Cthulhu: Dark Providence from CMoN Games- Review

The end is nigh. Which side are you rooting for?

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Publisher — CMoN Global

Designer — Travis R Chance and MArtin Wallace

Art Direction — Anders Finer

Game Type — Area Majority, Cthulhu, Deck Building, Hand Management, Social Deduction, and Worker Placement.

Initial Year of Release — 2025

Age Range — 13+

Expected Playtime — 90–120 Minutes

Number of Players — 1–5

Theme and What is it?

The end is nigh. Elder Gods and their cults are bringing the last moments of the world to the fore. Standing in their way are investigators who are busily traveling around the eastern United States in an attempt to stop the end. At the same time Cultists are working to bring about their dark gods’ will. Further still are the outcasts from both groups who are trying to thwart their old groups plans. ITs a race to the end of the world, who gets their first?

Cthulhu: Dark Providence is a worker placement game where you will be given a hidden role and need to complete some tasks in order to accomplish your organization’s goals. You’ll need to collect items, gather agents, learn dark secrets, and try to find your allies so no one falls behind.

Initial Impressions

My first experience with this game was playing it. A friend of mine had picked up a copy and brought it to board game league. I enjoyed my playthrough and liked the things I saw. Opening the box was a nice experience too. I liked the pieces and the card quality. Cardboard pieces had a nice heft. All of the bits looked good. Having already enjoyed the game I went into this with a pretty good understanding that I would enjoy it.

Game Mechanics

In Cthulhu: Dark Providence each player is given a role card that marks them as a Cultist, Investigator, or a Dissident. You will not reveal your role to other players and it gives you the things you’ll score at the end of the game. The biggest example of this is opening and closing gates to the outer realms. Investigators get the points for locking gates and Cultists get them for opening gates. The number of each role is based on player count with lower counts having one or two extra cards in the pool to leave some mystery to what faction the other player belongs to. Investigators and Cultists are the only roles that can double up.

The goal of the game is to reach a certain score threshold based on player count. On your turn you’ll take two actions from the following list: Add Influence, Claim, Buy/Retrieve Influence, Travel, Manipulate the Ritual, Card Action, Assassinate an enemy agent, Close/open a Gate, Place/Remove a Lock, and in a very specific circumstance you can Reveal Your Identity.

To add influence you’ll play cards from your hand to add influence cubes from your supply to a card. This can be an Asset, City, or Mythos Card. Assets are cards that will be added to your discard pile. These will be added to your hand through play and offer increased resources, agents to command giving you more presence around the board, and ability cards that give you actions. Placing Influence on a City and gaining control of it will add the city’s card to your discard pile and offer improved resources as well as victory points added to your total as long as you control the city. Influence can be added to a city controlled by another player and if you gain enough you can take control from them adding the city’s card to your discard pile. Mythos Cards are large, tarot sized, cards that give you permanent abilities or powerful one shot powers. These are placed face up next to your player board and remain yours. All of your influence on the card or space is discarded to the void. Every other player who had influence on that space has returned it to their supply.

Claiming a card allows you to collect a card that you’ve placed influence on. It must be your first action and is the only action you can only take once per round. Compare the influence you have on a card or space, plus the strength of any agents you have in the space against the influence and strength of all other players vying for that space. If you have the highest then you can claim the card adding it to your discard pile or tableau based on the card claimed.

To Buy Influence you’ll increase the available influence cubes in your supply. You start the game with six cubes available. You may spend influence on cards to retrieve cubes from the void on a one for one basis. To add new cubes to your supply you need to spend two cash for every cube you want to add to your supply.

To Travel you’ll move an agent along a path following the travel lines around the board. Each line shows a number of cash icons you’ll need to spend to use that line. You can travel across multiple lines at once, as long as you can afford the trip.

The Ritual is the amount of power your side has built up. This amount directly influences how many points your side will get at the end of the game. To adjust either ritual, you’ll play a card from your deck that has manipulation icons that show which ritual track you’ll change and if it will go up or down.

To take a card action you’ll play a card and do what the card instructs.

To Assassinate an Agent you’ll play a card that allows for an assassination. To do this you’ll need to play enough strength icons to overcome the cities defense Once this is done you’ll take the targeted agent and place their marker in your crypt. If a player’s final agent is assassinated you reveal their allegiance card. If they are a cultist you cancel the assassination and continue playing. If it’s anything else the game ends and you go to final scoring.

To Close or Open a Gate you’ll need to play a card with the appropriate action icon. You’ll then play enough strength icons and add the strengths of any agents in the space. If you equal or exceed the gate value then the gate is opened or closed.

If you play a card with the lock icon then you’ll be able to lock or unlock a card. A locked card cannot be claimed but you can still add influence to it.

You can reveal your influence if you have enough points in your hand, deck, crypt, and mythos that it will trigger the end game. If you do this you’ll quickly calculate your score and if you are high enough to trigger the end game, all other players will calculate their scores. Whoever has the highest score wins.

There are a couple other rules, this is just a brief overview to give you a basis for how the game works.

Game Build and Quality

I am very impressed with the quality of this game. I think the cardboard is nice and thick. Card quality is very good. I like how all of the pieces fit together.

The rules are nice and easy to understand. They are a little dense and some of the sections can be a bit confusing, but once you get rolling it plays pretty well.

The frames that you use to hold your agent tokens are fine. I’m considering using a little bit of glue on them to make them more sturdy.

There is a bit of a weird kick with the insert that I didn’t understand until I looked up how to use it. Here’s a picture to help you out.

Artistic Direction

I like the art here. The agent cards and tokens all have a nice time appropriate look to it. The Mythos cards all look appropriately creepy. I think it all works quite well.

Fun Factor

This is a very direct confrontation game. Each piece, card, or location is up for bid and the cost is how much you’re willing to spend. The mechanic for claiming a card puts you in confrontation with your opponents.

Age Range and Weight

The box says 13+ and I think that might be a bit low. While I think the rules are pretty straight forward there are a lot of things to keep track of. I think younger players might have a hard time following the game. You know your young gamers better than I do, but try and keep it in mind.

Conclusions

I like this game. I had a lot of fun with it when I played my friend’s copy and I enjoyed it when I revisited it, with my own. The rules are pretty easy to follow and while I had to look up some stuff in the rulebook a couple of times during play, everything follows the same basic rules so it was easy to learn and play.

The hidden role part of the game is really nice. You don’t know who anybody is so you have to try and figure out who your partner is. This is important because the player with the lowest score makes it so that no one on their team can win. You have to find out who your partner is to make sure they are doing well also.

The gameplay is nice in that there are multiple ways to use your actions to score points. You have many different things and paths you can take to try and win. Figuring out what to do is a fun clasp and lets you play your turn in fun ways.

The influence system works great since you have to have the most power at a location in order to claim it. You have to use Claim as your first action which means that once your place influence on a location the other players have a round to try and stop you. You also don’t need to have an agent at a location to place influence on it. You get a bonus point of strength to help you win a location if you do have someone at a location. This means everything costs what is important to the players.

The Mythos cards are a fun tweak to the game. They are very powerful and you’ll want to grab one or two over the course of the game. They add useful powers and fun abilities that can be huge swings for you. But as you need influence to grab something you’ll be fighting for those as you play.

The game can run a little long and it was hard to see a path to victory for the cultists in the first few games. I would say the cultists need to play an offensive game to block the investigators from scoring points. Sealing a door might not give you points as a cultist, but it prevents the investigators from moving in and doing the same.

The insert was a little odd and I had to look up some images online to see how to use it. I like and understand why the frames you use to hold your agent tokens. However, they can fall apart and I think it could be useful to use a small amount of glue to hold them all together.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game and am looking forward to playing it again to see more combinations. The game keeps it interesting with options, the hidden role bits are nice and keep you guessing since you need to figure out who your partner is and help prop them up so you don’t lose because their score was too low.

I think the game plays best at five. This gives you two investigators, two cultists, and one dissident. I think this fills out the game nicely and adds to the feelings of mistrust and the need to find your partner to “help” them.

I’m enjoying this game and will be adding it to my collection.

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Until next time, stay safe and be well.

Overall Rating — 8/10