‘Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown’ Board Game Review
If you’ve read my previous guide to Cthulhu: Death May Die and all its expansions, then you’ll already be aware of what a big fan I am of the series. It should be no surprise then to hear that I’ve already jumped at the chance to review the retail version of Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown, which is both a direct sequel to Cthulhu: Death May Die and an expansion – with most of the content in the box being referred to as “Season 3” in a nod to the fact that the base game and it’s Season 2 expansion are already out there.
The recent release of Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown goes hand in hand with both a Season 4 expansion and a new Old One known as Ithaqua: The Wind Walker. We didn’;t get our hands on either of these expansions yet, but once the Kickstarter content starts to land in the UK, we will certainly try our best. In the meantime both we (and you) will have to make do with the base game content – which is what this review is all about.
As a standalone expansion, Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown includes all of the content that you’ll need to play a game, including board pieces, investigator and monster miniatures, a rulebook, an Old One board and then other supporting components like dice, player tokens and similar. A fair bit of this is duplicated between Cthulhu: Death May Die and Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown, and you’ll only ever need one Old One board at a time – however other components like more dice and player tokens in new colours can always come in handy.
I’ll get onto the new content in a minute, but in general, Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown offers more of what you know and love. There are two new Old Ones in the box and there are six new episodes, each contained within its own little box along with any setup details, cards and tokens that are needed to play. As with the original game and its expansions, you can mix episode boxes with Old Ones and different investigators in any combination – making for practically infinite replay value.
Whilst there are several new monsters such as Gug’s, Ghasts and Fishers From Outside (plus the two Old Ones) in Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown and a fairly generous ten new investigators, these follow the same patterns as the same component categories in the older releases. There are new Old One threats to deal with and of course, each investigator has their own form of insanity, but as I said before, this is all “more of what you know and love.”
The new content comes in the form of both Relics (which make the game easier) and Unknown Monsters (which make it harder.) Relics can be handed out during setup to assist the investigators, with each one providing a powerful benefit on its “basic” side. When an investigator equipped with a relic reaches their third insanity trigger, the relic will flip to a more powerful side – in this way the “Strange Book” might become the “Necronomicon” or similar…. Is it real or is it all in your mind? Well, you’ll have to work that out on your own…
With all of that said, what if you’re completely new to the Cthulhu: Death May Die series? Is Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown where you should start? You’d think this would be an easy answer wouldn’t you, but it’s not. Arguably, there is more content in Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown because you also get the Unknown Monster and Relic components – which are also backwards compatible should you add the base game or Season 2 expansion later.
However, the content in Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown does appear to assume a level of understanding about the game that new players may simply lack. Remember, the content here also states that it is “Season 3” and returning players expect a certain level of difficulty from the series. You could start here, but if you do, you may need to be prepared for a few losses – which in my opinion isn’t the worst outcome for a cooperative game as long as it feels as if you had a chance.
As always with a CMON game and in particular a Cthulhu: Death May Die product, the miniatures quality is superb. The two new Old Ones are large and richly detailed, offering an absolute dream for painters to get stuck into. Components are otherwise excellent elsewhere too, with a clear and well-configured manual, good quality card stock and nice, mostly well-sized location tiles. As always in this game, it is not impossible for a tile to become so over-filled with miniatures that it simply doesn’t work, but that’s not a new problem for this game or the dungeon-crawling genre in general.
Overall then, Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown is almost entirely the standalone expansion that fans were hoping for. The game engine for Cthulhu: Death May Die was wildly popular and very good fun – offering challenging cooperative gameplay that somehow always goes right down to the wire. Most importantly, this is an engine that is capable of telling fantastic stories, and the new content only adds to that.
The Relics can be woven into your particular experience really nicely, with additional flavour text and storytelling coming naturally. Unknown Monsters take a bit more work to incorporate thematically – with their reason for being present in a mission needing to be explained. Yes, they make the game harder, no, they don’t add much to the mythos unless you happen to add one (or two) that fit well with the particular episode you are playing.
With fantastic miniatures and overall production, great storytelling and solid, well-tested mechanics, Cthulhu: Fear of the Unknown delivers on almost every front. If I were to criticise anything, it would simply be that it doesn’t necessarily push the boundaries in any new directions, which seems a shame following more than a two-year wait since the original Kickstarter concept. It’s a minor complaint though – what you do get is (once again) top notch.
