Cthulhu Game Description
Deep within the chambers of a profane library echoes the omens of an impending apocalypse. Beasts of eldritch countenance swell up by the dozen, and monstrous deities from beyond the stars emerge to crush humanity in their mucus-covered fists. Who stands at the threshold of insanity to stand up to such tyrants? You and your friends are the last bastion of hope for a humanity on the brink of destruction. Defeat these fiends, before your mind reels from the madness!
Cthulhu: A Deck Building Game is a treacherous cooperative game that pits you and your allies in a grisly battle to the death with the Elder Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos. Grab whatever precious weapons and materials you can, for all of it will be needed for the coming fight. This will be a long night.
The Review
Do you observe suffering as a hobby? Do you enjoy battle systems that demand you to break it, lest you be broken yourself? Do you want to enjoy the peace of your own home, only to be, interrupted by a swarm of forty flaming vampires that heal the boss to maximum HP each round? Welcome to Cthulhu: A Deck Building Game (CDBG), or as I like to call it, Cthulhu: Prepare to Die Edition.
This heinous equivalent of consensual torture simulation is a board game where all players take the roles of investigators having to go toe-to-toe with the Elder Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos originally conceived by H. P. Lovecraft, but properly developed by artists and writers who came afterward.
The game is structured around a cooperative deckbuilding experience, in which players take turns at the same time as a group, coordinating their efforts and purchases from the Library of available cards to purchase. This uses a resource known as “Moxie” which is used for both purchasing and attacking enemies appear at the end of the round. Moxie you spend purchasing cards is Moxie not being spent on attacking the endless horde that arises.
Once all players have finished their “shopping phase”, then begins the torment. It begins by the Elder Gods effect(s), followed by a random “Mythos Card” event, and finally the attack of any minion monsters. After all of this damage, it is time for the players to amass as much Moxie as possible in order to annihilate any new minions and to ultimately defeat the Elder Gods.
The goal of this game is simple: break it before it breaks you. The game’s various synergies (both for players AND enemies) can be egregiously powerful, and it is important to exploit them. This very reality is even indicated in the instructions, which implore the players to accept this fact before engaging with it.
In mere moments, your advantageous position is utterly nullified by a seething horde of mind-boggling monstrosities. The Mythos Deck alone is capable of nullifying entire rounds and turns for players, punishing them harshly for the mere nerve of existing.
And yet, it’s a delightful experience. Awful, heart-wrenching, but so fun all the same.
You see, CDBG is a love letter to the themes, the hopeless, and the absurd of its source material. It constantly seeks to build up your confidence and anxiety, then cruelly subjects you to an abysmal fate you must claw and puzzle your way through to succeed. CDBG is collective suffering that demands, not asks, for you and your friends to work together and put aside any differences for the sake of beating the hell out of some alien deities. It requires everything you’ve got, because it will not pull any punches when the going get rough.
Sometimes, you’ll just lose. You’ll do everything right and the aliens will swarm you before you can react. And that’s okay. This game has a strangely soothing, somber lesson to teach. Sometimes you are the master of your fate, and sometimes you’re just a pawn in a greater game. You do everything right and still lose the day, and that’s okay. Because there’s always another game, another fight to win or lose, always another day for you to try and try and try again.
That determination and blood-curdling level of gameplay is contained within this gorgeous box. Did I mention the art is magnificent? The shading, the cleanliness of the art, and the interesting depictions of cosmic-horror entities sucks me in down a rabbit hole of ogling.
It’s hard, but the degree of suffering is optional. It’s unfair sometimes, and other times its too easy. CDBG does not hold back any of its flaws, but its brandishes them well. I have to respect their brazen acceptance of the feeling of futility and fighting for every inch of progress. I rate this game my highest score of three tentacled Shoggoths locked in a room with an effectively immortal shotgun-wielding Grandma.
Game Raiders Rating Scale
