New lesson for an old favorite

I just had a rather interesting game of Chaos in the Old World yesterday.  It was the second consecutive session with this group.  One was a regular player (Slaanesh), another very bad at it (Nurgle), and the other brand new (Khorne).  I had been leading for a while, but eventually the other players started going after me.  My dial was doing very well, but after one unfortunate round, it became rather clear that I was not going to win that way anymore.  I was also doing really poorly in points, so I basically resigned myself to losing.  A miracle occurred that really taught me something about the game, details after the break.


The lesson I learned here is that points can just explode within a single turn.  I had learned it once before, but eventually forgot it.  Nurgle can realistically win before anyone else could get their dial victory.   Before I get into an analysis of what's theoretically possible, here's what actually happened in my game.  1 region had already been ruined (Border Princes).  Guess what happened next.  4 more got ruined in one round, so the maximum 5 would be all done.  What's even better, all 4 of those were every last populous region!  Nurgle got Kislev all by himself, I got first place with the next 2, and tied with Slaanesh for first in Estalia.  Provender of Ruin + domination of Kislev + ruining Kislev (also dominating 2 1-point regions) would get Nurgle 27 points, over half the score track!  It put him at 51 points.  That was nice, but look what it did for me.  I was a ruiner in 3 regions, making 4 + 5 + 5.  The Empire and Bretonnia got me 1st place each, for 11 + 10.  Tying 1st in Estalia got me another 5.  That got me 4+5+5+5+11+10, 40 points!!!!!  I don't know if I got any domination that round, but just 40 points alone ended up putting me at 56 total.
So, check out the scenario again.  Even if I didn't dominate anything, I was sitting at  16 points, Nurgle at 24 with Provender of Ruin (I didn't peg him to get quite so many points, though), and the other 2 were both a double-advancement away from victory.  Can you imagine how I felt right there?  I pegged myself at 3rd place in likely victory, because I did notice some regions very crowded with my corruption.  Seeing this big chain reaction of 4 ruined regions, especially being such high-scoring regions, just totally made my day.

The lesson in all this: never underestimate the power of points.  Unless someone can win by dial that round, regions crowded with corruption can easily swing the game in your favor.  This is most appropriate for Nurgle.  I've seen multiple occasions where he looks safe, just around the halfway area of the track, and then explode toward the end of the track.  Clearly this can apply to Tzeentch as well, since he's got more cultists than anyone else (8 in all).  Anyone can do it, but they're the most dangerous for it.