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Beings of ancient evil, known as Old Ones, are threatening to break out of their cosmic prison and awake into the world. Everything you know and love could be destroyed by chaos and madness. Can you and your fellow investigators manage to find and seal every portal in time? Hurry before you lose yourself to insanity.
In Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, you'll experience the classic Pandemic gameplay with an horrific twist that'll have you face twelve Old Ones, each threatening the world with their unique powers. As players take on the roles of investigators attempting to seal a series of portals before monsters of unspeakable horror pour into our world there is, of course, a high risk of the investigators losing their own minds.
Instead of curing diseases like in the original Pandemic, players seal portals and shut down cults in the classic New England fictional towns of Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. Can you and your fellow investigators manage to find and seal every portal in time? Hurry before you lose yourself to insanity and the evil that lurks beneath your feet...
Part of the Pandemic series.
Part of the Pandemic family — see Pandemic for the combined view.
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- Love the Pandemic system and games in it
- Cthulhu theme makes it evocative
- Board design and top-down look is appealing
- Seven investigators provide variety
- Rulebook is short and seems comprehensive; artwork noted as good
- Packaging issues (plastic not separating easily)
- Camera focus issues during unboxing
- Some miniatures have posing/base issues
- Discussion about card art side preference
- Lovecraftian horror with a Pandemic-style cooperative system to seal gates and defeat eldritch threats
- Top-down board showing locations Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Dunwich; investigators exploring gates to stop Cthulhu
- Cooperative, scenario-driven, investigator-based with chaos tokens and relics
- Eldritch
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action economy — Players take four actions per turn.
- Combat / monsters — Encounter shoggoths and cultists; defeat them to progress.
- Combat: Damage Based — Encounter shoggoths and cultists; defeat them to progress.
- Combat: Deck/Hand — There are cultist spawn cards, relic cards, Evil Stirrings cards, and elder sign related items.
- Decks and cards — There are cultist spawn cards, relic cards, Evil Stirrings cards, and elder sign related items.
- hand size limit — Hand limit is seven at all times.
- Movement via gates — Movement and actions are tied to gates/tokens on the map.
- sanity mechanics — If insane, must roll a sanity die; sanity can be regained.
- Set Collection — Goal is to seal all four gates; losing if gates fail or other loss conditions occur.
- Set collection / Gates to seal — Goal is to seal all four gates; losing if gates fail or other loss conditions occur.
- Turn structure with two card draws and an Evil Stirrings event — On a turn, players draw two cards and resolve an Evil Stirrings card.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Cannot wait to get this one played.
- The board looks really cool.
- I absolutely love Pandemic and several games in the Pandemic system.
References (from this video)
- Really cool
- A lot of fun
- Great job
- Liked it more than expected
- Defeating Elder Gods and closing gates
- Arkham environs
- Pandemic
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — cultists that are appearing and you got to destroy the cultists, but then you got the Shoggoths that come and and they're moving around the board
- Card Drafting — You're going around collecting cards and then trying to play the cards in order to close the gates.
- cooperative play — If you like Pandemic, it's a great Pandemic style game.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I love Cthulhu games. I think they're so much fun. I love that world. I've read I think I believe I've read every one of Lovecraft's stories.
- But man, I love this game. It is so much fun. I love the dice, the way you use dice in this game and how you're leveling up, but it's also driving you insane.
- So, there's a lot of replayability with these interactions between these monster boxes and the episodes. Really love Cthulhu: Death May Die. Brilliant game.
- Um Arkham Horror the board game, the second edition, which I played, never really thrilled me. I liked it, I didn't love it.
- my number one Cthulhu Mythos game of all time, Mansions of Madness second edition.
- the second edition has an app. And the app is great cuz it manages all of that stuff.
- It's a really really fun and creepy game.
- great app integration, great minis, great story that comes out of these games, and just a lot of fun.