Cthulhu Wars Review - A Cthulhu Carol

all right I'm gonna lay this saucy little railway between belper and leek which of course doesn't do anything right now but in the future I stand to gain four maybe five pounds you okay Tom you've barely touched your thematically appropriate beef drink yeah I'm fine I just thought that when you invite me around for Christmas Eve would play something a bit more colorful and most Algie some what could be more exciting than going into debt and then just when you think you're out you go right back I don't know maybe we could play something that isn't about making railroads for once and play one of those big chunky Kickstarter games all those miniatures and carful cards and fun Kickstarter miniatures Tom what do you think this is the last days of Rome do you see me with my top off touching myself seductively no no that's because you're part of sharp and sit down now where we take fun seriously yes although to be honest this game is a lot of work and I am quite tired so you know what I think I'm off to bed now you have a merry Chris adore dapat the game up for you no no no no you're still playing um you just take my moves for me just do um whatever you were gonna do more intelligent okay Merry Christmas [Music] that is not a real ghost it is a real ghost I am here for your reclamation take my hand what the review all right on paper Cthulhu was and its many expansions are precisely the kind of thing we should warn you away from and not for the overdone Lovecraft theme but because this site has a nasty habit of bursting pipe bubbles for years shut up and sit down has warned people away from striking outsized Kickstarter board games projects that will arrive at your door in coffin-sized boxes packed tight with enough miniatures to choke an alligator and enough buzzwords to make other games look thoughtless in their mundanity it's an asymmetric negotiation hidden movement real-time train war game do you want it of course you do but the more intoxicatingly ambitious the pitch the harder it's bound to be to execute and so you get games like Batman Gotham City chronicles containing so much stuff that actually playing it is a pain in the back bum or Kingdom death monster which offered such an epic campaign that a quarter of your time was spent working as some kind of doomsday cleavage administrator enter Cthulhu Wars a 2015 Kickstarter success story about Elder Gods thrashing against one another for domination of Earth assuming you're playing with the board in the base game actually there are eight other boards you can buy as expansions including a really really really really really big library that I kid you not includes Mechanics for gods being annihilated for having overdue books in fact while BoardGameGeek lists Cthulhu was is having almost 50 expansions this review is just going to focus on the base set because it's plenty big and expensive already this game really could be the poster child of a Kickstarter board game that is too big good lord it recently raised a hundred and forty thousand dollars for expansions adding evil space cats from the moon but I won't be bursting any bubbles today instead I'm here to tell you that Cthulhu wars is the real deal first things first do not be put off by this terrifying manual which is mostly a sort of glossy Elder catalog' in fact Cthulhu Wars is extraordinarily easy to learn and maybe its biggest selling point is that it compresses an epic game of arcane conflict into a rapid 90 minutes in fact speaking of undying abominations if we can assume from the endless popularity of risk that what a lot of people want from board games is to push little plastic people into their friends territory I might describe Cthulhu Wars as what people want from risk in the same way that shot up and sit down has always sold loads of Vegas as what people want from monopoly but we're getting ahead of ourselves when Cathedral starts everybody places all of their cultists on the board and this is great cultists are gonna give you power each round and within each round players are going to take turns doing one action spending power to do whatever they want do you want Australia it's yours do you want to get in the sea like the meme okay you got in the sea congratulations you now have a sea or you can spend three power crow barring open a portal to another dimension making a gate that is permanent and for as long as you have a cultists sat on a gate like a devoted mother hen that's yet more power you're going to get every round gates are double good because at the end of each round players will move one space along the doom track for every gate that they have and the first player to hit 30 doom wins the game for reference fula wars has other equally evil tracks including the ritual of annihilation track and the clicking fingers at Waiters track so boring economy minded players like me can have fun opening more gates so they'll have even more power to spend next round doing even more things but girls who just want to have fun they can make monsters and here we arrived at the true genius of Cthulhu wars which as any cult leader knows it's about hierarchy cultists can be recruited wherever you've got a miniature monsters have to be yanked through gates but are a source of comedic consternation and to any nearby players because for a laughably satisfying play you can assuming there is an enemy cultists in a space where you've got a monster and they're not protected by a monster of their own you can put them in a bag and they're yours now you've kidnapped them and you are gonna get one more power next term as they get one less and only then after the rounds do you hand back Cultus back thank you for them to spend yet more power bringing back onto the board yeah I feel so good so your opponents probably gonna bring in a monster of their own for protection bomb and now you might start thinking about rights but just one power anyone can start a fight with anyone else anywhere you gather your dice based on the monsters you got in the fight and then see what happens it's as simple as that stop rock and roll like everything else in Cthulhu Wars this is a rapid raucous ridiculous rude and risky ruckus by which I mean it's a risk your opponent could always roll more success than you expect as is the old fashioned Games Workshop II and charm of your and my friend the handful of d6 but I also mean that it's like risk in that if you want you can play it safe and only start fights where you definitely have the edge or you can always just for one power roll some dice and see what happens you know Cthulhu wall says live your life and but sooner than any of you expect someone is going to be seduced by the eye watering lis expensive action that is I'm bringing out your factions I'm not done it's absolutely ridiculous exactly like how popping monsters onto the board strikes fear into the hearts of nearby cultists slamming your old one to the table is going to fill the bellies of nearby monsters with nausea I don't care how many tentacles they have every old one is frightening but also every old one is unique when you sit down to play Cthulhu Wars you're sitting down at the dashboard of your own special faction but which should you choose it's always hard to know who to vote for us your fearless timeless loveless leader so let's look at their manifestos let's start with great Cthulhu he's pretty great Cthulhu is a single issue candidate who believes in taking back control of our ancestral borders by which I mean the sea from which all life on Earth came from Cthulhu can disappear in any ocean with an army and reappear somewhere else like the opposite of a Jehovah's Witness also he skims power from anyone else's gates that they open in the sea so if you stay out of the sea because through new winds and if you go into the sea through winds ever respectful of the democratic process the black dope understands that a vote for black dope means that you want more black go and nobody respects that more than the black go who starts the game with a power called fort empty Colts it's gonna be sloughing as much fungus as you can yank out of your gaping gates the black go also understands that along the way there are gonna have to be sacrifices you're gonna have to sacrifice yourself but that's ok because and I know what else you're thinking will this population explosion put pressure on social services the answer no because soon there will be no services of any kind let me guess you're tired of these elites who expect you to stand for something crawling chaos doesn't stand for anything and in fact I'm not entirely sure they can stand up at all but despite this disability they turn their nose up at government handouts as crawling chaos you can roll a dice and oh no you don't gain that much power instead the rest of the table has 60 seconds to negotiate and figure out who among them has to lose that much power so well-deserved innovation within the welfare state a new feeling nostalgic four times gone by are you yearning for when the world was a better place no well soon you will be with the yellow sign who's here to make the world worse how's it going to do that I've got three words for you desecration desecration desecration gee that sounds like a lot of desecration how you can do that let me answer your question with a question what's the worst word in great old one the answer one kid with the yellow sign you've got one old one who heralds the arrival of another old one that's a great old two and I know you're thinking do I have to pay for both of these old ones yes but whichever faction you choose you're going to have to earn your power each faction has six powers to unlock using six unique objectives and this adds to Cthulhu was dramatic three-dimensional sense of escalation since the game starts with almost no special powers but ends the very moment like a Monty Python sketch it gets too silly but it also adds a choice that's interesting on several levels when should you stretch yourself to achieve these objectives which objectives should you go after first and in what order should you unlock your powers the first time I played crawling chaos I went all in on a pack of thieving night-gaunts that flapped around the board the second time I plays to begin with I executed a premature birth of my old one but then in the very next game I gave crawling cows to another player and was delighted to watch him go all in on polyps I felt like my dear departed grandmother I couldn't move for the polyps but as simple as so much of Cthulhu was is done let me paint the wrong picture these powers you're unlocking are demented the sentence that gets said the most often in games of Cthulhu wars is you can do what I mean in a lot of ways this is a beer and pretzels war game but this is a PSA you're serving beer and pretzels at your own risk you can do what you can do what krikey on a bike achill one of crawling Chaos's powers is to decide where every miniature retreats from after every single battle even battles that that player isn't involved in the brat go gets a couple of ghouls and if they unlock the right power after every single fight ghouls show up and scare the survivors away like reverse ghostbusters who you go and call it's a trick question you're not gonna call anybody put the phone down the ghouls are already on their way to your home yes your actual home lock the doors so let's recap we have got here a war game that is clean and simple smart and clean and also an elbow room only buffet of bullet goodness there's actually a power that Cthulhu has that if you lose a fight with him you have to reach into your wallet and give him all the money in it I may have made that one up but it is true that a certain kind of strategic and highly competitive player will finish some rounds of casino wars feeling like they have been monks but for the rest of us those people know who they are but the rest of us who can approach Cthulhu wars with a will to win but a sense of humor about it seeing all of these powers interact in daft ways is endlessly surprising and also great fun and there's a design lesson here because this nonsense works for the same reason it does in shut up and sit down favorite Cosmic Encounter it's fast and it's flexible did another player's power completely Scotch your turn and the thing you are planning that's fine you've probably only had that plan for about 25 seconds and in another 60 seconds you'll be able to take another turn doing whatever you want perhaps chasing after one of these objectives to give yourself some of all games I couldn't stop thinking of route while I was playing Cthulhu wars route being last year's darling asymmetric war game now I like route I kept my copy of route but I ended my review of it saying that we never had a wholly satisfying game of it conversely Cthulhu Wars has been an immediate hit with almost all of my friends but now listen my biggest criticism of route was how you won by traveling up the score track per simplest route is sad when someone's losing it's frustrating when someone's winning and when everyone's tied whoever wins feels like a crapshoot now check it out Cthulhu Wars has exactly the same mechanic but it works and it's an interesting case study cuz it works for a couple of reasons first off rather than players gaining momentum and leaving other players behind if players are doing well they can perform a ritual of annihilation converting around power into points but then weakening them for that turn so other players can burgle their board states also you don't quite know how many points everyone has some of your points around a Zelda sign tokens which are secret and contain a random number of points from 1 to 3 is this fair absolutely not you could gain two points while I gain 5 but I don't wanna blow your mind here this game already has variance from dice it already wasn't fair but all of this is fine because there is almost no price too high if the end result is a design where players never quite know who's going to win and everybody can stay invested in the game right up to the end so that's Cthulhu wars and finally shut up and sit down has a dude's on a map violent war game that it can recommend as wholeheartedly as memoir 44 and commit cloody wars is a game that knows an epic experience does not mean an equally epic rulebook it is a game where simplicity and silliness sit side by side with strategy and scale or simply book cathedral wars is a game that says you can have both it's a game where you doing what's fun bringing giant miniatures onto the board and pushing them round and rolling crazy handfuls of dice as you try and bloody your friends noses in no way gets in the way of you being thoughtful of you try to win and you taking the game seriously and you get all of this stuff for oh I've just realized I don't know how much this game costs so that's part of my job and I should probably google it Jimmy Mary and Joseph okay turns out I do have one criticism of cthulhu was a big one that I'm now going to fire like a bullet into the back of its head this game is 160 dollars it would have to be half of that price for me to comfortably recommend it I mean for reference for 160 dollars you could buy gloom Haven the removable sticker set so you could sell it on after you're done you could sell it then you could call up your friends and go to the pub you get buy a drink and some nuts buy more drinks you get absolutely slathered decide you want gloom Haven back cuz you've got the address of who you mailed it to use your phone to buy some Breaking and Entering equipment your friends say well that's a bad idea they tell you it's not a good idea you believe them you all go to buy a kebab you I feel hungover you buy some Advil you go to work and make some money and you could still have enough money left over to buy frost Haven and here's the next part in this multistage booster rocket of craziness this game did not have to be this big you know it's lots of fun obviously that the miniatures are giant but due to the magic of how volume works if everything in this game was scaled down by about 20% kethu new wars would be drastically less expensive to manufacture store and ship and here's the next crazy part do you want one of the facts and expansions to bring Cthulhu Wars up to a 5 player game or even 6 but then you have to buy it another board that's fine it's great with five players good for you the factions of glows of fun they've got their own miniatures but each of these faction expansions is another $50 each one is the price of an expensive board game now listen I'm not against paying a lot of money for board games I bought a crocodile board but I'm hoping to pass that off to the next generation I bought blood on the Clocktower but that's my favorite board game of all time Kizuna was for all of its fantastic fun still only ever feels like just a very very good board game so I've got a wonder at that price who would buy it [Music] you know what day is it why it's Christmas Day Christmas then I'm not too late yeah go to the dice saloon and buy me a copy of Cthulhu wuss where's your Christmas spirit break-in Oh Tom listen I'm so glad you came because Merry Christmas surprise yeah have you played this one yeah I love it it's so breezy and funny and quick and it totally justifies the use of those giant plastic bookends plus I never bought it for myself oh yeah at this price I'd probably just end up buying three equally good unique boxes at 40 pounds each sure and the thing is as well it's not really like a big event game like twilight imperium or memoir 44 Overlord which you can split between your friends because at the end of the day it just feels like a game you know and while I love that it's endlessly expandable the expansions are insanely expensive I mean compare this and the expansions for it to the upcoming underworld expansion for room for example there's two factions and two maps in one box as well as some other little bits and bobs that you get as Kickstarter bonuses Cthulhu Wars is just such a bad value proposition but I suppose that's what makes it a great gift you know Tom I think you should leave I'm worried that the police are coming what the boardgame police no no that the actual police and I think they're looking for this game why it's not because it's stolen it's because it's now banned for being too far oh here take this evidence as well Queen expansions okay yeah evidence of fun do you like marzipan yeah sure here's some Christmas Christmas marzipan great thanks take the fire escape okay [Music] very good the boy is now in our debt hello everybody we sincerely hope you enjoyed that video we hope you enjoyed all of our content this year the ninth year of sharpens our down working hard to put the world's best board games in front of you we're almost ready to wrap up the site for 2019 but before we do I'd like to ask you a question have you enjoyed the content we've put out this year have we helped you to find some great games or helped you to realize that this or that game wasn't for you if you're one of our new subscribers you might not know this but the main reason that we're able to do this for a job is people paying us what they think the show is worth and an unfortunate reality of web-based donation business models is that donations are always falling off so please this holiday season we'd like to ask you to pay what you think shut up and sit down is worth for your payment you'll receive a monthly newsletter offering behind the scenes info early thoughts on the games we're playing as well as what movies books and video games we recommend now we know that that's not a lot but over the years we've come to realize that what we want and what our donors want more than anything is for all of Charlotte Aeons content whether you see it as a buyer's guide or just a warmed safe space on the Internet to be available to everybody whether they can afford to donate or not so I'm gonna say it one more time please this holiday season go to this link and donate whatever you think shut up and sit down is worth thank you very much for your time everybody and thank you very much for watching you take care I did it far with my hands at the end there that was unfortunate sort of undermined what I was by

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 422,007

Rating: 4.9580307 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Cthulhu Wars, Cthulhu, kickstarter, Christmas

Id: yJGDjt3i7wg

Length: 24min 3sec (1443 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Chantmer]

A great review. First game in, I was that player mentioned at about 14:00 - the strategic player who finishes a round feeling like they'd been mugged. I saw the map, I pondered the pieces, I schemed - and then the owner of the game plonked Cthulhu on the board, fired up some special abilities and sprayed hot acid all over my plans. This was't what I was expecting and it all seemed a tad unfair.

The second game; the parts of my brain most fond of Concordia, Hansa Teutonica, Brass Birmingham and the like got the night off to play with their cubes and it was great. Now it was fun watching plans get flushed, having to wait until I'd rolled more than 30 dice before getting a kill was hilarious rather than disastrous and it was all down to expectations. Sit down expecting a chaotic battle of monsters with crazy powers and you won't be disappointed.

As the review says, it's hard to justify the price, but I've been a bit lucky because a member of our game group is an excellent miniatures painter and a Cthulhu Wars completionist. Despite that, he's often had a tricky time getting it played, which is a shame, though there's no doubt that this won't be a hit for people who play games to get their efficiency-engines scratched.

[u/kugrond]

I wish it wasn't so damn expensive...

[u/MrBananaGrabber]

That aerial shot of Tom sprinting with the boxes had me laughing hysterically

[u/ProsperoFinch]

I’m fortunate enough to have a friend in my playgroup who is a phenomenally good miniatures painter (so good that his work got the attention of some of the people behind the game and he was given expansions of the game as payment for painting some minis for them). He has approximately 90% of the game now (between gifts and purchases), and playing the game on all the variant maps with these gorgeous painted figures really makes it come alive.

It’s a fun game on its own, but the painted figures make it ridiculously fun.

Glad I didn’t have to spend a penny on it

[u/Dr_Cornbread]

This is one of the few Kickstarters I've backed that I haven't regretted. It's expensive, but worth it.

[u/I_LIKE_PORTALS]

There are really better ways to spend one's money on boardgames but huge lovecraftian miniatures are kinda my thing. I possess ~80% of Cthulhu Wars and all I want for Christmas is another faction expansion.

[u/dgermain]

Great review. The criticism is warranted for the price. But at the same time, it's so enjoyable, I do not regret having it. They fairly depict that as well! After all, the most expensive games are the one that end up not being played!

I feel that having at least one additional faction really adds to the fun, for the variability, and 5 player games are great fun. So it's a dangerous trap to buy the base game, since you'll probably start lusting after expansions soon after !

[u/Poor_Dick]

Good review, and sums my feelings up on it nicely - including why I don't own such a fun game. It (like many Kickstarters) is just way too expensive (especially if you want the whole game). If I had unlimited access to money...

I'm kinda glad I own a copy of Chaos in the Old World.

[u/IrateGandhi]

This game is worth the price. The minis. The gameplay. It's everything you want in am area control game that summons huge gods and feel vastly different.

Played my first game. I got hosed. It felt bad. But it was still a ton of fun. I can see why people love it. I want to play more. Like... A lot more.