The year is 1940 and the German war machine has pushed across Europe. Belgium, The Netherlands and now France has been crushed, little stands in the way of the Nazis making a push to eliminate the last elements of resistance and start a full invasion of Britain. Little known to the Allies however, the occult forces of the Black Sun and the Nachtwolfe use arcane magics and otherworldly weapons to try and swing the balance for the Axis forces to claim their prize. But they are not unopposed. Secretly, brave individuals of Britain’s Section M and the US’s Majestic fight against this horror, and peak under the curtain to see even darker forces of the Mythos playing their great game against humanity.

In the Achtung! Cthulhu Starter Set, available to order now from Modiphius, players are able to take their first steps into the pulp influenced Lovecraftian World War II roleplaying game using the 2D20 system.

In this post we’ll be checking out the new Starter Set, seeing who the game is aimed at, and what it has to offer people who are a little bored of their current RPG settings

Massive thanks to Modiphius for sending us over a free review copy of the new starter set

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We’ve also filmed a full unboxing which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So grab your gear and ready yourself to face the horrors of entities beyond your comprehension as we jump into a pulp World War II adventure with the Achtung! Cthulhu Starter Set

Achtung! Cthulhu Starter Set Review

I’m a big fan of Roleplaying games, but I’ve got to admit Achtung! Cthulhu is nothing I’ve ever dabbled with before. Unimaginable Lovecraftian horrors is something I’ve faced in Call of Cthulhu, but gelling that with a pulpy World War II setting of heroic individuals battling against occult Nazi organisations dabbling with Old Gods and magic is not something that was on my bingo card for awesome RPG settings. Think the most over the top pulp adventures, with horror and sci-fi elements, Indiana Jones or Wolfenstein spliced with Captain America the First Avenger and you’re partway there.

The original version game was the first release by Modiphius and had a great following, and was recently updated a couple of years ago to use their 2D20 system that is also used in Fallout and Star Trek Adventures which has elements such as Stress (That reflects the physical and mental punishment characters take), Momentum which can be spent to trigger some suitably cinematic moments and Threat which is a dark mirror of Momentum which can be used by the gamemaster to add dramatic and often deadly twists.

This box is a way of players being able to dip their toe into the system and see if it’s for them with a full campaign for 6 players that introduces key concepts and rules while still delivering the rip roaring pulp action that the game is known for.

This vibe goes as far as the artwork and look of the product itself, the box art capturing the feel of those old Pulp comics and stories with suitably over the top and exclamation marked headers. The box itself is rather sturdy too, not only holding all the contents together, but also doubling as a decent little GM screen for people who are just starting out the game – While you’ll want to progress to a proper screen, the box is really good and has a lot of useful information that you’ll want at hand while playing so you don’t need to flip through the rulebook as you play.

The box contains a magazine format 20 page Basic Rules book, alongside a meatier 60 page campaign book that combined guide players through their first Achtung! Cthulhu campaign – we’ll have a look at these in more detail shortly!

Being a starter set, we also get lots of other goodies in the box – firstly there are 6 pre generated character sheets, something that is always really handy to have in sets such as these. For new players, having to create their own character the first time can be a little daunting, but by having pre generated character sheets, each player can just pick their favourite and just jump in! Each player also has access to a Quick Reference Sheet which explains most concepts players will be using in a clear and easy to follow way – Skill success charts, common actions and other things that may come up during a game. There is a typo in the “With Focus” example sadly that makes it seem that only 1s give you 2 successes – but the colour coding shows the actual intent and is clear enough – As GM I’d maybe just tweak the example to make it crystal clear for players however. Between the character sheet and the reference sheet however players will have most things they need for the campaign to hand.

Full fold out maps are included for all locations within the campaign, and card punch tokens are included for every player and adversary you will face, along with momentum and threat tokens. The character and adversary tokens are perfect to use in place of miniatures on the map, and give players a much better visual representation of what part of the map everyone is in, which can often be difficult for new players to follow when things are a little abstract. Likewise the momentum and threat token give you a physical currency to accrue and spend – again something that will appeal to new players and encourage them to use them.

Finally there is a set of 2D20s and 4 bespoke Challenge Dice – this is enough to play the game with, but with a large group of 7 including the GM I’d probably make sure you have 2D20s for each player and some extra challange dice so everyone has a pool to hand – If you don’t have any of the custom dice, there is a chart that allows you to use a normal D6 and map the results – but for new players I do think the custom dice are quicker to eyeball in the heat of the game.

So what’s the game like? Let’s dive into the Basic Rules and see how it plays!

Basic Rules

Achtung! Cthulhu uses Modiphius’ 2D20 system, which is a nice fast paced and easy to learn system that revolves around trying to get a target number of successes based on rolling below a number based on a combination of an attribute and skill. The target number of successes can range from 0 to 5, going from something that is very easy to do all the way up to something near impossible – most simple tests will just require one success, but this will increase as things get harder. In order to make the test you add together an attribute and a skill that represents that challenge – so for example shooting something you would add fighting and coordination – if we look at the premade character Alex, his fighting skill is 3, and his coordination is 9 – add both of those together and you get a value of 12, basically this means each dice roll of 12 or less would be a success. Criticals exist, and most times this is one a roll of 1 which would then count as 2 successes. However, in the case of Alex he has a focus in fighting with handguns, which means that any dice roll equal or under that skill value (3 in the case of Alex) would count as 2 successes.

Once you have worked out the target numbers you roll 2D20, and work out the total number of successes – hit the required number and you pass, fail to hit the number and you fail – nice and easy!

What’s really cool about this system is the concept of Momentum – for each success beyond the target value you get to add a Momentum token to the pool. This is shared by all players and caps out at 6, and can be spent by players in order to do some cool stuff. This can be as simple as spending Momentum to add an additional D20 to your dice roll to increase the chances of success, but you can also do fun stuff such as gain some information from the GM by asking a single question that the GM must answer, or to create a Truth. A Truth essentially alters a scene by adding an additional factor that will make something harder or easier – so maybe if the agents are tracking a target and are losing track of them, they could spend 2 momentum to create a truth that the target they are tracking is bleeding, and is leaving a faint trail making it easier to follow them. Or perhaps in the middle of a firefight they create a truth that means the heavens open with a torrential downpour that makes it harder for everyone to hit targets. What I really like about this is that it encourages the players to come up with some nice thematic and cinematic moments that not only have an impact on the game, but encourage the players to flex their creative muscles.

The GM also has a similar tool at their disposal though in the form of Threat – this is a similar currency that can be used to increase the amount of D20s that are used for a roll, or for the GM to make their own Truths, or even use to bring in more adversaries during a battle – the Threat pool doesn’t have a cap either, so the players need to be careful about managing this and make sure they do not do things that generate too much of it.

Combat range and ammo are fairly abstract compared to other game, with ranges simply falling into Close, Medium, Long and Extreme to show relative distances, with each increasing increment representing how many zones away you can interact with something. With the maps splint into zones rather than having to work out distances makes calculations for this quick and fluid during games. Likewise individual bullets are not counted, with the agents assumed to have enough on them for the adventure, instead an “ammo” count is used to activate special shooting modes that trigger additional abilities.

Damage is also abstracted into Stress which represents both the physical and mental toll a target can take – once a certain number of stress is reached then injuries or worse can happen – this is calculated using the custom Challenge dice that have one face showing 1 stress, 1 face showing 2 stress, 2 blank faces and 2 “Effect” faces that cause 1 stress plus trigger any special abilities the weapon has. There is a chart in the book allowing you to “convert” the results of a standard D6 to this, but in my experience its a lot easier to eyeball the results using the custom dice, and I’d highly recommend picking up another set or 2 if you are playing with a larger group (Ideally, each player needs 2D20s too)

While this is only a 20 page starter ruleset, there’s lots of cool stuff here and gives players a great taste of the 2D20 system – I look forward to checking out some other games by Modiphius to see how this is expanded further in a full rulebook.

Among The Wolves

The main attraction in the Starter Set however is the Among the Wolves campaign. This is an introductory campaign designed for 6 players (While this can be played with less players, I feel that 6 is the sweet spot for the campaign – though if you have a smaller group the GM could always run them as NPCs and scale the difficulty and number of adversaries down accordingly) and guides both new players and the GM through the mechanics of the 2D20 system and offers up scenarios that introduce concepts such as Momentum and Stress in a natural way that encourages players to engage with them – we even have pre written text for the GM to read out that talks players through the concept of the Challenge Dice and how they work, and by throwing the players straight into the action with a small skirmish they quickly pick up what can and can’t be done, and that Momentum is there to be used and not horded away.

I don’t want to dive into spoilers too much, but the 3 act story also takes the players on a journey from a fairly standard world war 2 adventure with combat, investigation and tracking down targets in a village, to being introduced to the secrets of the Mythos and facing the horrors of otherworldly entities and arcane technology. I really like this as it gives players a chance to get to grips with the pulp setting before hitting their sanity with the Lovecraft flavour too!

The campaign itself is really well laid out with useful box outs for the GM, stat blocks for adversaries in useful places and handouts printed both in sequential order in the adventure, and again at the back making them easy to photocopy and print out. My only mark against this set would be that I would have liked to have seen the handouts printed as separate pages that can be given to the players, as they are not really printed in the book in a way that would make it possible to cut them out and use as physical handouts – something that did surprise me given we have full fold out maps and tokens etc.

Without giving too much away, this is a great little adventure, and if you and your players are toying with dipping your toe into something that is a little different than your standard fantasy roleplaying game, then this starter set is a brilliant way of being able to have everything you need for an adventure before progressing with the “full” ruleset.

Summary

Having never played Achtung! Cthulhu before, I was pleasantly surprised with both how quickly the game plays and how the mechanics really lead themselves to some dramatic and cinematic moments that capture the feel of those pulp war stories that the game is trying to summon up.

While some Starter Sets need a more experienced GM to lead them, the Among the Wolves campaign has just enough hand holding to make sure that any group of players will be able to run a fun adventure and feel like they are getting a full roleplaying experience while not having to spend time working on the nitty gritty of character creation and complex rules interactions.

A good RPG Starter Set leaves players hungry to leap further into that world and sample more of what it has to offer, and Achtung! Cthulhu has certainly done that – I can’t wait to see what else is in store in the core game and in the future of the line

The Achtung! Cthulhu Starter Set is available to order now, retailing at £32.

Modiphius Entertainment provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.