Another Warlord you should avoid facing off at a planet with any other Warlords. It's potential for spike damage, zoning and card recycling makes this a Warlord to fear. Powerful ability followed by powerful signature cards. 5/5

It's worth noting this card says "assigned" - The rulebook states assigning is when damage is placed next to a unit. So a unit attack and assigns it's damage+1 - This happens before shields. This ability is very very strong.

Does that mean that even if all damage is prevented through a shield card the extra damage goes through?

Zarathur adds its 1 damage to the total of assigned damage. Then, you may use a shield card against that total assigned damage. Check out this thread for more exposition:

http://www.cardgamed...ng-zero-damage/

For me this Warlord is the bomb, it's good FFG decided to make the Chaos deck curve totally different from it's other decks and that the Bloodletters are not included twice.

Imho this Warlord + Signature cards are the best compared to all Warlords + Signature cards.

5/5

Couldn't agree more, Killax. In terms of Warlord and Signature cards, we're looking at the top tier.

Its a shame that Chaos itself doesn't have the cards to make them top tier yet. Too many big hitters, not enough cheap bread and butter units that work command. I like their style a lot, but so often I've played Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar and Marines against Chaos and won 4/5 command struggles against them each turn.

Zarathur's ability is so much more powerful than most people realize at first glance. He's a beast and makes EVERYTHING hit harder when he's there. Always use the boost, man, always!

Does Zarathur's ability even boost AoE? If so I've been under the assumption that it didn't and if I was wrong I've underestimated this guy just a little...

Anytime Damage is assigned to an enemy at Zarathur's planet.  I think this includes all card effect damage in addition to standard combat damage.

Also, I believe this would also boost self-inflicted damage that some Ork abilities use.

For example, if you were to use Nazdreg's Flash Gitz ability to damage it and ready it, it would instead receive 2 damage.

Is "indirect damage" still assigned? Can Zarathur boost the damage coming from say...an Ork Kannon?

Yes. All damage goes through the "assign, shield, take/place" process.

Worth noting the implications of this. It means Zarathur boosts Rotten Plaguebearers, AoE from Vicious Bloodletters, ability damage from Gleeful Plaguebeast, ability damage from Zarathur's Flamers, damage from Warpstorm and Nurgling Bomb...

There's a reason why on a strict warlord card vs warlord card comparison people say Zarathur is much better than Straken!

Zarathur boosts any damage. You attack with someone, boost +1. You play Tzeentch's Firestorm, boost +1. You sacrifice Zarathur's Flamer, boost +1. You activate Ork Kannon, boost +1. Ku'gath's Nurglings activates, boost +1.

Well, you can't use Ku'gath's Nurglings in an a deck which uses Zarathur, unfortunately.

Well, you can't use Ku'gath's Nurglings in an a deck which uses Zarathur, unfortunately.

Doesn't matter. It can be Ku'gath's Ku'gath's Nurglings. Zarathur will still boost it.

It can be damage from their own ork kannon, or their plaguebeast. It could even be damage which they assigned to themselves as a cost. Any assigned damage that goes to an enemy unit at the planet gets increased.

A weird thought occured to me while I was looking at Zarathur's ability again. If opponent has an exhausted Nazdreg's Flash Gitz at the same planet as Zara, and he activates its ability to ready it, will he still be able to do this if the damage is increased? The ability specifies: "Combat Action: Deal this unit 1 damage to ready it. (Limit once per phase.)". Is dealing 2 damage considered an effective paying of the cost (1 damage)?

Not a problem. You're still paying the cost. It just happens to be amplified by another effect.

Majestaat is totally right - when the Ork player goes to deal that 1 damage, during the first step of damage resolution, assign damage, he just has to add an additional point. Nice and clean!

Here's something though:

Can you shield 1 damage of that cost, and still have the cost considered paid?

edit: posted to rules forum

All a bit of poetic license. We're probably supposed to understand him as an average sized (chaos) space marine. But that's enough to keep the boys and girls swooning.