Hello everyone. In this guide I will cover:
- Victory conditions, faction and climate;
- Starting location;
- Diplomacy and outposts;
- Mechanics of the race and faction;
- Province edicts and army stances;
- Buildings and research;
- Lords and skills;
- Army compositions;
And give you my final notes on the specific faction. Hope you enjoy it.

For those that prefer the video:

https://youtu.be/mDzu12vJzgs

For those that prefer to read:

VICTORY CONDITIONS:
- For the short victory conditions you will need to have at least 600 supporters (which implies you confederate the Orthodoxy as well), and to occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements.

Pretty straightforward, but with a lot of good replay value as you can expand anywhere you like basically.

The reward is +3 hero capacity for all heroes, great to avoid having to build too many buildings for it, and it synergizes well with the Ice Court mechanic.

- The long victory conditions change, and become much harder. You need to achieve the short objectives, occupy, loot, raze or sack 70 settlements, and destroy the factions of Archaon, "Daniel", Azazel and Festus. They are close to you, with Daniel being farther away, but it does imply going to the north, which is a problem.

The reward is +10 hero recruit rank, decent to make your heroes better right off the gate.
Katarin is the ruler of the Ice Court, and gains devotion from successful frost maiden hero actions, as well as more control (6), hero recruit rank +3 for Frost maidens, and Ice Court training reduced by 2 turns. Overall, all about the Frost Maidens, really. Be sure to use them effectively.

Climate, not good, not bad. You do have an area that you can expand to, mostly Kislev and some mountains nearby, but the objectives and enemies will force you to the uninhabitable zones to the north. This will always create a slow pace there, and it is definitely not the easiest faction to dominate the whole map with.

STARTING POSITION:

- Fairly difficult start. There are plenty of enemies nearby, and expansion only ever gives you more fronts. There are some choke points such as near Praag or in the Mountains, but for the most part, you are in the middle of it.

Typical expansion is to control all of Kislev, then into the North. Expanding as a "ring", where you go everywhere, is tough and you will have to pick your enemies wisely. It is definitely a faction to gift a settlement here and there to catch a breather, or to invest in heavy garrisons to keep a hard enemy at bay. You can go South, for certain, but the North will always come for you no matter what.

In addition, how well the Empire and Dwarfs are doing definitely affects you, so offering some help may be mutual beneficial in the long run. Fight their enemies, who knows, the beginning of a beautiful friendship... for now 😉

You have a One settlement province, which has several special buildings. Choose wisely which buildings, it will require optimal planing right from the start.

DIPLOMACY:
- You are part of the Order tide. Empire, Dwarfs, Bretonnia, High Elves, Cathay, all good allies for you to reach out to.

Chaos and Norsca, Greenskins, Skaven, Wood Elves, Vampire Counts... all your most likely enemies. The biggest difference compared to other factions is that all of these are really close to you. To prepare an army that can fight all that is the tricky part, so be wary and plan ahead.


Outposts will therefore be limited to order factions, but try to get artillery and great infantry from the Dwarfs. Bretonnia may give you some good flying units too, which will prove useful later on.

MECHANICS:

- Devotion acts similar to rites. You can use that devotion to have:
1 - Supporters when gaining rank; Growth; replenish rate;
2- Supporters when occupying settlements. Attrition to enemy armies (GREAT); army ability to slow them down;
3 - supporters when building; income;
4 - supporters when battling; army ability to summon a bear (GREAT); Melee attack;

Use these wisely and you may yet survive another winter...the more supporters you gain, the more you get some typical buffs for your campaign in the race to confederate the Ortodoxy.

- The Ice Court mechanic works well, better than in Realms of Chaos because of the number of agents you will eventually have. It ensures you can nearly customize your heroes to really great levels, so do not sleep on this one.

- The Atamans ensure that your provinces are always giving great results and once more, be sure to check out which traits will better suit your playstyle.

Finally, a sort of mechanic of its own is the 3 cities of Praag, Kislev, and Erengrad. They act as main locations for your army building. Control of these is nearly essential, so again, prioritize these as you can. You will benefit from controlling them as soon as possible greatly into your long and domination campaigns.

PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:

- Edicts are:
1 - Control and decreased enemy move range;
2 - Income from buildings;
3 - Recruit cost and local recruit capacity +2; note this.
4 - Reduced chance of plague, hero recruit rank and cost, corruption;
All decent, note how growth is missing, but do not sleep on the defensive ones. You may yet need them.

- Army stances:
1 - Winds of magic;
2 - Encamp, typical one that needs 50% move;
3 - Raid, typical;
4 - ambush at 25%;
And forced march, of course. Wish they had something different, all the typical ones.

BUILDINGS:

- You have plenty of special buildings, but not all of them are essential, specially considering how Kislev is going to be your main unit producer for a long time.

- Military requires 6 buildings, 4 of which need to be in the capital; the buildings and settlements work differently, but only in the Kislev territory. Outside of the region, it works similar to other factions.

- Infrastructure is different between the 3 major cities of Kislev and the minor settlements.

- Infrastructure in the 3 major cities (Kislev, Praag, Erengrad):
1 - Growth/Recruit cost;
2 - Growth/Construction cost;
3 - Gold building. Like, insane gold building;
4 - Jack of all trades: Devotion, corruption, control, hero recruit, supporters... quite a good one.

- Infrastructure in the minor settlements:
1 - Income, growth, and recruit cost;
2 - Devotion, replenishment, ambush chance, corruption, and income from farms;
3 - Control and growth;
4 - Devotion, supporters, control, hero, corruption;
5 - income building.

Overall, you have plenty of choices to make infrastructure in accordance to your needs. You have great options for growth, for income, but the problem is simple: you may not have the opportunity until later to have both.

Research is rather average, there is lots of stuff, but you do have to control all 3 major cities in order to be able to unlock some research. In addition, units receive little buffs from it.

LORDS AND SKILLS:
- Tzarina Katarin has split skills, for both combat and army, and campaign buffs, all very worthy.
In terms of the blue line, you have both upkeep reduction and replenishment rate, but the initial ones may not be as useful. I recommend going with the attrition reduction, as Kislev is one of the few factions that can get attrition to negligeable levels and benefits a LOT from it.

Redline is one of the best. Plenty of interesting combinations, efficient, and without costing too much. It helps to ensure you devote skills into other areas.


Both the Patriarch and the Forst Maidens have specific skills that improve campaign or battle, so both are useful in any army. Patriarchs provide replenishment and healing, and I consider them a must in any army.

Tier 2 and 3 units are still useful throughout the game.

ARMY COMPOSITIONS: (check images)

- A good note is how there are great combinations of armor piercing, missiles, and anti-large with just spending a few skill points to buff them. This helps a lot.

Tzarina Katarin buffs Ice Guards and Snow leopards, as well as having a generalized Ward Save. Thus, I can say I won the Realms of Chaos campaign with the first build, easily.
Second build that I show is just reinforcing the snow leopards and adding one more ice guard.


Two alternatives you can get is the bears and elemental bear builds, or the sleds build. All of those just take up a single redline skill, so I regard them as mutually exclusive (but nothing stopping you from using both)


Finally, you will see some generalized builds for early game. Kislev can use those even in the late game, specially after all the buffs, and at least as sweeper armies. Notice once more how effective the redline skill allocation is (the yellow number underneath each army comp suggestion).


FINAL CONCLUSIONS:

Great faction to have some fun with. Ranged faction without too much artillery, but everything else is amazing.

Everything synergizes so well, which is also their downfall: lose one piece, and the others lose value. Devotion helps getting buffs, and then you confederate; growth and income are exponential, early and late game units are all great in their respective tiers.

The more you play, the more you feel that every decision was detrimental. And here lies it's main weakness. Either you plan it out from the beginning, or you may run into trouble.

In terms of army:
- Good hybrid infantry, best at it;
- Great cavalry;
- Great single entities;
- Good chariots;
- Lacks flying units;
- Specific lores of magic (familiarize with them)

Replenishment is great... but climate makes it only good/average, unfortunately.

Let me compile a set of notions to surpass the early game problems:
1 - Very difficult start position. And it does not seem like it just checking their strengths. The biggest issue is how you will need a meticulous plan of conquest, plan of which buildings, synergy for which units you will get, and against which enemies.

Ex: Say you want to finish off Azhag first: bring some solid ways of dealing with massive infantry armies. Magic to counter blobs, sleds to have massive charges and hit-and-run tactics, combined with solid frontline.
Say you want to consolidate to the north first, facing other Kislev factions. Bring firepower and anti-large to deal with enemy large units (including lords and heroes).

The problem is how nearly mutually exclusive these may be. Whatever your choice, be prepared to have to adapt to different enemies. For the most part, you will be facing heavy infantry armies (WoC, Norsca, Greenskins) so that can be a focus point.

2 - For that, SCOUT! But what to scout? Scout army compositions to adapt your build. Keep an eye on diplomacy to see if a nearby enemy is facing another front. If not, create that front, call some one to help. If you see a neutral moving an army towards you, recruit a lord and a few units. Or build a garrison. You can always cancel that later.

3 - Synergize. Enemies coming from all sides? Pop the attrition to enemies. Get the defensive edicts. Recruit an extra lord, pay for some units, and defend, defend. All the while, you MUST be winning ground somewhere.

4 - Defeating an enemy is much better than consolidating. This is probably detrimental. If you leave someone around, alive, it is going to force you to keep an army nearby. So eliminating enemies is often better. If you conquer a place you cannot defend, gift it. You gain gold, lose a problem, win a friend...

Let me know what you guys think.