Warhammer: Chaos in the Old World Review

Why is being bad so much fun? We don’t blink when plastic villages are leveled or our monstrous cardboard avatar smashes a city. We smile when the group discovers why they fear the house on the hill, then bare our claws and run down our former friends. It’s fun because games allow us to safely do evil, and nothing’s more evil than causing Chaos in the Old World.

Eric M. Lang’s 2009 game lets three or four players unleash their inner demon on the puny humans of the Old World, competing to cause the most ruin before time runs out and the worthless creatures manage to prolong their meager existence, scrabbling like ants across your world, their every breath an affront to your ruinous power, their fleeting joys a mockery of the vastness of the Warp. But I digress.

Asymmetry and theme are the keys to this game’s brilliance. Each of the four gods has a different modus operandi for the ruin of the world, and players ignore it at their own peril. Despite the preponderance of finely-crafted plastic minis, Chaos is not a war game. Battles can be fought between competing deities’ hordes, but should only be fought when necessary, and never with conquest as the goal. Even Khorne the Skulltaker, whose aim is to destroy other players’ servants, doesn’t need to win to advance toward victory. Killing is enough, and if the Blood God’s fiend is vanquished in the process, another can be sent into the material world to take its place. Humans obsess about occupying territory, but the Ruinous Powers see the bigger picture.

Speaking of territory, Nurgle’s goal is to spread pestilence over as much populated land as possible, grinning as country after country tumbles into decay. Slaanesh doesn’t seek to spoil the realm, just twist its heroes and leaders into gibbering puppets, decaying the soul behind the flesh. And Tzeentch revels in divining the plan just to alter it, all for the swirling chaos of the Warp. The gods each have their vice, but the Old World’s not big enough to hold them all, so interaction is inevitable, and the competing swarm of demonic machinations highlights the game’s fun.

Each god’s limited amount of power is spent to summon unique demons or use specialized chaos magic to enforce their will, with caps on power and the number of cards playable in a particular kingdom creating delicious dilemmas each turn. Khorne’s cards herd foes to the slaughter, Nurgle’s spread his rot, Slaanesh’s twist the mind of human and demon alike, and Tzeentch’s cards turn other gods’ plans inside out. A well-timed card can devastate a foe’s plan and when the cry of that same scheming god punctuates the last card slot being filled by an enemy’s magic, the empyrean knows the pain of a move not made and a scheme unrealized.

Even destruction itself has a downside, however. Corrupt too much too fast and the region is ruined, resulting in a final slew of victory points for the culprits and nothing more for the rest of the game, forcing their idol to spend precious power moving cultists and demons to fresh locales and new temptations. In comedy and devilry, timing is everything. Failing to anticipate these shifts means doom and fledgling gods may not even realize their peril until it’s too late due to the masterpiece’s final brushstroke.

In perfect homage to the old school, Chaos in the Old World offers absolutely no artificial means of keeping the game close, no procedural hands to restrain the leader or lift up the lowly. Its design allows players to rule their fate, producing open-ended contests that come right down to the last play each time. Mid-games feature creeping dread as Old World cards are played, each successive one bringing the puny humans closer to surviving the players’ scourge until finally a god ekes out a narrow victory, with at least one foe close behind.

After dozens of plays this consistently happens, and there have been one or two wins by a wide margin, so I know it’s possible, but Chaos in the Old World gives players freedom and trusts them to rein each other in without dictating that the last shall go first, draw more cards or summon devils at a discount. The god whose Threat dial is lowest chooses where that turn’s Old World card will be placed, provided there is a choice, but that meager scrap hardly satisfies like the feast of a well-crafted strategy, and the game offers no other free meals. Eschewing hidden scores that lull competing demons into a false sense of security through obscurity, the Old World is laid bare before the players, its perfect cohesive whole producing a streak of tight games and satisfied gamers.

My one knock on the game: some tokens are hard to spot on the map. That’s it. The Old World, drawn for the Ruinous Powers on a stretched hide of human skin, has the appropriately drab colors of a medieval map, and many of the tokens match that palette, causing the odd peasant or skaven to disappear in the wilderness and oblivious gods to miss an occasional play, but every masterpiece has a flaw if you look close enough, and like spotting a plot hole in a favorite movie, it means you’ve played it enough times to be able to focus on the tiny details. In today’s crowded board game field that means you’ve found a great game.