The Great Cthulhu - The Story Struggle

Welcome to my second article of the amazing game, Call of Cthulhu. Sorry about the longer then normal gap from last article, with finals and then Christmas week life was little busy, but back to the stuff that matters. This series is aimed towards players that are new to the game or not even currently playing but have a small itch to try it. Last article I went over a few things that make the game great, this time I am going to go more in depth on one of those aspects and that is the combat in Call of Cthulhu. Combat in Call of Cthulhu, like in most card games is a very important part of the game-play and I find it a very unique system. First thing you need to know is that unlike combat where your directly attacking the opponent, in Call of Cthulhu there are three stories on the table, and each player is trying to be the first one to win three of those stories. Now I am going to leave out conspiracies for now to make it simpler (a conspiracy is a card that is basic a story card but goes in a players deck). Each story has four different combat struggles: Terror, Combat, Arcane, and Investigation. To determine the winner of each struggle you compare the number of icons each player has at the story and then the player with the highest number of the given icon wins that particular struggle.


here is just a random story so you get an idea of the symbols and better understanding of how the stories work.

Terror
On the story cards terror is the first combat struggle that takes place, which for new players makes it seem the most important. The loser of the terror struggle must pick one character declared at the story and make it go insane. For those that don't play the game an insane character is flipped upside down and is considered a blank character that is basically useless while insane. Also, each player can only restore one insane character each turn so if you have multiple insane characters only one will be restored your next turn. Once restored it remains exhausted for a turn as well. So for the Star Wars players picture winning the terror struggle as being able to double focus an opponent's character. At first this seems EXTREMELY powerful. Reasons are that it is first combat so if you only have one character to defend with and that character is going to lose that struggle it will just go insane and be out of the challenge (since once a character is made insane or is destroyed it is removed from the challenge instantly). But, once you play a couple times their is a major downside to relying on the terror struggle. Every character that has at least a single terror icon or has the willpower keyword makes them immune to going insane. What this means is that if your guys can't go insane you won't even care if you lose the terror struggle as it won't have a negative effect on your board. So although it is a very powerful effect, if your opponent is prepared to survive the terror struggle can wreak some game strategy. The four monster factions usually have enough terror icons that they can survive most terror struggles.

Combat
This is the most similar struggle to other games. The loser of the combat struggle must choose and wound a character. It is important to note that most characters can only take one wound before it is destroyed. Those that can take more then one wound have a toughness +x keyword (x being the amount of additional wounds). Just like how some characters are immune to becoming insane, characters with invulnerable can't take wounds for any reason. It is important to note for new players that you can't pick a invulnerable character to take a wound for any effect that would require taking a wound. So with the first two struggles at a story - terror and then combat - there can be two fewer characters committed to the story by the time the last two struggles resolve.

Arcane
This is the most underrated struggle in the game, or it was at least for me. The winner of the arcane struggle gets to stand one of their characters. This is something I drastically overlooked in my first decks, but the ability to stand your characters after you attack is critical in order to successfully defend on your opponent's turn. It doesn't do anything to effect the story but it can be critical to get a strong defender for your opponents turn. Note that it can stand any character at the story it doesn't have to be someone with an arcane icon so more likely you will stand someone with terror/combat to defend with. The reason why winning this story and standing a character is so important is that this game is relatively quick and so there aren't that many characters on the board most games, especially at the beginning. So being able to use a character twice (attacker/defender) is critical to slow down your opponent.

Investigation
The winner of the investigation combat gets to place one success token on the story; the first to get five on a story wins the story; and the first to win 3 stories wins the game. So this is basically the rush struggle in order to win the game. You must place success tokens on the story. I also didn't know this first game I played so maybe a common rookie mistake is that if you win this struggle as the defender you still get to place a success token on the story. So don't attack if you're going to just give your opponent more success tokens, unless it benefits you in some way to do so.


Skill/Unopposed check
Now if you don't play the game and you just read the struggles above to get a feel of the game you'd probably think it takes forever to win the game if you only get one success story each attack at most, there are however 2 more ways to get a success token. First is after the struggles you see who has the most skill, if the attacker has more skill you get to place another success token. Note that if you win as the defender skill check you DO NOT get to place a success token this time. The last way to gain a success token is if your opponent didn't defend your attack or if the defender's skill is zero you get to place another success token. (You must have at least one skill of your own to place a success token for both of these checks.)

So in short if you attack with a blank character with at least 1 skill and opponent doesn't defend, you already get 2 success tokens, if you happen to win the investigation and undefended you just got to place three tokens on the story in one attack, and can see that the game can go lot quicker if the opponent can't defend.

Conclusion
So I hope this shows more about the uniqueness of this game. It isn't completely original (although at the time it came out there were very few things like it) but it also adds to the depth of the strategy. Knowing when losing that character at a story is worth it or knowing how to attack around an opponent that is ready to defend is only part of the complexity of the game. After playing this game now for little over a month I love it even more than when I just started, so it wasn't just the feel of a new game that I loved. This really is a great game. I will admit though this is not a game for everyone and the reason is this game is by far (I believe) the most complex of any of FFG's lcgs. The amount of deck types you can play is CRAZY. Just in the core set alone there is 22 different deck combinations and once you grow your card pool those numbers get to the 100s maybe 1000s it really is amazing the possibility. So if you love challenging yourself this is a great game. There are so many combinations and synergies, and therefore many different deck types, that you won't see only the same decks played over and over again. I just don't see the game ever getting boring.

Sorry for the veteran players: nothing here is new to you but as a series dedicated towards the new players I feel this is an important topic to cover. Hopefully the next article will be more interesting for those players. Next time I will be building two decks from a limited card pool (due to some requests from users) and will compare the two decks together and the different strategies decks can have. Thank you all for taking the time to reading this article hope it helps out the newer players and helps those looking at the game and maybe push you a little closer to trying the game. And with the new year reprints of the core set are coming very soon! If you have any questions about the game or have any topic you want me to tackle, message me or post in the comments.