Cthulu: Death May Die Core Set Painted

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Board Games – I feel like I paint a significant amount of Cthulu miniatures. It seems like most every Kickstarter has some variation of everyone’s favorite sleeping god. In this latest batch, I’ve painted up the core set and one expansion for CMON’s Cthulu Death May Die.

This is one of CMON’s massive Kickstarter projects that has multiple expansions as well a gigantic Cthulu statue that will all be crossing my table at some point in the future.

Here’s a summary of the game, which you should be able to track down on Amazon for about $200:

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.

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.

The episodes are all standalone and not contingent on being played in a certain order or with the same players.

Pandemic - Mythos Style

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Board Games – Pandemic is a classic board game that most serious gamers already have in their collection. Having lived through one for the last few years makes the game a little to real for most people to want to bust out for game night. Pandemic: Cthulu helps to solve that problem by porting over the gameplay to a Mythos Theme. Now rather than trying to control the spread of diseases you’re trying to stop the spread of cults to prevent the rise of a terrible evil entity (Hmmm … maybe it still hits close to home for some). As far as I know this is also the first game to feature miniatures, which I painted up in this latest batch.

Arkham Horror - Expansion

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Board Games – I’ve painted up quite a few models for this Fantasy Flight game. The latest batch adds some new heroes and a few monsters. The sculpts are all pretty decent and take paint well. My only honest complaint about the minis is the dumb clunky base. I know in game it serves a functional purpose that makes it easy to see what the monster is, how big it is and it’s basic stats, but in my opinion the base detracts from the model as a whole.

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Shadows of Brimstone - The Monsters

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Shadows of Brimstone - The Monsters

Board Games - When it comes to board games with miniatures there are two – three distinct varieties. First is the pre-assembled or single piece miniature. These pass the "Christmas Morning Test" meaning you don't have to do anything other than open the box to get started playing. The second type are snap together, these models require a little assembly but not necessarily glue or filler to get them in a playable state. The last type requires some significant modeling, gluing and filling just like a standard tabletop miniature game. My current board game project, Shadows of Brimstone falls into that last category.

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Another year older...

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I love December. Having my birthday and christmas in the same month usually means lots of new games. Earlier this month we celebrated both my and my wife's birthdays. Hers tends to fall Thanksgiving weekend so we'll celebrate with family all in one go.

This year I was lucky enough to receive the Myths and Legends expansion for Small World. I'm really looking forward to trying this out as it seems to add a whole new level to the game. As with the original game the art is fun and clever. On the board game front I also received Call of Chthulu LCG and the Chthulu Dice game. The card game seems similar to Magic the Gathering without the collectible aspect. Chthulu Dice is a variation on LRC with different terms and a funky 12-sided die.

Quick side note: Recently I watched Chthulu (2007) this is by far one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Be forewarned it is a giant waste of time. 

On the RPG front I was fortunate enough to receive the Deathwatch core rules and the Rogue Trader: Into the Storm expansion. Both live up to Fantasy Flight's high level of quality and I look forward to eventually nailing down a day each month to run a campaign. RPG's have been notoriously difficult to run with my usual gaming crew but everyone seems interested in this system. It seems like the nature of it will also lend itself well to players being absent for a session.