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I am trying to find out what the most awesome games there are along the lines of Space Hulk, Tyranid Attack, Siege of the Citadel, Blood Berets and similar.

The only ones I own of these are Tyranid Attack and Siege of the Citadel.

Edit: I got Fury of the Clansmen too, but it is pretty boring.

What games are there of this sort that rocks?

Current ones that spring to mind:

Imperial Assault (Star Wars - what's not to like)
Aliens vs Predator (great minis, poor faction balance)

Mantic did one called Project Pandora which you could likely pick up cheap as I'm not sure if it is still in production.

There's also Execution Force and Betrayal at Calth (although the latter is on a hex grid). Execution Force is quite fun, don't know about Betrayal at Calth.

Megacon Games are releasing (if they've not yet done so) Mercs: Recon (in two flavours, with different minis in each); it's about mercenary raids on corporate offices.

It's worth a look on Boardgame Geek, too; look up Space Hulk or some such, then see what genre and mechanic keywords it uses, and see what else is listed.

There have been several based on video game properties, such as Doom and Gears of War.

Thanks for the titles, good looking games. ...miniature Walker, say no more...

I am also curious how these kind of games utilize micro-tactics, cards and/or narrative. Personally I have been drawn to (what I would call) "pure" tactical war games, but realize that games that also rely on other elements such as event cards are more fun in the end. Please excuse me for lack of proper terms.

So what is the reason that you like one of these games, and not another?

Played the Doom board game, and it's a ton of fun.

Requires a huge amount of space, and one person to control the enemies. The GM also gets several tactical cards to use against the players for added difficulty.

I really enjoyed the fact that unless the GM uses one of their precious cards that allow them to, they can't spawn monsters in line of sight/range. So you have to balance isolating the players with keeping lots of open space between yourself and the monsters. And don't go into the spider room alone.

Doom and Gears of War are the first and third version of the rules used in Descent and Imperial Assault.

Doom is a lot of fun but is also (a) not very balanced, even with the errata'd rules from the expansion and (b) out of print for years. People tend to ask silly money for it when it comes up for sale. I've not played the Gears of War one (partly because I *really* hated the videogames) but I've heard it has some interesting mechanics.

Imperial Assault is very good though. It's two games in one box, the skirmish game (more traditional sort of wargame with 2 points based forces chosen from the 3 factions fighting it out on the gridded tiles) and the campaign game (which is more like Descent). The campaign game is quite asymmetric with 4 increasingly powerful rebel heroes fighting agains a mass of weaker but constantly replenishing imperial goons. It also has a bazillion sorts of cards and tokens for the various things that happen during the game and to allow the sides to level up as the campaign goes on. Like most FFG games all the rulebooks are available as PDF downloads from their website if you want to have a look.

 larva_uk wrote:
Current ones that spring to mind:
Mantic did one called Project Pandora which you could likely pick up cheap as I'm not sure if it is still in production.

I have one of these sets almost brand new. It's fun. I'm not a huge fan of Mantic's ever changing sci-fi mythos but the gameplay is interesting


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh yeah. Duh. Human Interface: Nakamura Tower should be out this month. I think it shaped up to be a pretty exciting game in the Kickstarter (which I backed. How the hell do I forget these things). It started off with like two teams, competing to beat the same "AI Levels" to get to the prize first. Like a race against time where you could cooperate with or sabotage the other player while fighting robots. Then they added at least three more teams and made the AI a lot more badass. Same core gameplay just a lot more options for awesome. You should be able to get the base game, shipped, for under $100 retail once it comes out. Oh yeah and it's hella cyberpunk. If you like that, definitely get it. If you don't, definitely avoid.

 larva_uk wrote:
Doom is a lot of fun but is also (a) not very balanced, even with the errata'd rules from the expansion and (b) out of print for years. People tend to ask silly money for it when it comes up for sale. I've not played the Gears of War one (partly because I *really* hated the videogames) but I've heard it has some interesting mechanics.

Imperial Assault is very good though. It's two games in one box, the skirmish game (more traditional sort of wargame with 2 points based forces chosen from the 3 factions fighting it out on the gridded tiles) and the campaign game (which is more like Descent). The campaign game is quite asymmetric with 4 increasingly powerful rebel heroes fighting agains a mass of weaker but constantly replenishing imperial goons. It also has a bazillion sorts of cards and tokens for the various things that happen during the game and to allow the sides to level up as the campaign goes on. Like most FFG games all the rulebooks are available as PDF downloads from their website if you want to have a look.

Doom and Descent 1st edition seemed to be heavily in the Alien/Overlord player's favour. Descent 2nd edition and Imperial Assault seem to go the other way, in my experience.

 larva_uk wrote:

Imperial Assault is very good though. It's two games in one box, the skirmish game (more traditional sort of wargame with 2 points based forces chosen from the 3 factions fighting it out on the gridded tiles) and the campaign game (which is more like Descent). The campaign game is quite asymmetric with 4 increasingly powerful rebel heroes fighting agains a mass of weaker but constantly replenishing imperial goons. It also has a bazillion sorts of cards and tokens for the various things that happen during the game and to allow the sides to level up as the campaign goes on. Like most FFG games all the rulebooks are available as PDF downloads from their website if you want to have a look.

Thats is an awesome resource, thanks a lot!

Level 7 Omega Protocol.

Kind of known as the GOOD PrivateerPress boardgame, it's Space Hulk with a more Descent/Imperial Assault vibe to it. Referee vs players, where the player figures are soldiers infiltrating an alien-research base. Each player figure has unique abilities and can buy more equipment and options, for a bit of variation.

The economy of the game runs on Adrenaline (action) points - as the players spend actions moving, shooting and searching, every expended point is passed to the referee who can use them to activate their own forces or build up points reserves to buy reinforcements, special abilities and the like.

It's a decent game.

If you're looking for something with a lot of narrative and potential for homebrew stuff, check out Earth Reborn. I really enjoyed the setting and the story and it's a game begging for homebrew missions and factions.

Betrayal at Calth is an excellent game in itself. We've played it a few times at the FLGS as I've been painting up my set. The rules are nicely done and if GW sold sets as self-contained board games like this, I could see getting back into the 30k/40k gaming pretty easily on a regular basis.