Flashback Friday - Space Hulk - Love It or hate It? Do You Still Play It?

My friend picked up Space Hulk 3rd edition at Gen Con one year, after saying he was going to buy it for years. We assembled the minis, and have since played it... 4 times? That was 2015 I think.

I enjoy the game, but I think I'd rather play Deathwatch Overkill.

Everyone should play Suicide Mission at least once. It's so good.

I'm a big fan of the game and how it evokes the feel of Aliens. However, I'd much rather play Claustrophobia at this time which is simply faster and more interesting.

It's still one of my absolute favorite games. Haven't played in a long while, but would do so in a heartbeat. Claustrophobia is also very good and abstracts things in some interesting ways, but it can't hit those moments of pure, visceral excitement that Space Hulk does.

Space Hulk 3rd is good but not great, and I haven't really gotten my money's worth from it yet. The minis are great, the cardboard tiles are fantastic, and the overall production values are great. The gameplay is very solid, and it plays at a brisk pace in a reasonable time frame. However, there are only 12 scenarios, and they have limited replay value because each represents a tactical puzzle to be solved. Once solved, repeat plays offer modest variation strictly due to good or bad die rolls. The space marines are much more challenging to play than the genestealers, to the point where there might as well have been some solitaire rules included to automate genestealer movement. Dollar for dollar, Death Angel delivers the same theme and action at a much more reasonable price point, and with much greater replay value.

I bought Space Hulk 3rd Edition when a FLGS had a 15% off the entire store sale. 85 bucks. Then, I spent 200 bucks on paints & 4 painting classes at a GW brick and mortar. And then some more money for the Battle Foam...

I've played it six times. I really dig it. I just can't get it anyone else to really dig it.

Then I read MB's review of Claustrophobia on NHS. So I bought it (along with Earth Reborn). The wife and I play Claustrophobia once in a blue moon.

I suspect I'll keep both in collection. The new Claustrophobia? Still on the fence. Earth Reborn? It's getting closer and closer to the sell pile.

I thought Incursion came close to being an improvement (Nazi zombies over Genestealers) but Space Hulk is still a worthwhile game. Amusing that GW's subsequent crush of boxed game products might be the biggest factor in it being knocked down the "all-time greatest games" list. It gets lost in the crush of whatever skirmish game GW sells that week, but it deserves a better fate.

ubarose wrote: We have 3rd Edition. The Genestealers fall over a lot. I need to glue some pennies to their bases to fix that. I heard the problem was fixed in 4th edition.

We used goldfish and it worked well.

I used to have 1st edition (I think). Played it a few times. It was pretty good but not great. Sold it off.

But I love that Flashback Fridays are back!

It's a pretty good game, but 2-player games are almost impossible for me to fit into my nerd time these days -- my regular group is me plus three.

One other problem with Space Hulk is that the setup time is lengthy compared to the play time. In theory, players are supposed to mitigate this and the imbalance between the sides by playing a scenario twice in a row, with players switching roles. But because each scenario is a tactical puzzle for the space marine player, it often feels like the space marine player in the second game has an unfair advantage.

I only played the actual board game a couple times. But I played the hell out of the excellent iOS app ; alas it’s no longer current as of about 2-3 OS updates ago.

I've yet to paint the minis but one day....one day. I played the crap out of one of the digital versions. SH is a keeper. Now Dread Fleet on the other hand, that's going on the sell pile.