Thread: Cthulhu: Death May Die:: General:: Solo Set-Up Tips w/Pimpage

by Robbage

This game is so pleasingly designed. Like a simple cook book, take one Episode Box and one Elder One Box. Stir well, lay out and play. I love the contained aspect of this. No gathering or searching for other material.

As an inveterate solo player I try and bring the game to me. Meaning, I sit back on my bed tucked under a lap table holding a lazy Susan and one of a number of different sized toppers.

Most C:DMD scenarios fit a 30” x 20” topper. The smallish tiles that people complain about assist with this and on occasion I will have to tweak the setup to accommodate a slightly larger tile set. There is no way everything for most missions will fit on the board so I look for what I can place vertically. In this case, it’s the two player dashboards as seen in the pics, as well as the story boardboard that I mount on a stand to the side.

I use metal stands, marketed primarily as book ends, and 8”X11” metal sheets. You can easily attach the sheet to the stand to handle different configurations. I place a small iron bar on the base of the stand to secure it. I use magnets of different shapes and sizes to secure the material to the metal stand

The two deck holders you see hold a card deck at a convenient viewing angle and discards slide easily beneath the deck. You will see a small card holder centered between the two player boards to hold the revealed Mythos cards. This is one of the handy units from UberStax.

Finally, the tricking out of custom bits for doors, tunnels, fire and summoning tokens. The decision to choose between the simplicity of a two dimension map and the addition of props to create a third, can be a difficult one. It often comes down to the quality of the pieces, the ease of implementing them, and the effect they ultimately create.

I picked some interesting pieces up from Tim Howell at his Etsy hobby shop, BoardGameWow: https://boardgamewow.etsy.com/listing/1698638081. There are doors tunnels, gates, and more. Some have clever tiny LED lights that illuminate and vivify the thematic dimension. The three gates absolutely pop. The doors are simple and elegant - in fact, I use them with several other games with grids and minis.

See what you think.