It’s been a rough start for me this week trying to get back to reality after attending Twin Cities Pride all last weekend. I had a blast walking around, taking pictures and seeing everyone being authentic in who they are. I decided to spend my Sunday after Pride writing about this new card game I tried out with friends titled Cultists & Cthulhu. If you read any of my board game reviews, you shouldn’t be surprised as to how much I enjoy any game based off H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. I found this game at Con of the North, a gaming convention I attended back in February. This would be a perfect game to pack for a convention, or to a brewery.

The purple deck is the draw deck, the green deck is the ritual deck. 

Cultists & Cthulhu is a card game where players are trying to roll dice to complete rituals. On a single turn players will draw cards from the purple deck. These types of cards will either be cultists or minus cards which impact another player’s dice roll. Cultists are the most important card in the game because to complete a ritual, you need to have a cultist in play to do so. This is where the game becomes tricky because you can steal cultists from other players. This is how I lost the game because my friend stole my cultist, so I couldn’t complete rituals.

Cultist cards are represented by the leaf symbol above the number. 

Once a cultist is in play, the player has to roll 4’s, 5’s or 6’s to receive ritual tokens to be placed on a ritual card. The twist on this is if you roll at least three 1’s and 2’s in one roll, the cultist goes “crazy” and has to be discarded. Fortunately, I rolled extremely well in the game I played, so this never happened to me. My friend however, had to discard two of her cultists in one game. I like the dice roll aspect of the game because it makes every game different.

The book symbol is the one that says how many ritual tokens needed to complete the ritual. The Cthulhu is how many points that are received once the ritual is completed. 

Winning the game includes completing a ritual which earns points. Each ritual card has a book icon on the bottom left of the card. This is the amount of ritual tokens needed to complete a ritual. The Cthulhu symbol on the right of the card is the amount of points received once the ritual has been completed. The first player to have twenty one points worth of completed rituals wins the game.

Cultists & Cthulhu is a sinister card game that’s perfect for any Lovecraftian fan. Prolific Games, the publisher behind Cultists & Cthulhu, is a local MN based board game company. It gives me a sense of pride to share my love for a board game that was crafted in my state. To purchase Cultists & Cthulhu, head over to Prolific Games online store where you can find the many fabulous card games to add to your game collection.