by Sandy Petersen | Jul 22, 2017 | BLOG, Cthulhu Wars, Design Corner, Sandy's Design Corner | 1343 Views
The Vooniths
Vooniths are an “amphibious horror” referenced by Lovecraft in his tale, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Pretty much nothing else is known of them. I have based my design of the Voonith upon sirens and amphisboenas – these are existing amphibians & reptiles who only have forelegs. So the back half of the Voonith is long & eel-like, while the front part has claws and fangs. Our model shows it rearing up, ready to strike. They cost 3 Power, and only have 1 Combat, which may at first seem puny, but wait, there’s more!
The Voonith is a solitary hunter, and I wanted the in-game version to foster that concept. Therefore, its special ability is that if you roll NO kills in a battle involving your Voonith, add 1 kill to your total. Because of this, the Voonith’s 1 combat die isn’t actually a drawback. If you have 2 Vooniths and roll no kills, you’d get 2 kills for free. And yes, if you have 2 Vooniths in Battle and roll only 1 kill, you get a free kill for your deficit. Basically, each Voonith you have provides a guaranteed kill!
The trick to the Voonith is that they are actually a detriment to a large battle – you’re throwing in a costly unit that only rolls 1 die. But in a small battle, in which you are not sure you’ll get a kill, the Voonith is a boon.
by Sandy Petersen | Jul 19, 2017 | BLOG, Cthulhu Wars, Design Corner, Sandy's Design Corner | 1659 Views
Meet the Ancients!
Once more let’s talk about the Ancients.
First, the basics. They have six acolytes, like everyone else. They also have two types of monsters – the Un-Men and the Reanimated, and get three of each. They also get three Yothans. Uniquely among all factions, the Yothans are Terrors, and they are the ONLY Terror that appears in groups (all the rest are loners). Finally, they have four Cathedrals, their new special building.
FUNDAMENTALS OF BEING ANCIENT
The Ancients have to be extremely sensitive to the other players, and must engage in diplomacy and negotations to an extent previously unknown in Cthulhu Wars.
Like Yellow Sign, you need to travel across the world. In your case, this is to build Cathedrals in the same areas marked with Symbols as Yellow Sign (though you also have to build one Cathedral in an unmarked area). Fortunately, you have an ace up your sleeve – other factions often rather like to share their areas with a Cathedral. But you can’t always rely on this, and you lack the punch of Yellow Sign’s undead army.
Like most factions, each of your creatures has a spellbook dedicated to it. Unlike every other faction, these spellbooks actually make your creature inferior in some way! However, they’re still worth getting for two reasons. First, they make the creature MUCH less expensive, and thus let you have a good combat punch (which you’ll need). Second, you can’t win the game without all six spellbooks!
Your special faction ability is Dematerialization, and is useful in movement. Each Doom phase, select one area in which you have units. Move any or all of those units to one other selected area, anywhere on the map. In play, you’ll find this useful not only for planned attacks, but also for building your Cathedrals.
YOUR MONSTERS
The Un-Men have a Combat of 0. Once you get their Festival spellbook, you can summon them for Cost 0 as well, which is a great deal. Unfortunately, when you do this, you must choose an enemy to gain 1 Power. So you may not want to do this too much in the early game.
The Reanimated have a Combat of 2, and when you get their Mindless spellbook, their cost drops to 1 apiece, which is a real bargain. Their only weakness is that they cannot Move, Battle, or Capture unless non-Reanimated unit of yours is in the area, to give them commands. This is not often a problem, because you’ll want to accompany them with Un-Men or cultists most of the time.
The Yothans are your most powerful units. Not only are they resistant to many spellbooks since they are Terrors, but they have a Combat of 7! (That’s more than Cthulhu! And you have three of them!) Their spellbook of Extinction means they only cost you 3 Power, but gives them the serious drawback that when they are killed, they go back into the box, and can never be re-summoned again.
Naturally enough, some players freak out over these weaknesses and try to work around them. But the far cheaper price of getting the spellbooks far outweighs their disadvantages. Even the Yothan’s dire Extinction is not so terrible – usually you won’t need to use them in combat until the last turn or two, and if you are able to pace out your losses over time, all is well. To be frank, if you lose your last Yothan near the end of the final turn, who cares? You won’t need him again, and really, if he died in battle, his 7 dice may well have done the job you summoned him for.
THE CATHEDRALS
Cathedrals must be constructed by your Cultist. Unlike Gates or Desecrations, you don’t have to keep a unit in the Area to continue to gain a Cathedral’s benefit, and they can be abandoned upon completion.
Cathedrals cost either 3 or 1 Power to complete, depending on whether they are adjacent to another Cathedral (they’re cheaper when NOT adjacent). So your first Cathedral only costs 1, but then you’re often better off moving a unit two areas away before building the next. Fortunately, your Dematerialization ability lets you move multiple units for free. Take advantage of it.
The Cathedrals serve two important purposes. First, no less than FOUR of your spellbooks’ requirements are tied to building Cathedrals! So you need to hop on this right away. Second, three of your spellbooks are specifically tied to your Cathedrals. These are:
Worship Services – in Gather Power, you earn 1 Power for each Cathedral that shares an area with an enemy Gate. That enemy also gains 1 Power. This is not only a source for extra Power for you, but serves as a tool to help you “get in the door” when trying to build a Cathedral in an enemy’s area. It’s best if you don’t build all your Cathedrals so as to benefit a single enemy, though, because it’s best for you to split up this power boost among multiple foes. This spellbook does also make your Cathedral areas into targets for battle, which is entertaining and instructive.
Consecration – this lets you get Elder Signs when you do a Ritual of Annihilation. I nakedly admit this is here for balance purposes, so the Ancients won’t fall behind in the Elder Sign sweepstakes. But it works, and gives the Ancients interesting choices. If they have 1-3 Cathedrals in play, they get 1 Elder Sign. If they have all 4 Cathedrals, they get 2 Elder Signs. This means that an early-Cathedral strategy is viable, but costly in terms of Power.
Unholy Ground – this is your terror weapon. If a Cathedral is in the battle area, you can choose to remove ANY of your Cathedrals after the battle. This eliminates one enemy Great Old One from the battle. The general effect in-game is that enemy Great Old Ones try to stay away from your Cathedrals, except for Cthulhu of course (nothing fazes him).
But there is another, subtler effect. When you remove a Cathedral, typically this denies another player his free point of Doom phase Power. This also lets you re-build that Cathedral in an area controlled by a more amenable player, as well as punish (if only slightly) an enemy.
by Sandy Petersen | Jul 19, 2017 | BLOG, Cthulhu Wars, Design Corner, Sandy's Design Corner | 1108 Views
Cthulhu Wars Faction Development
There are a lot of considerations that go into developing a Cthulhu Wars faction. So much so that I’ve only done it 9 times in 5 years! (By comparison, I developed 17 factions in just over 18 months for Age of Empires II.)
Some of these considerations are sort of “unwritten rules”, which I would probably be willing to break if the result seemed worth it. Others are hard-and-fast and I would never violate them. While I don’t have time or space to go over every piece of the puzzle in developing a faction, I can throw out a few general rules, some rather simplistic, and others more subtle.
Faction Monster Structure
One of the fundamental aspects of a faction is its structure in terms of what monsters are available to it. If you look at the 9 factions I’ve done so far, you’ll notice that every single faction has a different arrangement of monsters at each price level. Most factions have a cost 1, cost 2, and cost 3 monster. Let’s look at how this breaks down for every faction:
- Great Cthulhu – 4/2/2
- Crawling Chaos – 3/3/2
- Black Goat – 2/4/3
- Yellow Sign – 6/4/0
- Opener of the Way – 0/4/3/2 (the top end monster costs 4, and there are no cost 1 monsters)
- Sleeper – 2/3/4
- Windwalker – 4/0/4
- Tcho-Tchos – 0/6/0
- Ancients – 3/3/3
I did it differently in every case, and this wasn’t arbitrary – the number of monsters in each category is always carefully considered and crafted for that faction’s needs. For example, let’s take Great Cthulhu – 4 Deep Ones is the perfect number to provide a sort of dynamic balance for his cultist management (playing off Dreams & Devolve against each other). He “only” has 2 Shoggoths, but you really only need 1 in any particular battle, thanks to the nature of Absorb. And those who are experienced with Cthulhu know that if he had 3 Starspawns instead of 2, he would be way too dangerous. He’s severe even as it stands. In the same way, I have had beginning players ask me why I only gave Black Goat 2 of those puny “useless” ghouls. I won’t answer this here – ask any experienced player what kind of nightmare scenario would ensue if Black Goat had just one more ghoul!
Spellbook Requirements
Every requirement of a particular faction is different from every requirement of every other faction. This is one of those “hard-and-fast” rules I referred to. Yes some of them seem similar – for example, you always get a spellbook for awakening your Great Old One (another hard-and-fast rule). But of course Great Old Ones are … different. Sure both Tsathoggua and Yog-Sothoth earn you a spellbook when you finally plop them down, but the steps you take to get to that point don’t compare.
Some spellbooks at first glance seem related, upon consideration are not as close. For example, Great Cthulhu gets a spellbook for controlling 3 Gates in the Ocean, while Crawling Chaos gets a spellbook for controlling any 3 Gates. But in actual play they cause different behavior in their owners, plus they have differing alternate requirements (for Cthulhu, any 4 Gates in the Ocean, and for Crawling Chaos if he reaches 12 Power).
Spellbook requirements are also a useful tool for forcing factions to behave in a desired manner. For example, Black Goat’s requirements force her to move her units out and around and mix it up with the enemy. In the long run, this is also good for Black Goat as a faction, so when a beginner plays her, he gets the idea that she is expansionist.
Spellbooks
I didn’t just create spellbooks that I thought sounded neat, or powerful. I wanted these spellbooks to fit into the faction’s milieu, and seem unique to them – crated specifically for their needs. Two guides I generally followed were to give a faction’s units something special.
For example, of Cthulhu’s 6 spellbooks, there is one each for their Deep Ones, Shoggoths, and Starspawn. He has two spellbooks which mention Cthulhu, and these are actually set in a kind of opposition to each other. One (Y’ha Nthlei) makes you want to keep Cthulhu alive. The other (Submerge) affects how he moves and fights and tends to put him in harm’s way. In this manner, players can craft their own strategy, balancing these against one another. Of course, this is a relative thing – no faction in Cthulhu Wars should ever be truly passive – but there is a difference between Cthulhu relentlessly attacking at every chance, and engaging in a couple of key strategic attacks per turn, then putting Cthulhu somewhere safe for the Gather phase. Both of these strategies can work – you just have to know what you’re doing.
I also try to give a faction some abilities or spellbooks that really makes other player’s eyes bug out when they first hear it. It makes that faction’s player feel cool and empowered and just makes everything about that faction more fun. The “cool” spellbook doesn’t even have to be that most important or most-used. For example, when I am explaining why Opener is neat to Cthulhu Wars players who are asking about the faction expansions, I always mention that Yog-Sothoth IS a gate. They immediately understand why that is amazing. When I add to this that his faction can move gates around, and summon units at other people’s gates, and their mind boggles at the greatness of Opener, plus they start to realize that Opener is a highly-themed faction, that all works according to that theme.
Something New
Because one of the most appealing aspects of Cthulhu Wars is the amazing asymmetry of the factions, with every faction I have to think up something new and cool. Windwalker has the Horde Army under control, so I will never do another faction with that as their theme. (Yellow Sign has a horde, too, but no one is really afraid of it in battle.)
For the Ancients I decided that the cool new thing would be to make their spellbooks actually WEAKEN their monsters – no faction yet has had that feature! And of course I gave them their cathedrals – no other faction has ever had the ability to Build a structure beyond a Gate (unless you count Yellow Sign’s Desecrations).
In another example of how my mind works, early on, I feared that the Ancients would be vulnerable to capture by enemy Great Old Ones (since they had no ruler of their own), and this would be problematic. So one of their first spellbooks gave them the ability to recruit back a cultist who had been captured, thus evading the inevitable sacrifice in the Gather phase. This was a cool ability, but in the end I decided to drop it. Not least because both the Tcho-Tchos AND Windwalker already had anti-capture spellbooks of their own. I also decided that it was way more thematic to make the Ancients vulnerable to such capture. If they don’t like it, they can defend themselves with diplomacy, Cathedrals, and their mighty terrors. This puts the Ancients on the knife’s edge, which is fun. They must be daring, yet not overreach.
Also, in the early stages, I had the Un-Men be cultists instead of monsters – they were not capturable however, because of their gaseous form. This was kind of cool, but then it led to all kinds of complicated FAQs and problematic rules issues. Making them monsters solved all that. And also, once more, had the desirable effect of leaving the Ancients vulnerable, yet dangerous.
Well that’s enough for now. I hope it was useful.
by Sandy Petersen | Jul 17, 2017 | BLOG, Cthulhu Wars, Design Corner, Sandy's Design Corner | 1152 Views
Whence the Ancients?
The Ancients are the new faction for Onslaught 3. They are a human-oriented faction, and are particularly unusual, because they don’t have their own Great Old One. The Tcho-Tchos are, of course, also a human-oriented faction, but play quite differently from the Ancients.
Some fans have expressed curiosity about the origin of the Ancients. Lovecraft once ghost-wrote a story called “The Mound” for a Zealia Bishop. No doubt she provided him with some of the plot (for example, it is one of the few Lovecraft stories with something approaching a love interest), but HPL took and ran with her ideas, and added a massive amount of depth.
Now, I won’t defend “The Mound” in terms of its quality as a horror tale – like Lovecraft’s other rewrites, it is crippled by the pedestrian nature of his erstwhile collaborator’s ideas. But, it is a treasure trove of concepts which can be adapted to a gaming setting.
In brief, deep below the earth is the colossal blue-lit cavern of K’n-Yan. There dwell a race of humans (of Amerind descent), who are highly advanced scientifically, but exceedingly decadent in their ethics and morals. They have access to genetic engineering, are able to transform humans into plasma-like gaseous entities, and reanimate the dead. (They also hold torture sessions in colosseums with audiences of thousands.)
My concept is that when the Earth starts to fall apart at the start of Cthulhu Wars, the Ancients seize the opportunity to return to the surface in an attempt to thwart the Great Old Ones, and rule the Earth for their own good pleasure. Now, you can portray this depraved, but effective society in Cthulhu Wars.
They have four unit types, and a unique building.
ACOLYTES
Their acolyte cultist functions much as anyone else’s. To celebrate their tech-savvy nature, we have given them a unique cultist, who is dressed futuristically, rather than in hooded robes. She brandishes an ominous-looking eye-like device. She is based on the uniforms from one of my favorite science-fiction movies of the 60s – Planet of the Vampires, by the genius Mario Bava. (As a kid this movie scared me so much I tried to crawl under my chair at the theater.)
THE UN-MEN
The Un-Men were once human enough. They are taken from the ranks of madmen and criminals (and Lord knows what crimes are dire enough to deserve this fate among the sordid Ancients!). The Ancients use their science to transform the victim into a gas-like form, and then assign them as guards, scouts, and spies. At first, the Un-Men retain their former appearance, though of course they are far more elastic and mutable. But over time, as they lose their memories of what it was like to be truly alive, the Un-Men degenerate into a parody of humankind, and eventually become wholly monstrous. While they cannot easily interact directly with solid matter, the Un-Men still retain potent psychic abilities, can read minds, and can drive victims insane. THE
REANIMATED
The Ancients often need a more … solid … guardian than the immaterial Un-Men. They have a method of restoring a sort of pseudo-life to a corpse – or even a partial corpse – and are known to attach machinery and electronics to the newly-animated form to make it more effective. Often they use deceased victims of their torture sessions as raw material for their Reanimated specimens.
In “The Mound”, they often just use unmodified corpses, but I reasoned that in the tough environment of Cthulhu Wars, the Ancients would take care to upgrade their living dead warriors with weaponry and defenses – they have to face down terrifying shoggoths, byakhee, and worse!
THE YOTHANS
Deep below the blue-lit cavern of K’n-Yan is the red-lit cavern of Yoth. Lovecraft is quite clear that at one time this was inhabited by a race of intelligent reptiles, though now extinct. I have posited that a few of them are left (since such prehistoric lingerers are common in HPL’s works), and they are working with the Ancients, whether willingly or coerced, it matters little.
Because these are extinct reptiles, I decided they must be gigantic. Because they are from Lovecraft’s tales, I decided they must be hideous. You must decide for yourself how well we succeed in portraying them (but I really like these guys).
THE CATHEDRALS
The Ancients had no “state religion”, but worshiped a wide variety of great old ones, including even Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, and so forth. Though such worship was often banned (no doubt out of fear of strengthening their potential rivals), it was never actually stamped out.
The Ancients, uniquely among all factions, are able to use the Create Gate Action to construct something besides Gates – namely, their Cathedrals. These are only in part areas of worship – they also hold technology, computers, and genetically- and surgically-modified workers to extend and confirm the sway of the Ancients over the surface world.
Like Gates, Cathedrals can’t be moved once placed (since they are not Gates, they are not vulnerable to Opener’s “Beyond-One” ability or other gate-affecting effects). These structures help the Ancients to substitute (partly) for their atheistic lack of any Great Old One.
The bottom line is that the Cathedrals are NOT some kind of “substitute” for a Great Old One. They are quite different, and serve different purposes. However there is a bit of overlap. For example, the Ancients have to pay between 4-10 Power over the course of the game to get their Cathedrals placed, which is comparable to a Great Old One’s price. But the real value of the Cathedrals comes in with their spellbooks, which I will now examine in some detail:
- Worship Services – This spellbook takes effect in the Gather Power phase. For each Cathedral that shares an Area with an enemy faction, you earn 1 Power, and so does that faction. This tends to encourage you to place your Cathedrals in enemy lands, and of course likewise encourages that enemy to let you do so unmolested. Free power is free power.
- Unholy Ground – Their signature spellbook. If a battle happens in an area containing your cathedral, you can destroy a cathedral (from anywhere) post-battle to eliminate an enemy Great Old One that was in the battle. This is pretty scary for your enemies, and means their Great Old Ones tend to avoid your Cathedral areas.
- Consecration –If you have a Cathedral when you perform a Ritual of Annihilation, gain 1 Elder Sign. If you have all four Cathedrals, gain 2 Elder Signs.
The fundamental dialectic for the Ancients is that their Unholy Ground spellbook has to be balanced off against their Worship Services and their Consecration spellbooks. Worship Services tends to make you want to put ALL your Cathedrals in enemy-held areas. But then you can’t use them to defend yourself against enemy Great Old Ones! Also, if you sacrifice a Cathedral to save yourself from Ithaqua (or whoever), then you might not have all four when you need to Ritual next, so this costs you an Elder Sign.
If you are forced to destroy a Cathedral using Unholy Ground, typically you don’t want to destroy the Cathedral actually in the Area where the fight just happened, because that’s your key site of vulnerability. This means you have to destroy a Cathedral in someone else’s area, which means you’ll need to hike back over there to replace it. Or at least hike SOMEWHERE to replace that Cathedral, or do without. The King in Yellow has to travel all over creation, but at least once he’s placed a Desecration it stays put.
All of this means that the Ancients can’t just turtle in a corner and feel safe, unless their opponents are really passive. You have to get out there are constantly interact, and your Cathedrals are a key path and reminder that you must do so.
by Sandy Petersen | Jul 17, 2017 | BLOG, Cthulhu Wars, Design Corner, Sandy's Design Corner | 1364 Views
Let’s talk about Dire Cthulhu
Why is there even a Dire Cthulhu? Well, our original Cthulhu sculpt is creepy, and terrific. But something about it always bothered me – Lovecraft describes Cthulhu as … corpulent. And our classic sculpt is pretty svelte. I guess he works out.
Of course this doesn’t mean Cthulhu is obese – he is a shapeshifter with every ounce of his flesh, which means he doesn’t actually have fat deposits in the traditional sense. But what I wanted was to have a Cthulhu who was more beefy – not fat, but tough, like a bear or a Russian weightlifter. I have nothing against lean, hungry great old ones – in fact I have plenty of them in the game (Nyarlathotep, Ithaqua, King in Yellow). I just wanted Cthulhu to be a Big Guy in every way.
So now, with Dire Cthulhu, I have it.
by Sandy Petersen | Apr 13, 2016 | BLOG, Cthulhu Wars, Design Corner, Sandy's Design Corner | 1546 Views
Introducing the Tcho Tchos
The Tcho-Tcho faction faces numerous decisions throughout the game, and requires planning. Should you accumulate High Priests or expend them to gain immediate Power? Which enemy Start Areas should you target? It is almost impossible to gain all of your spellbooks until turn 4 at the earliest, so in what order do you take them? Your choices affect not only you, but other factions, who will be vying to discourage your attention.
Your only spellbook available in the first Action phase is the one for removing your starting Gate (not necessarily recommended). Since you’ll need a High Priest to Awaken Ubbo-Sathla, one of your actions should always be to recruit a High Priest. You now have to choose between trying to create a Gate or recruiting a second High Priest for your first turn’s activities. Remember that having an extra High Priest lets you jumpstart your second turn with 12+ Power (by sacrificing him), giving you a slight leg up on the other players, even those who have two Gates.
You are weak defensively at first, but enemies are typically reluctant to attack an Area containing your High Priests (due to Martyrdom). If they don’t send in Great Old Ones, you can often handle riff-raff with Proto-Shoggoths.
In the first Doom phase take your first spellbook, for Awakening Ubbo-Sathla. If you take Hierophants as your reward, you’re set up for 5 free High Priests over the rest of the game, which will be amazingly useful.
You have a major power advantage in the early game, because you normally spend 0 Power on your Great Old One. You can use this offensively not only to capture or build Gates, but to place your Units in enemy Start Areas to harass them with Tablets of the Gods.
As the game goes on, your Faction loses steam, so you eventually are fighting a rear guard action, clinging to your remaining Gates as long as possible. It may be worth sacrificing multiple High Priests in the Doom phase to afford a Ritual at a critical time. Properly using and recycling High Priests is key to your success. Be sure to keep a sharp eye out and notice when people are performing Rituals of Annihilation, so you can seek your Sycophancy reward.
