The Old Ones have risen. Monsters walk the Earth. Humanity is finished but the struggle continues.
Sandy Petersen, well known for his venerable roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu, rose out of the primal oceans like Great Cthulhu himself with this huge game and an equally huge Kickstarter campaign to publish it. $1,403,981 flooded in and his dream to make a monstrously over-produced, incredibly expensive boardgame was on its way to becoming a reality.
Get past the truly excessive amounts of plastic and the sticker shock, and thankfully a very good game is waiting to enfold you in its tentacles. It’s eldritch ‘dudes on a map’, but a plethora of special abilities (‘spellbooks’) and a simple balancing act of gaining and expending power result in a satisfying strategic slugfest.
But the figures. Oh the figures. They’re beautifully sculpted and satisfyingly chunky, and as they begin to crowd the board to the point where you can hardly distinguish between the areas you’re fighting over, you can’t help but giggle insanely to yourself at the insanity of the plastic excess. Which is very appropriate for the theme, really. I do wish that the production values had extended to thicker card components, the rulebook is bordering on unreadable with its tiny reversed-out type, and the thick storage tray is great for storing the biggest, less-easily-damaged figures and completely abandons all the other figures to the crammed corners of the huge box, but these are minor quibbles explained away by the inexperience of the publisher. Just look at all that plastic and you’ll feel better. Look at all that plastic …
Oh, and if you still haven’t had enough plastic, there’s a tidal wave of expansions available.
The latest version of my summary is from the ‘Omega Edition’ of the rulebook.
Awesome! Thanks for this.
Very cool. Any chance to get a Template to organize the Cthulhu Wars contents? Or are you waiting for some of the expansions first?
I will come up with a foamcore insert for this eventually. It won’t include any space for expansions though, as it’s impossible to allow for what people do and don’t have (and I’m not currently planning to get any expansions).
Ok cool. Well I just got my first few expansions and carting it all around is going to be challenging. Not sure if I can fit it all in this box but I might take a stab to designing my own template. If I find something that works I will share it with you.
Any chance of getting an updated reference including the rules revisions and the expansions?
Errr, you asked me exactly the same question here: http://www.orderofgamers.com/cthulhu-wars-v1/ and I answered it …
Sorry, I couldn’t find that page again so I thought it got deleted.
Hello! I was wondering if you have any plans to update this? I know that there were a few minor changes for OS2 like the order of the Turn Sequence, but also Sandy finally added rules for a true 2-Player game. If not, that’s cool, too. I just figured I’d ask, as you do great work with these. Thanks!
Yep, working on it right now!
Awesome! Thanks so much! I’m looking forward to it! I’m sure you know this, but just in case you don’t, the whole Omega Rulebook is on the Petersen Games website as a PDF. There’s also some other cool variants there, such as The Color Out of Space variant, which may be cool to add.
Thanks again!