Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn! — Let's All Play Cthulhu Wars!

Who wants to take control of a Lovecraftian horror and ruin the world? I know I do. So let's all play ...



Who's Sandy Petersen? Oh, just one of the principal authors of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, a former employee of id Software who worked on Doom II and Quake levels, and a former employee of Ensemble Studios who worked on games such as Age of Empires III and Halo Wars. We're in good hands. The art is by Richard Luong. Everything is copyright 2014 Sandy Petersen and Green Eye Games.

You can find the rulebook here.

You can find drafts of expansion rulebooks (to cover the factions that don't come with the base game) here.

You can find a spreadsheet listing detailed faction info here.

So how ya play this thing anyhow? Here's my summary of the rulebook:

A. Gather Power

1. All players add up earned power
- 1 power for each of your Cultists on the map
- 2 power for each gate you control
- 1 power to each player per abandoned Gate
- 1 power per captured enemy Cultist (return them to owner's pool; NOT optional)
- The Yellow Sign player gains 1 power for each space on the board with both a Desecration Marker and one of their units.

2. Check for minimum power
- Any players with less than half the power of the player with the most power sets their power to half the highest amount, rounded up.

B. Determine First Player

1. Cthulhu is the first player in the first round.

2. On subsequent rounds, the player with the most power is the first player, and chooses the direction of play. If there's a tie, the player who previously was first player chooses who becomes first player.

C. Doom Phase (skipped in first round)

1. Gain Doom Points equal to the number of gates you control.

2. Optionally, in player order, spend power equal to the current cost to perform the Ritual of Annihilation (5-10)
- Each player to do so advances the Ritual Marker up the Ritual of Annihilation track.
- Each player to do so again gains Doom Points equal to the number of gates they control.
- Each player to do so gains Elder Sign tokens equal to the number of Great Old Ones they control. Elder Signs are worth as many Doom Points as are printed on them, and may be revealed at ANY TIME. There are limited Elder Sign tokens; if they run out, a player gets a Doom Point instead.
- If the Ritual token is on the 10 space and a Ritual is performed, it moves to the Instant Death space -- at the end of this Doom Phase, THE GAME ENDS and victory is determined.

3. Special Events
- Any special events that happen during the Doom Phase are resolved now.

4. Victory/Defeat determination
- If the Ritual Marker is on the Instant Death space, or if any player has 30 or more Doom Points the game ends and victory is determined.

D. Action Phase

1. In player order, players spend power to take Common, Unique or Unlimited actions in rounds until all power is spent or all players have passed. Common actions include:
- Recruit a Cultist (1 power, once per action round, to an area with one of your units)
- Summon monster (variable power, once per action, to an area with a controlled Gate)
- Summon Great Old One (power cost and summoning requirements vary)
- Build Gate (3 power, once per action round, requires a Cultist)
- Move (variable power; spend as much as you want to move an equal number of units into adjacent areas, but only one space for each monster per Move action; ALL units can move into ocean areas)
- Battle (1 power, enemy units can coexist in an area without battling, must choose one enemy to fight if there are more than two factions present, can declare unlimited Battles each round once you have six spellbooks; you must be able to roll at least one combat die to declare a battle in a space)
- Capture Cultist (1 power, if you have a monster in a space with an enemy Cultist and no enemy monsters or GOOs, take the Cultist and place it on your player sheet; a GOO can capture a Cultist even if there are enemy monsters present, but NOT if there is an enemy GOO present; if there are multiple Cultists, the controller chooses which is captured)
- Pass (all remaining power, can take no further actions unless another player's action provides you with power).

2. Unique actions vary in cost and effect by faction
- ALL actions cost power, even 0 power (some things affect this cost)

3. Unlimited actions can be performed as many times as you want on your action turn in addition to your action, and include controlling or abandoning a gate (0 power) or starting a battle (if you have 6 spellbooks)

When all players are out of power, the action phase is over and play proceeds to gather power.

More detail on:

I. Battles
1. Carry out any pre-battle effects
2. Battle (add up combat dice for each side, and roll them; each 6 is a kill, each 4 or 5 is a pain, other results miss. Kills are resolved first; remove a unit for each -- yes, even a GOO, so don't leave them unguarded. A pain forces a unit to retreat to an adjacent space. Each player assigns any pains and kills suffered to their own units; for any timing conflicts, the attacker goes first)
3. Carry out any post-battle effects
- Keep track of any and all spellbooks and other special effects on the battle!
- Most GOOs calculate their combat in a particular way; take note of it.

II. Spellbooks
1. Whenever you fulfill a condition for a spellbook, choose and place any of your remaining spellbooks on the appropriate space. If two spaces are linked, you can earn multiple spellbooks at once by fulfilling both conditions fully at the same time.
- If a spellbook requirement is to do something "as your action ," that's ALL you can do that action round if you want the spellbook.

III. Winning
1. If you have the most Doom Points at the end of a Doom Phase in which a player reaches 30 points or there is Instant Death, you win -- but ONLY if you have all six of your spellbooks. You cannot win the game without them all.
2. A player can reveal Elder Tokens at any time during the Action Phase; if this brings their Doom Point count to 30 or more, the game is immediately over, and whoever has the most Doom Points AND all six spellbooks wins the game.
3. If the game ends, and no player has all six spellbooks, all players lose.

NOTE: Various abilities may break the above rules. Windwalker's Hibernate, for example, carries over power between rounds; Black Goat can summon as many monsters as can be afforded to as many gates as desired when its player summons; and so on.

I don't know anything about this game, but holy fuck I am in.

Now that I've taken a look at the spreadsheet, I think I'll go with Crawling Chaos as my preferred faction.

Why not.

Either Windwalker or Creeping Chaos. If anyone wants one of those, I'll take the other.

I don't know anything about the game either but will also play!

I'll take Yellow Sign by virtue of random.org.

Excellent. We'll wait a bit since there's room for one more and I don't have everything set up to go quite yet. Read the rules while we wait, if you would! And if you want to know more about strategies for your faction, check the GEG forums or BGG; there are plenty of articles.

I'll do it and I'll take that black goat.

Oh, there was a spreadsheet with faction info?

I just went for flavor. Oh well.

Still have no idea what any of the numbers mean. I'll figure it out as we go.

All right, we have a quorum! I'll take the jolly green giant himself. So here's our lineup:

Great Cthulhu — Sarcasmorator
Black Goat — periodical
Crawling Chaos — MrChris
Yellow Sign — Gerad
Windwalker — aturtledoesbite

I'll get things ready to go and update when they are. Stay tuned!

Also, my thinking for this is that we'll have a Dropbox with the PSD file I have to track units and faction status, so everyone can update with their own moves as we go and post updated maps to the board. So, if you don't have Photoshop, download Paint.net (free) or similar along with a .psd plugin, please! You'll need v4.0 or better for the plugin to work.

I'll write up a brief guide for readers and players to supplement the rulebooks, and it'll probably be a day or two before we're ready to go; time to read the rules at least. But in short the cost is how many points a thing costs to summon, the amount is how many of that unit there are (you'll note there are only a few of each monster type), and the combat is how many dice they roll (a 4 or 5 "pains" a unit, forcing a retreat; a 6 kills a unit; 1-3 does nothing). The size doesn't matter; it's just how tall the mini will be in the final game.

Also: The .psd uses the Vinque font, so get that too! The license is free.

Windwalker: Would you rather start in the Arctic, or in Antarctica?

Let's go for the south one, sure.

OK, in order for us all to be able to upload to and download from a Dropbox folder (which will make this go MUCH quicker than if I do it all myself), we all have to be members assigned to a shared folder. So, if you have a Dropbox account, let me know and I'll add you; if you don't, do you mind signing up?

I'll check my account tonight to make sure what the name is.

All right, everyone. I've made some adjustments to the map; now all our units are available as numbered layers for easy manipulation. We'll just list our Power/Doom points/number of Elder Sign tokens in each post; easier to update any mistakes that way, rather than having to edit and post another image. I have a document ready for random and secret Elder Sign token selection, as well. Just need to write up and post a rules summary, and we should be good to go!

Cthulhu always starts as first player if he's in the game, so I'll be going first, and play will proceed to the right (as you can see from the little lantern guy on my faction thingy). First player and direction of play will change from round to round.

Here's the new starting map:

Round 1
Great Cthulhu Action 1

Power: 8
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

Action: Move -- Spend 2 power to move 1 Cultist from South Pacific to Indian Ocean, and 1 Cultist from South Pacific to North Pacific.



Power: 6
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

Yellow Sign's turn.

Sorry to be holding things up! I'll get to it later tonight.

It's fine! PbF games go slow even when they go fast.

Oh, and a note on the map: If a space looks adjacent, it is (for example, you can get to the Indian Ocean from Australia and New Zealand, even though the NZ overlap is small) and the Indian Ocean and North Pacific spaces are the same space on both sides of the board, as per the arrows. The map wraps around to east and west.

I'll get around to editing the map, but in order to install paint.net I need Windows 7 service pack 1, and I'm currently installing Windows Update 4 of 35. So it may be a while. Sorry!

My turn will be moving one cultist to Arabia for 1 power, if the next player wants to go ahead.

EDIT: In formal style:

Round 1
Yellow Sign Turn 1

Power: 8
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

Action - Move 1 cultist to Arabia.

Power: 7
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

Okay. Can I get a basic version of the rules? Like, what the primary goal is and what all the numbers mean?

Post No. 2, my friend!

For the units, the white numbers are how many you have, the blue numbers are how much a unit costs, and the red numbers are how many dice they roll in combat.

Gerad, that's fine. Go ahead and put your faction name and turn number too, though, for easy tracking.

Oh hey, didn't notice the edit. Sorry! Gimme a little bit, then.

Done, thanks.

Full disclosure: I spent at least an hour reading the rules before taking my turn.

I might still need to look a couple of things up, but I can dig through the rulebook on my own time.

Power: 8
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

Spend 2 Power -> Move Cultist from Antarctica to South Atlantic; move Cultist fom Antarctica to Indian Ocean.



Power: 6
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

(Gerad, I moved your Cultist, too.)

Coolio.

Note for future: Don't move a Cultist off a gate you control unless you want to abandon it. I assume you want to maintain control of the gate (the gray blobby thing) in Antarctica.

Oh, is that what that is?

EDIT: Also to ask: What are those spinny-things up in the north and in various other areas?

Thanks.

They look like faction starts to me.

The spinny things are glyphs for awakening Ithaqua.

Crawlin' Chaos is up, but MrChris is traveling. May not happen until tomorrow.

I assume they also cover Rhan-Tegoth.

Correct.

Round 1

Crawling Chaos Action 1:

Spend 2 Power

Move Cultist from South Asia to Central America

Move Cultist from South Asia to Australia

Power: 6
Doom: 0
Elder Signs: 0

Incidentally, if anyone would care to post some brief instructions as to how to move around the pieces in paint.net, it would be much appreciated.