Have you seen the Yellow Sign? Let's All Play Cthulhu Wars — Again!

Yes, attacker retreats first.

Ahh South Atlantic it is.

Yellow Sign, Round 5, Action 1

Power: 9
Doom: 6
Elder Signs: 3

ACTION: Cast Undimensioned to move the following units to the North Atlantic: Hastur, The King in Yellow, 2 Cultists and 3 Star Vampires from South America, 1 Cultist from North Pacific, 1 Undead and 1 Byakhee from South Pacific, and 1 Undead from South Asia. (2 power)

UNLIMITED ACTION: Battle against Black Goat in North Atlantic. (1 Power)

Rolling for Star Vampires (3 dice): 1d6=6, 1d6=1, 1d6=1

Star Vampires inflict 1 Kill and drain 1 Doom.

Rolling for other units (10 dice): 1d6=4, 1d6=4, 1d6=6, 1d6=3, 1d6=3, 1d6=1, 1d6=6, 1d6=1, 1d6=4, 1d6=3

Other units inflict 2 Kills and 3 Pains. I use Vengeance to assign the Kills to Shub-Niggurath, the Dark Young, and the Leng Spider, and the Pains to the 3 Fungi. It's now Gerad's turn to roll.

I told you guys this would happen! Though periodical's 14 (I think) dice could cause a lot of mayhem in return.

I was all prepared for everything except the sneaky "pain into the territory" tactic.

15 dice (1 spider, 2 DY, 3 fungi, 9 Shub-Niggurath (4 gates + 5 cultists)):

1d6=6, 1d6=3, 1d6=4, 1d6=5, 1d6=1, 1d6=4, 1d6=6, 1d6=1, 1d6=6, 1d6=2, 1d6=2, 1d6=5, 1d6=5, 1d6=5, 1d6=4

3 kills, 7 pains. The Indian Ocean ghoul comes up with Necrophagy to add another pain to each side: 3 kills, 8 pains.

Yellow can retreat and then I will.

Remember that you can convert 2 pains into a kill (yours or opponent's results) with the Leng Spider.

Also remember that with 8 Pains, I can move most of my units into Europe to finish off Atlach-Nacha.

I know. 3 kills 8 pains gets everything out of the North Atlantic, 4 kills 6 pains doesn't.

It's my fault for not making a mid-turn map update, but by my count, I have 12 units in the North Atlantic: 1 Cultist which was pained into the area from South America, and 11 more units which I moved into the North Atlantic with Undimensioned. Do you want to move your second Ghoul into the area to completely clear out my units?

No, I'll leave one, that's fine.

All right, in that case I'll let 3 Cultists die (and receive 3 Power from Passion), and leave 1 Undead in the North Atlantic. 1 Undead and 1 Cultist retreat to South America, while the King, Hastur, 3 Star Vampires, and the Byakhee retreat to Europe.

Fungi go to West Africa.

Yellow Sign, Round 5, Action 1

Power: 9
Doom: 7
Elder Signs: 3

UNLIMITED ACTION: Cultist controls gate in South America.

UNLIMITED ACTION: Battle against Opener of the Way in Europe (1 power)

Rolling for Star Vampires (3 dice): 1d6=5, 1d6=2, 1d6=4

Star Vampires inflict 2 Pains and drain 2 Power.

Rolling for other units (9 dice): 1d6=6, 1d6=6, 1d6=6, 1d6=6, 1d6=2, 1d6=3, 1d6=6, 1d6=6, 1d6=2

Cripes, that seems a little excessive. Atlach-Nacha is killed. It's now Sarcasmorator's turn to roll.

Atlach-Nacha at least does some damage on its way out.

6 - 4 - 5 - 6

Two kills, two pains.

Dang, that is one badass spider! 1 Byakhee and 1 Star Vampire are killed, and 2 Vampires retreat to Scandinavia. I don't think there are any other actions I can take, so that's it for my turn. I'll update the map now; Opener is up next.

Power: 10
Doom: 7
Elder Signs: 3

Opener Round 5 Action 1

Power: 9

Move Abomination from Indian Ocean to Antarctica, and Mutant from North Atlantic to South Atlantic.

Power: 7

Don't forget that you lost 2 Power (and Periodical lost 1) from the Vampires.

Oh, that's right. With that in mind (and now that I can see the map) I'll revise my turn.

Opener Round 5 Action 1

Power: 7

Recruit Cultist in Antarctica

Power: 6

A note on Atlach-Nacha: Anyone else can now summon it and attempt to complete its web.

Sleeper Round 5 Act 2

Make a gate in South Atlantic and control it.

Power:4

Goat Round 5 Turn 2

Power: 11
Doom: 10
Signs: 3

ACTION: Move Dark Young from South Atlantic to North Atlantic, take gate (1 power).

Power: 10

Yellow Sign, Round 5, Turn 2

Power: 10
Doom: 7
Elder Signs: 3

ACTION: Desecrate Europe (1 power). Roll: 1d6=1. Success. I place a Desecration Token and a Star Vampire in Europe, and take 1 Elder Sign.

Power: 9
Doom: 7
Elder Signs: 4

You luckbox, you.

That's 8 gates on the map, so I take Dread Curse of Azathoth.

Kind of interesting how low everyone is (relatively) on Doom Points compared to this round of the game last time. I chalk it up partly to no one wanting to build any gates!

Yeah, the Opener's presence in a game does seem to discourage other players from building gates, for some reason! The neutral monsters also seem to slow things down a bit by giving players something to spend their Doom points on.

I think the other thing that's kept the Doom point totals relatively low this game is player skill. This time around, everyone is being much more careful about defending their gates and culling the Cultist population when necessary, and I think that's reflected in the point totals. By the time Round 5 rolled around last game, two players had managed to pull off 6-gate Rituals, whereas this time around, this is the first round that anybody's managed to have even 4 gates during the Doom Phase. Now that people have a better idea of what to watch out for, it's going to be a whole lot harder for anyone to grab 12 points in a turn like we saw last game.

Ack, didn't realize it was my turn, then I left town for a couple days! Here we go:

Opener Round 5 Action 2

Power: 6

Declare battle on Yellow Sign in North Atlantic.

Result: 5

Your Undead rolls no dice. He retreats, and my mutant abominizes. I'll post the map after you retreat.

Power: 5

The Undead retreats to North Africa. I also just noticed that I made a mistake when I last updated the map; the Ghoul in the Indian Ocean should have been moved to the North Atlantic due to Necrophagy. I somehow forgot about that when I was updating the map from the battle results. Sorry about that.

All right, this should be current:

A quick note: I couldn't remember any rules about player elimination, so I went asking. There is no elimination; if you lose everything you can recruit a Cultist anywhere.

Sleeper's up.

Sleeper Round 5 Act 3

Battle Yellow in South America. It looks like invisible castle is down, so here's my roll from a real life die...3. Balls.

Power:3