Cthulhu Wars
The Old Ones Have Risen! Monsters Walk the Earth! Humanity is finished, but the struggle continues. Which Great Old One will rule the ruins of Earth?
Now, you take charge in Cthulhu Wars, a fast-moving, competitive, tabletop strategy game of Lovecraftian horror in which 2 to 8 players face-off to determine the fate of the planet. In Cthulhu Wars, you can play as Great Cthulhu himself, or take charge of other monstrous factions seeking to dominate the world such as the slithering hordes of the Black Goat, Shub-Niggurath, the aquatic terrors of the Crawling Chaos, or the insane minions of the Yellow Sign. Recruit cultists, summon Shoggoths, cast spells, open interdimensional gates, and awaken your inner Great Old One in Cthulhu Wars!
Reviews and Articles About Cthulhu Wars
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Editor reviews
End of Days Destruction with Great Old Ones (Goo!)
Cthulhu Wars is Legit Fantastic! Oh, you already knew that? Sorry, Carry on. Well now, I guess we get to see what happens when we add a different star editor star score to the mix :) I could (and probably will at...
User reviews
A ridiculous, glorious game
My group loves area control games / DOAMs. Cthulhu Wars is one of my favorites, and has a pretty comfortable spot in my top 5. It's ridiculously expensive if you are a completionist, but the good news is that the base game alone provides the best experience. I have not...
Played it once and didn't love it. There are other good games out there without the hefty price tag and FOMO Kickstarter BS.
hotseatgames wrote: If I was going to sum up the overall feel of Lovecraft's work, I'd say it's about an ancient evil that has always been here, and woe to the human who gets even a little exposed to it.
In one of Lovecraft's longer works, At the Mountains of Madness, there were indications of past conflicts between mythos creatures. During his many years of developing and editing material for the Call of Cthulhu rpg, Sandy Peterson built upon that idea and extrapolated that various Great Old Ones had come into conflict in aeons past. Peterson is the big name on the design team for Cthulhu Wars, so he is extrapolating even more from that same idea. I think that it's plausible. There has never been a clear hierarchy established for the Great Old Ones, at least not in Lovecraft's writing, so it stands to reason that those beings might come into conflict from time to time.
It's true that Lovecraft's stories tended to have a different focus. Typically his stories featured one or a few intellectuals who come across compelling evidence of a mythos monster. They are skeptical at first, but after applying rigorous logic find themselves forced to believe. The unlucky ones gain unbearable insights into the underlying nature of reality and go insane. The lucky ones manage some minor victory over the mythos and live uneasily ever after. This isn't really ideal material for a game, so even great games like Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu miss the mark by erring on the side of entertainment value. Cthulhu Wars ignores most of Lovecraft's style of storytelling and takes things in a different direction.
The theme in this game does sort of work like others have said. The Chtulhu mythos monsters aren't exactly a bunch of friends, but as has also been said, the stories are about very limited human beings encountering the monsters, not the monsters themselves actually doing anything interesting.
Jeff White wrote: I've only read one Lovecraft story, played CoC the RPG twice and one game of AH, so I'm not the best judge on what is Lovecraftian. Is this what his stories were about though? Old ones fighting each other? Warfare?
I seem to recall Age of Conan getting dumped on because countries going to war isn't what Conan or REH are about. There was a theme disconnect.
If Lovecraft wasn't about war...why is this game getting such a huge pass whereas Age of Conan didn't?
It sounds like this game is aping CitOW...though I'm not a superfan, the Chaos gods spreading their seed across the Old World _is_ what Warhammer Chaos is about.
Is it the minis only? Surely, there are have been tons of other Chtulhu minis produced over the years.
What's going on with this game?
In addition to what Shellhead has said, I would add that Cthulhu is a subcultural phenomenon, nearly third place behind vampires and zombies in "mainstream geekdom," whereas Conan never really attained that status. And the larger an audience for a given subject is, the more that subject can be bent away from its canonical origins.
You can buy a Cthulhu plushie, but Thulsa Doom never had it so good.
Oddly enough, it turns out those issues of the comic were totally based on a non-Conan story of the same name and by Robert E. Howard. But that story was a Red Sonja based on a couple of historical battles from the 1520s! That wily Roy Thomas transplanted that story into Hyperborea and replaced Red Sonja with Conan, while introducing her into the comic in a different story.
So maybe the guys that designed Age of Conan were fans of the Conan comic book instead of the original Conan books.
Hypothetically speaking, if I were to back this Kickstarter, I would go for the following combo:
Cultist level ($150), which is the base game
the plastic Gate miniatures ($25), which are stupid but look cool
The Opener of the Way expansion ($48), so we can play 5-player, and because it looks like this faction really changes up the game.
The Primeval Map expansion ($40), because I like the sound of the plastic icebergs forcing the endgame into a big knife fight in a phonebooth situation.
The Dreamlands Map expansion ($48), just because I have always liked the Dreamlands setting and want those map boards.
And because all of the above would put me well above the $200 minimum, I would receive the following Great Old One mini-expansions for free:
Yig
Atlach-Nacha
Ghatanothoa
Bokrug
Abhoth
Chaugnar Faugn
Cthugha
Father Dagon
Mother Hydra
plus 8 more dice for free.
The base set alone weighs about 8 pounds, and those GOO minis are all probably large, so all of this stuff might end up weighing close to 20 pounds. Good thing I wouldn't be paying international shipping rates.
But that would be $311 for a game of unknown quality. By comparison, I bought Arkham Horror plus all the expansions for roughly the same amount, and I love that game. The big difference is I was able to gradually by those Arkham Horror releases as they came out, and I only had to buy the base set at first to discover that I loved the game.
I could probably get by without the extra map boards, and just pick up the base game, the plastic gates and the Opener of the Way for a mere $223 and still score all those bonus Great Old Ones.
But this is all hypothetical for now. In the next two weeks, I will find out if I will still have a job, depending on if our current investors can agree upon a sale price to the potential buyer. Then I still need to weigh my upper middle class income against big spending that might arise in the next twelve months, involving a car, a computer, and business attire for my girlfriend as she approaches graduation and her new career. I suppose $311 is nothing compared to all that, but the accountant in me worries anyway.
Shellhead wrote:
plus 8 more dice for free.
For free.
Where do I sign for the free dice?PavingMantis wrote:
Shellhead wrote:
plus 8 more dice for free.
For free.
Peterson has admitted to the Chaos in the Old World influence, but in Cthulhu Wars, players effectively need to perform different kinds of actions for each of their six advancements, and they get to choose which order they receive their various advancements. Plus there isn't a Khorne-equivalent driving the whole game. If the Petersons are being honest, then they have been playtesting the hell out of this game, with particular focus on keeping all these different advancements balanced. They noticed early in the playtesting that there was one particular advancement for each faction that playtesters kept choosing first, so they made each of those advancements into starting powers for those factions. This might actually be a pretty good game. Still not sure if it's a $175+ game.
Seems like at least one person here is getting it, so hopefully we can get some kind of review of it.Shellhead wrote: This might actually be a pretty good game. Still not sure if it's a $175+ game.
I'm still on the fence. But I know if I don't back it then I'll see it at dragoncon in all it's glory and feel regret. I just need a few of those expansions to get put in the CDG level for my trigger. But they seem to be going towards expansion expansions now so who mows. $50 for a map and 16 of the same (glacier) minis is ludicrous, so I can only think they are inflating the price expecting to add "free" stuff to it later.
Disgustipater wrote:
Seems like at least one person here is getting it, so hopefully we can get some kind of review of it.Shellhead wrote: This might actually be a pretty good game. Still not sure if it's a $175+ game.
Reviews usually aren't helpful for a Kickstarter, unless it's a new edition of an existing game. By the time Cthulhu Wars is in stores, the Kickstarter will be over, and the chance to buy the Kickstarter exclusives will be gone.
Actions go quickly, with each player doing one thing, generally paying some power to do that thing. They continue until everybody passes and then there is brief bookkeeping of who gets how much power for the start of the next turn. One guy summoned Shub-Niggurath right away and then had to pass every time. First player each turn seems to be based on who has the most power, and he gets to choose the direction of play that turn, clockwise or counter-clockwise.
Overall, it seemed like leisurely and enjoyable game of Chaos in the Old World, as though Khorne had been banned from the game. Game play was fairly dynamic, because each player is trying to gain more spellbooks (advanced abilities), and each player has a half-dozen different ways to get a spellbook. Each of those ways can only be used once, but then any one of the six spellbooks for that faction can be chosen. The net effect is that it's challenging to anticipate what other players will do, at least in the early game, because there are so many possibilities. At the end of the first video, Cthulhu arrives, and that is a really huge miniature.
Here is the first video, with links for the others in the recommended list off to the right side:
By the end of the second (of six) videos, one player has all six of his spellbooks, which apparently lets him declare attacks without paying power for them. The game is not over yet, as apparently the winner needs to advance to the end of the Doom Track, which appears to work like a victory point tracker except that at one point, a player used a special ability to spend Doom Points for a more powerful effect.
Player pieces seem to have very thematic abilities. The cultists can't normally fight and can be captured if they don't flee. Ghouls can move into a space where a battle just happened. Cthulhu automatically devours an enemy unit right before a battle starts in his space.
By the end of the third video, two players now have all of their spellbooks, but nobody seems very far up the Doom Track. The players comment on this and move the Doom Track over near the camera man. Although the Doom Track ends at 20, the players emphasize that the pace of the game accelerates. So when players are at around 10 on the Doom Track, the game isn't half over, it's about 90% over.
Except for a special ability of Cthulhu's, there doesn't seem to be any meaningful difference between land spaces and ocean spaces.
During the fourth video, designer Sandy Peterson is called in from the next room to give a ruling for a situation where two different special abilities seem to contradict each other. This is apparently more of a playtest game than a demo game, but Sandy knew the answer immediately even if his answer was a bit hard for me to follow.
There is also a ritual track next to the Doom Track. Apparently it forces the game to end if somebody doesn't get to 20 on the Doom Track first.
By the fifth video (each are a little less than 15 minutes long), the energy level of the players seemed to have dropped. I had the impression that they already played one game before this one, but still a bit worrisome, like the game wasn't as fun after everybody had all their spellbooks.
Kingmaker situation for the Cthulhu player towards the end of the fifth video. He even says "kingmaker" out loud. The overall game took less than 75 minutes. Aside from the official win, most of the sixth video is the normal post-game analysis by the more enthusiastic players. The quiet guy came in distant last but had some interesting things to say post-game.
During the first couple of videos, I was back to really wanting to Kickstart this game, but my enthusiasm dwindled as the game went on. Don't get me wrong, this looks to be a better game than Chaos in the Old World, but it definitely didn't impress me as a $150+ game. The problem is the miniatures. They look great, but they push the cost up too high. I really like the artwork on the cardboard desecration tokens used by the King in Yellow player, and I feel like this game could have been made at a reasonable cost with good artwork on cardboard tokens.