The Hills Rose Wild on Halloween 2023

Back in October I celebrated Halloween with a game of The Hills Rise Wild. Originally published by Pagan Publishing in 2000, it started life as a board game, but with strong miniatures play characteristics. Players take on the roles of one of four factions from the backwoods New England of H.P. Lovecraft's 1920s horror tales.

The objective of the game is to take your team of six miscreants and find the old Whateley Seal, which in turn grants access to the Whateley manor, resting place of the fabled Necronomicon. Having found the book - no mean feat in the twisting halls of the manor - your faction needs to get it back to a summoning circle and summon a Great Old One, thereby winning the game, and probably ending the world in the process.

I decided to translate the game into a miniatures game. I tweaked some of the creature profiles slightly to match my collection, but I had most of the protagonists covered, which was gratifying. On the day we went with the Marsh Clan (Deep Ones from Innsmouth), the Whateley Clan (hill billies out of Dunwich), and the Cult of Ezekiel. I generated the playing surface using the tiles provided with the game, but used my own terrain collection.

Above: The layout was randomly determined using the process for creating the board in the game. Faction summoning circles are in the corners. The Whateley manor always sets up near the middle.

All the houses used in the game had cards allocated, which provided encounters, equipment or special features as per the rules.

I lost arguably my toughest character - Wilbur Whateley - early on to a spell from the Sea Witch of the Marsh clan, and was playing catch up for the rest of the game, as my Whateley cultists were picked off one by one. The Cult of Ezekiel hung back, sensibly letting the Whateleys and the Deep Ones battle it out in the early stages. The Marsh clan spread across the board. I THINK they were the ones to find the Whateley seal which then led to a dash for the manor.

Wilbur Whateley (with tentacles) and Lavinia Whateley investigate an abandoned hut as they search for the Whateley Seal.

By this point I still had two characters in the game, although both were wounded. I entered the manor in an effort to see if I could get to the Necronomicon before the Marsh clan could, but sadly failed. The Cult of Ezekiel had also decided to contest the manor. I had managed to dispatch one Ezekiel cultist with TNT, but they still had five on the board, although Father Dark was wounded badly.

Members of the Whateley clan approach what turned out to be the Murder House, eventually claimed by the dreaded Marsh clan. In the distance, my hound sniffs at the fence. What's inside?

As the battle raged inside the manor itself, the Marsh clan was down to about three effectives (Captain Obed Marsh was already slain), and with the Cult in a good position around the manor, we conceded the game to them.

I thought the game ran well as a miniatures game. Everyone seemed to have fun. It did run longer than four hours, however, which was a bit longer than required. I was looking for it to run inside that time frame. With a fourth player it would take even longer.

The Marsh Clan moving into action.  The cards are randomly distributed in the huts and one of them will be the Whateley seal. This is needed to access the mansion, seen in the distance.

The game also suffers a bit in my view from 1990s games design, with quite a few modifiers involved. Pre-2000 game designers seem to have loved modifiers, and tabletop wargames from this era are full of them. Personally I feel they are not needed in modern games design. The Hills Rise Wild is, however, more than 20 years old and shows its age.

The Cult of Ezekiel, led by Father Dark in the black robe. Here they are tangling with the Marsh clan. We used the markers of the game to keep track of the bodies, although I was not sure of their exact utility.

My other big issue is with what is required to win the game: I think it is too fatal for any one player to actually get to the point where they successfully summon the Great Old One. Before you even reach that point, there should only be one faction left capable of achieving the summoning. Thus, there is a strong argument for simply focusing on killing off all the opposition, and winning by default.

The seal only turned up on the last card flip of the exploration phase; in most games it will be found sooner. I feel the length of the game - and the level of attrition - can partly be attributed to that, and if the seal had been discovered in one of the first few huts explored, it would have been a very different game. Something to bear in mind for the future.

The closing scene of the game: the Marsh clan grabbed the Necronomicon in the manor, but surrounded by the Cult of Ezekiel, were forced to concede.