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In Cthulhu: Death May Die, players each choose an investigator from a roster of ten characters included in the base game. They then choose one of the six included episode boxes and one of the two Elder Ones (Cthulhu or Hastur). The latter two items here (the episode and the Elder One) are then combined to create the scenario – each episode brings two specific enemies, a map layout, two-episode specific actions and potentially some additional tokens or periphery. Each Elder One brings a huge miniature to represent the big bad, provides rules for a standard cultist enemy and also introduces a unique bad guy associated only with that Elder One. The game has multiple episodes, and each of them has a similar structure of two acts, those being before and after you summon whatever it is you happen to be summoning. If any character dies prior to the summoning, then the game ends and you lose; once the Elder One is on the board, as long as one of you is still alive, you still have a chance to win. In Cthulhu: Death May Die, inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, you and your fellow players represent investigators in the 1920s who instead of trying to stop the coming of Elder Gods, want to summon those otherworldly beings so that you can put a stop to them permanently. You start the game insane, and while your long-term goal is to shoot Cthulhu in the face, so to speak, at some point during the game you'll probably fail to mitigate your dice rolls properly and your insanity will cause you to do something terrible or maybe advantageous. Hard to know for sure. Now, I won’t say too much about the Cthulhu: Death May Die: Unspeakable Box because you can only buy it on the secondary market now (or as an add-on to the latest campaign, which has now closed) however it is worth a mention because it adds some interesting things. Firstly, inside the box you’ll find two Elder Ones – Yog-Sothoth (which is also available at retail) and Dagon (who is not available anywhere else), six new episodes and then ten new characters. You’ll also find some plastic overlay trays for your character mats, and in my opinion these don’t help much since they slide around just as much as the base game pieces anyway.
Similarly to the Unspeakable Box, the Comic Book Extras and Julia Investigator are no longer available at retail and I can’t add much detail because I don’t have either. The Comic Book box seems to contain around six investigators who all look quite cool, but more interestingly it includes a graphic novel which I would love to read to expand my immersion into the Cthulhu: Death May Die universe. Julia is similar really, in that she is an extra investigator who has some nice new moves, but I haven’t used her in my games and therefore can’t speak specifically about her. Season two is a superb expansion. It builds and develops what was already a great game without trashing what made it excellent in the first place. Lang and Daviau use their combined experience to design a play experience that is thematically engrossing and massively enjoyable even when you go down vainly firing off rounds in a swarm of flailing tentacles and gaping maws. Whereas season 1 felt a little woods, caves, caves, woods (ep. 3: Danse Macabre aside); season 2 takes you to theatres, banks, gothic churches and a Vegas casino. In your quest to clobber cultists and destroy the Ancient Ones, you will solve a murder mystery, perform a heist and dig for buried treasure. As sequels go, Cthulhu: Death May Die Season Two is more Aliens than Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines. Respect Your Elder OnesPreviously on Cthulhu: Death May Die: 10 disparate heroes battled their way through 6 R’lyeh-raising episodes of pure pandemonium. Traversing the USA battling deep ones and fire vampires and the big guy himself, Cthulhu. Cultists were cut down. Cthonians curtailed. Season one of Eric M. Lang and Rob Daviau’s co-operative dice and slice through the Cthulhu universe was as fun as it was big and brash, but how does season 2 compare to the original? Cthu’s Who
There are so many cool things about Cthulhu: Death May Die that it’s hard to even cover them all. For example there are also insanity cards, which are specific afflictions dealt at random during setup. Examples include co-dependency, where a player will teleport to the location of a named character whom they cannot be apart from – albeit at a cost of stress. There is the stress resource itself, which can be used to reroll dice just in case you miss, or roll more (or less) stress than you like. Then, there’s the most exciting thing about the characters, which is their unique abilities. Skills like Brawling, which allows more and more damage to be done, and then split between multiple enemies – or stealth, which allows players to escape spaces with enemies in. Cthulhu: Death May Die: Season 2 Lovecraft and authors like him always made sure their characters were incredibly human. And incredibly flawed. They were greedy for gain, for knowledge, for power, and that was often their downfall. He had quite a bleak view of humanity, and in honesty, he wasn’t the nicest bloke himself. But he saw people as broken from the off, and this is reflected in the characters and their abilities. No matter who you choose to play as, they’ll always have a unique ability and two shared ones. The way these are written and sound don’t come across as those of a sane person, but one obsessed. It suits the theme beautifully but also makes you realise why these characters are taking on these tasks. They’re haunted with visions of madness. Lovecraftian horror is undeniably one of my favourite genres of board game, game, book and sandwich fillings. It’s everything you want from the psychological horror, as it’s not what you can always see that you should fear. Nowadays we’ve become so desensitised to everything that film makers have to resort to full blown gore and disembowelment to get an audience to flinch.
Expansions
Inside the chunky season 2 expansion box is a wealth of new components and missions. 10 new hero characters each with their individually sculpted mini can be played with missions from both season 1 and season 2. As with season 1, each hero also has their own unique ability. Dagon is quite interesting however, and he brings a rather unpleasant set of enemies in the form of the Deep Ones. Over the course of each game, Dagon may transform the player characters into Deep Ones, which can result in a game loss if more than half the investigators have transformed – whilst also weakening them in various situations when facing their new “master.” The lost episodes are also fun, including one which uses all of the new investigators in a nightmarish birthday party scenario where one or more of them has turned to the dark side.
Having said all this, I still haven’t covered the main hook in Cthulhu: Death May Die– which is that as players roll dice to deal (or receive) wounds, they also roll insanity. Insanity is good and bad, because as players gain it, they also gain new powers and abilities… However, if any characters reach maximum insanity, they will die and be eliminated from the game – if this happens before the ritual is completed, then all players lose – but if it happens afterwards (with the Elder One on the board) then the other players can keep fighting to try and defeat their greatest foe. The Season 2 expansion contains some very fun missions, including the very first one – Strange Bedfellows – which introduces the player(s) to a host of Chicago mobsters. In this mission, the players must disrupt the ritual by collecting loot, paying off gangsters to join them and then breaking into the bank vault where the cultists are holed up. It’s a fun, thematic story, and when you meet a gangster and can’t pay them, you’ll instead become “marked” which has negative consequences when certain cards are drawn. The other five scenarios are just as interesting, and as always the new monster miniatures are huge, amazingly sculpted and often terrifying! Avoiding spoilers, the episodes of season 2 feel more distinct from each other than those of the base game. Each has its own distinct mechanisms that impact how you play and feel easier or harder with different combinations of characters and Elder One’s. This range of play style also carries through into stronger theme and setting for each episode. Something that is massively helped by the new floor tiles included in the expansion that combine with the base game components to bring the scenarios to life on the table. Cthulhu Death May Die is a cooperative game for 1-5 players. Players take on the roles of investigators trying to stop rituals and eventually the Elder God behind them. Each investigator is unique in their set abilities and can level up throughout the course of the game. Also, each investigator is afflicted with an insanity of sorts which will trigger when their sanity decreases. Set-Up
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The monsters described in the writings mentioned are described as being unimaginably horrific. The thing about things being unfathomable and unimaginable is that there won’t be a universal idea of what it looks like. What’s agreed is that they’re disgusting and not necessarily logical. Tentacles left, right and centre, claws, wings just because. Or they’re just writhing messes of flesh and mouths. They should drive men insane with just their sight, and Cthulhu Death May Die’s impressions of these beasties is quite accurate.
You could be Margarethe, the paleoanthropologist chef, whose desire to bring the most exotic dishes to the world’s dining tables has led her to unearth ancient and otherworldly meats. Just don’t stand too close to her knives. Some say she’s a little crazy. Or how about gentle Sam, who wouldn’t hurt a fly… until those dang cultists went and killed his family? Now he’s armed with his pitchfork hunting down those robed varmints. Whatever your preference there’s a voodoo priestess, Italian sergeant or Venezuelan ex-cultist to match your mood. With Yog-Sothoth also comes Wilbur Whateley – a terrifying minion who uses Yog Gates (a special and unusual spawn point) to pop up in the places where you least expect him. Annoyingly, regular enemies can also appear from these gates as well, so the net result is that Yog-Sothoth will spawn gates and enemies, often right in the active player’s space – and that’s never a good thing. Both the Yog and Wilbur miniatures are large and very well detailed, with Yog himself a particularly large, terrifying beasty. Wilbur is tough and relentless – hunting the players mercilessly – whilst Yog focusses as much on dealing insanity as he does actual damage. The models are designed with horror in mind and look incredible, and they’re of brilliant quality too! If you’re a fan of painting miniatures, you’ll appreciate the quality of these and enjoy making them look more grotesque. The investigators too look awesome. Each one looks like they’re straight out of the 1920s and fit well into the themed tiles of the maps. The artwork across the cards is awesome as always with CMON games, and are of a lovely quality. Being a poor quality painter myself, I would have appreciated having the miniatures pre-painted, however this isn’t something that will keep me up at night. What does keep me up at night is how incredibly designed the inserts of the game are. User functionality is at the heart of this design, and it may seem minor, but it makes a difference! Final Thoughts In one game, one player’s ability was to keep a mythos card and replay it when they went mad, which helped at some points and was unhelpful at others. As best we could, we ensured they triggered their insanity at a particular point or in a particular place, ensuring minimal threat to other players. Other afflictions were a lot less helpful and impractical. Kleptomania was the bane of my first win, as I constantly increased stress whenever I couldn’t steal from another player. Our game plan wasn’t to stay together, and it impacted my progress negatively. There were situations where we thought we could use it advantageously, but you can’t always manipulate a dice roll. By triggering it early I nearly lost us the game, so it’s very double-edged in its function. Aesthetically Horrifying
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And it’s not just the goodies whose numbers are swollen. Over six new missions you’ll be introduced to a bevvy of bad things: Hounds of Tindalos, Tcho-Tcho’s, Dimensional Shamblers and Yuggs. These new creatures are tougher and meaner than those faced in season one. With powers that will test the strength of the intrepid heroes and warp their minds to the point of insanity. In total there are 27 new minis included with season two, manufactured to the intricately detailed standard you’d expect of CMON. Hastur La Vista, Baby
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