boardgaming in photos: Space Hulk 4th Edition

The first edition of Space Hulk came out in 1989. That's more than 30 years ago! Yet the game does not feel aged and is in no way inferior to more current games. I have played Space Hulk before, and I think it was the first edition. The recent version I played was Allen's fourth edition. I couldn't tell the difference other than the game components. They did not change the game rules much. Allen paid a specialist to paint his set for him, and the guy did an amazing job. So we knew we must get it played! 

We played Scenario 1. The space marine team had five members, and they started at the top left. They had to get to the control room at the top right and blow it up. By doing so they would complete their mission and win the game. The aliens, known as the genestealers, had to stop the space marines. 

The purple arrows in the photo above were the entry points for the genestealers. The green discs were blips, i.e. what the marines detected using their sensors. Each blip represented 1 to 3 genestealers. The exact number was known by the genestealer player but not by the marine player yet. At this point the marines were moving towards the control room, and left one marine hanging back to watch out for genestealers threatening to attack from behind. 

Allen played the marines and I played the genestealers. I've always felt Space Hulk was a game about the marines, like the classic movie Alien. The story was about the marines on heroic missions, and the genestealers were a part of the missions controlled by a human player to make the missions come alive. In our game, Allen's marines ran into my genestealers near the T-junction in the middle. His marines entered that short stretch of corridor, while my genestealers hid around the corner along the longer corridor. This was bad for him. When my genestealers pounced from behind the corner, they were almost upon the marines, and the marines did not have much time to shoot. My genestealers descended upon the marines swiftly, and promptly killed a few, including the one with the flamethrower. The flamethrower marine was the critical guy in this scenario because the marines needed the flamethrower for destroying the control room. Once the flamethrower marine was killed, it was game over for Allen. It was a rather abrupt end, which surprised both Allen and I. Genestealers were much stronger in hand-to-hand combat, and marines should always try to shoot them down from a distance and not allow them to get close. 

The genestealers look pretty scary. 

Since our game was much shorter than expected, we decided to play the same scenario again, this time swapping roles. I did the same thing as Allen. I assigned one marine to watch my back, since the genestealers threatened from behind. 

This green marker was an overwatch marker. When a marine was put on overwatch, it would automatically fire at anything which moved during the genestealer player's turn. Every time a genestealer moved within sight of the marine, it would get shot at. Overwatch was crucial for the marines because they had fewer action points than the genestealers and would not be able to shoot down the waves of genestealers using just their regular action points. 

Despite having assigned one marine to guard my back, Allen's genestealers manage to get to him, and promptly killed him. I had to get another marine to turn around to deal with the genestealers behind my team, but he too fell quickly to the genestealers. 

Now I had only three marines left. The captain and the flamethrower marine were in front and they were now near the control room. The flamethrower marine had now lit up two sections, killing all genestealers within those sections and also preventing those beyond those sections from moving forward. The flamethrower marine had been using the flamethrower to kill many approaching genestealers. By now he only had one shot left, and that had to be reserved for destroying the control room. The corridor to the control room on the left was occupied by two genestealers, and the captain was now standing between them and the flamethrower marine. 

The third marine was facing backwards shooting at the approaching genestealers. Unfortunately he wasn't able to shoot all of them down. These genestealers didn't bother attacking him. They were aiming for the flamethrower marine. So they slid off into the side corridor after surviving the gunfire. 

The two genestealers ignored the marine who had fired at them and went after the flamethrower marine.

I needed to use my captain to defeat both the genestealers blocking my way to the control room. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to complete my mission before being overwhelmed by the horde of genestealers. The captain was better at close combat compared to regular marines, but genestealers were still stronger. The captain only rolled one die, and added 1 to the result. Genestealers rolled three dice in close combat. When my captain attacked the genestealer immediately in front of him, he rolled a 3! I thought this was it, game over. To my surprise, Allen's die roll was even worse! 

This was the view from the direction of the control room. The captain killed the first genestealer blocking the way, but there was a second one still in the way. To my delight, the captain managed to kill it too. This captain was certainly the MVP of the day! With these two genestealers out of the way, I now needed to complete my mission before the other genestealers rushed my flamethrower marine. I carefully counted the action points I needed. The captain would move forward to the control room door, open it, and take one more step forward past the doorway. By that point, I would run out of action points - both the captain's action points and the team's shared action points (called command points). I needed the captain to move one more step aside, so that he wouldn't block the line of sight of the flamethrower marine. I needed the flamethrower marine to be able to look inside the control room, in order to take aim, and then destroy it. Aaarrgghh! Just one action point short! What a shame it was, after those two hard won fights. 

Then Allen pointed out to me that the captain didn't really have to step aside. The place he was standing was part of the control room. So if the flamethrower shot at the captain, the captain would burn, and that would light up the control room. What a gruesome way for our MVP captain to die - at the hands of his own comrade. 

A dramatic way to die!

"Chief, it's been an honour!" exclaimed the flamethrower marine, before being overrun by genestealers. The marines knew this was going to be a suicide mission. Even if they managed to destroy the control room, there were so many genestealers they knew it was impossible to make it back out alive. 

The marines complete the mission right at the last moment. They would not have lasted one more round. This was a really close game. 

After Space Hulk, Allen and I needed to play some Patchwork to calm our nerves.  This is a small box game but it takes up a lot of space at the table, because all those pieces need to be arranged in a circle.