Reign of Cthulhu!

Reign of Cthulhu ……

…..also known as our newest addiction!

Reign of Cthulhu is made by Z-Man Games, the people who make the pretty awesome Pandemic game. We played a game of this at Gen Con 2016. It was fun, but we needed more than one game.

Well we eventually played many many games of Pandemic on vactation and realized that it is stupid fun and that the Cthulhu version is worth a buy, just as fun and right in our wheelhouse.

Alright.

Reign of Cthulhu is based on the H.P. Lovecraft universe. Here the ancient and long thought dormant Elder Gods have their cultists trying to bring them for into the material realm. You play one of four characters and are trying to thwart the cultists and close dimensional portals that those pesky Elder Gods, most notably the big guy Cthulhu himself, are trying to move through. Simple right?

Nope.

Alright first this is a Co-Op for 1-4 players. You play an archetype character (Doctor, Hunter, Occultist, Driver etc.) with an ability to help you/ the team stop the cultists and their Shaggoth masters from summoning the big nasties. Your team has to travel a board that contains four towns Innsmouth, Arkham, Kingsport and Dunwich. Yes all towns based on/part of Lovecraft literature.  Now each town has a color and a portal. Players collect town  cards and once they have five of the same color, they can close that town/color portal. Do this four times and you win the game.

Now along the way cultists show up every turn and you have to “clear” them from the towns. Why? More than 3 cultists on a town location and they summon an Elder God. This will have some negative game effect and make it harder for the players to win. If you summon all the gods…( there are seven Old Ones to summon and the seventh is always Cthulhu)… then you can guess what happens.

There are also Shoggoths that move around the board. They are trying to get through portals as well. If they do, then an Elder God awakens, like having 3+ cultists. Yup you will move one step closer to Cthulhu and the game will get more difficult. So “clearing” (or killing cultist/Shoggoths) bad guys is as essential as closing gates during the game.

Close four gates and win. That is it. The only way to win the game

Now losing the game is a lot easier.

·       -  If you run out of town color cards, then you lose.

·      -   If you run out cultists to place on the board, you lose. There are # of cultist pieces and 2-3 are placed every player turn.

·      -   If you run out of Shoggoths to place on the table. There are three of them, so if you need four….game over!

·      -   If all the character run out of sanity. Yeah they have 4 sanity tokens and lose them by doing certain actions, Elder God summons, certain card flips etc.

·       -  If you awaken Cthulhu you lose. Duh!

Yeah it is stupid easy to lose this game and it will happen a lot. It is an uphill climb type of game. It is always difficult, but never so over powering that is not fun to play.

Games are also fairly fast and have minimal set-up/tear down. The typical game runs 30 odd minutes for us. I don’t think we have ever played more than 40 minutes and have been defeated within 10 a few times.

A great game, especially if you are a fan of Pandemic and the works of H.P. Lovecraft. 

Fast. Challenging. Great theme. Stupid easy to learn. Fast game to play.

A quick rundown of the game.

Totally worth the $30 odd bucks.

Reign of Cthulhu go play it!

My cat cares not for the game....but loves the box!