Cthulhu Wars: A Jewel in the Crown

The story of Cthulhu Wars is charming. Designer Sandy Petersen was ready to give up on his tabletop gaming career to move back to a more viable career in video game design. He decided to go out with a bang, designing a massive game called Cthulhu Wars. This was meant to be a one-off lavish affair – unnecessarily large minis, thick (with two Cs) cardstock, and lots of dice rolling goodness.

It was so successful that it revitalised his company.

Now, Cthulhu Wars has an almost mythical aura about it, known for its legendary size and extravagance, with a price tag to match. Unfortunately for my wallet, it’s also ruddy good.

Cthulhu Wars is a brawling dudes on a map game, where players use highly asymmetrical factions to fight for control over gates that churn out power and points. Cultists build gates. These gates allow you to summon monsters onto the map and grant you more action points during each round. You use your monsters to attack others to try and steal their gates, and the cycle continues. Each faction has a big honcho, a Great Old One, that is vital for getting the upper hand. Combat is simple, exciting, and quick. Count up your strength, roll that many dice, and let fate take the wheel. Sixes are kills, and fours and Fives are pains. Pained units have to retreat to adjacent areas, and killed units are removed from the board. So far, so simple.

However, it is the variety and the character of the factions that breathe life into Cthulhu Wars.

The base game comes with 4 factions: Crawling Chaos, Great Cthulhu, The Yellow Sign, and Black Goat – and they all play very differently. Great Cthulhu loves fighting, and can devour both their own and enemy monsters to gain an upper hand in combat! Crawling Chaos excels at spreading out across the map, wreaking havoc by forcing opponents into tricky situations and kidnapping enemy cultists. Black Goat is fantastic at summoning hordes of monsters. The Yellow Sign comes with two great old ones, with the first one heralding the arrival of the second.

Players have six spellbooks that they must unlock in order to win. Spellbooks are unlocked when players achieve certain milestones such as summoning their great old ones or control a certain number of gates. Each spellbook unlocks a new ability. Some are ongoing, while others are unique actions that players can take on their turn. For example, Crawling Chaos’ “Madness” spellbook allows it to decide where to send pained units, even if Crawling Chaos wasn’t even involved in the fight! Great Cthulhu’s “Dreams” spellbook makes other players swap their cultists for one of Cthulhu’s! These abilities are game breaking and each player gets to unlock six of these over the course of the game, on top of the one power that each faction starts off with.

There’s a lot of tactical thinking here: which spellbook should you unlock first? What spellbooks are your opponents going to get first? There’s room to tinker and strategise, but you need to consider what everyone else is doing as well. These decisions are not insanely complex, but they can make all the difference.

Asymmetrical player powers aren’t unique to Cthulhu Wars – games like Root and Rising Sun also have unique abilities for players to toy with. However, Cthulhu Wars introduces the asymmetry slowly throughout the game. This slow burn creates a sense of development and achievement and allows newer players to get used to the increased complexity slowly. It’s simple, efficient, and excellent deck building.

At the end of the game, whoever has all six spellbooks and the highest number of points wins. There’s a lot to think about in playing the game, but the basic premise of the game is refreshingly unconvoluted. It’s a joy to unlock your abilities and use them in creative ways, and plonking down your massive great old one always feels grand and exciting.

The only downside to this game is what made it famous in the first place. It’s a huge game with massive hunks of plastic. This makes it quite a pricy proposition indeed. While many games also fit the bill of “big dudes-on-a-map games with lots of plastic”, there’s something special about Cthulhu Wars. It’s faster to play and easier to teach while still feeling epic. It’s surprisingly approachable and exciting for both new and old players. These qualities make it a lot easier to get a game of Cthulhu Wars going compared to a game of Eclipse or Rising Sun.

Once you start getting used to what the base game has to offer, Cthulhu Wars has an almost endless catalogue of expansions, ranging from more factions to play with to new maps with crazy new rules. However, that also adds more to the cost of the game.

Cthulhu Wars is brilliant. The gameplay is simple, fast-paced, and incredibly fun. The miniatures are epic and add to the gravitas of the game. However, it comes with a similarly epic price. It’s not a must-buy game by any means, but for someone who has a little bit of cash to splash on a little indulgence, Cthulhu Wars is the perfect candidate.