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 and taking pictures. 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 how much I enjoy any game based on H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. I found this game at Con of the North, a gaming convention I attended in February. This would be a perfect game to pack for a convention, or to a brewery.

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 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 a cultist in play. 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 the rituals.

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 1s and 2s in one roll, the cultist loses their sanity and has to be discarded. Fortunately, I rolled extremely well, 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.

Winning the game includes completing a ritual that earns points. Each ritual card has a book icon on the bottom left. 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 crafted in my state. To purchase Cultists & Cthulhu, head to Prolific Games online store where you can find the many fabulous card games to add to your game collection.