The Elder Gods are coming and the only way to stop them is to destroy all 4 Gates by using every resource at your disposal! You will only succeed by skillfully deciding which items to keep and discard along your adventure.
In Hand of Cthulhu, players fight through an onslaught of monsters until they reach a Gate to worlds beyond our own. There are 12-16 cards between you and each Gate. Each card is an Encounter that is either a Bane (Monster) or Boon (Event). To fight Monsters, you must use your Items wisely and decide which Items to keep and which ones to discard. Once you get to a Gate, you will attack it and exploit its fractures to destroy it. Once you destroy the fourth gate you have successfully saved our world. But if you ever lose all of your health, you die, and if you lose all of your sanity, you go insane and lose the game!
—description from the designer
- Works well as an in-hand game
- Easy to play
- Great art
- Nice variety in cards
- Fun combat mechanics (weaknesses, specific card types)
- Good time for what it is
- Slightly unclear rules
- Not a strategic masterpiece
- Enemies can get trapped behind items in hand
- Surviving encounters until reaching and defeating a gate
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Combat — Monsters will have ... a lightning bolt effect, which is an immediate effect... the up arrow is going to be on some enemies and it will tell me a bonus I get to my attacks or a penalty I get to my attacks... I see his attacks at the bottom.
- Deckbuilding — survive through all these encounters until you can get to this gate card at the back of the deck.
- Dual wielding — If you get two of the same kind in your hand, you're said to be dual wielding them. And that means when you use them, you don't have to throw them away.
- Fractures — These are called fractures. And the cool thing is when you use them, you don't have to get rid of the item.
- Hand Management — The max number of items you can hold at one time is four.
- In-hand game — a solo inhand game. And ... this is an inhand game where you could play it with just your two hands.
- Item Usage — Each item is an S, W, or O, a spell, a weapon, or an object.
- Resource Management — Uh if you run out of life or sanity or can't defeat a monster quickly enough, you lose.
- Selling items for stats — You can trade in the flamethrower to get plus four to something, plus two to something, and plus two to something. That could be healing health, that could be healing sanity, or it could be drawing more weapons at the beginning of the next round.
- Shop/Selling items — the shop that's going to be something I get to do after I fight the gate. ... the shop is basically where you recharge and heal yourself. ... I can trade in as many items as I want. ... I'm just paying attention to their type or their value here like the 10 and the five.
- Wielding bonuses — And if you can get three or four in your hand, you actually get free combat bonuses for triple or quadruple wielding.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So, what I think of this one, it first of all works very well as an inhand game.
- But the art is great.
- It feels cool when you get to like use a weakness against somebody or use the exact type of card to defeat them.
- So, it's a good time for what it is. It's certainly not like a strategic masterpiece.
- I do wish the rules were slightly clear, although I think that's just me reading them stupidly.