Well, I’ve had this game for about a week now. I guess I might as well give my impressions of it. This won’t be a particularly objective or in-depth review, but there wouldn’t be much point in that anyway. You probably know by now whether or not you want it, and if you want it, you presumably already have it. And if you don’t already have it, you may find it quite hard to get, as I suspect a lot of places will be sold out by now.

So, a new edition of Space Hulk, in a super-deluxe limited-edition release. Is it any good? Was it worth paying just shy of sixty quid for?

The set’s greatest triumph is the boards. Second edition’s floorplans were pretty nice (painted by Richard Wright, who also did the 3rd edition Blood Bowl pitch and the floorplans for Warhammer Quest), but these are just gorgeous. They’re printed on very heavy cardboard (it’s about 4mm thick) and are have some of the details debossed into the surface, which is a nice touch. And the artwork is fantastic. If I had one criticism of the second edition’s boards, it was that they were slightly too clean and shiny. The new pieces are darker and grungier (without being excessive), and feel much more like the interior of a derelict spaceship. Also printed on the same thick card and with the same high standard of artwork are all the counters, markers and templates. The game includes exactly the number of flamer templates as the flamer has ammunition, and the game includes a board with tracks for command points, assault cannon ammunition and the librarian’s psi points. Having these mechanisms for keeping track of everything is very nice, and shows how much thought has gone into this set.

Almost as impressive are the models. Interestingly, the models have clearly been designed solely as pieces for this game, with no attempt to make them compatible with the rest of the Warhammer 40,000 range. Each Terminator model is a character in its own right, in a distinct pose and with lots of little details all over the place. The Genestealers are similarly individual, although there are two of each of about half the sculpts. A lot of the ‘stealers are climbing on or jumping off bits of the scenery. Normally I’m not that keen on having a lot of scenery incorporated into a model, but in this context it seems okay, I suppose. There isn’t any scope for posing the models as you choose; they’re all push-fit and go together in exactly one way. This would be a problem for miniatures intended for an army, but as pieces in a closed, stand-alone board game it’s fine. And ultimately, they’re just lovely sculpts. While I would never buy them for a Warhammer 40,000 army, the models get a thumbs-up from me.

The other components are some dice and a sand timer. The dice are fine. They’re a set of five fairly ordinary dotted D6s, with a slight marble effect in the plastic. The sand timer, though, is a bit of a disappointment. It feels a little flimsy, and isn’t very accurate. In particular, it takes about 20s longer for the sand to go one way than it does for it to go back the other. In a set that is otherwise such great quality, it seems a bit of a let-down.

Finally, the rules. Interestingly, they seem to have decided to go back to the rules for the first edition of the game, and leave them largely unmodified. There are a few tweaks (for example, the addition of the ‘on guard’ rule, which is a sort of close-combat counterpart to overwatch, or the fact that rather than affecting the time available — which is now fixed at however long the timer takes to run out — Sergeants allow you to re-draw your command points for the turn), but it’s basically the same. This was a good move as far as I can see. Opinion seems to be more or less unanimous that the original rules were just fine as they were, and that the changes in the second edition were not for the better (lots of needless over-simplification). What is different is that a lot of the extra rules from the ‘Deathwing’ expansion have been included in the basic rules. Since GW aren’t planning to release anything more for this game, this is definitely a good move; it allows for a lot more variety with the basic set. What haven’t been incorporated, however, are the additional rules from the second expansion, ‘Genestealer’. This was fairly sensible; although the extra stuff may have been all very well in a supplement (opinion appears to be divided), it made too many changes to how the game worked to be appropriate to include in the core game.

The game includes twelve missions, of which 1-5 and 10 are the original six missions from the first edition (although some have been tweaked a little). I don’t know whether the other six are also based on older scenarios or whether they’re entirely new.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the new Space Hulk. While in principle I could have got everything I needed to play a game of Space Hulk anyway (Terminator and Genestealer models are available separately, the rules for either of the previous editions are easy enough to find on the web, and even the floorplans could be reconstructed by downloading scans of the original versions and sticking them to pieces of foamcore — or, for those with a lot of money to spare, by buying something like Litko Aerosystems’ Space Corridor system), it would have worked out quite a bit more expensive unless I’d tried using counters instead of miniatures. Tracking down a second-hand copy of either first or second edition might have worked out cheaper, but even so, the improved quality of the components is, I think worth the extra money.

Whether this version of Space Hulk would have been worth getting had I got either of the previous editions while I still could, I don’t know. But I didn’t (I don’t think I ever quite had the money to spare), and so it definitely was worth it.

In addition, if anyone’s interested in going beyond what’s included in the box, and playing with rules for Genestealer hybrids, Space Marines in power armour, Eldar, Tyranids, Grey Knights, Imperial Guard, crazy psychic powers blowing up all kinds of shit, and goodness knows what else, check out the ‘Space Hulk Bible‘. It’s an attempt to collate all the rules for first edition, including both boxed expansions and numerous White Dwarf articles, into one document. What’s nice about the new rules staying very close to the first edition is that it means this extra stuff should be fairly easily compatible with the current game. Similarly, any additional missions available on the tubes should work without much, if any modification.