Enter The Space Hulk

Today I decided to look through Barnes & Nobles board games section. I’m not sure what made me want to look through them but I am glad I did because I spotted a Warhammer 40k card game called ‘Space Hulk: Death Angel.’ I casually read over the box and thought it was a cool idea for a card game. When I noticed that it was only $20, I bought it right away. Only Warhammer can make me run out and buy something. I really enjoy the content/background of the Warhammer universe. It can be said that it’s probably the only subject that makes me ramble on like a ‘Fan Boy’ anymore.

Rob, my brother, and I decided to play a game to get a feel for the rules. A couple hours later… I mean 5 hours later, we finally win the third game. This game does not take it easy on the players. It’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry. Your Space Marine was ripped apart!” It’s a good change of pace from most board games where you can just win. Finally beating the two Brood Lords was great and it made us want to play some more but we ended up getting our butts kicked in the first location.

The game is for 1 to 6 players. All of the players work on the same team and control a combat squad of Space Marines, Rob and I got 2 squads each (4 total) since there was less then 4 players. You get a set of card for each squad and the cards allow you to issue an action to your marines. You can only make one action per turn. Each player picks an action for their squad(s) and places them face-down on the table. Once everyone has picked, all the action cards are revealed and the lowest numbered card goes first. The actions allow you to move/activate, support (your team) or attack (enemies). After the actions are done, the aliens on the ship get to attempt to kill your marines (if they survived your action phase). The player with the lowest action card gets to draw an event card. They allow the game to spawn more aliens, affect or help the marines. The object is to get to the last location and complete the victory condition. We managed to get to one and it was to kill 2 Brood Lords. It came down to our last 2 marines but we finally did it with the help of an Event card that made his alien bodyguards disappear.

If you have $20, like Warhammer themed games, and card games you should get this game. It was a lot of fun and wasn’t that hard to learn. You can play it by yourself if you wanted to burn some time. The game was definitely worth the money.