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The heart of Cthulhu Wars is its factions – a tightly-themed collection of cultists and monsters in service to a Great Old One. The player with the highest Doom and all 6 Spellbooks is the winner! In most cases, this takes about 5-7 turns for a complete game, depending on how aggressively the group is playing once your group is familiar with the basics, you can easily complete a 4-player game in about 2 hours. The game ends when one or more players either earn 30 Doom or the Ritual of Annihilation reaches “Instant Death” during the Doom Phase. It’s this confluence of faction-based strategy, Spellbooks, and player interaction that gives the game so much strategic depth and replayability (see below). Once a player has collected 6 Spellbooks, they become eligible to win the game, incentivizing players to both play to the spirit of their faction and to try and undermine their opponents’ actions at the same time. When a player runs out of power, they are out for the rest of the turn when all players are out of power, the new turn begins.Īs the players succeed in completing certain tasks during play (as defined by their faction), they also earn Spellbooks, which they choose and add to their faction card to power-up their units and unlock new abilities and strategies. During the Action Phase, each player spends power to take an action (such as building Gates, recruiting or capturing Cultists, summoning monsters or Great Old Ones, battling enemies, etc.), then play passes to the next player. Then players score Doom (victory points) for every Gate they control, and may perform a Ritual of Annihilation to score more Doom and move the game towards an earlier end. At the beginning of each turn, all players gather power (action points), based on the number of Cultists and Gates they control the player with the most power becomes the first player and sets whether play will pass clockwise or counter-clockwise. With all its figures and emphasis on player interaction and conflict, the game is distinctly American (as opposed to parallel-play Eurogame experience), but there’s no player elimination – such are the advantages of being an immortal being from beyond the stars! To paraphrase a famous bit from Call of Cthulhu, even if you nuke a foe’s Great Old One, it just comes back 15 minutes later, angry and radioactive…Ĭthulhu Wars’ turn structure is simple. Those familiar with Risk, Axis & Allies, or Fantasy Flight’s excellent Chaos in the Old World will feel right at home playing Cthulhu Wars, but the game has plenty of its own unique experiences to offer as well. The game ramps up quickly (with many factions starting just 2 spaces apart in many cases!), rewarding players who play boldly and aggressively from the get-go. CTHULHU WARS IN A NUTSHELLĪt its core, Cthulhu Wars is a strategic area-control game, where players battle to take and hold spaces on a map of the Earth and score victory points from round to round. What I discovered after receiving my (absolutely massive) game box in the mail, and playing it pretty much every other week since then, is that it’s a very good game, indeed. That was enough to get me to back the original campaign, regardless of what the game played like. Lovecraft’s work and the Cthulhu Mythos to date), with piles of gorgeous miniatures from Fenris Miniatures, and the extraordinary art of Richard Luong. When I first discovered Cthulhu Wars during its Kickstarter back in 2013, I didn’t have much of an idea of what the game was supposed to be, beyond being game created by Sandy Petersen (co-creator of Call of Cthulhu RPG, the single most-influential expression of H.P. Each player chooses a unique faction and battles their opponents for total dominion and the end of humankind once and for all! The cultists, creatures, and beings from beyond the stars have gathered into factions, each following one of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones – immortal alien creatures (effectively gods) who once ruled the planet, and wish to once again. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos return to conquer the Earth for their own. Thematically, Cthulhu Wars is a game set in the modern day, when the stars come right and the famous horrors of H.P. So let’s start with the basic question: just what is this game, anyway?
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The depth of strategy and tactics in the game really impressed me, to the point where I thought the game deserved the same sort of treatment I’ve been giving Dropzone Commander. I backed Cthulhu Wars’ original Kickstarter and have been playing steadily since February 2015.
#Kickstarter cthulhu wars series#
Hi there, and welcome to Mythos Mayhem, Gamerati’s new series on Cthulhu Wars, the strategic game of Lovecraftian end-time beatdowns from Petersen Games! I’m Alex Flagg, game designer and co-owner of Crafty Games and enthusiastic wargames blogger at.