Ok, I just got the game and learned all the rules. However, I haven't played this game yet. Both of my parents and my sister will be participating next gaming session, and since my parents (my dad in particular) are not very good in grasping in complicated boardgames such as this, I just have to ask. Which god is the most straightforward and easiest to play? What should newbie players play as?

Khorne works well in non-thinking mode, at least with novices. All you are looking for is figures in a color other than Red to kill.

I sort of suspected that was the case, but I just had to make sure. Thanks!

Well, I have completed my first game of Chaos, with my dad as Khorne, my mom as Nurgle, my sister as Slaanesh, and I as Tzeentch. It was a total blast! This was one of the most fun I had from a boardgame. I like how that everyone always comes close to victory, despite varying abilities of play. My parents, even though not really knowing what's going on in the first half, still got surprisingly close to victory. During the 7th round (yes, the Old World was on the verge on victory also), Khorne was just one dial tick away from victory, Nurgle would have got 50 VP if he squeaked in 2 more points, and both Slaanesh and I reached Dial Victory, but Slaanesh won due to being 8 VP ahead of me. Everybody was literally standing up when the game reached its climax, and everybody left the table enjoying this game thoroughly (even though Nurgle grumbled because Khorne kept picking on him.)

In the game I played as tzeench i got my ass kicked, didnt even have the dial moved up once when khorne won by the dial, nurgle and slaanesh were about a quarter up the dial. Fun game but it seems way to easy for khorne to win.

It's just how you were playing the game. In our group Khorne isn't in distance of winning a game because the other gods are so frightenend of him. It's easy to lock Khorne out of reach for the other players and it's getting more of a challenge between Nurgle and Slaneesh who will get 1st.

This game is just awesome. It really depends on the players how they play against each other. If nobody does something against Khorne in the early game, Khorne will surely win. If Slaneesh and Nurgle are ignored and can develop themselves in the regions where they have benefits then it will be a win for one of them.

It's been awhile since we played, but it always seems like Slaanesh is easiest to win with a Dial victory, unless a concentrated effort is made to stop him from getting his 1st upgrade for a few turns.  Once he can upgrade his cultists, he becomes very powerful we have found.

mastabou said:

Are you looking at the FAQ?  The rules on Slaanesh's card are wrong:  You need 2 cultists in a region to get the dial tick.  Slaanesh gets much more difficult after that.  In fact, I can't win a game with them!  Slaanesh seems so mediocre compared to the other races.  It doesn't do any one thing really well and I struggle with that in our games.  I keep taking Slaanesh out of a desire to see it work, and keep failing!

Slanny won the first two games for us, playing with the FAQ already out, so 2 corruption requirement. After that, everyone made him the target in the early game so Slanny wouldn't upgrade on the first turn and he hasn't been in the running since.

Slaanesh has to be murdered in order to be kept down.  You have to either outrace his dial advancement or keep him from getting his first upgrade.  Once he gets his Seductress upgrade, it takes a lot more effort to stop his progress.  Slaanesh can get ridiculously lucky in some games when combat is denied, but he can have a lot of trouble beyond that.  Still, it's not that much harder than any other character.

Slaneesh and Nurgle have always been the most common winners in the games I played.

Between his defensive cards and cheap plaguebearers, nurgle can just sit on the Empire/Bretonnia and ride them to domination VP victory.

If nobles/heroes start in the south, then Slaneesh is probably going to win. If he starts with that combat cancel card to cover him until his first upgrade, then he's pretty much guaranteed to win. Nurgle isn't going to move out of the populous areas, Khorne is either easily blocked or he's going to cripple his own dial advancement doing nothing but going after Slaneesh, and Tzeetch isn't going to get in a direct conflict with anyone.

Tzeetch only ever has a chance when warpstone starts off in the frozen north. Otherwise he's pretty much a total write off from the start.

The most interest games I've played have always been where nobles/heroes start out in the same populous area that Nurgle is going for. Nurgle is the only non-Khorne god with any military presence and Khorne alone can't stop Slaneesh without crippling himself. Forcing Nurgle and Slaneesh to tangle is a very exciting situation.

Khorne might indeed be a bit more immediate, but this does not translate into more effective or favoured.

Sure.  The issue is not best, but easiest.  He seems to work there.

midloo said:

No we are definitely aware of the FAQ update.  He was even MORE disgusting before that, to the point that we never had another god win at all until the update.

Yeah we've always played knowing that Slaneesh needs 2 cultists on a noble/hero region.

Once he does get the cultist upgrade though, it's very easy for him to get dial ticks since almost no one bothers to target him anymore. The only thing that can really hurt him in combat is a combo of Khorne + Nurgle playing a plague touch card, but even that is iffy because Slaneesh is almost always going to play one or two cards in a contested area and there's a good chance Khorne will too, leaving no slots for Nurgle. The only real non-combat ways of stopping him is stuff like Dazzle (assuming Tzeetch thinks it's worth 2 power points) and Khorne's "no corruption tokens" cards, but again those are a bit iffy since Slaneesh has so many cheap cards he can play.

The thing is, you can tell from the first turn or two if Slaneesh is going to almost be guaranteed a win or be shut out. If the only starting nobles are in populous area that Nurgle is going for, he's probably going to have a tough time.

Old World card that places additional nobles/heroes in the first turn or two? Slaneesh is almost guaranteed to win. An old world card like that plus his dial bonus that lets him place 2 additional nobles (plus cards that let him move nobles) make it virtually impossible to lock him out of dial ticks.

(the double whammy is that Slaneesh is equally capable of VP wins and can switch goals if one isn't working out)
 

Which leads to a kind of beef I've had with the game that I'm hoping the expansion will fix: the wild disparity of the old world cards. They kind of tend to be totally trivial (place one skaven token on a region with warpstone?), or massively favoring one god to the point that they practically win the game for him early on (Slaneesh with hero placement). It'd be nice to even those out a bit. The lowest threat player getting to pick the old world cards was meant to help out the last place player, but most of the cards are so trivial that they don't change anything. The other problem was that "lowest threat" didn't mean "last place" so much as "Nurgle". The expansion DOES say that they're going to try giving everyone equal shots at dial/VP wins, so that's good.

I would say that Nurgle is the easiest to play.

I don't really think that Khorne is really that easy to play despite what people are saying.

Especially if you are playing other experienced players, I would say that Khornes play might prove to be an extremely frustrating experience. Large plays are continuously slapped down by cards you didn't know existed, like Slaaneshs FIeld of Ecstasy, Warp Shield, Rain of Puss, Teleport, or simply just moving out of the way. Once players understand the notion of saving cards and stalling at any rate.

The only time Khorne was effective was in our FIRST game, when nobody had ever played before. Even then, he only won by a nose hair and with great dice rolls. I think that he should be going for domination and points rather than Dial Ticks more often than not.

Tzeench is the hardest, you need to make very careful tactical decisions to win with him. Your scoring mechanisms are extremely fragile with him, manage it well and later in the game you can make bolder moves like burying yourself in the corner of the map with 5-6 stacked warp stones (kinda funny doing the 1 round ruin lol).