JW
Apr 18
Thursday! Once again we get thrown back to the years when this website did not yet exist so the notes I made from my gameplays back then can just be recycled. Today it's time for Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game, a brilliant design that you can only find on the second hand market these days, but it's worth looking for a copy.
(My apologies for the quality of the pictures, they were taken with a prehistoric camera.)
That was exciting.
If you don't know this game: you've got six Space Marines that have to fight Genestealers (aliens) in four locations. The locations are unknown until you enter them, and setup varies every session. Also, every turn events happen and more Genestealers appear. You can use action cards for fighting, protection (support), moving and special actions. And you have to roll one red die. A lot. And it's out to get you.
Void Lock
Spent most of the time this session in the very first location. Managed to keep the Genestealers under control though and at the end every Marine had collected some support tokens as well. Which worked out very well, because the next location turned out to be the
Teleportarium
This room has a control center that can be activated to discard all cards from both "blip piles" (the card piles that spawn the Genestealers every round). When one of these piles is empty, you automatically travel to the next location. The cost for activating the control room: every Marine has to discard one support token, or roll a die that can get them killed. So first round everyone turned in a support token, and for good measure I also rolled the die - as I forget stuff faster than I can read at the moment - but fortunately no one died. On to the
Hibernation Cluster
And here the event cards turned against me.
- First "They're everywhere" (spawn one Genestealer in front of every Marine that is not engaged) added a lot of aliens in play.
- Followed by "Surrounded" (move all Genestealers, from all positions, to one Marine)
From that moment on, there was this huge swarm of Genestealers that just killed off my Marines one by one. Don't ask me how, but against all odds some made it to the last room:
Launch Control Room
Here you can put a support token on the control panel in your turn, and then, in another round, you can win the game by a dice roll that's equal or less than the amount of tokens on the card.
Two rounds further, two tokens on the panel. One Marine left. And then I didn't have an "activate" card. And there was a swarm of seven or eight Genestealers behind my back. No!
What options did I have left? Just two cards in my hand. But the action card "Power Field" read: choose any swarm, Genestealers in the chosen swarm may not attack or be slain this round. The swarm would not attack. And another round would return the "Activate" card to my hand. Yes!
Last turn. Now I had to roll a two or less. Come on, come on, come on.
A zero on the red die!
This session was a roller coaster. I honestly would have had just as much fun if I had lost, but it feels so good when you win when everything seems hopeless.
They lied to us.
The transmission read: "44% chance of mission success". But Brother Omnio did the math on his BG Stats app and it clearly stated a win percentage of 8%.
We sent in a squad twice today. Things got very hairy when the first marines came out of the Void Lock. A well aimed flamer attack thinned out the Genestealers.
And that was the last we heard of the first team.
The second team was better prepared now and made it all the way to the Launch Control Room. While Brother Leon was figuring out how the controls worked, the enemy flanked him.
Win percentage down to 7%. Surprise, surprise.
My second hand copy came with expansions, so let's check them out. First up is the Space Marine Pack.
Ten plays in with this expansion, ten losses. Still the same game then. Which is a good thing, don't get me wrong. I would not have liked these marines to be overpowered. But then again I don't think they add much. I'm not bored with the original marines yet.
Coolest loss was to this swarm:
Saved me some dice rolls.
I love Space Hulk: Death Angel, but I have trouble distinguishing the team colours (purple, blue, grey, another grey in this expansion). The new team cards that are also included in this expansion help somewhat because the marines are printed on them. Of course I could learn their names, but I'm lazy and they die anyway. But apart from that I’d say: an expansion for completionists only.
Some new locations to die in! This Mission Pack looks like just the expansion this game needs (nope).
I kept sending in marines, and after 25 casualties, five managed to survive and actually pull it off. That's a 20% mission success rate with 83% squad casualties. Well, at least half the briefing was right.
I pretend to get better at the tactical card play in this game, but I know I was exceptionally lucky when drawing the event cards. And the dice rolls were not too hard on me either. But hey: it's a win! Twice in a lifetime already. I feel so special.
After playing the expansions Space Marine Pack 1 (not that interesting to me) and Mission Pack 1 (okay), this feels more like a real expansion.
The Tyranid Enemy Pack adds new end locations, a new "boss" and a whole alternate Enemy Deck, where some Genestealers have extra actions. This expansion really adds some variation to the game.
Still the same outcome of course. I ended with a classic "0" roll of the die just before reaching that new end location.
Fresh meat. They came, they never saw it coming, they lost.
With the Tyranid Enemy Pack (new enemies to kill your marines in new locations) and this Deathwing Space Marine Pack (new space marines to sacrifice) you'll have as much variation in set up as you'll ever need.
But I think this game is good enough without any expansions. Because great is good enough for me.
I lost. Can't put all the blame on the red die, even though I'm pretty sure it's loaded. I mean, it's like there's a "0" on three sides. But there were at least three times during the game that I thought how someone who would just take some time to think before picking their cards, would have had a decent chance at survival. I suffer from whatever's the opposite of analysis paralysis though.
Here's Brother Scipio's last stand against the Brood Lords. Hey, I rolled a 5 for the Genestealers at last! Too bad that was also a kill.
I needed just one more play of Space Hulk: Death Angel to get to increase my H-index. Sacrifices had to be made.