Picked up Chaos in the Old World a few days back at Castle House Games. I walked into the store and there it was. One of the best things about FFG is that you never actually know when things are released until you finally see them in the store. While I assembled the board and read the instructions, Monkey and Big D threw down with Space Hulk - but I had a new game to assemble with its fresh out of the box boardgame scent still complete.
The above picture shows the in game dials for each of the powers. Every turn each deity is trying to do something different. Khorne has to kill folks, Tzeetch has to get cultists where there is magic or warpstone, etc. If you do this, then you get to turn the dial to the next spot(s). This gives you in game bumps and ups your power level - pretty neat. Just don't screw up the dials putting them on the board. They are hell to redo. I know from experience.
Now the neat thing about the game is that you don't really take turns. Well you kind of do, but there isn't really any down time while you wait for other to take their turns. So no 'oh my god take your damn Arkham Horror Turn already, before I kill you with this spoon syndrome'. It keeps everyone involved. Each player has a set number of power points and you can spend them summoning creatures/followers or casting spells. Another neat thing is that not all of the gods are the same creature wise. Khorne has very few followers he can drop, but he has way more blood letters than Slaanesh has daemonettes. Tzeentch has a buttload of spells and can really screw with the other players and has a lot of cultists. Slaanesh is tricky and can make you just not attack that turn. Nurgle... has some crazy ruination abilities and has some neat things going for him.
Each area can have any number of creatures summoned and can have up to two spells played on it per turn. This 2 per area leads to some interesting strategy as sometimes you will load an area up just so others can't mess with your stuff.
After the summoning/casting you go around and do battles. You beat each other up pretty good and try to get dominance in an area for domination. Khorn is nasty - as you would expect. Then you try to corrupt regions, because if you can ruin an area you get uber victory points. The catch here is that the game fights back. Every game is differnt and the cards the game throws at you means heroes may pop up and kill your dudes or that troll slayers will start breeding in the mountains. Of course, Teclis can show up to save the empire and you can deal with skaven infestations. All of them change up the game. There is a stack of about 30 different cards and you only use 7 per game. The way they interact with each other creates even more layers.
So how do you win? Get enough victory points or advance your dial all the way or ruin 5 territories on the board and its over.
The game is a lot of fun. We have played it with 3 and 4 players and more is better. I recommend the game because it has some neat strategy and at times feels like 4 people are all playing a different game - I love it! The game has a surprising amount of replayability as well! If you can grab it do so! FFG has sold their initial print runs!
Here is some more pics of the parts on opening:
