Cthulhu: Death May Die Review - I Think I'm Going Insane

Probably the most infuriating game I've ever played, Death May Die is a coop semi-narrative miniatures game for 1-5 players that sees you fighting off monsters and cultists as they attempt to summon the Elder One. But he'll come anyway, and you'll be brutally slaughtered while trying to defeat him.
Buy Cthulhu: Death May Die at Amazon: amzn.to/2SzbVaz
#boardgamereviews #cmoninc #cthulhu #deathmaydie #tabletopdungeon

[@Zakalwe-01]

The title’s from a very sinister poem by Lovecraft: ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die’. Ooooh scary 🐙

[@TabletopDungeon]

Ahhh, thanks for clearing that one up, you can tell I'm not a big Lovecraft fan huh. ..

[@MazeMouse]

I played this game a few times now and my group does like it. Not a "every time we meet" but a regular occurance. However we usually played with 4 or 5 players and the one time with 3 players was very noticably much harder. I can only imagine how borderline impossible it becomes with 2 or even 1 player. Now this does kinda fit with the "you're going up against a great old one alone? FAT CHANCE", but makes the 1-5 player distinction feel a bit like false advertisement if it only really becomes consistently winable from 3 players on.

[@TabletopDungeon]

Thanks for dropping by! You can play 5 characters with one player, so 1-5 players is technically true, but yeh - difficulty scaling is just off.

[@David-ym2vk]

I love your no bullshit point of view. So many game reviewers try to sugar coat things they don't like about game and you just highlight the poor game designs and straight up say you don't like the game. I appreciate that and wish you had more content.

[@TabletopDungeon]

Thanks for the kind words, David. I suspect other some reviewers are afraid of damaging relations with bigger companies. In my experience reviewing gadgets for my day job, I find the good companies are more than happy to get negative feedback. In fact, they usually come back a few months later having taken it all on board and fixed the product, desperate for another review!

[@scifigeezer5271]

Most of these Lovecraft inspired boardgames tend to hinge on random craziness. You might prefer Reign of Cthulhu pandemic. I find pandemic a bit dull but really liked the Cthulhu themed version. Probably the only Cthulhu game that is a "proper game".

[@Fleshpenance]

6:09 "Note that you can always spend one stress to move an extra space" Is this true? I can't see anything about this in the rulebook

[@TabletopDungeon]

I'm not sure where I got that from! Perhaps mixed up with taking a stress to reroll a dice?

[@kraziel]

This looks like a complete successor to The Others 7 Sins. It is almost a copy and paste but with different mechanics but everythinng is very, VERY similar. The tiles, the movement, the actions, the "stress/insanity" which is "Corruption" in The Others 7 Sins. It even uses almost the exact tentacle plastic token as The Others. Both games are modular, meaning you can setup each Mission/Scenario with whichever Monster/Sin you want, etc, but in The Others you also choose the different Acolytes (lesser minions), and different layouts of the map for the same scenario (each Scenario has an A and B layout, and depending which expansion you have you also could have layouts C and D, and so on.) It is a 1vsMany game, my girlfriend and I play 1v1, (one plays the Sins/Monster and the other plays the Heroes, and we always change sides between game sessions), and we absolutely LOVE The Others 7 Sins, we have all the expansions for that game, it has an absurd variety of things and it never gets old. It is very strategic, very competetive and extremely fun and tense. It feels VERY hard to win FOR BOTH SIDES, the game is very balanced, and almost 90% of the times it came down to a last roll to decide if one or the other would win. We have such good memories of playing moments we will never forget, and everytime we play something crazy happens, and it is purely because of our decisions and planning against one another. Cthulhu Death May Die looks A LOT like that game, and if it's anybit of fun like The Others was, and different enough mechanically to justify another game like this, I would very much consider getting this once we are tire of The Others (which could be an eternity)

[@Gropylol]

You sold me the game until you started talking about the negatives, lets hope the maddening randomness of the game is a design feature !

[@benjaminmichael5719]

I've been playing with a buddy of mine that got this game, and I say it's a positive. You can think of the game as a modular system. You choose your characters, your scenario, and the enemy you'll be playing. The character insanity trait card, and the mythos cards introduce RNG into the gameplay. If you want to remove a little RNG from your game, you can simply make a house rule where each person can choose their character trait... it basically allows you to make an OP character, but it it's a small mod that lets you ease into the game. Likewise, you can can make house rules make the game less brutal if you wanted. In one of my first playthroughs with my buddy, we somehow got the idea in our heads that you reset the ritual counter back to the first red space each time you defeated the elder god phase card. It gave us more time to clear cultists and other monsters. (I'm actually starting to get inspired to make a card with game variants to make the game easier.) That being said. I just ordered the game for myself now that it's back in stock in some stores. If you're a board game fan, I'd say give this one a shot. It's got a lot of heart.

[@guizeenho]

The game should be hard. Because you are fighting with something bigger than you. This is the exact feeling.

[@TabletopDungeon]

To a certain degree, yes. But not to the point of being detrimental to fun, because it is after all a game.

[@joshuaforrest4135]

I'm still sitting right at a 50% win rate and I've played about half at 2player ad the other half at 4-5 players. That said we quickly discovered that certain common abilities are much more necessary at a lower player count. Brawler or especially marksman are borderline required at lower player counts because one botched attack can lead to a quick downward spiral

[@Dannezou]

Totally disagree with your negative view of the game but you were highly entertaining to watch, really enjoyed this. Definitely appreciate the dry sense of humour. The way it started actually thought you were going to like the game haha. Look forward to seeing more content, keep it up!

[@LukeE94]

2:11 90 minutes to 1 and a half hours? Are you okay haha 🤣

[@TabletopDungeon]

SEE WHAT THIS GAME DID TO ME!

[@annoyingcommentator1582]

90 minutes to 1.5 hours is quite a precise time frame.

[@TabletopDungeon]

You see what this game does to you!?! YOU SEE!?!?

[@OPMDK]

I will await you’re next video assessment of adding in the KS content. Good luck? 👍

[@TabletopDungeon]

In the end, I decided to get rid of it all - just too many good games to play, and I realised I really don't need those extra minis for the DnD campaign I will never run. :(

[@Pavlou991]

Dont listen to this guy, this is one of the best games cmon has produced.

[@TabletopDungeon]

I can't argue with logic like that - what a well-reasoned argument you've presented.

[@tonnysndergaard9732]

Great review. Nice to see a different opinion. Because your critical view is in the minority, I which you’d gone into even more detail about the things you didn’t like, showcasing some examples instead of just explaining it. The same point will come across either way I guess, but It would really hammer home the message. Hope to see a lot more stuff from you :)

[@kraziel]

I'm severely torn apart between getting Zombicide (and which one) or getting Cthulhu Death May Die.. any thoughts?

[@TabletopDungeon]

The thing about Zombicide is that if you don't get in there at the kickstarter, you really miss out on a lot. Actually, that's the same with all CMon games. Right now you can still late pledge for the latest Zombicide iteration - Marvel (a variation on modern), but it's a bit different from regular zombicide, so that might be worth considering if you canb wait a year or so for delivery. marvel-zombies-zombicide.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/399921 I can't recommend Death May Die, unfortunately. It was just so frustrating that I got rid of it.

[@BittermanAndy]

Surprised you said you're not aware of another game like this, with all those Zombicide boxes on the shelf behind you. Anyway - I've not played this yet as I've been painting all the minis. I'm looking forward to it though. A read of the rules looks very much as though you're right about the level of randomness, which I normally don't like in a game (when taken to an extreme). I'm expecting to be more forgiving of it here though, as I am a big fan of Lovecraft's writing and "humans are powerless in the face of cosmic horror" is pretty much the point of it. And, again, I acknowledge that isn't normally what makes good gameplay (even if "deliberate"), but to me it seems forgiveable in the setting. But... we will of course see if I still feel that way after actually playing it.

[@TabletopDungeon]

It's a completely different experiences to the pretzels and beer type game of Zombicide. If you stop for a pretzel when playing this, the pretzel will turn into a tentacled demon which proceeds to slaughter you. You're gonna love it! :)