^[1]

In Cultists & Cthulhu you lead a Cthulhu cult bent on completing nefarious rites while beset by incompetent underlings, meddling kids, and imminent madness.

Cultists and Cthulhu 2nd Edition ^[1] was designed by William Sininger and John Harris, and is illustrated with full-color, entertaining art by Steve Robbins. The cards are full of geek culture references including Meddling Kids, LARP-ER, We Have Cookies, and several nods to popular Cthulhu Mythos tales by HP Lovecraft. The components are well made and include cute, little tentacle meeples and Ritual dice. Steve Robbins’ Lovecraftian art adds a healthy dose of humor and helps keep the gameplay light and fun.

Inside the box you’ll find:

* 82 Cult cards
* 28 Ritual cards
* 25 tentacle tokens
* 5 custom ritual dice
* 2 custom madness dice
* Rules sheet

Note: all of the components fit neatly back in the box after the game is over, which is an important detail not every game publisher seems to be aware of…

Setting up the 20-minute game for 2-8 players only takes a minute. All of the players start the game with three Cult cards, then roll the ritual dice to see who goes first.

Play begins with Ritual cards, either from the player’s hand or if they don’t have any, they draw from the Ritual deck. After that, they draw a Cultist card and play one card from their hand to various effects. Finally, the player rolls to Incant, which triggers a Ritual they have in play.

Various cards affect whether or not a player can complete a Ritual, including how many Cultists they have in front of them and certain other card effects from Sacrifices (can only be used once and then discarded), Books (also can only be used once, plus only if the Player has a Cultist in play), and Negatives (which can reduce the number of dice the Player has to work with).

When you’re playing the game, make sure you use the Renfield Rule. Though this rule is named after a character from Bram Stoker’s Dracula for some reason…it is a good rule to have in the game. Sometimes, the randomness of the cards drawn can block a player’s actions on their turn. This rule allows a player, who’s stuck with a bad hand, to discard their hand and draw three new cards instead. They’ll skip the rest of their turn, but having new cards can help them in the next round.

Once a Player completes a Ritual that card is set aside and kept for its value. The first player to achieve a total of 21 points in successfully-completed Rituals wins.

At first, the game can seem overwhelming because several variable cards are in play and Players have to plot out different stages before they get to roll dice. However, once you start playing Cultists & Cthulhu 2nd Edition, you’ll pick up the flow quickly. To help you learn how to play, the cards are printed with simple instructions.

If you’re looking to add a little Ia! Ia! in your life, Cultists and Cthulhu 2nd Edition ^[1] is a fun, quick card game published by Jeff Tidball’s Prolific Games ^[2].

This review of Cultists and Cthulhu 2nd Edition was written by Monica Valentinelli and contains Amazon affiliate links. A complementary copy of the game was provided by the publisher.