

Jesta ThaRogue