Every Cthulhu Wars player has a list of neutral units they quietly refuse to put on the table. Mine included the Dark Demon. I was wrong — and it took a seven-player vegas game night and a phone app to prove it.

The Units Nobody Asks For

I've talked before about the neutral units that don't just give you something. They punish everyone else. The Servitor of the Outer Gods, for example. I've played with units like the Servitor a handful of times, and every time, the other players rued the day I asked for it. Which was unfair of me, because I wasn't pulling them out because I liked them. I was trying to prove a point, to show people why I thought these units were bad for the game.

Except I wasn't playing with them in the best possible way.

How Neutral Monsters Actually Work

Quick refresher, straight from the rulebook: "A player may purchase a Neutral Monster's Loyalty Card during the Doom Phase. A player may never purchase more than one of these in a given Doom Phase, but there is no limit to the number of Neutral Monster Loyalty Cards a player may possess."

You pay 2 Doom when it's your turn to perform a Ritual of Annihilation. And if you want, you can still perform the Ritual. Once purchased, that Loyalty Card is yours for the rest of the game. Only you can summon and control its associated monsters from that point forward.

Most of my Cthulhu Wars games are in a semi-teaching role. Almost always there's a new player or two at the table, so we cherry-pick: a couple neutral units, a couple neutral Great Old Ones, maybe the neutral spellbooks. Keep it manageable.

Then last week happened.

What Happens in Vegas Gets Written Up on a Blog

I live in Las Vegas, and the nice thing about Las Vegas is that people visit — a lot. A few years ago, some fans of the YouTube channel invited me to join them for games. It became an annual thing. (If you're ever in town, seriously, reach out. I'll try to make it.)

This year, someone suggested we use the Necronomicon App. If you haven't seen it, the app has all the rules plus utilities like game generators. We decided to go all in: whatever it suggested, that's what we pulled out. Random factions, random neutral units, the whole deal.

What did it generate for our seven-player game?

• Yuggoth Map? Check, awesome.
• Black Goat? Was hoping for something more exotic, but sure. Check.
• Six neutral Great Old Ones? Wow. Wasn't expecting that many. Okay, check.
• Seven neutral monsters PLUS the Dark Demon? Umm.

See, the Dark Demon isn't even a Neutral Monster. You take it as if it's one, but it isn't. So it doesn't use up a neutral monster slot. And what does it do? You get an anemic cultist that, if it dies, the first thing you must do is spend power to bring it back. But the real sting: it forces every other player to permanently sacrifice an acolyte and replace it with a Dark Demon. Permanently. That means for the entire rest of the game, everyone else can only have five acolytes generating power.

Brutal.

I thought the game was going to be miserable.

The Part Where I'm a Hypocrite

So we play, me fully expecting to hate every minute. And what do I do? Just like with the Servitors. I do everything in my power to make sure I'm first player as Black Goat. Which I am. And I promptly spend 2 Doom to grab the Dark Demon.

Black Goat needs units to sprawl. Having an extra body on the board isn't bad, and I still have six acolytes generating power while everyone else drops to five. I was a little smug. Not gonna lie.

Then I picked up Abhoth.

Abhoth let me start placing zero-combat "Filth" monsters anywhere on the map. Whether I was there or not. Black Goat players are already seeing the insanity of this combination. I scooped up almost all of my spellbooks immediately with a few well-placed Filth tokens and my Ghouls showing up uninvited to battles.

It was ridiculous.

The Part Where Everyone Else Was Fine

And the other players? They were having fun too.

Here's what I'd been missing every time I cherry-picked a couple of "bad" neutral units for a teaching game: when you play with all of the rules, when there are seven neutral monsters and six neutral Great Old Ones on the table, everyone is racing for the best ones. And if you burn your first 2 Doom on the Dark Demon? You don't have enough Doom for anything else that round. So yes, everyone loses a cultist. But everyone else picked up their own ridiculous, game-warping neutral monsters. They didn't mind the lost acolyte. It didn't ruin their game.

And who won? Not me. I did very well, but it was the Opener of the Way who took it, sneaking in a four-Citadel victory. While I was busy chasing my sixth spellbook, they didn't bother, just played the map and won. We couldn't even stop them because none of us had calculated that they'd go for the win like that, and they just barely pulled it off.

Great job, Chip. Great game. And glad you talked us into using the app.

Sandy Was Right All Along

It turns out you need the full amount of crazy to balance out the crazy. Sandy Petersen's design philosophy, make everyone feel broken and overpowered so that no one is overpowered, only works when you actually let it breathe. Cherry-picking a couple of "safe" neutral units for a learning game is fine, but it was teaching me the wrong lesson about the rest of the roster.

I don't think I want to play without the full set of rules again. Bring out the Hunters. Bring out the Servitors. Bring out the Dark Demons. In a world of madness, only more madness makes sense.