I'm a fan of the board game, clearly, and the Death Angel box says 1-6 players. So I thought I’d give it a go, one player. I’ll try to rope the boys into some multi-player games, but the single player experience, as with so many games, is alright if you can’t find a friend.
But I digress. Death Angel plays like this: depending on the number of players in the game, there are 6-12 marines in play, assembled into a single line called the formation. The top half of the line faces left at start, the bottom right. Facing is important for firing, line of sight, etc. The marines are delineated into two-man combat teams, with each team comprising a basic storm-bolter type marine and a special weapons, sergeant, or otherwise extraordinary combatant. The teams are basically set up as:
Sergeant Lorenzo with the Power Sword, and backup dancer Brother Deino.
Sergeant Gideon with the Thunder Hammer and Power Shield, and backup dancer Brother Noctis.
Brother Zael with the Heavy Flamer, & fly girl Brother Omnio.
Brother Leon with the Autocannon, & extra from the “Thriller” video Brother Valencio.
Lexicanum Calistarius, the psychic “Librarian”, and wingman Brother Scipio.
Brother Claudio of the Lightning Claws, and some guy named Brother Goriel (fun fact: Goriel is latin for “gibs of God”).
The game starts in a standard location of a Space Hulk depending on how many marines are in play, as defined by starting location cards. All games begin in the Void Lock, though they are different depending on how many marines are in play. Each location has different “terrain” features, like the door card, the corridor card, the ventilation shaft, etc. These features are essentially genestealer spawning points. Each location also has a left- and right-side blip stack, which defines how many bugs can spawn on each side of the location. If, at the end of any phase, a blip stack is empty, the marines move onto the next location, staying in formation and with any ‘stealers in the formation staying as well.
Each game moves through several locations, as defined by the first location card, but randomized a bit: there are 3 of each number location and each game moves through 4 or 5 locations (starting to a random #1 type location, then to a #2 type, etc to #4 type location and marine win conditions), and therefore the various locations the marines can move through have several permutations, enhancing replayability.
So the marines get set up in their formation, and then the genestealers get spawned a bit to get the ball rolling. The spawning points are conveniently in front of the marines at the game’s start, but as the game progresses things change and it gets hectic and dangerous. Then the marines get to choose their actions for the round, based on their two-man combat teams. Each team gets to choose to either Move/Interact with the environment, Support their fellow marines, or Attack the bugs. The team cannot choose the same action two turns in a row, so if Lorenzo’s team Attacks on the first turn, they must Support or Move/Interact on the second turn. And so on.
Each team has special cool little stuff they can do with their action choices: Leon’s team’s support card is called Overwatch, and at the end the turn the Overwatch card is played, any marine can burn a Support token (generally gained by choosing the support action) to take a shot at a bug; Lorenzo’s team’s attack card is called Lead by Example, and once this turn, while attacking, if Lorenzo or Deino kills a bug, they can add a support token to any marine. And so on. So there’s actually a lot of cool shit going on for these teams, and they’re asymmetrical in this way: even while choosing standard actions they’ve got a lot of special, exception-based text working for them.
So, each marine squad chooses a card to play (discussed with other players if playing with multiple players), and they’re resolved in a particular order: each card has an initiative number, and they are resolved in ascending order. For the most part, support actions take place, then move actions, then attack actions. Attack actions for marines go like this: the marine attacking rolls the die which comes with the game, and if a skull-side of the die shows, a Genestealer of choice in the marine’s range dies. The die is special. It is a six-sided die enumerated from 0-5, and there are skulls on the 1, 2, and 3. So a marine essentially has a 50/50 shot at killing a bug on his attack turn.
Assuming the marines have not eradicated all the bugs currently against them after their action cards resolve, the bugs get a chance to strike back. The bugs attack as a swarm, with each pile of genestealers attacking the marine closest to them. The marine defending from the swarm rolls the die, and if it shows a number equal to or less than the number of Genestealers attacking his marine, the marine dies. So a basic 1-bug swarm in the beginning of the game kills 1/3 of the time, not counting those rerolls. If the game’s gone on a bit and there are 4 bugs in the stack, they’ve got a 5/6 chance at killing their foe. Don’t let 5 or more Genestealers gather in a swarm.
Support tokens can be spent for rerolls in either attack or defense, but only against bugs facing the marine. Don’t let them behind you.
I played a one-player game with random teams. The one-player scenario starts with 3 teams. I got Leon, Lorenzo, and Calistarius. I shuffled the guys up and they were pretty well spread out, with Leon at the top of the formation, followed by Lorenzo’s backup dancer Deino, then Calistarius’ guy Scipio, then Calistarius, then Lorenzo, and finally Valencio, the “Thriller” extra from team Leon.
The game went incredibly well for me. It took a long time, as I had to stop and consult the rules a bunch, but several factors seemed to work in my favor: My support token rerolls always were used to save a marine’s life in defensive spots, Lorenzo’s support card allows him to use his power sword to fuck up Genestealers while defending, Lorenzo’s move card lets him get Genestealers off the board and back into the blip-stack from whence they spawned, Leon’s Full Auto Attack card lets him roll three attacks during his combat action and he has the largest range of any marine, and Calistarius’ support card essentially holds a swarm in stasis for a turn.
There’s a lot of ways in which these abilities came together to buy me time when I needed it. The team was strong and I blasted my way through the starting Void Lock location to the randomly chosen Teleportarium. The second location had some weirdness to it, but I ignored all the special text and just mowed through bugs to get to the third location, and then quickly on to the fourth and final location, the Genestealer Lair. My victory condition was to kill the two Brood Lord Genestealers, which could have been difficult in some other game, but in my game it was easy. The board was already cleared of bugs, and since the Brood Lords need other Genestealers to hide behind in order to be resilient, I had a lot of opportunities to end this one easy. I finally did. No marines dead.
I decided to play again a few days later. I pulled up different teams at random. This time I got Lorenzo, Gideon, and Claudio. The two close-assault marines and Lorenzo, with no heavy weapons and no psyker to lay down the psionic assault.
It didn’t go well.
At first it was okay, but Gideon’s backup dancer Noctis got surrounded early, and one of the bugs behind him managed to kill him. That was a drag. Then Lorenzo’s pal Deino bit the dust too. I fought off some of the swarm, but they seemed immune to my bullets and without Leon’s deadly autocannon I was feeling the hurt. The bugs had moved away from Claudio (at random, per the rules), and this was really bad for me, as Claudio can do some damage with his Heroic Charge attack action (kill three bugs within range one of Claudio, then roll the die, on a 0 Claudio dies as well) to help even the tide. But the bugs were all too far away for him to make much difference.
When marines die bad shit happens: the formation shifts. Because the “location” and “terrain” cards are an abstraction, a dead marine means shifting the formation up or down so that the marines are in a single line again. This can merge stacks of Genestealers into even larger swarms, and worse yet, in the later throes of a game it can merge terrain cards (spawning points) together, making huge and untenable swarms of Genestealers arrive in single locales. Losing the first marine isn’t so bad, but it’s the beginning of a slippery slope: each further death seems to exponentially reduce the chances of marine victory. When down to one or two marines, those guys are almost certainly surrounded by bugs, spawning points, and moments from a die roll with a good chance of death.
Gideon bit it next, which was a damn shame, because I didn’t get to test his mettle much. Further, when he left I had lost an entire team so I had one fewer action card to choose during my turns. After that I got some ground back with Claudio’s aforementioned Heroic Charge and Lorenzo’s Intimidation move action, which moves a die-roll worth of Genestealers off the board and back into the blip stacks. But the next turn saw four more bugs spawn on either side of Lorenzo, and since I couldn’t just do the Heroic Charge/Intimidate thing every turn, I had to try something else. I went with support tokens, as both Lorenzo and Claudio have good support bonuses, but while doing this Claudio’s buddy Goriel died.
With just Lorenzo and Claudio into the final stretch, I again pushed a bunch of bugs around and cannonballed Claudio into a pile. That didn’t stop the xenos from killing Lorenzo in the madness, however.
Claudio made the final location (the Launch Control Room this time), but the Control-panel based win condition required a lot of perseverance and more turns than I had. A stack of 7 Genestealers ended the marine game shortly thereafter (they couldn’t lose).
As I hadn’t played Zael’s team yet, I waited another night and gave him a go.
This last time I had Zael, Leon, and Claudio. This seemed like a hot combination. The two heavy-weapons marines have some of the strongest attack actions, and Claudio’s Heroic Charge has demonstrated its usefulness: even if he dies he’s taking three bugs with him.
In theory it was awesome. In practice I rolled badly. Leon the autocannon marine died before the marines left the Void Lock. He failed to kill the swarm in front of him with his many many attacks, and then died despite having a support token to reroll for defense during the ensuing Genestealer counterattack. Sad. Losing Leon hurt a lot. Zael and Claudio fought off the swarms that killed Leon, and things leveled out for a while. Then I lost Valencio, Leon’s buddy. That sucked, as I had one less action card to play then and so my options were low.
The Genestealers spawned a lot in the third location, the Genetorium, and Zael couldn’t handle the swarm (I rolled poorly for his incredibly powered Flamer attack). Losing the third marine really hurts in a one-player game: the last three guys will find bugs all over them in no time. I managed to kill a bunch of them with Claudio’s cannonball Heroic Charge, and moved to the final location, the Toxic Pumping Station this time. This final location is all about killing bugs: the marine victory hinges on exhausting both piles of blips and then killing all the bugs in the formation. This is a totally doable goal.
But again I rolled badly, and then Goriel died. Then Omnio. Claudio cannonballed again to crush a bunch of bugs, but unfortunately 4 were left in a stack in play, which means that during counterattack Claudio needed to roll the 5 to live. Didn’t happen, but victory was in my sights at least: one blip stack was exhausted, and there were only 3 cards left in the other, so if Claudio had been able to stay alive another few turns I might have been able to pull it off.
Two losses, one win. It’s surprisingly fun, and the various combinations of teams and locations help with replayability.
The three final locations, I’m afraid, are all that there is. So the marines’ win conditions are either: kill all the bugs ever (Toxic Pumping Station), kill the two Brood Lords (Genestealer Lair), or move/interact with the environment a lot while fending off the bugs (Launch Control Room).
The toughest might be the Genestealer Lair, as the Brood Lords are beasts, but in my game I’d gotten lucky and killed all the bugs before even facing the Lords. And the Lords are nothing without their pals. The Launch Control room seems the most difficult for a whittled-down squad of tired marines: the marines have to activate the control panel multiple times to ensure a decent chance at victory, and then again to actually try and win. All while fending off the villainous aliens.
Overall, I like the game a lot solitaire. But then, I like Space Hulk a lot. If I can sucker my pals into playing with me I’ll post some multiplayer playthroughs.
-Merlin out
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