What Does This Cosmic Horror Board Game Glossary Cover?
This glossary defines the terms you will run into shopping for or playing a premium cosmic horror board game: general hobby vocabulary like meeple, point salad, and Kickstarter exclusive, plus Cthulhu Wars-specific terms like Great Old One, faction, and Terror, defined precisely so you never confuse one entity type for another.
New collectors run into two problems at once when they start reading about this corner of the hobby. General tabletop slang gets thrown around without explanation, and cosmic horror games layer their own vocabulary on top of it, faction versus Great Old One versus Terror, spellbook versus gate versus Doom. Get those mixed up and a forum thread or a product page stops making sense. Here is the whole list, plain English, no assumed knowledge.
What General Tabletop Terms Should Every Collector Know?
New to premium tabletop games? Start here. These terms show up across the entire hobby, well beyond cosmic horror games.
Centerpiece game
The single game in a collection built to be the visual and experiential focal point of game night. Big board, oversized sculpts, a setup that turns heads before anyone rolls a die. Cthulhu Wars plays this role in a lot of collections; so does Hyperspace.
Asymmetric
A design where players do not start with matched abilities, boards, or win conditions. Each side gets genuinely different tools, so the right move for one player is often the wrong move for another sitting at the same table.
Dudes-on-a-map
Hobbyist shorthand for a game where miniatures or tokens ("dudes") move across a shared map, fighting over territory. Cthulhu Wars is a textbook example: a mounted Earth map with cultists and monsters shifting region to region every round.
Meeple
The small, human-shaped playing piece that gave the hobby one of its most recognizable words. American board-gamer Alison Hansel coined it in November 2000 during a game of Carcassonne, blending "my" and "people," and the term spread through BoardGameGeek from there.
Point salad
A scoring structure built from many small, unrelated point sources rather than one dominant path to victory. You are tossing points together from several categories at once, hence the name.
Kickstarter exclusive (KS exclusive)
A component, miniature, or stretch goal reward available only to backers of a crowdfunding campaign, and never sold at retail afterward. Kickstarter itself launched in 2009 and runs on an all-or-nothing pledge model: if a project misses its funding goal by the deadline, no money changes hands.
Sculpt
The physical, three-dimensional design behind a miniature before it's cast or printed. A good sculpt reads clearly from across a table. Silhouette, pose, and detail all have to survive being viewed from three feet away, not two inches.
Insert
The foam or plastic tray inside a game box that organizes and protects components. On a heavy, component-dense premium game, a well-built insert is the difference between a five-minute teardown and a scavenger hunt at the start of every session.
Stretch goal
An extra reward unlocked during a crowdfunding campaign once total pledges cross a set dollar threshold, on top of the original funding goal. More backers pushing the total up means more content unlocked in the final box.
Table presence
How much visual impact a game creates once it's actually set up: sculpt scale, board size, color, the whole physical footprint. It's the term for the moment a game stops being a box on a shelf and becomes the reason people lean in.
Area control
A scoring and strategy structure where players compete to hold regions on a shared map rather than collect resources or build an engine. Cthulhu Wars runs on area control: a faction's core resources and points come from capturing and holding specific spaces on the board.
Expansion ecosystem
An ongoing line of add-ons built around a core game rather than one sealed box: new factions, monster packs, dice sets. Cthulhu Wars is a clear example, with faction expansions and Great Old One packs releasing well past the O4 core box.
What Do Great Old One, Faction, and Other Cthulhu Wars Terms Actually Mean?
Precision matters here. Faction, Great Old One, and Terror sound interchangeable. They aren't. Each is its own entity class in Cthulhu Wars, and mixing them up is the fastest way to misread a product page or a rulebook.
Great Old One
A colossal, world-threatening entity in cosmic horror fiction, and the central playable figure tied to each Cthulhu Wars faction. The O4 Edition core box has five Great Old One sculpts split across its four core factions: Great Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep (Crawling Chaos), Shub-Niggurath (Black Goat), and two for the Yellow Sign, Hastur and the King in Yellow.
Faction
One of the playable sides in Cthulhu Wars, each with its own units, spellbook, and win path. The O4 core box ships four: Great Cthulhu, Crawling Chaos, Black Goat, and the Yellow Sign. A faction is the whole playable side. It isn't the same thing as a single Great Old One miniature, and it isn't the same thing as a Terror.
Faction expansion
A boxed expansion that adds an entirely new playable faction to Cthulhu Wars, rather than extra Great Old Ones or Terrors for factions you already own. The Sleeper (Tsathoggua, God of Entropy) and the Tcho-Tchos are both faction expansions. The Tcho-Tchos field their own human cultist faction and interfere by worshipping other players' Great Old Ones rather than fielding one of their own.
Neutral Great Old One
A Great Old One not tied to any single faction from the start. Yig, alongside Abhoth, Chaugnar Faugn, Cthugha, and Mother Hydra in Great Old One Pack 1 ($39.99), is recruitable by whichever faction reaches it first during play. Neutral doesn't mean weak. A neutral Great Old One that lands with the wrong player can swing an entire game.
Terror
A unit type separate from both factions and Great Old Ones: powerful, independent monsters not part of any player's starting roster. Quachil Uttaus is the clearest example, a Terror (not a Great Old One) found in the Cosmic Terrors pack ($29.99) alongside the Great Race of Yith and the Dhole, or sold on its own as a standalone blister.
Spellbook
The set of faction-specific powers a player unlocks over a game by meeting in-game conditions. Each faction has exactly one spellbook of its own; the O4 core box ships four, one per core faction.
Gate
A location on the map that a faction builds or captures. Holding gates generates the Power that funds actions, summons, and combat, and often feeds Doom as well, which is why gate control is worth fighting over even when no one's Great Old One is directly threatened.
Doom (Doom Track)
The running score every faction climbs toward across a game. Factions build Doom largely by holding gates and converting earned Elder Signs. Reaching 30 Doom points is what triggers the endgame in Cthulhu Wars, at which point the highest score wins.
Elder Sign
A token a faction earns through its own faction-specific actions, then chooses when to convert into Doom points. Skilled players bank them and reveal on their own timing rather than cashing in immediately. Not to be confused with Elder Sign, the unrelated Fantasy Flight Games dice game; inside Cthulhu Wars, Elder Signs are the currency that decides who wins.
The Yellow Sign
A core Cthulhu Wars faction, not an expansion, led by two Great Old Ones at once: Hastur and the King in Yellow. It is also the name of a literary symbol from Robert W. Chambers' 1895 collection The King in Yellow, decades before H.P. Lovecraft folded Hastur into the wider Cthulhu Mythos.
Twenty-two terms, one throughline: precision matters more in this corner of the hobby than most. A faction isn't a Great Old One. A Terror isn't a faction. A neutral Great Old One belongs to no one until someone claims it. Get the vocabulary right and the rest of the hobby, forum threads, rulebooks, product pages, opens up fast.
If you want to see these terms attached to real components rather than just definitions, the Cthulhu Wars collection at Petersen Games has the O4 core box, faction expansions, Great Old One packs, and Terror packs all in one place. In-stock orders process within 48 hours, with US delivery via USPS Ground Advantage and Canadian delivery via DHL Ground; rates calculate at checkout.
Frequently Asked Questions About Cosmic Horror Board Game Terms
What does Great Old One mean in a cosmic horror board game?
A Great Old One is a colossal, world-threatening entity, and in Cthulhu Wars specifically, the central playable figure tied to a faction. The O4 core box includes five Great Old One sculpts across its four core factions, with the Yellow Sign uniquely fielding two (Hastur and the King in Yellow) rather than one.
What is a faction expansion in tabletop games?
A faction expansion adds an entirely new playable side to a game, with its own units, powers, and win path, rather than just extra pieces for a faction you already own. In Cthulhu Wars, the Sleeper and the Tcho-Tchos are both faction expansions built on top of the four core factions.
What is the difference between a faction, a Great Old One, and a Terror?
A faction is a whole playable side with its own units and spellbook. A Great Old One is the colossal entity tied to a faction, or in some cases, a neutral one recruitable by any faction. A Terror is a separate unit type entirely, an independent monster not tied to any faction's starting roster, such as Quachil Uttaus.
What is a centerpiece game in the board game hobby?
A centerpiece game is the single title in a collection built to be the visual and experiential focal point of a game night, with a large board, standout sculpts, and enough table presence to be the reason people gather around it. Cthulhu Wars is a common example in premium collections.
Is a neutral Great Old One the same as a faction?
No. A neutral Great Old One, like Yig in Great Old One Pack 1, has no faction of its own and isn't aligned with any player at the start of the game. Any faction can recruit it once it becomes available during play, which is different from a faction's own dedicated Great Old One.
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