Review
HORROR GAME BASED ON LOVECRAFT’S BOOKS
CARCOSA
CARCASSONNE well shaken with cthulhu à Carcosa
Readers that love the romances of Ambrose Bierce and Howard Lovecraft already know this name: Carcosa, the lost city of their books, placed inside the black lake of Hali. Most recently, she was also named in the TV series “True Detective”. Let’s see together if the game is a good introduction to those books.
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The materials of Carcosa are strong and easy to use: only the cards are probably a little too “light”, but we do not have to manipulate them during the game so they are fine. Of course, the heart of the game are the 88 square tiles, (Carcassonne like), including the four “starting” ones for the town of Hastur that should be placed in the middle of the table at the set-up. A small board, called “Yellow Sign” (or “Cultist Sheet” if you prefer) is also placed on the table: it has two sides and you decide which one to use based on the number of players (front side for 4 players, back for 2-3). Finally, we have four series of wooden meeples (one “Prophet” and 9 cultists for each color). The box of Carcosa is a good example of “how” to produce a game: small, compact, and exactly filled by the stored components. No waste: compliments to “One Free Elephant” who produced it. I just add one note: please find a fabric bag large enough to store all the tiles to facilitate their draw.
To set-up the game you need to place the board (that we will call simply “Yellow Sign” from now on), corresponding to the number of players. Then you prepare on some stacks of tiles randomly extracted from a cup or a bag: again, the number of stacks (4 to 6) depends on the number of players (2 to 4) but all the tiles are always used, and they should remain “covered”. See picture nr.2
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Finally, in the middle of the table are placed the four “start” tiles that represents the town of Hastur, completely surrounded by the black waters of the Hali lake.
Each player takes all the meeples of one color and one card that represents a section of their cult house. She is divided in two parts: on the right the hospital to recover the cultists that become mads after a ritual; on the left the dining room were the cultists try to come back to force to be ready for another task. The last meeple is the “Prophet”, to be placed on the Yellow Sign, standing.
The tiles have the “usual” dimensions of the Carcassonne series, but with a major difference: they are printed on both sides (see also Picture 3). Side “A” shows an “unstable” territory while on side “B” is printed the real “final” territory: some of them may rise special bonus/malus when they are overturned, as we will see later.
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The game is played in turns of five phases:
Phase 1: recover a cultist from insanity
Phase 2: select a tile from one stack on the “Yellow Sign” and place the Prophet on top of that stack (blocking it for the following players)
Phase 3: place the selected tile on the table, with the “unstable” side on, following the usual “Carcassonne” rules for the connection to already placed tiles.
Phase 4: (optional) take one cultist from the reserve to be placed on that tile
Phase 5: solve the eventual effect of the tile.
As you see this is very similar to a standard “Carcassonne” sequence, but there are some differences that will make Carcosa slightly different from its ancestor, starting from the meeples: instead of knights or peasants we have cultists and they are really unlucky as their Prophet will use them for some sorcery (and they become insane) or sacrifice in the black waters of the Hali lake (to be devoured by a monster).
On the “Yellow Sign” is also printed the Victory Point (VP) track and the players get VP (called here Power Points) when they are able to “stabilize” some tiles (i.e. turning them on the “B” side). If, for example, you have a cultist on a road … uuups … on an “Energy Flow” (as they call it) and you close that path all the unstable tiles are turned on the “B” side and you gain as many VP as there are tiles on this flow. But the poor cultist become insane and should be sent to the hospital.
If a player closes a “district” (a series of territory tiles) the Cult with more cultists there gain as many VP as there are tiles, but if some “Theaters” are printed on that district the player may take extra cultists from an initial general reserve. Of course, all the cultists in the district become insane and must be placed on their hospitals.
If a cultist is in a “Ritual Site” when it is overturned there are two possibilities: (a) The Yellow King (master of this world) is satisfied and the Cult gains as many VP as there are tiles around the Site (ad the cultist becomes insane, of course) or (b) a monster comes up and devours the cultist that is sent then to the “Yellow Sign” (but the player get the VP).
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Another difference with Carcassonne is the use of the “Ritual Stones” (see also Picture 3): every player gets 6 of them at the beginning but they still do not have “magic” powers: any time that an Energy Flow is completed the player may “charge” a stone that has up to the same number of the VP gained. Therefore, with a 5 tiles Energy Flow you may “charge” one of the stones with the number “II-III-IV-V”. When you use a “charged” stone you place it in your reserve, and you need to “charge” it again if you wish to use it later in the game. A charged stone allows the player to make “special” actions: immediately recover an insane cultist; move a cultist from a tile to another; look at the tiles of a stack on the Yellow Sign; move a Prophet; take a cultist from the general reserve; etc.
The game ends when a Cult reaches the case 70 on the VP track, winning the game, or if TWO stacks of tiles on the Yellow Sign are completely exhausted: in this second option all the VP must be calculated (adding reduced VP for unfinished districts or energy flows and some extra VP for the sacrificed cultists). The player with most points is the winner.
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The dominant theme of the game is obviously the “Horror”, including the rules booklet, graphically very well done. Unfortunately, this complicates a little the study as you have to separate the real rules from the “chrome” of the narrative contents. The authors were probably conscient of this as they created a special section in the booklet (called “Arcane Knowledge”) where the wrote specific questions and the related answers. It is strongly suggested to read this section BEFORE starting with the rules. You will avoid becoming confused, even if this is the real scope of the Yellow King, of course.
The rules also include three variants: the first two (“Criminal”, who adds 8 grey coloured tokens, and “The Stranger” that adds a special yellow token) are used to vary a little the rules, while the third one (The Investigators) is written specifically to play “solo”, with special rules to use the cultists of the other factions against your own.
Surely the game has a particular “soul” and the setting will greatly please to the players that like the “Horror”, the dark drawings and the … human sacrifices. One thing is certain: we are still in the path traced by Carcassonne.
Pietro Cremona
Players: 1-4
Age: 12+
Time: 60+
Designer: Nigel Kennington
Artist: David Campos, Colin Briggs, Augustinas Reginskis
Price: ca. 30 Euro
Publisher: Spiele-Offensive 2017
Web: www.spiele-offensive.de
Genre: Tiles laying, horror setting
Users: With friends
Version: de
Rules: de en it
In-game text: ja
Comments:
Reasonable playing time
Good interaction among players
Rules should be better written
Of course, the Carcassonne base is evident
Compares to:
Carcassonne
Other editions:
One Free Elephant (en), MS Edizioni (it)
My rating: 4
Pietro Cremona:
An interesting variation of the classic Carcassonne, with an eye on Lovecraft’s horror books.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 1
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0