POSTED BY dean-haworth on August 20, 2011Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game
Space Hulk! It’s big, it’s bold and it’s awesome. This is FACT. It is the story of massive 7 foot tall super human Space Marines battling against the seemingly endless horde of evil alien Genestealers who like nothing more that scampering down dark space ship corridors and ripping the face off anyone who gets in their way!
Unfortunately Space Hulk is bloody hard to find and also rather expensive when you do! The good news is all is not lost. Fantasy Flight have an answer, and it’s called Death Angel!
Unlike Space Hulk, Death Angel is a relatively small cooperative card game for up to six players. Thankfully, since my normal co-op partner, my missus, wouldn’t know a Bolter from a Plasma Cannon, it also supports solo-play.
Despite obviously being a heavily stripped down version of its bigger brother, Death Angel succeeds in capturing the themes of Space Hulk brilliantly. The fear of being overwhelmed by the xeno scum? Check. The dark scary corridors? Check. Brother Claudio with his bad-ass Lightening Claws? Yep, he’s here too.
Death Angel is obviously much more portable than it’s larger bulkier brother!
The game comes with cards for six Space Marine squads with two marines in each squad. Each squad has different abilities depending on their equipment and style. Brother Zeal is a member of the Purple Squad. He uses his flamer to quickly and efficiently cut down the Genestealers where they stand. On the other hand, one Marine in the red team has a massive Auto-cannon and can attack 3 times instead of once. It’s these little touches which really add to the Warhammer 40k flavour. If you’ve had any experience with the W40K universe, you’ll feel right at home here.
The Warhammer 40k and Space Hulk theme obviously stretches to the art. These are some of the best artistically designed cards in any game I’ve played. Each marine has their own card sporting a picture of the marine in a dramatic pose, their name and a nice sentence or two of fluff. Real care has gone into all the cards and it’s all very well done.
These are the Yellow squads Action Card, I mean look at them. They’re beautiful!
Fantasy Flight have never been famed for writing the clearest rules and Death Angel is no exception. However, once you get your head around them the game is quite simple.
You start by lining your Marines up into a formation and placing terrain, such as doors and vents and the like next to them as instructed by the current active location card. As your Marines kill off the Genestealers they will travel to the next location where the terrain cards will be changed.
Here’s the top half of a formation. The Blue and Red teams are bravely guarding a door and dark corner!
Over time the dirty little Genestealers will at spawn on these terrain cards and you’ll need to fight them off before they feast on your precious Space Marine’s brains. To combat the oncoming threat each squad of Marines can play one of three action cards.
Attack - Lets both of the Space Marines in the squad attack a Genestealer.
Move + Activate - Each member of the squad moves up or down the formation and change facing. Can also “activate” locations.
Support - Allows you to place a Support token on a Marine which lets you re-roll any combat dice.
It all sounds rather straight forward so far yes? Well the next mechanic is what makes the game stand out and introduces the majority of the Death Angel’s tactical depth. When a squad plays an action card that card is unavailable for the next round - it’s a simple mechanic but one that has far reaching consequences.
Picture the scene, you’re surrounded by Genestealers, you need to kill them off quickly before they attack. The temptation is for each squad to play their Attack card allowing you to roll some dice and thin out the alien threat a little. On the face of it this obviously sounds like a good idea, however, it’ll leave you unable to attack in the next round and who knows what you’re going to be facing then!
This simple rule keeps you on your toes, always thinking ahead and never being able to do exactly what you want or what the situation requires. Your team will start to argue, mistakes will be made and brave heroic Battle Brothers will be sacrificed.
The game ends whenever the Space Marine players complete the objective on the final location card or the last Marine falls in battle.
I’m not going to explain exactly how the game plays phase-by-phase, if you are interested the rules are available for the FFG site, but I will say this - the game somehow always finds a way of screwing up your plans in new and interesting ways!
Just when you believe your formation is set and everything is looking good you’ll draw an Event card at the end of the round and suddenly all the Genestealers will flank the Space Marine they’re engaged with or spawn new Genestealers in precisely the position where you don’t want them. The Event cards do sometimes help you by letting you revive a fallen Battle Brother for example, but most of the time they’ll just make you want to cry!
Event cards. One good, one not so good. You’ll find that the helpful Evant cards are much rarer!
The game is just so hard. You’ll go into each game expecting to lose heavily and quickly. In the 14 games I’ve played I’ve won just once. ONCE! The game never lacks tension and there’s no let up, even when playing solo. When you get close to wining and you’re down to just 2 or 3 Space Marines and the Genestealers are swarming around you, you really feel the pressure. You need to protect you Marines too. Losing just one can really screw you up, making the rest of the game that much harder.
The one game I did win was an incredible against-all-odds victory. It could have gone either way but my Marines pulled it out of the fire at the last mintue. It was a great achievement and a wonderful feeling. I’d earnt that that win. For that one moment all the abuse the game had served up seamed almost worth it, and you’ll feel exactly the same. Like you’ve finally faced down the playground bully who’s been beating you up for the past five years!
Despite these great moments the game isn’t perfect. I don’t like being too negative about things, especially when it pushes so many of my buttons, but if I was to be picky I’d have to admit that there’s room for improvement. It could do with more locations and terrains to battle through. After a few games it can start to lack variety, and while it never becomes predictable, a change of scenery would be nice. Fighting against the same types of Genestealers and the overuse of the same limited set of locations could become tedious or repetitive over time.
The problem facing Fantasy Flight is that with this being a Space Hulk game it’s hard to imagine what new settings they could use. They are kind of tied to the dark creepy corridors and the same enemies. Where else can they take Death Angel and still keep it within the Space Hulk universe?
Thankfully, Fantasy Flight appear to have seen this concern coming and have already released two new Print-on-Demand expansions. One includes new missions and locations and the other two new squads for you to command. Expect a thorough write-up of both expansions soon. Only then will we see if Death Angel can grow and avoid going stale.
It is a little harsh to criticise the game too much though. At the end of the day it gives you the theme and feel of it’s bigger boardgame brother, but without the crazy prices that you would normally pay. For less than £20, even if you only intend to play it solo, it’s great fun, and a bargain to boot!
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