Fighting over the Shreds of a Fallen World - Cthulhu Wars

The staff here at Gaming with Chuck are long time fans of the horror stories written by and inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.  So it should be no surprise that one of the more recent Kickstarter games being backed is none other than "Cthulhu Wars".

Sandy Peterson (in suspenders, quite proper for an elder statesman of gaming) demoing the game at an H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival

The Kickstarter campaign is here.  Go check it out, even if you don't become a backer, you'll become impressed with the work they have done.

This is a board game, heavily influenced by Sandy Peterson.  His company Green Eye Games is producing the game, and out of the box (with no add-ons) it includes 60 (sixty!) 28mm miniatures.  The sculpts look good, from the promotional videos and pictures on the Kickstarter site, and at Board Game Geek.  See a nice picture of some of the figures here.

Sculpt prototype, from Boardgamegeek.com

The board game is about a number of different factions, each composed of the cultists and creatures aligned to a specific Old One.  It seems that the end of the world is nigh, and the Old Ones have returned to consume what is left of the shattered world.  So the four factions (possibly more, after add-ons or expansions of the game are added in) fight with each other to control the planet.  Sort of an Eldritch Risk kind of game.

One side of a two sided board, also shown on Boardgamegeek.com

 There was another game, an older game.  A game out of space and out of time, penned by a pair of cursed hands belonging to two damned souls descended from an ancient, and corrupted race (John Tynes and Jeff Barber).  That game was called "Creatures and Cultists" and it was from a publisher of Call of Cthulhu adventures and magazines, called Pagan Publishing.

The game eventually ended up in the hands of another company, called EOS Press, and got a facelift from that vile sorcerer from the Plateau of Leng -  John Kovalic.  The game, of course, is a lot of fun, and is also based on the idea of a number of different factions (each serving their own great old one) fighting with each other for the privilege of summoning their own big baddy and destroying the world (devouring human kind in the process).  Loads of fun, but for some reason, I had a lot more fun playing the original, than the EOS version.  Not sure why, maybe there is a rules difference?  Or maybe we have come to expect a different (faster?) experience from our card and board gaming experience, than we did back in 1993.