It’s happening all over! Cultists gathering in secret, Terrifying creatures are being summoned, and you, with your wits and skills, must put an end to the madness or go insane trying.
Reign of Cthulhu takes a classic game; Pandemic uses its mechanics engine and puts a new spin to it. Reign is definitely a lot more than Pandemic re-skinned, it introduces some new mechanics that fit it’s theme really well.
The board consists of 4 towns; Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. Each town has a specific gate location that players are trying to seal. More on how this works later.
In addition, the game has miniatures instead of cubes and uses a sanity die. There are also shoggoths, hideous monsters that roam around the town causing hysteria and terror.
To start, take Cthulhu and place him in the last slot of the ancient ones, shuffle the remaining old ones and select 6 more, placing them facedown on the gameboard.
Next, each player selects an investigator card, their accompanying miniature, and 4 sanity tokens, and places their figure at the train station in Arkham.
Take the relic cards, and select a number based on player count, and shuffle these into the clue deck. Set the remaining ones aside. Then deal each player a number of clue cards, based on player count. Take the remaining clue cards, separating them into 4 piles, add one of the 4 Evil Stirs cards to each pile and shuffle each pile separately, placing them one on top of each other, to form the clue deck.
Take the summoning deck and, like Pandemic, draw 7 cards placing cultists and shoggoths in the corresponding locations like so: 3 at the first 2 locations, then 2 at the next 2, then 1 at the last 2, and 1 shoggoth at the 7th location.
A player’s turn consists of three phases: Take 4 actions, Draw two cards, and Reveal summoning cards. To make a movement action, select one of three types: walking, (moving from one location to an adjacent one) taking a bus,( use a clue card to move to a new location or town) or using a Gate (move between two open gates)
Other actions consist of defeating cultists, using a special action, defeating a shoggoth, trading clues, or sealing a gate.
Like Pandemic, player’s are collecting town cards from the clue deck as they progress. When a player has collected 5 of the same town, they can take them to the corresponding gate site in that town and perform a seal gate action.
To seal a gate, a player discards the 5 matching town cards and places a gate marker over that town’s gate location. Shoggoth`s and investigators may no longer travel through that town’s gate.
It takes one action to defeat a cultist and three to defeat a shoggoth. If 2 investigators are in the same location, they may exchange a clue card or relic as an action. Finally, each investigator has a special action they can perform as described on their investigator card.
Some actions require a roll of the sanity die. This can cause an investigator to lose sanity. If an investigator ever loses more than their 4 sanity, they go insane. An insane investigator may then behave differently. Investigators can be healed by certain actions in the game, such as sealing a gate while insane. When this occurs, place that investigator at either the church or hospital, returning their card to their sane side, and regaining all 4 of their sanity tokens.
After an investigator completes their 4 actions, they draw 2 clue cards. If they draw an evil stirs card, they must complete the following steps; roll the sanity die, reveal the next ancient one, draw the bottom card from the summoning deck, placing a shoggoth at that location and take the summoning deck discard pile, shuffle it, and place it on top of the summoning deck.
Finally, draw summoning cards, based on the current threat level, placing one cultist at each corresponding location.
If there are three cultists at a location, and a fourth one needs to be placed, perform an awakening ritual instead (reveal the next ancient one and resolve its effects)
Some clue cards have a shoggoth symbol, indicating that each shoggoth moves one space to the closest open gate. If one ever goes through a gate, remove it from the board and reveal the next ancient one.
Relic cards, are a free action and can be played anytime, even during another player’s turn. The player who has the card chooses when to play it and resolve its effects.
Players win when they seal all 4 gates. They lose if either the last ancient one awakens, the clue deck has no more cards to draw from, or there are no more cultists or shoggoths to place on the board.
Reign, like Pandemic, is a race against time to seal the gates before Cthulhu awakens and the world is destroyed. As each ancient one awakens, the game gets harder, and time grows shorter.
I enjoy Reign a lot, finding it to be a great Cthulhu game that is easy to teach and fast-paced. Players who know Pandemic can jump right into Reign with a few new rules and changes.
Personally, as a fan of Lovecraft, I will bring Reign out given a choice between it and the original Pandemic. I really enjoy the sanity effects, the tougher monsters, and the use of relics. Pandemic fans and Lovecraft fans, I think will both enjoy Reign.
Tom Vasel, of The Dice Tower, has a great overview of Reign if you would like to see more.
Written by Ed Carter
