Space Hulk is a Games Workshop game. That means it ought to be for asexual geeks and heavy metal fans. I am neither. Well, perhaps a geek.
I used to play it ages ago when I was about 11. It was great fun; far simpler and quicker and less fussy than any other Games Workshop game, and by a long way, too; basically there are some 'space marines' and some 'genestealers', and the 'space marines' try and accomplish a mission while the 'genestealers' try and kill fuck out of them. It's the film Aliens on a kind of jigsaw boardgame.
I bought a knackered first edition box of Space Hulk off ebay ages ago, well before we bought the house, and last night I played it, on my own. (I was gonna play against Bob, but he didn't know the rules and kept bopping the dice about.) It's easy to play on your own - the aliens just move like demented things towards the humans and try and kill them, while you can think tactically about how to accomplish your mission with the humans. I had to get my 'flamer marine' to shoot his flamer into a specific room on the board layout. The aliens won, by killing the 'flamer marine' before he got there. I felt a bit gutted, even though I was playing as the aliens as well as the humans, so I had technically won, as well as lost.
This is the box;
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/7/79/300px-Space_hulk_box.jpg
This is vaguely what the game looks like being played;
http://www.smallbattles.co.uk/galleries/archive/SpaceHulk2_thumb.jpg
Games Workshop stopped bothering with Space Hulk years ago, presumably because all the bits you need to play it are in the box, so you can't coerce 12 year old boys to spend hundreds of pounds of their parent's money on extra models and paints and shit like that. It's a bit like chess, i guess, but with a more interesting board, and guns. And dice.
Have you ever played Space Hulk? Would you like to?
― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 3 March 2008 15:42 (seventeen years ago)
it was OK but it only took about a month for us to get into full-blown 40k mode
― moonship journey to baja, Monday, 3 March 2008 15:50 (seventeen years ago)
(xpost) In answer to the questions, no and no. I had a two month obsession with AD&D when I was 13, and that was it. There was a videogame version of Space Hulk on the PC ages ago, which might be better if you have to play by yourself.
― snoball, Monday, 3 March 2008 15:54 (seventeen years ago)
I've only played the computer game, which I never was able to play well. It was a real-time first-person perspective shooter, yet you had to switch between four different marines. I do believe there was some command-issuing and such, but I was no good at it, and always ended up controlling one guy and occasionally frantically switching to the others just in time to watch them die. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b6/Space_Hulk_Terminator_View_Screen.png
(Sorry if bringing up adaptations is bad form)
― Øystein, Monday, 3 March 2008 15:56 (seventeen years ago)
I've no problem with adaptations, at all; never played any myself. The engines for PC versions always looked so shit though; I think I preferred the boardgame cos it left it to your imagination.
― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 3 March 2008 15:59 (seventeen years ago)
Fan Made remake
http://www.teardown.se/
― Jarlrmai, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:06 (seventeen years ago)
this RULED. see also:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/61/TalismanCover.jpg/250px-TalismanCover.jpg
when my mum would take me into Brum as a nipper i would always drag her into GW. i lapped this shit up.
― Roberto Spiralli, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:07 (seventeen years ago)
i think i had the board game, i know there was a spectrum version of the game above and they also had a version of hero quest which i suppose was supposed to get people into goblins-n-shit warhammer. i certainly had this:
http://data1.blog.de/blog/f/fz1-3do/img/SpaceHulk9.jpg
― DG, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:24 (seventeen years ago)
^^^very hard game
i played the pc version a few times, but never really got into it because i was young and it was hard.
i always wanted to try the board game, but i would rather try gw's other aborted darling, necromunda.
― Will M., Monday, 3 March 2008 16:34 (seventeen years ago)
Yeah, it was a good game. Also worth seeking out from this period of GW was the Mad Max-esque Dark Future: http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic18448_t.jpg
(Can't find a decent image of it being played, sorry)
(also, I was very much an asexual geekand heavy metal fan when I was into this stuff)
― chap, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:35 (seventeen years ago)
Blood Bowl is the other unmentioned classic here; anything that requires a definite board and can be played inside an hour or two, Games Workshop seem to have lost all interest in after 1994. Which is when they floated on the stock market, I believe.
― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:44 (seventeen years ago)
Oh, Talisman very strongly seconded, by the way. I even got my parents playing it.
― chap, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:46 (seventeen years ago)
The Sega Saturn version was nigh on impossible. The board game is great though.
― Neil S, Monday, 3 March 2008 16:57 (seventeen years ago)
we painted our polystyrene blood bowl field green = hardcore
― Roberto Spiralli, Monday, 3 March 2008 17:02 (seventeen years ago)
btw reminisences caused by this thread are blowing my mind. memories that haven't bubbled to the surface for nearly 2 decades.
― Roberto Spiralli, Monday, 3 March 2008 17:04 (seventeen years ago)
spring 1996 for me; we got a playstation (w/space hulk) and my bro went warhammer 40k crazy
― DG, Monday, 3 March 2008 17:14 (seventeen years ago)
Played it the other weekend; still lots of fun, but most of the missions seem to be impossibly weighted towards one side or other (usually Genestealers).
― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Sunday, 17 June 2012 21:04 (thirteen years ago)
It certainly captures the tense claustrophobia of its setting very well though.
― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Sunday, 17 June 2012 21:07 (thirteen years ago)
So I sold that version cos I had no one to play it with. And then GW released a third edition in 2009, and a fourth edition last year (which was just the third edition with a couple of extra floor tiles and missions), both in limited runs that have been going for enormous money to scalpers on ebay. But I just bought an unplayed third edition copy, and now I am excited again. Might buy Talisman too next month. Never played it way back when.
― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 11 May 2015 12:03 (ten years ago)