[Chaos] CitOW Game 41: The Horned Rat reigns in the Old World!

Sterica

Credits of Chaos
Adam Bloom for his rocking Handtracker site.
FWD for the awesome board app.
Rend for the comprehensive OP.
Darian for bringing order to chaos as games manager and our resident rules lawyer.

Welcome to Chaos in the Old World, Fantasy Flight Games' boardgame take at Games Workshop's famous fantasy IP. In this game, players take the role of one of the four Ruinous Powers of the universe (and a fifth, uninvited guest). Speaking of which, I believe this calls for some introductions.

Tmoiy as Khorne
Khorne loves long walks on the battlefield and nights alone with the recently deceased. He enjoys handywork, and has even so constructed a throne for himself from nothing but the skulls of the living. He's always on the lookout for new blood - in the most literal sense possible - earning him the title of "The Blood God." If Khorne were a flavor of ice cream, he would be Berserk Banana.

schuss as Nurgle
The other white meat! Or in this case, possibly white pus. Nurgle, now with 300% more pestilence! This is Great Unclean One with the new Nurgle Treatment, and you won't believe it! Have you ever been traveling around, and all of a sudden you wish you had brought your horrific ailments with you? But how are you going to fit it all in your bags? Well that's easy with the new Nurgle (or as we should say, the Old Nurgle)! Watch as it spreads the epidemic over the entire countryside as you pass. And if you order now, we'll throw in this free plaguebearer. Call now!

Aegis as Tzeentch

stever777 as Slaanesh
"Working for Khorne? It's ok, I guess, but I worry about my future prospects. You know how I'm probably going to die? Not enough blood left in my neck. You know how those Slaanesh dudes over there are probably going to die? Too many orgasms.
You can see my consternation." - Khorne Thrall
As the Prince of Pain and Pleasure, some might say that Slaanesh 'goes both ways.' His followers don't quite have a 'lust for battle,' but enjoy the 'corruption' of the aristocracy. He finds subtle usurping 'invigorating,' and sometimes even so much that he just has to release his 'keeper of secrets.'

susan as the Horned Rat
The Horned Rat does not exist, nor is there such thing as the ratmen that worship it. Scholars have concluded that claims of an empire of vicious verminfolk are nothing more than stories invented to frighten the very young. Any reports of having sighted these "skaven" is seen as spreading discord amongst the faithful and, naturally, quite blasphemous. The skittering and scratching you hear deep below you at night is naught but the fevered workings of your imagination. If you insist that you have seen these creatures, please see your nearest witch hunter to be summarily executed for your blatant heresy.

----

This will be a Play-By-Post game of Chaos in the Old World.

[RULES]
[FAQ]

OP stolen shamelessly from Rend; board graphics courtesy of MrBlarney as adapted by FunkyWaltDogg

Previous games, aka recommended reading before playing, are linked from the CF Boardgame Index

General discussion thread for Chaos in the Old World is available here

Sterica

From Rend: A QUICK TUTORIAL ON CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD

-The Turn Phases-

The Old World Phase

This phase is much like the crisis phase in BSG, the infection phase in Pandemic, or the "Bad Stuff" phase in any cooperative board game. Except this game isn't so much "cooperative" as it is "petty". Each turn, events will take place in the old world, and this is when they happen.

Every turn one old world card will be drawn, and its effects will be resolved. If there are any choices to be made, the power with the least threat will make those choices. (Threat is determined by who has advanced their victory dial the farthest)

Note: There are only 7 cards in the Old World deck. If the cards have been exhausted, the game ends at the end of the turn. If nobody has achieved a victory condition, the Old World has won- and all players lose.

The Draw Phase

During this phase, each power draws 2 cards, except Tzeentch. Tzeentch draws his hand up to 5. Also, this is when each player refreshes their Power Points to however many applicable.

The Summoning Phase

This phase always starts with Khorne, and goes:
Khorne
Nurgle
Tzeentch
Slaanesh
Horned Rat

Starting with Khorne, each player may either summon 1 figure or play 1 chaos card. In order to do so, you spend Power Points. The cost for figures is the circled value on your power's card. Then there are also attack and defend stats, which will be explained in further detail in The Battle Phase.

Chaos Cards each have a cost directly following their name in Handtracker. Additionally, if the cost of your card is followed by M, that means there is a magic symbol on it. If you play that card onto a region, that region gains 1 magic symbol.

Chaos cards are played directly onto one of the nine regions. Each region only has room for 2 cards, but they are cleared at the end phase after all effects are resolved.

If a player chooses neither to summon nor play a card, he passes and his power points go to 0. He may not play again this phase.
Additionally, if a player reaches 0 power points for ANY REASON, they may not play again this phase, EVEN IF THAT PLAYER HAS 0-cost cards or effects. Once you reach 0 power points, you are out of the turn phase, and are skipped until the next turn.

If you have no figures on the board, figures may be summoned to any region. If you have at least one figure on the board, you must summon to that region or an adjacent region. Figures may be summoned either from your reinforcements, OR from the board itself. There is no discount for summoning figures from the board, it simply allows you to move figures instead of summoning new ones if you wish. You may summon a figure from a region in order to place him in an adjacent region even if none of your other figures are adjacent to that region (ie, a single figure can "walk" across the entire map alone).

When making a play during the summoning phase, your entire post should be colored properly. All summoning phase plays should include the PP (power points) remaining, and you should fully quote the text of any Chaos cards played in addition to linking the played card in Handtracker.

The Battle Phase

In this phase, dice are rolled. All combat is considered simultaneous, however, hits are chosen in the Order of Play (Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Horned Rat). Each figure with at least 1 attack power rolls a number of dice equal to that attack power. Any dice of 4 or better are hits. The player then designates those hits among any enemy figures in the region.

You may not allocate more hits than necessary to kill an opponent.
You must allocate all hits.

Any figures which are killed will die at the end of the phase. However, unless the hits which killed it happened before normal dice are rolled, they may still return fire.

The Corruption Phase

The Corruption Phase takes place in 2 steps. Domination, and Corruption

In the Domination step, each player's domination value is calculated for each region. This value is equal to the PP cost of any chaos cards that player has played on the region, plus the number of figures (number, not attack power) that player has in the region. If this number exceeds the region's resistance (which is the number by the region's name), and that player has the highest domination score, that player dominates the region and gains Victory Points equal to the region's number.
If two players are tied for first, or if the top player is tied with the region's resistance, no VPs are awarded. Additionally, no VPs are awarded for ruined regions.

In the Corruption step, each cultist a player has in a region adds one Corruption Counter to that region. An exception to this rule is the Horned Rat, whom is incapable of adding corruption at all. If a region should reach 12 or more corruption counters, it then becomes ruined.
When a region becomes ruined, it indicates that the Chaos has taken it over so completely that it is no longer even recognizable. It is now a hellish, daemonic wasteland. First, one of the 5 ruination cards is flipped (the cards go in order, so the values are the same from game to game). Each player who put a corruption counter on the region DURING THE STEP IT WAS RUINED gains a small amount of VPs instantaneously, decided by the card. Also, a Horned Rat player will receive these points as well if he or she has figures occupying the region at the time of its ruination. Later this turn, the player with the most and the second most Corruption in the area gain a large lump sum of VPs as well. After the region is ruined, NO VPs will EVER come of the region again.
If two players are tied for first, they add the first and second place values together and split them. If two players are tied for second, they split second place. If there is no second place, and only one player has counters, the second place VPs are wasted. Again, the Horned Rat is a special case, and any figures present at the time of scoring will count as corruption equal to the figure's cost. For example, a Clan Rat (1) and a Rat Ogre (2) would count as three corruption when scoring a ruined region.

If, at the end of the turn, all 5 Ruination cards have been flipped, the game ends and the player with the most VPs wins the game.

The End Phase

During the end phase:
1. Remove Chaos Cards from the Board
2. Hero Tokens are resolved - meaning that in any region with a hero token, the daemon with the highest threat in that region must sacrifice one figure, as the hero kills it.
3. Resolve Old World cards - If a card on the Old World track asks for a resolution during the end phase, this is when it happens.
4. Score Ruined Regions - this is the step when first/second place ruination is scored
5. Advance Threat Dials - If you have fulfilled your victory dial condition at least once, you turn your dial one click. If you have fulfilled your condition more times this turn than any other player, you turn your dial two clicks. This dial gives various rewards, including Upgrades, VPs, and control of the tokens on the board.
6. Check for Game end
The game end conditions are checked one at a time, in this order:

Dial Victory
Victory Point Victory
All 5 ruination cards drawn (most VPs wins)
No cards in the Old World deck (All players lose)

In the case of a dial victory tie, the player with most VPs wins. If they are tied, the victory is shared.
In the case of a VP victory tie, the player with the highest threat wins.

How do I gain victory points?

Gain victory points in 5 ways:
1. Dominating regions at the end of the battle phase
2. Helping to ruin regions by placing corruption counters on them during the step in which ruination occurs
3. Ruining regions and having most or second most counters on the region
4. Sometimes, by advancing your victory dial
5. Some chaos cards can grant you victory points.

The most reliable points come from Domination, while the quickest points come from ruining regions.

How do I advance my dial?

KHORNE: Gain 1 advancement token for each region in which you kill an opposing player's model this turn
NURGLE: Gain 1 advancement token each time you place 2 or more corruption counters in a populous region in a single phase
TZEENTCH: Gain 1 advancement token for each region with 2 or more magic and/or warpstone tokens in which you placed 2 corruption counters with cultists this turn.
SLAANESH: Gain 1 advancement token for each region with at least 1 hero or noble in which you placed 2 corruption counters with cultists this turn.
HORNED RAT: Gain 1 advancement token for each region containing at least one skaven token that you dominate this turn.

Every player with at least 1 token gains 1 click on the victory dial. Each turn the player who gained the most tokens this turn gains an additional click on the victory dial. In the case of a tie, neither player gets 2 clicks.

Useful information:

STANDARD REGION ORDER

1. Norsca
2. Troll Country
3. Kislev
4. The Empire
5. Bretonnia
6. Estalia
7. Tilea
8. The Border Princes
9. The Badlands

PLAYER MATS:
Khorne

Nurgle

Tzeentch

Slaanesh

Errata: Dial advancement for two corruption, not one.

Horned Rat

DIAL ADVANCEMENT BONUSES:

Khorne: 9 clicks
Nurgle: 10 clicks
Tzeentch: 8 clicks
Slaanesh: 7 clicks
Horned Rat: 8 clicks

AVAILABLE UPGRADES:
Khorne Upgrades:

Upgrades:
Power of Blood - +1 PP per turn
Deluge of Ferocity - Draw 3 cards instead of 2 each turn
Bloodsworn - Stats: (1/1/1)
Bloodletters - Bloodletters strike first and inflict casualties before opponents return fire
Bloodthirster - Counts as 3 figures for domination value

Nurgle Upgrades:

Power of Pestilence - +1 PP per turn
Provender of Ruin - Score 3 VP each time a region is ruined
Lepers - A Leper's cost is 0 if placed in a region where you have no other figures. A given leper may only be summoned for free once per round.
Plaguebearers - When an opponent kills one of your plaguebearers in battle, inflict one hit on any figure in the same region belonging to that opponent
Great Unclean One - Immediately place two corruption tokens in a region when you summon a Great Unclean One there

Tzeentch Upgrades:

Power of Magic - +1 PP per turn
Deluge of Magic - Draw to 6 cards per turn instead of 5
Acolytes - When summoned from the board instead of your stockpile, an Acolyte may bring a Warpstone token if present from its origin to its destination
Horrors - When you summon a horror, you may place it on an empty card slot in that region. Only you may play cards to that slot while the horror remains.
Lord of Change - A Lord of Change has 2 magic symbols.

Slaanesh Upgrades:

Power of Pain - +1 PP per turn. If you have power of pain and power of pleasure, total +3
Power of Pleasure - +1 PP per turn. If you have power of pain and power of pleasure, total +3
Seductress - New stats (1/0/2)
Daemonettes - In battle, Daemonettes can only be hit on a die result of 6
Keeper of Secrets - At the beginning of the battle phase, choose any cultist or warrior in this region. Control it until the end of the round or until your keeper of secrets is killed, whichever comes first.

MORRSLIEB UPGRADES
Khorne Upgrades:

Crimson Tide - Each time you dominate a region, draw one Chaos card.
Vengeance - In any region where you are rolling at least one battle die, you may roll one additional battle die.
Bloodsworn - Each Bloodworn counts as two figures toward your domination value of any region that it occupies.
Bloodletters - You gain two victory points each time you kill a figure in a region containing a Bloodletter.
Bloodthirster - Once per round during the summoning phase, you may summon a Bloodthirster for 0 power into a region that contains six or more corruption tokens once per round.

Nurgle Upgrades:

Cavalcade of Decay - Any region containing five or more Cultists is considered Populous.
Infested Colony - When you dominate a region, place two corruption tokens in that region.
Lepers - When your Lepers place at least one corruption token in a region during the corruption phase, you may place one additional corruption token in that region.
Plaguebearers - When a Plaguebearer is killed during the battle phase, place one of your corruption tokens in that region.
Great Unclean One - For every figure you kill in the same region as a Great Unclean One, you may place one corruption token in that region.

Tzeentch Upgrades:

Mystical Disregard - Once per round, you may play a Chaos card on top of an opponent's Chaos card, canceling its effect. The card you play must have power equal to or greater than the card you cover.
Well of Power - During the summoning phase, instead of summoning a figure or playing a Chaos card, you may spend one power point to draw one Chaos card.
Acolytes - Once per round during the battle phase, you may discard a card from your hand to cancel one hit assigned to one of your Acolytes.
Horrors - When you play a Chaos card with a magic symbol, you may immediately summon a Horror to that region for 0 power.
Lord of Change - When you summon a Lord of Change into a region, you may place one Warpstone token in that region.

Slaanesh Upgrades:

Fall from Grace - If you place three or more corruption tokens in a region with a Noble or Hero token, collect two dial advancement counters instead of only one.
Rise to Glory - When calculating domination in a region, each noble token adds one to your domination value in that region.
Seductresses - When summoned from the board (rather than from your stockpile), a Seductress figure may bring a Noble token (if present) from its origin region to its destination region.
Daemonettes - When you summon a Daemonette into a region, you may take control of an opponent's Cultist in that region until the end of the turn. (Place the Cultist next to the Daemonette as a reminder.)
Keeper of Secrets - A Keeper of Secrets counts as three Noble tokens.

Horned Rat* Upgrades:

The Council of Thirteen - Once per round during the summoning phase, you may play a Chaos card into a region whose card spaces are full. (Place this third Chaos card near the other card spaces in the region.)
The Under Empire - You treat all regions with Skaven tokens as adjacent regions. When a region is ruined, you may immediately move any number of your figures from that region into one adjacent region.
Clan Rats - When you summon a Clan Rat into a region where you do not currently have any Clan Rats, you may summon one additional Clan Rat to that region for 0 power.
Rat Ogres - Opponents cannot assign hits to Clan Rats until they first assign enough hits to kill all Rat Ogres in the region.
Vermin Lord - You may summon a Vermin Lord from the board (rather than from your stockpile) for 1 power.

*The Horned Rat has only one set of upgrades.

HOW TO MAKE A BATTLE ROLL:

Delmain wrote: »

Hey guys, helpful IC tidbit here.
Roll Xd6.hitsopen(4,6). It'll reroll 6s and then count all the dice 4 and above and give you a convenient number of hits.

Alternatively, you can make battle rolls via orokos (thanks, Infidel!)

Delmain wrote: »

Use Xd6o6h4.

o is for Open, it rolls them over and over until you get a not-6. e6 just rerolls 6s once, even if another 6 comes up.

Battle dice probabilities:

MrBlarney wrote: »

I made a table for expected results up to 6 battle dice. Cells without values have probabilities below 0.1%. There is some rounding, so the values won't be exact, but they'll be close enough for most purposes.

We'll be using both google-docs and admanb's handtracker for this game; you'll need to make an account for the handtracker and PM me an email address.

Once the game begins, you'll use the "Draw to hand" command on handtracker to draw cards. To play cards or discard them, click the "Play" button on the card in your hand, then link the action in the thread with the name of the card.

Aegis

The Lord of Change would like to note that the server outage was in fact his own doing in order to establish his early arrival.

Sterica

I didn't mention it in the OP, but this will be a Morrislieb game with just the standard Old World cards. The expert cards can be a bit...much when you're not adjusted to the new decks.

stever777

Sign up! S > K > T > N > HO

Aegis

Oh right I suppose I should put an actual list, shouldn't I.

Tzeentch> > Nurgle > Slaanesh > Khorne > Horny Rat

susan

In!

New Version, eh? Interesting... Let's try this:

HR>T>K>N>S

Tmoiy

Sign up! No preferences.

Sterica

Tmoiy, you will need to make an account at Handtracker for card-related stuff.

Tmoiy

Rorus Raz wrote: »

Tmoiy, you will need to make an account at Handtracker for card-related stuff.

Done, same username.

schuss

Sign Up!

Remember, bold is the enemy. I would like anyone but Khorne.

Sterica

Let's welcome our players!

Tmoiy
schuss
Aegis
stever777
susan

Due to some technical issues, I cannot start the game quite yet. Do not draw your starting hand just yet, but do check that you're in the game in Handtracker. I hope to get round one started in about four hours.

susan

Fear Me!

Darian

Needs more horns.

Aegis

The Lord of Change would like to inquire as to why there are vermin crawling around his underwear drawer!

That is all.

stever777

Can Slaaneshi followers have relations with rat-men?
What am I talkin' about??!! Of course they can!!

schuss

Rats? You must mean plague rats.

Sterica

Round One: Old World and Draw Phase

Old World Card

The Grail is Found: Remove all Event tokens from the board and remove any Old World cards bearing the Twin-tailed Comet icon from the Old World track. Then, place one Event token in Bretonnia and one Event token in any single region adjacent to Bretonnia. - In the end phase when Old World cards are resolved, all corruption tokens are removed from every region where there is at least one Event token.

Nurgle to choo-oh, I guess the Horned Rat gets to choose now, eh? Well, in that case, pick which location adjacent to Bretonnia that shall receive the second event token. Sorry about that, Greatfather. That be the breaks!



Required Decisions

-Horned Rat to place the token
-Tzeentch to decide if he'll discard.
-All other players may draw five cards.

Khorne is active once the above is finished.

Aegis

Goddamnit, not another Grail. What is it with the humans and their shiny objects?

susan

So. Many. Rats. Squeek!

Event Token to... Estalia.

Aegis

Slight problem with the drawing of initial 3 cards: I just drew a card and instead of going into my hand it went into the discard pile.

susan

Problem: Handtracker auto-discarded every card I drew for some reason .

Ninja'd!

Sterica

I may have gotten the permissions mixed up. Gimme a second.

stever777

Ditto.

El Skid

There's a draw to hand and a draw- two separate functions.

You want to let the players draw to hand, but not draw.

Sterica

"Draw" really should be "play from deck," but nitpicking.

Permissions have been fixed!

Aegis

The Lord of Change will not discard his trinkets for the time being.

stever777

Cards drawn.

stever777

I have a feeling Rat-boy's gonna kick my ass...

Sterica

I have a feeling this is going to be a funny game since most of you are totally new to the Morrslieb decks, much less the Horned Rat.

Aegis

I think we're all feeling that way about everyone else given that we're getting to play with entirely new decks that we have no idea what they do (if you don't have the list handy and even then you don't have experience with how they play out).

susan

I have a feeling Rat-boy's gonna kick my ass...

I've never played these cards or this God before. I've got no feel for the strategy, or the meta, or the playstyle of mine God or, frankly, anyone else's at this point. I'm also the new kid on the block, and likely to be the recipient of extra attention on behalf of Khorne and the other players as far as screwing goes.

...But yeah, I think so too.

Aegis

You're probably going to get extra attention from Khorne simply because you have the most tokens.

Also, why are the vermin in my underwear drawer speaking? Grandfather, this is your doing isn't it?

stever777

I've seen you play, Suze.
Also, you are a rat-bastard!
Thank you everyone. Try the veal...

Tmoiy

Good hunting, my brothers... plus a newcomer... a hamster god? Honestly, what is the old world coming to these days?

Anyway, I suppose it's up to me to kick off the festivities. Corn for the corn god!

Bloodsworn to the Empire. 6/7 PP.

schuss

Where there's people, there's pestilence.
Leper to Empire 5/6 PP

Aegis

I think we should all gather just a little bit closer in this big ole world of ours..

Glean (M) to Norsca.

6/6 PP

stever777

Is that good, or not?
Good ole' Seductress to Good ole' Estalia. 5/6 PP

susan

Interesting... *steeples fingers and pretends to know what's going on*

Skitterleap to Norsca, 6/6.

Sterica

Round One: Summoning Phase

Three gods take their first steps into a bold, new (albeit still old) world while their rivals seem to have cold feet. You know, rats tend to have cold feet.

No, stop it. No more rat jokes, damn it.


Active Effects

Norsca is suffering from Glean (adjacent to all regions) and Skitterleap (owner may move figures if dominated).

Khorne is active.

Tmoiy

Interesting play, brother.

Bloodsworn to Norsca. 5/7 PP.

Out of curiosity, what are the ruination cards like? Do the VP values generally go up or down?