Power Core: Call of Cthulhu Preview
Note: This preview uses pre-release components and rules. What you see here may be different from the final, published game.
When I first heard about Power Core: Call of Cthulhu, I was pretty excited. I’ll play just about any Lovecraftian game, but mash it up with a dueling game, and my interest is immediately piqued.
The first in what appears to be a future line of games in the Power Core system, Power Core: Call of Cthulhu is a two-player dueling game that will have players pitting a pair of Great Elder Gods in a battle to the death.
To start a game of Power Core: Call of Cthulhu, players each select two Great Old Ones and shuffle their decks together. Why do you use two Elder Gods? I have no idea thematically, but I’m guessing mechanically it’s to make the decks a little thicker.
Players will take turns with each turn having a handful of phases. First, a player will rotate all the Power Cores on any cards in play. Once rotated, whichever space is facing up, grants the player its effects. These range from attacking your opponent, to healing, to gaining horror resources, to giving your monsters damage-preventing shields. Some monsters even have unique powers that will trigger at certain times.
While Great Old Ones and their Avatars have unique and never-ending power cores, the rest of your monsters and items will have a limited time on the battlefield. After the fourth turn of a Power Core, the red section will activate and the card will head to the discard pile. While a monster can be sent to its doom prematurely via attacks from your opponent, after enough time it will automatically leave.
Once your Power cores have all been rotated, you can take two actions. The main actions are drawing a card, playing a card, or
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