Board Game: Cthulhu Wars

This was last week, but what the heck, it's not like you'll notice the difference.

The Game: Cthulhu Wars
The Publisher: Petersen Games
Time: Two hours, I think? It'll move faster next time
Players: Me, Michelle, Al, and Gus

Game Play: I would really love it if my phone would stop randomly not keeping the pictures I take, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, the basic premise here is that the world has ended, the Great Old Ones are returning and battling it out, and we're fighting to see who achieves ultimate mastery of the ruined husk of the world. The factions include Great Cthulhu himself, the Black Goat of the Woods, the Yellow Sign, and so on. That's all very well, but look at these.

Great Cthulhu and his peeps.

You don't get some weak-ass cardboard counters for the Great Old Ones, you get full-on, huge plastic sculpts of the Big Guy, the Star Spawns, the Deep Ones, and whatever the hell else. And then they romp around on this map:

The doomed canvas. 

OK, so that doesn't say much about the game so far, but I think it's important to recognize the scale and production values here, because they're amazing.

Anyway, the game itself: You start with an open gate and six of your cultists on the map, and then every turn you get a certain amount of Power that you can use to move your guys, summon monsters (or a Great Old One), open new gates, or do battle with other players. In addition, you have six spellbooks that you access by doing various things (the book flat-out compares it to achievements in a video game; some of them are as easy as "kill a dude in battle" and some are a little more involved).

Gus and the Black Goat, Shub-Niggaruth. 

Every turn, you get some Doom points for having open gates. You can get more by performing a ritual, but it eats a lot of your Power for the turn (and eats more the more people do it). In addition, you get Elder Signs for doing various things, and those give you Doom Points, but they remain hidden until the end of the game.

The world in crisis. 

First player to 30 Doom Points who also has all six spellbooks ends the game, and then the Doom Points get tallied, and then the player with the highest Doom total and all six spellbooks wins. There's also an "everybody loses" condition where the Annihilation Track (OH DID I NOT MENTION THAT) runs out before anyone gets to 30 Doom.

Seriously, look at all these damn things.

Opinions: OK, so I know it sounds like there's a lot of moving parts to this game, and the instruction manual is literally thicker than some RPGs I own, but this game is actually surprisingly smooth and easy to learn. Sure, every faction works a little differently, but the differences are right there on the faction cards. I was expecting battle to be this big, long, protracted mess, but it's just "roll some dice, count your 6s, count your 4-5s, inflict Kills, inflict Pains (which makes things retreat)". It took us one battle to get the hang of it.

In the end, Gus won because they took great advantage of the Black Goat's fecundity. I wasn't nearly aggressive enough with my dudes (Great Cthulhu is not someone to be shy with). I great look forward to playing again; this game's a lot of fun. Also I have an expansion.

Keep? Hell, yeah.