Ravings on… Cthulhu Wars
Board games set in H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos are two a penny now-a-days. Everything seems to need to have a Cthulhu version, or feature a Cthulhu reference in some way. Its almost like the world has become obsessed, worshipping his twisted sense of reality as if we were all members of some kind of cult. Wait! My God it all makes sense now!
*Sound of smashing glass*
Cloaked man: You will come with us!
Matt: No! Take your mutant hands off me! I need to finish the Cthulhu Wars review!
Cloaked Man: Oooo! I love that game. We’ll help you finish then sacrifice you to our dark Gods.
Matt: I… yeah ok.
Matt: So, while games like Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness have players investigating and battling a rising tide of monsters and cultists, in a desperate bid to save the world from destruction, Cthulhu Wars puts you in control of those monsters.
CM: And what beautiful monsters they are! Idols worthy of the Great Old Ones themselves!
Matt: There’s more plastic in this box than your average children’s toy shop. Sometimes I wonder if the $200 price tag isn’t just its value in crude oil.
CM: No sacrifice is too great for our Lords and Masters.
Matt: Less talk about sacrifice ok!? The cost is undeniably high, but you really are getting your money’s worth here.
CM: So many of the uninitiated bleat about cost vs replayability, as though any other game would ever need to be owned. Our initiates play continuously: training for the coming apocalypse.
Matt: Ah… Well on the subject of replayability, there are 4 unique factions in the game, each with their own monsters, great old ones that lead your faction, spell books and multiple strategies for victory. And they are all brokenly over powered!
CM: Mere shadows of their true natures of course…
Matt: This gives you as a player a sense of incredible power! Watching the look of horror on your friends’ faces as you move Cthulhu, Shoggoths, Starspawn and deep ones from one side of the board to another in one go, smashing apart their forces and banishing their key units, or when the Shub-Niggurath player spawns his entire collection of monsters on to the board at once in an explosion of writhing tentacles. And because everyone is crazily overpowered, no one has an advantage. It’s amazing to think anyone could have balanced this crazy mass of stuff, but somehow they have!
Each of the factions play completely differently. Cthulhu is a combat monster, Crawling Chaos moves like a bat out of hell, the Black Goat is a rock the other players will be dashed against, while the Yellow Sign is… well… creepy and weird, moving about the board desecrating regions and slowly growing in influence.
CM: Always beware the agents of the King in Yellow. While most players will win by controlling gates, occasionally performing dark rituals, the Yellow Sign is expert at collecting Elder Signs.
Matt: Indeed, the Elder Signs are bonus victory points, drawn from a bag and kept secret from the other players. All players can gain them, though some factions find it easier than others, but they are a strange weak point in the games design.
CM: What!? There is no weakness!
Matt: Shut up and let me explain for a minute will you? While any other luck present in the game, like the dice rolling of combat, is something you can “control” by stacking the odds in your favour, the Elder Signs are more high variance. If you get a 3, you’re doing great, but only pick up a 1 and it’s not really helped. Yet both take the same amount of effort. This means some games you will get punished for pursuing a strategy that is very effective in another game.
CM: But they add a layer of unpredictability to the game, allowing players to come unexpectedly from behind, or just instilling doubt into who exactly is in the lead, or when the game is going to end. The plans of the Great Old Ones should always be unknowable!
Matt: Sure, but that lack of control means drawing a 1 is going to feel like a kick in the teeth, particularly if you’re behind. It’s not a big problem by any means, but it can be a source of frustration.
Matt: Now, the winner may be the player with the most of these victory (or “Doom”) points, but you can only win once your faction has gained all of its unique spell books. You unlock these by completing the conditions printed on each factions’ reference sheet, much like a video game. This gives the game an excellent sense of pace, each spell adding a new action only you can perform, or an on going effect to benefit you or hurt your opponents (same thing really!). Every one of them, of course, making your opponents groan with disbelief, until they get their next spell and gleefully describe it to the table!
CM: Nyarlathotep gains a spell that allows him to decide how units retreat… from every single fight. Shub-Niggurath, already excellent at spawning monsters, has a spell that makes her monsters even cheaper. Cthulhu can just replace an enemy cultist with one of his own. And the Yellow Sign can teleport their Great Old One to the location of any other cultist.
Matt: You mean Hast-
CM: HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED!
Matt: -uright nevermind! And that’s just to name a few! The genius of the system is that you can unlock the spell books in whatever order you choose. This directs your strategy for that game and adds a whole heap of replayability. Not only do you have multiple, completely different, factions to chose from, each set of spell books offers multiple strategies to consider. Of course replay potential is only as good as the game is fun to play.
CM: Fun!? It’s a temple to the non-euclidean realms beyond human imagination! Of course its fun!
Matt: Well not everyone “gets” Cthulhu, and more than a few are fed up with his… her… its conquest of gaming store shelves.
CM: BURN THE HERETICS!
Matt: Fortunately though, the game itself is great! A tight area control game with a combat edge, it is a beautiful strategic puzzle, yet still clatters along at a rapid pace. Each turn, players gain “Power” from the gates they hold, the resource enabling them to perform actions. Then you alternate performing actions until everyone has spent all their power. This neatly avoids any down time players have to sit through, whilst also keeping everyone on their toes, reacting to the moves of their opponents. A valid, and highly entertaining, strategy is to conserve as much power as possible throughout the turn to have free reign over the other players when they run out.
CM: Crawling Chaos loves that. They even have a spell that sucks power from the other players.
Matt: You’ve calmed down then?
CM: …yes.
Matt: Good. This control of gates is key to the game. Stealing one from another player represents a major swing in power. And these swings will be happening all the time.
CM: Whenever a faction slips into the lead, having too many gates or spell books, the others will turn on them and cut them right down to size. Timing your ascendancy is absolutely key.
Matt: And never, ever, ever, leave a gate undefended.
CM: S***! I left the gate unsealed! The eldritch monsters leave the headquarters in such a mess when they come through alone. I’d better run!
Matt: …
CM: Been great doing this. Don’t forget to make sure all your readers buy Cthulhu Wars! Oh, and your local cult is always open to new acolytes! Bye!
Matt: … I think it might be time to find a new flat.
Leave a Reply