Good old Space Hulk has a re-release in September.
The game was originally released 20 years ago, and was apparently the ‘gateway’ game for a lot of people getting into miniature gaming.
Space Hulk That’s the Australian link, you can change your country as an option to see it locally.
I played the video game more than the tabletop game.
I think it would make a good co-op game like L4D.
Wonderful news. I’ve wanted this since I played it as a teen, and just last week I lost an ebay auction for a complete set (it went for over $300).
You know, I’d much rather see Games Workshop license Space Hulk to a company like Fantasy Flight than just do another edition. Space Hulk cries out for an easy, out of the box gaming experience and they bog it down with being a miniatures games.
The same goes for Blood Bowl for that matter. If they boxed them as ready to play and kept any additions similarly simple then they could sell a massive pile of additional copies. But then they wouldn’t be Games Workshop.
I know so little about the gaming culture that I thought this was going to be a video game with a large green protagonist in a space suit.
One of them would be me… 
I was attending a sci-fi con here in Indianapolis a decade or so ago, and wandered into the gaming room. A guy there was just finishing laying out a huge Space Hulk layout – must have been 4 or more sets jumbled together. I found an empty seat, sat down, and had a terrific 3+ hours playing a game I knew nothing about.
Nowdays, I’m an avid Warhammer Fantasy player (but oddly enough, not a Warhammer 40,000 player), and the copy of Space Hulk that I bought at the con still sits on my shelf. I should really get it out and play it again.
Every time I see this thread I think: Bruce Banner in space?
For those who are curious, it goes a bit like this…
In the Warhammer 40K universe (and Fantasy too?), there is something called the Warp. Think of it like hyperspace in Star Wars or subspace in Star Trek, sorta. It’s where magic comes from and what allows interstellar travel. It’s a region where emotions/thoughts/ideas create actual effects, including coalescing into gods and demons.
Anyways, from time to time a spaceship will get lost in the Warp. Over time, such ships tend to drift around and pick up other pieces of ships. Games Workshop have changed the ‘reason’ for this a few times, IIRC, and has used various explanations like doomed crews welding this ships to other ships in order to better raid them for supplies to the strange currents of the Warp just smooshing ships together over the millenia. In short, the result of a bunch of ships smooshed/welded together is a hulk. Hulks phase in and out of reality (unpredictably) and they offer the promise of potential untold riches for those who might plunder them.
They’re also uses as battle transports by orks and infection vectors by Genestealers (so the forces of the Imperium of Man often board hulks in order to purge the unclean… with fire). Originally, genestealers were created for the Space Hulk game as simply some form of antagonist species and they were later rolled into the Tyranid playable race for whom they operate as vanguard scouts and ultra-elite hand to hand combat specialists. The good guys in a game of Space Hulk are the space marines, specifically space marines in a type of super-heavy armor made for boarding actions and intense firefights and such, known as tactical dreadnought armor. In the common parlance of the 40K world, this is called terminator armor. So the troops who are in it are referred to as terminators.
Anyways, a game of Space Hulk consists of space marine terminators boarding a space hulk to (I dunno, host a wet t-shirt contest) and then fighting the genestealers whose razor sharp claws are capable of penetrating even uber-awesome terminator armor.
That background bit out of the way: I’ve never played the board game although I do collect and play 'nids. I’ll keep my eyes on the reprint but I’m not sure if it’s worth buying or not.
Anybody able to fill me in any on what playing a game is like?
Quite simple, really. 2 to 4 players. One player plays as the Genestealers, the rest get a Terminator squad each (or one player may play multiple squads, but it’s not as fun, since a big part of the fun of playing as the Marines is inter-squad bickering). A marine squad is composed of 5 marines : a sergeant (who gets an energy sword and a storm bolter), three regular marines (storm bolter+powerfist) and a heavy flamer.
Before the game starts, all players agree on the mission they’re going to play, from the rulebook. Each mission has its own floorplan and objectives, and dictates how many “blips” the genestealer player gets per turn. Usually missions involve crossing the board to reach a specific room in order to either set it on fire, or have a marine fiddle with a computer. Some missions are also pure survival, seek & destroys (kill X genestealers, then come back) and so forth.
The marines have 4 action points each, plus 1D6 “squad action points” per turn than can be used for any marine in the squad. Moving one square forward, shooting, turning 90° all cost 1 point. Moving backwards costs 2. The average corridor is 6 to 8 tiles long, 1 tile wide, the average room 3x3. Marines can also be ordered to go on “overwatch”, which lets them fire during the genestealer turn. The kicker : Marines can’t share a tile, or cross a tile with another marine in it, and can’t fire over the head of each other. Since the Hulk is very cramped, and marines are very, very slow, positioning is key. And the flamer is never where you want it to be :p.
Regular marines kill stealers on a 6+ on two dice, but if they roll a double, their weapon has just jammed, and they need to spend one AP to clear it. That happens a lot on overwatch, where they get to fire once each time a genestealer in their line of sight moves. Continuous fire (firing multiple times at the same target) gives the marine +1 each time.
Marines can also fight hand-to-hand, but they’re at a big disadvantage there. They roll one die and kill on 5+, while the stealers roll three dice and kill on 3+. Only the sarge gets a break, he rolls two dice and kills on 4+ IIRC.
The flamer’s special ability is that it can set tiles or rooms on fire (duh), burning everything to a crisp and blocking the way for one turn. The problem is that fuel is at a premium : he only gets 6 shots worth of woosh for the whole game. After that, he’s dead weight.
For their part, genestealers have 6 action points each, can move diagonals and can turn 90° for free. They can’t shoot at all, but as stated earlier they rip marines to shreds when they close in. Every turn the stealer player picks a number of “blips” from a bag. Those are little tokens with a number on them (from 0 to 6) that represent returns from the marines motion sensors (à la Aliens). They can only enter the board on a number of tiles, and only if the marines aren’t within 6 spaces of those tiles (controling the reinforcement spots is crucial for the marine player who doesn’t want to get sandwiched all to hell). Blips move 6 tiles per turn while they’re out of sight of the marines. When a blip is seen, it’s flipped over, revealing the number. The genestealer player then gets to put as many genestealers on the board as he can, up to either the blip’s number is reached, or there are no more free tiles around the blip’s position (that happens a lot when you stupidly move a 6 blip in a corridor). Those genestealers are “fresh” and get their full 6 APs no matter how many spaces the blip has moved before.
That’s about it for the rules. It’s that simple. Oh, yes, I forgot, there’s also the problem of doors, which cut vision, cost 1AP to open or close, or can be shot open (but then, obviously, they can’t be closed back. Not that it matters because marines like open doors).
For most of the game, the marine player(s) will move inch by inch, dreading corners (since moving close to a corner means you’re liable to get a 3 blip “pop” right in your face, with very few tiles to cover) and crossroads. The genestealer player will get to play with tens of models, who die very fast, but come back just as fast. The longer the game, the worse the marines are screwed, and the more blips pile up in the dark corners of the map. And then the rearguard’s gun jams. 
Ah, thanks. Doesn’t sound like my kind of game. Tabletop 40k is probably still a better bet, especially with the Apocalypse rules that let me field a full swarm.
Good news! I think I gave mine away years ago and I’ve really missed it since. I hope they re-issue the Deathwing and Genestealer boxes too.
Spacehulk is a really really good game. It’s relatively simple to get the hang of and at the same time it’s so well-balanced that it never gets old. Easily Games Workshop’s best game - and I have played them all a lot. I’ve replayed Spacehulk more than any other of my board games put together - with the possible exeption of chess and Settlers of Catan.
I picked it up at a local Games Workshop store on Friday, so I thought I’d weigh in with a little review.
First things first - it is BEAUTIFUL. I haven’t played it since 1st edition, and they’ve completely redone the tiles and the miniatures. I’m not really actively involved in any tabletop gaming, so maybe this is just technology and injection molding having advanced over the past decade and a half, but DAMN are these things detailed and gorgeous. Also, they’re designed to snap together - a real boon for people like me that are into games but aren’t into the whole gluing and painting side of things. The tiles are really amazing, too - they’re “debossed” with textures and indentations to denote the different spaces.
I haven’t played the game in quite some time, but it seems like they basically took all of the rules from the expansions and rolled them into the main rule book. Still, it remains a simple enough “pick up and play” mechanic. I love how quick a game can go…in this day of games with 3-4 hour playtimes, you can knock out a Space Hulk game in 30 minutes, depending on how things go.
One warning, if anyone’s interested: the printing has ALREADY sold out online, so you’re going to need to find it in a local store if you want it. And you should probably get on it - the GW guy said that they already shipped all of the copies and once they’re gone, they’re gooooooooone.