PLAYING SPACE HULK AT RISING PHOENIX

 

This is one of my favorite figure/scenario games. We used to play it a lot back-in-the-day at my friend Brett's house (who owned the game). I've played the marines a few times, but mostly played the Genestealers instead. It's an balanced, but asymmetric game -- which I like.

It's got a great vibe. Though it's based in the Warhammer 40K universe, it really feels like you're playing in the Alien franchise universe -- but more specifically, replicating the very feel of the Aliens sequel. Think about it, it's got marines, it's got genestealers who resemble the aliens in the movie in how they look and behave, and you've even got the blips that display when they're detecting movement in the movie. It was always an expensive game -- I don't know what it's original retail was, but it had to be at the top end. I bought the reissue with larger figures and game pieces about twenty years ago for about $120.

On Saturday night, I played a mega-game of it, that incorporated four squads (two squads of marines and two squads of tau), each with their own secret missions and spanning two entire decks of a hulk. There were two genestealer players, so we started out spawning two blips from the start, then four, and by the next turn when we ended the game due to time constraints, we were about to spawn six blips per turn!

The Imperial players (for that's what we'll call them) played well tactically. They were always able to set it up so that we were always one square short of being able to close assault. And they did a good job of planning overlapping fields of overwatch with their variety of weapons. But in the end, we were able to slow them down with the threat of our units attacking. It wasn't until the near the end of the session where we were able to inflict substantial casualties. Having said that, we still lost by one 3/4 of a point to the Marine players. But if we had continued on just one or more turns, when we start spawning six blips at a time, I think the outcome would have been substantially different.

We did make a mistake with how we used our Licter. It's a power piece, with the ability to intentionally spawn in front of the Imperial players. It was tough, and it can respawn endlessly. I'm afraid I didn't really understand its game-changing abilities well enough to employ it to maximum effect. But I hope to be able to play in a similar scenario in a future convention. But as the Genestealer, of course.

I'll need to look for some original sets and appropriate minis, because that game we played. Was. Simply. Awesome!