Into the De(ath)pths: A Deep Dive into Cthulhu: Death May Die, Part V: The Nasty Neighbors

The real reason that everyone's playing this game, the Great Old Ones are a mix of difficulty and minions, but all seem to stick pretty close to their literary themes.

The central focus of the "Cthulhu Mythos" has always been the Elder Ones/Great Old Ones/Ancient Ones/Outer Gods/call them what you will. Yes, there's active debate on various fora about how Azathoth is an "Outer God", while Cthulhu is a "Great Old One." In the same way that the Yithians- spacefaring aliens -would be seen by most regular people as some kind of demon and would have been seen that way in all of the centuries before this one (Anyone ever read Childhood's End? Anyone? Bueller?), it really doesn't matter. All you need to know is that the biggest mini on the map is the thing that you have to defeat if you want to win the game, no matter what it's called. But the actual name of each of these things is extremely important, especially given the meta lore that has grown up around the game in terms of the difficulty of each GOO (which I am going to continue to call them.) It was kinda the same in 2nd Edition Arkham Horror, where the choice of GOO would often color how the game went and whether you'd pull off a victory. It's even moreso the case in Cthulhu: Death May Die, since each one of them not only brings their own unique abilities to bear when they advance on the Summoning track (and, in the case of Nug and Yeb, on their Influence track, as well) but also a unique monster that you don't get to see anywhere else unless you're squaring off with the demon god in question. So, we're going to proceed in rough chronological order, which begins with the two that are probably the most famous among non-Lovecraft fanatics and take a look at how they shift the game, how tough they are, and maybe even who's the most fun to seal behind a portal. One atmospheric note: I never liked the idea of fighting the respective dark god directly in Arkham Horror. The idea of fighting back against something that you could barely comprehend with a knife and a shotgun just struck me as not only wrong, in general, but also very non-Lovecraftian. Consequently, I appreciated that, like The Others, Daviau and Lang overtly declare that in this case you're slugging it out with simply an avatar of the god in question, which at least makes it seem more approachable as a concept.

Cthulhu-

First appearing in his namesake story "The Call of Cthulhu" in Weird Tales in 1923, the big man himself has shown that he's actually one of the tougher opponents to face in a game of DMD, which seems appropriate. In Thilo's sheet, his results at any player count aren't that much above 50%, although he does get easier at 4 and 5 players. Part of that is likely because of his abilities which produce an almost unending stream of Cultists materializing at all of the R'lyeh tokens on the board, which will never go away. Plus, each time he advances, there are more R'lyeh tokens and, thus, more Cultists to be appearing. If you have enough people with advanced talents like Brawling, Cultists are and remain chaff to be swept away. But if you have fewer people, it can become tough to keep up with the numbers. In his last two phases, he begins by simply draining Sanity from all the Investigators on the board and his final phase makes everyone discard all of their Item and Companion cards, so if you were leaning on those things in an episode up to that point, you have to fly solo once those last 12 wounds appear. He comes out swinging harder than a lot of other GOOs, too, as he starts with 2 black and 2 green dice and adds another 2 green and another black by the end.

Cthulhu brings a single Star Spawn with him who has 3 black dice and when attacking or being attacked in a R'lyeh space adds 2 tentacles/Madness to every roll. So you can see that the theme here is driving as many people insane as possible by the end of the game and it does happen pretty regularly. However, one downside, similar to the Shoggoth, is that there are only 2 of 8 Mythos cards (Star Spawn!) that summon it, so while the risk of Sanity loss is present, it might not be with the (ahem) star monster inflicting it. As always, the loss of Sanity also eventually means a sharp increase in power, so the upside of that risk is being able to take huge chunks out of the Star Spawn's 7 wounds and Cthulhu's 12. But the rest of his Mythos cards stay in theme, as 6 of the 8 involve potential or definite Sanity loss, based on the presence of either the Star Spawn or R'lyeh tokens and 3 of them move Cultists toward you, as well. I think it's this consistency of theme and mechanisms that make him such a challenge. After all, you often are grateful to turn up Madness symbols on the dice in the early game, only to come to regret some of that in the later game and few GOOs emphasize this more than the big man. It's that consistency of theme, as well, that makes him so entertaining, as people playing through a Lovecraft story should be going insane. It's basically the undercurrent of everything the man ever wrote. Our games against Cthulhu have always been both challenging and entertaining and I'm never averse to adding him to the table.

Hastur-

He Who Shall Not Be Named is probably best known in recent years for his literary connection to the city of Carcosa, through the play The King in Yellow, which is also a title ascribed to Hastur, although there are differing interpretations of how that all works which is highly appropriate in the Lovecraft Mythos (i.e. there is no "canon" here, Jedi freaks), but he's actually only mentioned once in Lovecraft's tales in "The Whisperer in Darkness", while he first appeared in literary form in Ambrose Bierce's "Haïta the Shepherd" and Hastur was later listed as the name of a city in Robert W. Chambers' "The Yellow Sign" and "The Repairer of Reputations" in a collection entitled The King in Yellow. In other words, most of what we imagine about the character these days came from sources pre-Lovecraft that were developed post-Lovecraft. Appropriately, unlike the rest of the big bads, Hastur doesn't bring monsters with him, but instead more deadly Cultists known as Hastur Disciples which, again, is perfectly in theme, since the whole essence of the character through years and stories is that he drives people to madness not just in general, but to make them part of the aforementioned play. I think CMON's art department could have played into that a bit more by not presenting the Disciples all armed with tommy guns, but whatevs. Those Disciples come with 3 green dice each and, if they wound you, give you the choice of either summoning a Cultist or taking a Yellow Sign token. The collection of those tokens becomes quite the personal problem after a while, as you might expect, since Hastur doles them out every time he advances, as well as spamming Cultists and Disciples all over the board. Pretty soon, you're just picking up another Yellow Sign at the end of each turn.

Why is that bad? Well, in his first physical form (Stage II), all monsters and Cultists gain a green die if you have 2 or more Yellow Signs and his Mythos deck is oriented around them, too... but not as much as Cthulhu and R'lyeh. 3 of 8 cards just move Disciples toward you while another just moves a Cultist. But two of them- The King in Yellow and Naming the Nameless -actually activate the ability of Hastur's final form, which is to roll a black die for each Yellow Sign token you have and take a wound for each success and lose 1 Sanity for each tentacle result. This is where the tokens really start to become a burden. He also comes out at a moderate level of personal threat, starting with 3 green dice, but ramps up quickly at Stage III with an additional 3 black dice, adding a final green die at the end stage. But when the threat is mostly embodied by 2 wound Cultists, yellow or not, and a random die roll which could turn out to be negligible, it makes Hastur one of the easier GOOs to deal with. The Investigators' win rate is at its lowest at 5 players (61%) but at its highest at 4 (73%), which is among the highest in the game. The menace of the Yellow King remains subtle and our encounters with him reflect that. I'd have hope for a more overbearing build-up in the presence of the Yellow Sign, but I know that those kinds of things can often be considered "unfun" in co-op games, so I get why they tried to make it a little less onerous, especially in the opening box.

Black Goat of the Woods-

That's a marked contrast to Black Goat, who is almost universally regarded as the toughest GOO in the game. Now, let me state up front that I totally understand the decision to represent this entity with a nickname of its original name, which is one of Lovecraft's more obvious racist references (Shub-Niggurath.) However, I don't understand CMON's decision to show the figure as male, when Shub has always been depicted as female (Mother of a Thousand Young) and I also don't understand why the monsters that come with it are called Dark Spawn, rather than their original Dark Young (as in, Mother of a Thousand...) Both of those choices strike me as really odd, not least because there aren't any GOOs in the game that depict as female (at least until Atlach-Nacha finally arrives.) But Shub's origins are also kind of murky, given that she's never actually seen in Lovecraft's tales, but only mentioned; the first time being in a story entitled "The Last Test" which HPL co-wrote with Adolphe de Castro as a revision of one of de Castro's previous works. Anyway, what makes BG so difficult is partially the Spawn, since they have 3 wounds and are one of those "if they take a wound, summon another one into the space" type beings. They only attack with 1 green and 1 black, so they're not huge threats, but they just keep (ahem) spawning, not least because every time BG advances, he summons a Spawn and then deals a wound to everything in that space. So, in essence, he summons two Spawns, both of which will be able to attack, since Mythos happens before the safe space check. Also, like Cthulhu, BG comes out swinging, with 2 green and 2 black dice, and then adds 2 more green and another black in his next stage, but at least doesn't add anything in the final stage.

But that's OK because his later stages summon all the Spawn on the board to his space if he takes wounds, then he deals a wound to each figure in his space and adjacent spaces (for all you Marksman types), and finally can't take wounds when monsters or Cultists are still alive around him. So, it turns into quite the slugfest and if you don't have Investigators with some way to resist (like Toughness), it can get overwhelming right quick. On top of that, Mythos cards like Dark Immolation mimic his abilities (dealing 1 wound to each Dark Spawn on the board and placing a Fire token in its space for good measure), while others like From the Book of Eibon and Dark Spawn Strike! keep a steady flow of Black Goat's favorite servants getting up in your business. It means that dealing with BG and Co. is really a measure of how much combat you can create successfully (i.e. one-shotting a bunch of 3 wound monsters as often as possible) and whether you can survive the constant plinks of damage from them and the GOO itself. The win rate for 2 Investigators doesn't sound that bad at 60%, until you notice that it descends sharply from there to 47%, 39%, and 22%(!) at 5 players; the worst in the game by some distance, although the sample size is a bit smaller than others (32 recorded games.) I think that, like Cthulhu and Hastur, this GOO has stayed right in theme with the premise presented by Lovecraft and contributors, in that the Mother of a Thousand Young keeps flooding the board with her children and forces you to deal with them before you can get to her... uh, him... it. Whatever.

Yog-Sothoth-

Flipping things on their head again, we come to the GOO that is widely regarded as the easiest and Thilo's stats reflect it, with the lowest win rate at 68% and ranging as high as 73%. Our games match this assessment, as we've rarely felt threatened by The Key and the Gate. That kind of pains me, as I've long thought of Yog as my favorite of Lovecraft's GOO creations. Demonic Mr. Bubble is my favorite faction in Cthulhu Wars and it has always been the most fascinating to me, largely for its lack of understood form. This is the embodiment of the "things we can't comprehend" that is one of the baselines of Lovecraft's fiction. And, yet, in DMD, he's kind of a pushover. (He's also the smallest box of any of the GOOs. The indignity only grows. Or shrinks.) First named in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", Yog becomes a central figure in "The Dunwich Horror" and goes on to become a mainstay of the entire Mythos, causing Lovecraft to refer to those Mythos as "the Yog-Sothothery" at one point. Yog is about summoning extra gates, which is great in principle, since it means more spawning points for bad guys and since whatever is summoned at a Yog gate is also summoned at a regular gate, you conceivably could have a board swarming with enemies. But the problem is that they're usually mostly Cultists, since Yog's other creature is his son, Wilbur Whateley. That means that there's only 1 of Wilbur and, despite dishing out 2 green and 2 black dice, he only has 3 wounds, which is a brush-off in the mid and late game. When he gets killed, he leaves behind a Yog gate, but those can be killed off, too (and with the same number of wounds.) Like the Star Spawn, there are only 2 of 8 Mythos cards (Wilbur Whateley!) that summon Wilbur in the first place and the rest just summon Cultists, so he's not likely to spend a whole lot of time in play.

However, when Yog advances, he does summon Wilbur, so if you're having trouble with the ritual, WW will be around a bit more often. In his opening stage, he starts moving Yog gates toward you if he can't place one on the board and when one is destroyed, each Investigator loses 2 Sanity. Then he just starts placing them randomly and being in a space with any gate costs you the 2 Sanity before they finally just start draining your Sanity at the end of each turn for being nearby. So the threat does ramp up, kinda like Yog's dice, as he starts with just 2 black, before adding 1 black and 1 green, and finally 3 green in his final stage. But that means that he's largely as negligible of a threat as Wilbur and all the Cultists running around and the Sanity loss caused isn't nearly as omnipresent and/or inescapable as that inflicted by Cthulhu and, since the Yog gates can be destroyed, unlike R'lyeh tokens or Yellow Sign tokens, the ability to remove much of that mild threat is much more prevalent than against those other gods. Maybe he's more of a threat in an episode with a couple serious monsters or using the Unknown Monster rule, since those will spawn from normal gates and then, subsequently, also at Yog gates. But without those circumstances, unfortunately, Yog has been a bit of a cakewalk in most of our games with him.

Dagon-

This is an actual deity from Mesopotamia that Lovecraft incorporated into his stories, usually referring to him as Father Dagon and later often suggesting that he is the consort of Mother Hydra. The character first appears in the eponymous story "Dagon" in 1917, but he first comes to real prominence in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", the inhabitants of which are mostly members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. In DMD, he has a more elaborate relationship with the Investigators than do many of the other GOOs, in that Dagon is trying to encourage them to join his ranks, rather than just destroy them as the last line of defense against the Old/Outer/Great Gods/Ones/Things. When Dagon advances on the Summoning track, the target Investigator Transforms, which means you flip over one of your three tokens to the Deep One side on your way to becoming part of the ichthyoid menace. If ever you fully Transform, you are then considered a Deep One, even though you're still fighting against Dagon. As you might expect, Dagon brings Deep Ones with him as his special minions, although these are referred to as Servants of the Deep, who have the same 3 wounds as regular Deep Ones, but bring 2 black dice and add 1 green if there are any Deep Ones (Investigators or not) in their space. What this transformation means in the long run is that if there are ever more Deep One Investigators than human Investigators in play, the players lose. I'm not sure if that extra loss condition is the main reflection on the win rates against Dagon, but he stands up there as among the most difficult of the GOOs with a high rate of 57% with 3 players, but low rates of 39% with 2 or 5 and 4 only somewhat better at 48%.

Dagon's whole approach is centered around the Transformation mechanism. It can't be resisted when he advances, but it's otherwise inflicted by his Mythos cards. 5 of the 8 have the potential to Transform the drawer, but all of them give the option of avoiding it by taking 2 Stress (or wounds for every Stress you can't take.) So it is conceivable that the central conceit of this GOO can be largely avoided, leaving you against Cultists and Deep Ones with no significant greater threat. Indeed, Dagon's abilities as he advances through his stages are solely centered around picking on Deep One Investigators and if you've managed to avoid that problem, he's a vanilla 12 wound thing that can probably be dispatched in short order. Except... it doesn't often work out that way because you do end up with Deep One Investigators since people haven't been in a position to take the Stress and/or wounds and end up Transforming. At that point, they become highly susceptible to hindering their colleagues through cards like Storm Surge! and The Innsmouth Curse, which causes Deep One Investigators to deal out wounds to humans. Both Dagon and Servants deal out an extra 2 green dice against Deep One Investigators, too, so it's quite possible to find yourself running out of human bodies in the late game, as you just can't keep up with the incoming wounds. And, again, as soon as there are fewer humans than former humans, the game is over. That's happened to us a couple times, so I've experienced the lack of wins that Thilo has accounted for. I find games with Dagon entertaining mostly because of that lurking dread at the prospect of changing and not being able to resist it, which is kind of the theme of Lovecraftian horror in the first place.

OK. That's the first batch. Next time, we finish off the other half of the GOOs and do a final wrap-up on this deep (One) dive.