This very simple game drips with atmosphere. You lay out the corridors and rooms in a space hulk, a large disabled ship floating in space. Knowing that Genestealers tend to inhabit these ships until they meet other creatures, the space marines search these ships out in order to rid them of their infestation.
The Space Marines Terminators go in loaded for bear. Wearing suits reminiscent of the space suits in Starship Troopers (book not movie) they are more powerful with built in weaponry. The Genestealers reminiscent of the alien in Alien are naked and defenseless except for their enormous speed, four clawed arms able to rip through a Terminators armor and their seemingly endless numbers.
At first it looks like the Terminators cannot lose but soon they find themselves overrun. The Genestealers almost play themselves and the game could be played solitaire. A unique mechanism is the Genestealers have no time limit but the Space Marines have a 3 minute time limit, 2 if the sergeant is killed. This is done to simulate the fact that Genestealers move so much quicker and does add a lot of angst to the game for the Marine player.
The miniatures are excellent although you do have to paint them yourselves and the modular board is very well done.
The Deathwing Expansion adds new personnel, weapons, rules for multilevel hulks, new missions and a mission generator along with some complexity.
The Genestealer Expansion adds new marines, weapons, Genestealer Hybrids who can use weapons and new missions. There are also rules for psychic powers.
There was also the Space Hulk Campaign Book that can be linked for longer games. This book also added rules for traitor Marines and new weapons.
Even with all rules in place the game does not get too complicated and is a very good introduction to Warhammer 40K.
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