EXCLUSIVE! A Closer Look at Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

UnGeek gets a FIRST EXCLUSIVE LOOK at the upcoming Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu game and we dissect the information to do some theory-crafting of what to expect.

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Following up to last week’s news about Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, our friends at Gaming Library, the exclusive distributor of Z-Man and Pandemic in the Philippines, sent us an awesome image that provides interesting details about Z-Man Games’ upcoming title.
Here are some of the facts we noticed based on the screenshots. Keep in mind that the artwork and components are not final, and that contents may change in the final version of the product. So here it goes:
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The board (unlike the previous Pandemic board) depicts key locations – Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport divided into 4 regions represented by color (Green, Yellow, Blue, and Red respectively). 3 Ancient ones (Shuddle Mell, Azatoth and 1 other) can be seen above the board, are places for cards which could possibly mean that multiple Great Old Ones can be present during the game. There also seems to be placeholders for cards on the side of the board for the locations and other elements in the game. Lastly, at the bottom of the board we see a guide for the “sanity” mechanic in the game, determined by a die.

 

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Here are the components list and some thoughts on it:

  1. Seal tokens – could replace the virus element of the previous game (win via gate-seal?).
  2. Clue cards – Can be equivalent to the player cards that the investigators can use.
  3. Relic cards – equipment for the investigators to use.
  4. Summoning cards – card effects for the cultists and Great Old ones perhaps?
  5. Sanity tokens – could be one way for the players to lose the game, when they turn into madness.

 

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Speaking of the Ancient Ones, 3 (out of the 12 mentioned) before are shown here:

  1. Shuddle Mell – has effects that deals with sanity loss
  2. Azathoth – Removes cultists (possibly for other game effects in favor to the board)
  3. Cthulhu – Has an instant effect that gives an auto-loss for the investigators.

 

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On the investigators side, 3 out of the 7 characters are teased:

  1. The Magician – Starts with a specific hand limit and has an ability that deals with relics, another feature in the game.
  2. The Hunter – Looks to be the combative type and has a once-per-turn abilty when dealing with Shoggoths, one of the main monsters represented by miniatures in the game.
  3. The Reporter – Has a value of 4 on the upper right of the card, sanity perhaps? Also, it seems that one of the mechanics of travel in the game is by taking the bus

 

So that’s what we know so far about the game. Its plays 2-4 with an estimate 40-minute time in finishing and is slated for a SUMMER 2016 release. What do you guys think of the game? Did you find anything else that we might have missed? Hit us up in the comments! Thanks for reading and keep on playing!