Which Cthulhu Wars Great Old One Should New Players Learn First?
Great Cthulhu is the easiest Great Old One for a new player to pick up. His Devour ability is a direct action with an obvious payoff, his spellbook order doesn't ask you to track three opponents' plans at once, and his win path is the most legible in the box.
The Black Goat (Shub-Niggurath) makes a strong second faction, the Crawling Chaos (Nyarlathotep) rewards patience once you've played a few rounds, and the Yellow Sign (Hastur) is best saved for later.
That's the short version. Cthulhu Wars packs five colossal Great Old One sculpts and four wildly different factions into one box, and picking the wrong one for game one can turn an exciting first session into a confusing slog. Here's the order that actually works, and why it works that way.
What's the Difference Between a Great Old One and a Faction?
Worth clearing up before the ranking starts, since the two terms get used loosely online. A faction is a playable side at the table, controlled by one player, with its own spellbook, unit roster, and win condition. A Great Old One is the towering figure that leads it, or in some cases a neutral entity with no faction of its own that any player can recruit into their existing force.
The O4 core box ships with four playable factions: Great Cthulhu, the Crawling Chaos (Nyarlathotep), the Black Goat (Shub-Niggurath), and the Yellow Sign (Hastur, also called the King in Yellow). Each gets its own spellbook, so that's four spellbooks in the base game, not six or seven as some older listings claim. The box also includes 5 Great Old One miniatures among its 72 total figures (alongside roughly two dozen cultists and about 35 monsters), which is worth mentioning because you'll see the wrong number floating around forums and even on some retail copy. This guide sticks to the four playable factions, since those are what a new player actually picks between.
1. Great Cthulhu — Start Here, Every Time
Start here. Every time.
Great Cthulhu's signature move, Devour, removes an enemy unit from the board in exchange for power, which gives a first-time player something concrete to aim at from turn one. You don't need to memorize what Nyarlathotep's teleportation trick does or when the Black Goat's fungi spread fastest. You need to build power, look for a good Devour target, and push toward your doom-point threshold. That's a manageable amount to track for a first game.
His Great Old One sculpt is also the most recognizable piece on the table, and that matters more than it sounds like it should. New players anchor faster to a faction when the miniature in front of them matches the character they already know from the mythos, and Cthulhu is the one name almost everyone in the room recognizes before the box is even open.
2. The Black Goat (Shub-Niggurath) — Volume Over Precision
Shub-Niggurath wins by flooding the board, not by making perfect tactical reads. Her ability to breed cheap Ghouls and Fungi lets a new player grab and hold gates through sheer numbers rather than combat finesse, and her doom-point income tends to build predictably once you understand the basic gate economy. That forgiving floor is exactly what a second faction should offer: a different playstyle from your first game, without a punishing learning curve stacked on top.
Where Great Cthulhu teaches direct action and a clear target, the Black Goat teaches board presence and patience with the numbers game. Play her second and the two games together cover a surprising amount of what makes Cthulhu Wars tick.
3. The Crawling Chaos (Nyarlathotep) — Save Him for Game Three
Nyarlathotep can win faster than anyone else in the box, and that's exactly the problem for a first-timer. His Thousand Forms ability moves units around the map without the slow buildup other factions need, which means an experienced Crawling Chaos player can threaten a gate you didn't see coming. His units are fragile compared to the other three factions, though, and his spellbook conditions ask you to plan two or three moves ahead in a way that's hard to do before you've internalized how the other factions actually behave.
He belongs in your rotation, just not your first night. Once you've played Great Cthulhu and the Black Goat and have a feel for how power and gates move around the table, the Crawling Chaos turns into one of the most rewarding factions to pilot. Jump straight to him on night one and you'll likely spend the whole game reacting rather than planning.
4. The Yellow Sign (Hastur): Worth the Wait
Patience pays off, eventually. Hastur's faction, the Yellow Sign, leans on cultists and gate manipulation instead of raw combat or unit volume, and his win condition builds through a slow "capture and control" rhythm rather than a visible power spike. New players tend to underestimate him mid-game because nothing about his board presence looks threatening, and then get surprised when he crosses his threshold.
His spellbooks open up through conditions that are easy to overlook if you're still learning to read the other three factions, and that's exactly why he sits last on this list. Play him fourth, after you've got a feel for what the other Great Old Ones are trying to do on any given turn, and Hastur becomes one of the more interesting factions in the box.
What About the Great Old Ones Outside the Core Box?
Five sculpts, four factions, one core box. That's not the whole world of Cthulhu Wars, though.
Petersen Games sells Great Old One Packs that add neutral entities, Yig and Cthugha among them, that don't lead a faction of their own but can be recruited into any player's existing force for a fresh ability set. Separately, standalone expansion factions exist for players who've outgrown the core four: the Sleeper, led by Tsathoggua and entirely distinct from Great Cthulhu despite the name confusion that pops up online, and the Tcho-Tchos, a human cultist faction with its own playstyle that has nothing to do with the Yellow Sign. None of these ship in the O4 box, and none of them are a good place to start. Get comfortable with the core four first.
Ready to Meet the Core Four?
All four core factions, Great Cthulhu, the Crawling Chaos, the Black Goat, and the Yellow Sign, ship together in the Cthulhu Wars O4 Edition, priced at $249.00 (check the product page for current pricing before you buy). One board, 72 miniatures, four completely different ways to play, and enough depth to keep a group busy for a dozen sessions before anyone needs to think about an expansion.
Once the core four feel like second nature, browse the full Cthulhu Wars collection for the Great Old One packs and expansion factions that fit your table's style.
FAQ: Cthulhu Wars Great Old Ones for New Players
Which Cthulhu Wars Great Old One should a new player learn first?
Great Cthulhu. His Devour ability gives you a direct, easy-to-read action every round, and his spellbook order doesn't require you to already understand what the other three factions are doing. New players consistently find him the fastest to pick up at the table.
What's the difference between a Great Old One and a faction in Cthulhu Wars?
A faction is a playable side at the table, run by one player. A Great Old One is the colossal figure that leads a faction, or in some cases a neutral entity that any faction can recruit. Great Cthulhu, the Crawling Chaos, the Black Goat, and the Yellow Sign are Great Old Ones who each anchor their own faction in the core box.
How many Great Old Ones come in the Cthulhu Wars O4 core box?
The O4 Edition includes 72 miniatures total: 5 Great Old Ones, roughly two dozen cultists, and about 35 monsters, spread across the four core factions. Each of the four core factions gets its own spellbook, for 4 faction spellbooks in the box.
Is the Yellow Sign a core faction or an expansion?
The Yellow Sign, led by Hastur, ships in the O4 core box alongside Great Cthulhu, the Crawling Chaos, and the Black Goat. It's one of the four base factions, not an add-on you have to buy separately.
Should I buy expansion factions before I've learned the core four?
Not right away. Expansion factions and Great Old One packs add real depth, but they assume you already understand the base game's power curve and spellbook pacing. Most experienced players suggest getting several games deep with the core four before adding anything else to the table.
A Note on the Mythos Behind the Miniatures
The Great Old Ones on the table trace back to a shared pool of cosmic horror fiction that Petersen Games doesn't own and doesn't claim to. Cthulhu himself comes from the wider Cthulhu Mythos that H.P. Lovecraft built starting in the 1920s. Nyarlathotep, the literary figure behind the Crawling Chaos, has his own well-documented history in that same body of work, covered in detail on Nyarlathotep's Wikipedia entry. Hastur and the Yellow Sign go back even further, to Robert W. Chambers's 1895 story collection The King in Yellow, later folded into the broader mythos by later writers. Knowing where these characters come from doesn't change how you play the game, but it does explain why the theme lands the way it does at the table.
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