Club of Cthulhu

For a time it seemed that there was another Lovecraft-themed game out every week. That way lies madness and the tide slowed but Cthulhu is never far away and in this small-box game from Play With Us Design he's back along with the other dark deities from his demonic domain. In Club for Cthulhu, designed by Shi Chen and with art by Keching Chang, 2–4 players are researchers into the black arts. They collect cards to research each god and sacrifice them to gain more cards. If, on your turn, you collect a set of three matching cards, you gain the blessing of the corresponding deity, which gives you powerful abilities. This is a Lovecraftian game, however, and having the favour of these deities is very much a mixed blessing... you don't score any points for gods for whom you have been blessed. Club of Cthulhu is essentially a push-your-luck game then where you're mostly trying to avoid completing a set of three matching cards on your turn.

Tho' Club of Cthulhu comes in a compact box, Play With Us Design haven't skimped on its production. In addition to the cards and tokens, the game comes with a fabric playmat in the format of a summoning circle with a pentagram in the centre. When you play a card to one of the stacks on the pentagram, you get to draw two cards from the two stacks that can trace a line to the card you played (ie: the two stacks immediately opposite). For any god for which you've gained a card, you get to activate that god's corresponding 'gift'. These variously allow you to manipulate the cards you've drawn, peek at the top card of a draw pile or play a 'take that' action on another player. You usually want to avoid gaining a god's blessing because that will mean you won't score for any cards in your research pile for that god and it ends your turn. Where you have previously gained a god's blessing, however, you have the option of using its 'blessed gift' power - in each case, an enhanced version of that god's basic gift.

Of course, the longer you extend your turn the more cards you're going to accumulate and the greater the prospect of you gaining unwelcome blessings... It's only when you decide you've pushed your luck enough, or when you get a blessing, that your turn ends and all the cards you drew get moved down to your 'research' area.

The game runs until two of the pentagram stacks have been exhausted or until a player eliminates themselves by gaining blessings from all five gods. Players then score for the number of cards they have in their research piles that correspond to each of the gods for which they have not been blessed. Watch out tho'... the scoring is different for each god and most scoring isn't strictly linear; certain card counts give you negative points! Play With Us Design have included six different pairs of scoring cards in the box, so you can expect games to play differently depending on which scoring cards you choose to play with.

Club of Cthulu plays in around 20 minutes. It's an intriguing balancing act where you can play safe and just take short turns with just one or maybe two sacrifices or you can take the gamble and keep your turn going longer, albeit with the ever-increasing risk of collecting blessings. It's satisfying when your gamble pays off but it's maddening when you end up drawing cards (including double-deity cards) that lumber you with two or more blessings on a single turn. But you have accept that any Cthulhu-themed game is bound to be maddening...

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