Time for New TacticsDenizens of the Underworld Is Now Available for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game
“Suydam’s new associates were among the blackest and most vicious criminals of Red Hook’s devious lanes, and that at least a third of them were known and repeated offenders in the matter of thievery, disorder, and the importation of illegal immigrants.”
–H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror at Red Hook
The city of Arkham is home to cultists, cops, nosy professors, and strange creatures that defy human comprehension. Now the time has come for all members of Danny O’Bannion’s Syndicate to step forward and reclaim Arkham’s streets… and start turning a profit.
Denizens of the Underworld, the sixth deluxe expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!
Denizens of the Underworld introduces 165 new cards to Call of Cthulhu (three copies each of fifty-five individual cards), roughly two-thirds of which provide the Criminals of the Syndicate with new members, tools, and tricks. You’ll be able to build stronger decks around characters with the Criminal subtype, use new tricks to cheat luck, ensure no contest is ever fairly fought, and explore new Tactics. Additionally, you’ll find a new Ancient One, a new cop to pursue all the new criminals, and new characters and Tactic events for all of the game’s other factions.
You can learn more about the Syndicate’s new tricks from Denizens of the Underworld by reading our previews. In them, we examine some of the expansion’s new Criminals, see how it promotes new uses of skill manipulation, and discover one of the Syndicate’s most terrifying Tactics.
Of course, there are darker and more terrifying forces also at work in the streets of Arkham, and while the Syndicate is pursuing its new Tactics, they and their minions are pursuing their own!
Ghastly Experiments and Secret Rituals
While the Syndicate’s thugs and hatchet men fight at night to win back their turf, some of the game’s other factions pursue strategies with far more sinister implications…
In Denizens of the Underworld, all of the game’s other factions receives new Tactics and strong, new characters, some of whom might have secret ties to the Syndicate’s Criminal efforts.
H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are full of eerie transformations, and Denizens of the Underworld introduces yet another that may be destined to haunt and terrify any that would stand against the minions of Cthulhu. The Tactic, Calculated Mutation (Denizens of the Underworld, 45) can transform even the most harmless characters into terrifying monsters or punishing combatants. More important, perhaps, is the fact that it grants Cthulhu’s minions the means to gain critical Investigation icons. For example, if the Villainous Scientist, Dr. Wentworth Moore (Ebla Restored, 43) were to submit himself to a calculated mutation, he could gain as many as three Investigation icons and win the Investigation struggle against many of Miskatonic University’s brightest minds.
Meanwhile, while it’s true that Danny O’Bannion’s Syndicate is Arkham’s number one name in organized crime, a number of other Criminals arrive in Denizens of the Underworld, and each of them has his own secret ambitions. As an elite Government official, who also happens to be a member of the Order of the Silver Twilight’s prestigious Lodge, Josef Meiger (Denizens of the Underworld, 52) is willing to break the law whenever it serves his interests. Particularly interested in the power available through a number of Rituals and Artifacts, Josef Meiger can bring those types of supports into play whenever he commits to a story. Of course, if he leaves play, all your Rituals and Artifacts are destroyed, but the question is whether or not your opponent can discover Josef Meiger’s Criminal activities and put an end to them before you can use your newly acquired power to win the game.
Calculated Mutation and Josef Meiger are just two of the cards from Denizens of the Underworld that illustrate the horrifying schemes the game’s other factions are dreaming up and that the Syndicate will need to counter… Or, are they?
Given the freedom with which players can approach deck building in Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, it’s easy to imagine a Syndicate member like Isaac Miles (Denizens of the Underworld, 9) being subjected to a ghastly Calculated Mutation in order to give him a more terrifying visage. Alternatively, some Syndicate members might learn that they’ve been manipulated by the Order of the Silver Twilight, and outside Criminals like Josef Meiger using characters like the Clover Club Pit Boss (Denizens of the Underworld, 12) in order to gain Willpower. In Call of Cthulhu, the synergies between rival factions are rife with possibility, and Denizens of the Underworld builds upon many of them.
It’s Time to Turn a Profit
Take back the streets of Arkham and draw the crowds to the Clover Club. The time has come for Danny O’Bannion’s boys to start turning a profit. Denizens of the Underworld is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!
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Time for New Tactics
