Space Hulk: The First Mission

"They're everywhere... they're coming through the walls..."

Space Hulk is, self-evidently, one of the greatest games ever. It's also the closest you can come to living the film Aliens without shipping out to LV-426 and getting eaten. The tension of the timed rounds, the resource management of the limited action points, the suspense of the blips... it's a hectic, adrenaline soaked game for the Marine player. For the Genestealer player, it's a satisfying game of laying traps, of planning ahead and then of launching overwhelming force at the puny humans.

I like it quite a lot.

So having finally assembled the various bits and pieces for the game, I was eager to play. Thankfully, the Good Lady Er Indoors - though generally disparaging of my toy soldiers - likes a bit of boardgaming, so a bit of fast talking got us a game.

I took the marines, and she took the Genestealers. You'll recognise the first mission from the original campaign - all I had to do was fire the flamer into the room at the bottom of the map. How hard could it be?

Pretty ********* hard, it turns out.

It doesn't look that far. This should be easy. 

First Squad, all nicely painted up and ready for deployment

 

But who's this just waiting around the corner....?

She's taking altogether too much pleasure in sliding those blips toward me, in my opinion.

Not what you want to see at the end of the corridor. 

It gets worse. 

"Don't worry, lads, I have a plan!"

...and then dice happened. 

And the 1s just kept on coming...

...until only Sarge and the Flamer dude were left. The flamer guy has three shots left. Can the Sarge keep them off his back long enough for him to complete the mission?

Can he hell as like. 

In fact, the flamer dude makes it right to the door of the final room - with one shot left. He just has to risk taking on one last Stealer in hand to hand. 

And then dice happened.

It was a great game - everything that Space Hulk should be. Fast, brutal and fun. The good news is, she's agreed to play again!