Stats:
No. of players: 1-4
Amount of time to play: 60 min
Age requirements: 10+
Set-up time: minimal

The Cards of Cthulhu is a solo or cooperative card game of dice pooling and hand management. You must defeat the Cults before they summon their Elder Gods or lose.

The Cards of Cthulhu Description:

You start The Cards of Cthulhu by randomly drawing or choosing an investigator. This is the character you will play in the game and each investigator has different special abilities. Your investigator starts with four experience coins.

Each turn you draw four cult cards. Many of these will be minions and horrors but there are also gates, items and followers. Minions and horrors go to the cult board matching their color. Gates force you to instantly draw another cult card and then go their matching board. Items and followers may be purchased with experience coins or discarded to gain one experience coin. At this time you may also purchase spells that give you extra dice for the turn, extra attacks or heal your wounds.

Horrors enter the game asleep (face-down) depending on their strength they awaken once there are enough minions on their board. After you awaken any horrors that meet the criteria you check for sanity loss. This causes you to lose experience or sacrifice a follower based on the strongest horror in play.

Now it is your turn to fight back. You first choose which cult board you are going to attack. Then you roll the combat dice and may re-roll any die not showing a one. If you roll a one on your Body die results in a wound. If you are wounded you lose one of your two Health die after the combat or sacrifice a follower. When attacking minions you must meet or beat their power with one or more dice. When you attack an awake horror you must roll two, three or four dice combos (depending on the horrors strength). A dice combo is either a run (2, 3, 4) or a set of matching dice (5, 5, 5). Awake Horrors are also more deadly and if you roll a number equal to or less than its dice combo value you take a wound or lose a follower. Sleeping Horrors are easier to kill and just require you to use any dice as long as they equal the horrors dice combo value.

Another thing to remember about combat is protection. Certain cards protect others and must be defeated first. Awake Horrors protect minions and minions protect sleeping horrors and gates.

Killing minions and horrors and destroying gates gets you more experience coins. Minions and gates get you one each and horrors are worth their dice combo values.

If any cult board has five or more minion cards after combat you lose. You win once the cult deck is empty, there are fewer than four minions out and all Awake Horrors are dead.

Quick Review of The Cards of Cthulhu:

The Cards of Cthulhu is a fun solitaire board game that is hard to beat. It can be played as a cooperative game too and both versions are enjoyable.

The components for this game are good. The experience coins are nice metal and the cards and boards are well-made. The art is a bit hit-or-miss. Some is excellent and a few are just ok. There is an art book that seems unnecessary too. The rules are pretty well written and are easy to follow. There are just lots of little rules you might forget your first couple of games. The player aid is very useful and makes playing much easier.

This is a tough game and you should expect to lose a lot. The dice and your card draws can just be really tough. Some followers help you but if you don’t purchase one early you could be in trouble.

The Unspeakable Horrors are really tough and require a four dice combo to beat. Since you only start each turn with three dice you need to purchase spirit dice to defeat them. Making sure you keep sleeping horrors asleep can be hard but is key to winning. And while you concentrate on killing the minions protecting a sleeping horror, minions on other cult boards are starting to pile up.

I like how fast the turns move and once learned how easy the rules are for this game. It can be kinda of random but you do need to decide how best to deal with the incoming minions and horrors.

The Cards of Cthulhu plays fast and though tough is fun. If you are a Cthulhu fan you should try this game out. It is not amazing but is good for playing when your friends aren’t around to play board games. Or you want a fast-playing cooperative board game.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 2 out of 6 (if not playing solitaire)
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6