Players: 2*-5
Playing Time: 45-90 minutes
Complexity: 3 (of 10)

* I wouldn't bother playing with 2.

This is a review of the recent, Eos Press, printing of Creatures & Cultists. The game was previously published by Pagan Publishing. This new edition has added an exclamation point to the name.

The Components

Creatures & Cultists! comes in a small box with the following components:

• 128 cards
• 8 cult sheets
• three dice
• 1 rulesheet

Cards: The cards are the highlight of the components, which is probably appropriate for a card game. They’re only light-to-medium stock, but they’re glossy with rounded corners and are printed full color. Each card has a type (sorcery, thuggery, conjuring, defense, mondo, or event), with a corresponding background color to make it easy to sort. In addition some of the cards have full color artwork by John Kovalic, which are up to his usual (high) standards of humor.

Overall, the cards are an attractive centerpiece to the game, though I think some of them have way too much text, which could have been better summarized, iconified, or simplified, and I’m not fond of their terms for critical and fumble, which are "spooge" and "boof", and generally make the game harder to play due to their non-intuitiveness. (I also have a few other general usability problems with the design of the cards, but I've covered them further below, in The Game Play.)

Besides the deck of play cards, there are also several blanks (which would have been more useful if they'd been lined) and several summary cards, which list sequence of play, what the stats are on the cult sheets, and what the different types of cards are. (Missing was a listing of the special rules for spooges and boofs in thuggery and conjuring, which aren't too hard to remember, but would have been better if they'd been summarized.)

Cult Sheets: These are plain paper sheets which look like they came off of a photocopier and are folded twice to fit into the box. Each one lists the stats for a player's cult, complete with motto and cult symbol, along with a big table of the 24 cultists in the cult.

As a record sheet it's OK, though it would have worked better if there was a specific place to mark a cult symbol on each cultist, to show that cultist is dead. (I noted this problem in the game, as it's a bit hard to see who's dead when symbols could be scrawled anywhere on a pretty busy box; when I looked at my copy of the previous edition I saw, sure enough, there was a big blank space at the bottom of each cultist, where a symbol could be scribbled and remain very visible.)

My bigger problem with this cult sheet, however, is that it's not really sufficient to play the game. For example, each cultist can only go twice a round, once for a thuggery attack and once for a conjuring attack; yet, there's no way to mark when a cultist has gone. Worse, you accumulate "fuggly points" during the game, and you just have to mark those by circling or underlining (and later erasing) numbers on a little chart. In both cases, markers would have been more useful: little cardboard pieces or stones which players accumulate to mark all of these things. Because they're not here you sometimes have to stop and ask "Has this cultist gone already or not?" and the little fuggly point chart can end up a mess as you accumulate and spend points. (I think this cult sheet is something that was accepted in games 10 years ago, but is pretty far behind the component curve nowadays.)

In any case, the cult sheets are also available from the Eos Press Downloads page if you are so desirous.

Dice: Small plastic dice, with inset pips inked red and blue.

Rulesheet: A large, single rulesheet, printed in black and white, and folded multiple times to fit into the box. It's a bit too jocular, and that makes it less useful for reference. There were also some errors in the rules that made them harder to read. (My favorite bit in the rules was the line, "Once the favored cult has been determined, everyone draws cards," followed a few paragraphs later by the statement, "Before the favored-by-the-star roll is made, every player draws cards". Fortunately which order these two actions occur in doesn't really matter.)

Box: The game comes in a small, sturdy box with no tray. There's just barely enough room to fit all the cards, and nothing to keep them in place.

Overall, the cards in Creatures & Cultists are quite nice, but nothing else is particularly notable, and I think this set of components (which is about the same as previous editions, I'll note) isn't really well designed to play this game, because of the missing markers I noted above. Still, solely on the strength of the Kovalic artwork and the decent cards, I've let it eke in a "3" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Creatures & Cultists! is to accumulate enough fuggly points to successfully summon your god.

Setup: A game of Creatures & Cultists starts off with each player coming up with a name for their cult, say "The Red Minions of Dubya", and then a credo, say "Black is White! Up is Down!", then a cult symbol, say an iconic, spouting oil well. Next each player rolls their conjuring, sorcery, and thuggery skills as two dice plus three (inexplicably, rerolling doubles). Afterward each player gets an initial set of 6 cards and play begins.

Order of Play: Each round of play includes the following actions:

• Roll for Favor
• Draw Cards
• Take Turns

Roll for Favor: All the players roll dice, and whomever rolls lowest is favored by the stars. That player will go last in the current round and gets a +2 for every action in the round. The player to the right of the favored player will go first, then play will continue counter-clockwise (why they choose counter-clockwise, I don't have a clue; it's another minor annoyance that doesn't make any difference).

Draw Cards: Each player draws up to a full hand size of six cards.

Take Turns: Now each player gets their individual turn in the order noted above.

Each player first must play all Mondo cards in his hand. These are entirely random events that sometimes benefit you and sometimes hurt you. Some are permanent, some are instantaneous, and some last a couple of rounds. Unfortunately there's no quick iconography to make it obvious which is which, and the game again comes up short on counters here, because there's no way to mark how many rounds of effect you have left from any mondo that lasts a specific number of turns.

During their turn a player can play any cards from their hand, until they're done.

Event cards are played on other cults; they do nasty things. So do Sorcery cards, but they take a successful Sorcery roll to play. (To make any roll in the game, you must roll the appropriate skill level, plus or minus modifiers, or less on three dice.)

Finally, you can also attack other cultists. You can do physical attacks with Thuggery cards and attack via monsters with Conjuring cards. Your cult sheet has three rows of eight cultists each, half of which are good at conjuring and half of which are good at thuggery. To attack you'll point to someone in your current front row of cultists, then point to someone in the current front row of cultists for another player to indicate an attack.

In each case you try and make a succesful roll (Thuggery or Conjuring), and then your opponent tries to make a successful defense. If the attacker succeeds, the defender is dead; you mark your cult symbol over the cultist and then take his value in "fuggly points", from 0 to 5. If the defender succeeds, he avoids death, and if he was facing Thuggery, he gets to make a counterattack.

There's a bit more complexity, involving what happens in criticals and fumbles, which isn't worth going into here. It's slightly complex, but I think I had a handle on all the possibilities by the end of my game. One thing that I didn't have a handle on was what happened when someone made an attack on multiple targets (something which a number of Thuggery cards allow). When counterattacks get to be made, and by whom, isn't entirely clear.

A last type of card can also be used during attacks, by the defender: Defense cards.

About Fuggly Points: Fuggly points are really the goal of the game, because you need to earn them to summon your god and win. You'll need a total of 15-25, depending on the number of players you have. During the game fuggly points can also be used to increase your possibility of success on any roll: you burn 2, and your chance goes up by +1. Usually, it's not worth it, and you should save them instead.

Winning the Game: When a player is favored by the stars, and has at least the minimum number of fuggly points (15-25), he may try and summon his god during his turn. He tries to roll under his Sorcery, and if he succeeds, he wins; if he fails, he loses that minimum level of fuggly points and is back to the drawing board.

Relationships to Other Games

Creatures & Cultists (1993/2004) notes a debt to Avalon Hill's Naval War (1983), a card game where each player has a set of ships, and you try and use your ships to blow up your opponents'. There have been many derivatives of that game, including Modern Naval Battles (1989), Naval Battles (2004), Enemy in Sight (1988), The Challenge (1990) and maybe Encounters (1983).

Like all of those games, in C&C you must play cards using your existing characters (ships, etc) to destroy other characters (ships, etc). Unlike all of those, C&C has lots of other cards which add a huge amount of complexity, and randomness to the game.

Creatures & Cultists is also one in a long line of board games about H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, all based on the success of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG (1981). Other games have included: Arkham Horror, an adventure board game (1987); Mythos, a storytelling CCG (1996); Cults Across America, a Cthulhoid wargame (1998), The Hills Rise Wild, a Lovecraftian miniature game (2000); and Cthulhu Mash, a newer adventure board game (2003). This last year has been a boom year for new Lovecraftian merchandise. It's seen Cthulhu 500, The Call of Cthulhu CCG from Fantasy Flight Games (2004), this reprint of Creatures & Cultists, and the upcoming reprint of Arkham Horror. A lot of the Cthulhu card & board games have been designed by folks without a lot of board & card game design experience; this is one of them.

As previously noted, this is the third edition of Creatures & Cultists. It was originally stapled into The Unspeakable Oath #4, and then a substantially identical edition was distributed in 1993 as a standalone release.

The Game Design

The first game I ever reviewed, I think, was the previous edition of Creatures & Cultists. In an early issue of The Chaosium Digest I wrote:

There are some flaws in the game. The frivolous attitude turned me off a bit. A certain card really messed up things in the game we ran, and the end game kind of dragged on. But, I think that the problems will be fairly easy to fix. Since the game was pretty enjoyable overall, and the problems easily correctable, I'd give the game a high rating.

I'm a bit embarassed by how much my assessment of its game design has changed in the intervening eleven and a half years; as you'll see, I give it a pretty low rating this time around, though the game design is pretty much identical.

I'll offer a couple of different reasons for this: I was much too nice when writing reviews then (I should have said it deserved an "average rating" given the quality of games out at the time); I've played a lot better games since; and the overall maturity of the gaming industry has improved a lot since 1993.

My own gaming tastes have changed too, but I still do my best to measure a game by how well it succeeds at filling its own niche. In this regard I'd classify Creatures & Cultists as a beer & pretzels game. This means that it concentrates on theme, not mechanics, and that it's expected to be a light game, without really deep strategy. However, even in that context, I find the game somewhat lacking.

First of all, there's the issue of theme. To be honest, it's not that terribly interesting. You have the various elements of the Cthulhu Mythos, and they're presented with funny graphics, and some of the card text is funny, but the game doesn't really come off as horror, nor does it particularly come off as satire. Especially with terms like "fuggly", "spooge", and "boof", I felt like the game was full of in-jokes that I wasn't privy too. Cthulhu 500, which I recently reviewed, did a much better job of acting as a beer & pretzels Mythos game, because it was funny and original.

Beyond that, the game is not largely random, like many beer & pretzels games, but rather almost entirely random. I actually wrote about this in my original review, where I said:

Randomness: A lot of people seemed to end up with the conditions necessary to summon their god at the same time (ie enough fuggly points). Then, only the person who randomly was chosen by the stars got to win.

More Randomness: Another problem with the end game (ie when people have enough points to win) is that unless someone is very, very weak, you get a situation where, either someone has drawn a "make someone else lose a turn card" or the person chosen by the stars wins. Much too arbitrary.

I omited in that description how much randomness comes about from initial skill rolls, and from random card draws. Some players draw great mondo cards, while others lose turns from them; together all of these elements determine the winner, not strategy in the game.

Finally, I'd say that the game is repetitive with constant attack-attack-attacking and has the potential to be too long (depending on who happens to get the stars right, and who doesn't).

Still, there's clearly something to be said for the game. When I was 21 I said I liked the game (though, honestly, I don't think I ever played it again after that initial session that spawned that review), even though I don't now when I'm 32. If you are looking for a light, brainless Cthulhu game, you might like it.

However, I believe that recent years of design have shown that light beer & pretzels games can be produced that play quicker, and that allow some level of strategy, without destroying their basic simplicity, and that in contrast Creatures & Cultists is old and creaky. Thus, in the modern market, I can only give it a "2" out of "5" for Substance: below average.

Conclusion

Creatures & Cultists is a card game that unfortunately shows its age. There are better Cthulhu games and better beer & pretzels games out nowadays, leaving Creatures & Cultists too long, too complex, and too random.

I feel a bit bad saying that, given that the design team was kind enough to offer a special thanks in the newest edition to "Shannon D. Appel [that's me under a previous nom de plume], for fixing 'Herbert West'", which was the card that 'messed up things' which I'd mentioned in my previous review (and offered a correction for).

Sorry guys.