Glorantha: The Gods War

After many years of production delays, Petersen’s second big project finally reached my table. And yes, visually it did absolutely nothing for me: personally, I find the miniatures utterly awful. I never particularly liked RQ’s aesthetic either, so I bought this one purely for the gameplay, not to admire the table.

At its core, I see it as a slightly improved Cthulhu Wars. The flow is noticeably more playable and more strategic, mainly because you cannot snowball quite so easily. That keeps the game livelier and made me feel that my choices carry more weight.

Runes and fragments are the additions that noticeably raise both the fun and the Ameritrash factor. In our five-player game, we used the four core factions and the Invisible God, who works like the Ancients in Cthulhu Wars, alongside neutral tribes, cosmic monsters, dragons, and whatever else this setting throws into the arena. That interaction produced the expected mayhem without letting anyone run away with things effortlessly.

I would go so far as to call it a Cthulhu Wars killer in gameplay terms. I cannot say I had any complaints about our five-player session; it was an honest game. Still, if you expect it to win me over as an object on the table too, its miniatures are a very large thorn in its side.