How Do You Play Evil High Priest?
Evil High Priest is Petersen Games' 2 to 5 player worker-placement game where every cultist races toward the same shared Elder God, competing to look best when it finally wakes. Send your high priest and cultists to gather resources, complete rituals, and sabotage rivals in a game that usually runs about 45 minutes.
Here's the twist that trips people up: you're not each summoning a different monster. Every cult at the table serves the same Elder God, chosen from five Elder God boards packed in the box, so the entity changes from session to session but never within one. You're not building your own win condition from scratch. You're all racing toward the same finish line, and the game rewards whoever plays it best.
What Comes in the Evil High Priest Box?
A cult worth running. The box includes a game board showing cult sites around the world, five Elder God boards (each with its own set of powers), wooden cultist meeples, resource tokens, ritual cards, and the rulebook. Only one Elder God board comes out per game; the other four sit in the box until your next session.
That's a deliberate replayability choice. Swap the Elder God board and the strategy shifts with it, since each one favors a different mix of resources and rituals. Two groups who've played the same core game a dozen times can still be working through unfamiliar territory on a fresh Elder God board.
How Do You Set Up a Game of Evil High Priest?
Quick, honestly. Pick an Elder God board, lay out the world map of cult sites, and give each player a high priest, a handful of cultist meeples, and a small starting stash of resources. Shuffle the ritual deck, set it within reach, and you're ready. There's no lengthy scenario setup or faction draft to argue over before the first turn.
What Happens on Your Turn?
You send workers out and bring resources back. Each turn, players place their high priest and cultists on location spaces to gather what the game calls for, work through ritual cards, and press toward the shared summoning. Reviewers who've played it describe a Sanctum-style home board where you store what you've collected and defend it, since a rival's raid can strip resources you haven't protected. Meeple Mountain's review and GeekDad's writeup both walk through this resource-and-raid loop in more depth if you want the granular turn order before your first game.
Sabotage isn't a side option here; it's baked into the ritual cards themselves. You're watching what your rivals stockpile at the same time you're building your own position, and a well-timed ritual can set another cult back a full turn or more.
How Do You Win Evil High Priest?
The Elder God decides, not a timer. Play continues until the shared Elder God wakes, and at that point the game looks at how much each cult managed to collect and hold onto. Whoever comes out ahead gets named the Evil High Priest. That means defense matters as much as offense: resources you gather but fail to protect from a rival's raid do you no good when the reckoning comes.
Is Evil High Priest Hard to Learn?
No, but it isn't a total beginner's game either. If you've played any worker-placement title, the core loop (place a worker, take an action, watch what everyone else is doing) will feel familiar within a round or two. The rulebook itself leans into the game's dark comedy, which makes a first read genuinely fun rather than a chore. Petersen Games rates it for ages 14 and up, and the reasoning is mostly thematic rather than mechanical. GeekDad's review noted the actual gameplay was light enough for a middle-schooler to pick up fast, with the age rating driven more by the grim, tongue-in-cheek subject matter than by rules complexity.
Two players works fine if that's your group. The disruption mechanics stay sharp head-to-head. Add more cults and the table gets harder to track, which is part of the appeal for players who like a chaotic finish.
How Does the Same Mythos Show Up Across the Petersen Games Catalog?
The Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft's fictional cosmology of ancient, indifferent gods, is public domain material that plenty of publishers draw from. Petersen Games uses it in both Evil High Priest and its flagship Cthulhu Wars, but the two games don't share rules or components, and Petersen Games doesn't claim ownership of the mythos itself, only of its own original designs built on top of it. For background on where that mythos comes from and how widely it's used across fiction and games, Wikipedia's entry on the Cthulhu Mythos is a solid starting point.
Cthulhu Wars is the epic-scale centerpiece: premium miniatures, a sprawling map, sessions that stretch across an evening. Evil High Priest is the shorter, funnier sibling that fits into a 45-minute slot without asking anyone to learn a new universe. A lot of collectors keep both on the shelf for exactly that contrast.
Where Can You Buy Evil High Priest?
Directly from Petersen Games. In-stock orders process within 48 hours (2 business days, Monday through Friday). US orders ship USPS Ground Advantage, typically 2 to 5 business days in transit; Canadian orders go DHL Ground, typically 3 to 7 business days. Shipping rates are calculated at checkout based on destination and package size.
Pick up Evil High Priest at the Petersen Games store and get your cult on the table this weekend. Same Lovecraftian world as Cthulhu Wars, a fraction of the setup time.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many players does Evil High Priest support?
Evil High Priest plays 2 to 5 players. The sabotage and resource-defense mechanics hold up at every count, from a tight two-player showdown to a five-cult free-for-all.
How long does a game of Evil High Priest take?
About 45 minutes once your group knows the rules. The shared summoning gives every turn a reason to move quickly, so games rarely drag.
Do all players summon a different Elder God?
No. Every player at the table races to summon the same Elder God, chosen from five Elder God boards packed in the box. The board you choose changes which entity you're all working toward from game to game, but within a single game everyone is aiming at the same target.
Is Evil High Priest connected to Cthulhu Wars?
Thematically, yes. Both games come from Petersen Games and draw on the same Cthulhu Mythos setting. Mechanically they're separate products: Cthulhu Wars is a large-scale area-control game with premium miniatures, while Evil High Priest is a shorter worker-placement game. You don't need to own one to play the other, and no rules carry over between them.
What age is Evil High Priest rated for?
Ages 14 and up, per the product listing. Reviewers generally describe the mechanics as approachable for younger players too; the rating leans more on the dark, cult-themed subject matter than on rules complexity.
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