The board game Cthulhu Wars

Cthulhu Wars (USA, 2015) is a colourful hybrid of Risk (France, 1957) and European economic games from the 2010s.

You can watch the SU&SD review on Youtube, or this tutorial on the rules:

It’s a good game from a technical standpoint, but there’s more to it than that. Cthulhu Wars was an early success in crowdfunding physically large “boutique” board games on the basis of plastic miniatures and the reputation of the game’s designer, Sandy Petersen.

The rainbow of doom. — Inch-tall miniatures from the game

I got the game from the first Kickstarter, where it came with a storage solution that would not be kind to paint. Years ago, I built wooden storage boxes for each of the game’s first four playable factions, to go inside the main box. In the summer of 2022, I similarly replaced the interior of the boxes for the remaining five playable factions in my collection, so that every figure in the game had its own slot and could be safely transported after painting.

Customized storage for painted models. The beige compartments are soft printed material that I CADed for the shape of the models. The dark blue is soft foam. The bottom layer is cork. The top layer is acrylic paint and glossy PVA on XPS. Everything lifts out of the original cardboard box. — Custom storage for the Windwalker faction

In the winter of 2022–2023, I painted the first nine factions released for the game. I usually paint armies for wargames, so this project was an opportunity to experiment with short-run colour schemes and techniques. Based mainly on the advice of Vince Venturella, I got better at using my airbrush and glazing or inking down from a brightly preshaded foundation. I also tried new brands of paint.

Here are my own articles on the game, in English:

General Cthulhu Wars strategy, about the game as such.
Cthulhu Wars sculpts, reviewing the models.
On the game’s first nine playable factions, presented here in alphabetical order:
- The Ancients.
- The Black Goat.
- The Crawling Chaos.
- Great Cthulhu.
- The Opener of the Way.
- The Sleeper.
- The Tcho-Tcho.
- The Windwalker.
- The Yellow Sign.

The faction articles link to notes on how I painted each one. More of my own writing on the game is available in Swedish through Brädspelet Cthulhukrig.

External links:

The rules of the game, including all the factions, are in this official single-page application.
BGG user hauntrollfail’s simulator is a JavaScript application that runs in your browser. It’s a good way to get to know the rules before playing with humans.
The fandom.com strategy wiki collects advice from players.