Cthulhu: Death May Die unites two of tabletop gaming’s biggest designers (Updated)

Update: Cthulhu: Death May Die has launched on Kickstarter.

Original Story: Cool Mini Or Not and Guillotine Games have announced Cthulhu: Death May Die by two of contemporary board gaming’s most popular, prolific designers: Eric M. Lang and Rob Daviau. In Cthulhu: Death May Die players will attempt not to stop an alien god of Lovecraft’s mythos from entering our reality, but summon it accidentally or on purpose in order to, in CMON’s own words, “shoot it in the face.”

Daviau is known as the principal pioneer of the Legacy game, the popular genre of board games that permanently change as you play them. Lang, an improbably prolific and successful designer, is responsible for more games than is easy to list—suffice to say he designed at least one of the newest hotnesses in board games each year for the last five years.

Cthulhu: Death May Die will be a series of standalone episodes. Each episode will have a two-act structure focusing on the moments before the monster is summoned, then transitioning into a focus on killing the Great Old One. The twist is that no players can die in the first act without a loss, but any number can fall in combat with the alien god—as long as it dies. Few other gameplay details are available right now, but it has miniatures and dice-based resolution mechanics. Mitigating dice rolls and bad outcomes by playing around each character’s insanity is cited as a major mechanic.

Eric M. Lang is known for such games as Blood Rage, Chaos in the Old World, XCOM: The Board Game, Quarriors!, and Bloodborne: The Card Game, as well as this year’s new hotness: Rising Sun. He’s famous for making asymmetrically balanced, relatively approachable designs that make heavy use of miniatures.

Daviau is best known for legacy games like Risk: Legacy, SeaFall, Pandemic Legacy, and the upcoming Betrayal Legacy, as well as miniatures game Heroscape. Daviau is also part of classic games revival company Restoration Games, whose Fireball Island Kickstarter topped $2.8 million.

Cthulhu: Death May Die will be funded in a Kickstarter to be launched “soon.” Given the production times involved with miniatures-heavy board games, it’s almost certainly a mid to late 2019 release.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.