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1. The Components
Space Hulk is a little on the expensive side, but for those used to playing with Games Workshop stuff, it’s kind of old hat to drop $100 on something like this. That rather high cost being introduced makes me want to scream, “BUT WAIT! IT’S WORTH IT!!!!” Because, for people who love the Warhammer 40k Universe, and really for people who just enjoy a great game with amazing components, it is worth it. If you pay any attention at all to the “Hot” image feed, you’ll see a slew of Space Hulk components. One of the reasons I decided to get this game was because I wanted some awesome components, which they are, but you really don’t understand how great they are, until you’ve seen them in person. The figures are top notch quality. Honestly, I thought the detail and poses were better than many of my Warhammer 40k minis. The Terminator Squad has some awesome figures, and great detail that can be added by a skilled painter. The Tyranids are in the same vein, with some awesome looking figures that add some cool variety to the Genestealer mass. If you’d like to take a closer look at some of the components, just go to the image section of this game, and drool to your heart’s content. It’s important to note, for those who don’t know, that if you buy this game, you will have to assemble your own figures, and, if you wish, you can paint them. For my own personal, I used a Krylon plastic primer, color satin. This made painting very easy. To paint the rest of the30-40 figures, it took me around 18 hours. Maybe I’m slow, but I’m not the most experienced and I took a lot of time particularly on the Terminators. But anyone familiar with Games Workshop knows about great minis. One thing you wouldn’t expect, is the quality of the other components. The board is made up of cardboard room and corridor tiles that you rotate depending upon which mission you’re playing. These cardboard tiles are amazing quality. I was honestly shocked by how nice the tiles were. They have some great artwork, and will stand up to lots of wear and tear. So in conclusion of the components, you get some of the best components I’ve ever seen. Does that make it easier to swallow that $100 price tag? That’s up to you.

2. The Theme
Space Hulk is set in the Warhammer 40k Universe, which for those inexperience with it, has stories of humanity in the distant future where there is nothing but war with their own corruption, demonic forces, and the threat of alien races.
For those who don’t know, the basic story behind Space Hulk is that a derelict ship has coasted into range of a human world. The mightiest warriors of the Imperium of Man, the Space Marines, are sent to destroy the alien threat aboard the giant Space Hulk, so that the human techpriests can extract valuable lost technologies from the Space Hulk. I know there’s more to the story, you hardcore 40kers, but for those from the outside, that’s pretty much the basics. You play as either the Space Marines or the Tyranid Genestealers battling over objectives onboard the giant ship.
This game has a great theme, and it plays so well within the theme. I love a good game, but a game with really no theme, that tries to pretend it has one, or perhaps is too abstract, frustrates me, just a tiny bit. I’d rather have a good game with no theme, that a game with a painted on theme. But personally I believe the best work the theme right into the game, which Space Hulk has done perfectly. When I’m playing as the Space Marines, I feel a slight desperation everytime one of my few soldiers goes down. And I really feel like a commander, splitting up my different Space Marines to protect, or assault, different areas of the forgotten cruiser. When I play as the aliens, I feel like my many soldiers are basically very disposable. A game that gets you to think differently, and think within the theme, is a great game, which Space Hulk does, and it does it within a very fun, addicting game.

3. The Concept
Space Hulk is, for lack of a better description, a dungeon crawler game. As either side, you’ll venture through the corridors and long-lost rooms of the drifting labyrinth. Really, the concept, or the point of the game, changes depending upon what mission you’re playing. But basically, the Space Marines will have an objective, say to reach a certain room, or recover an artifact, and the Tyranids are attempting to stop them by killing them. While it might sound a little repetitive with 12 missions, it’s not. Each mission changes your squad of Marines, causing you to play the game a little differently. So the concept is great.

4. The Ending
Really, Space Hulk, gets closer to the ending depending upon how you play. If you move quicker, take riskier moves as the Marines, you’d get closer to your objective faster, but you might put your squad in danger. Most board games get a lot tenser as the game progresses, but Space Hulk is intense the entire game. Each turn that passes, really each action that is taken, especially by the alien player, is usually a huge deal. Lots of times, the Marines will barely close in on their objective, or the aliens will barely kill them off before they can. Unless one player is at a much higher skill level, or one is extremely lucky, the game should be intense and interesting.

5. The Game play
I’ve really covered most of this section in little bits sprinkled throughout the review. But, essentially, each player will move their different figures throughout the board, attempting to complete their missions and objectives. Each turn begins with the Space Marine player drawing a random command counter, which allows them to take extra actions either during their turn, or in response to actions that the Genestealers perform during their turn. This counter will span from numbers 1-6, and only the Space Marine player is allowed to see it. After drawing this counter, the Space Marine player has a timer turned which designates the time they have to take the rest of their turn in. Each Space Marine has 4 Actions to take each turn, but some actions, like backing up, and firing a Flame Thrower, cost 2 actions. So the Space Marines make their moves, and pass to the Tyranid player. The Tyranid player then takes a number of re-enforcement “blips” and moves them, along with the figures and blips already on the board. These “blips” represent a number of tyranids from 1-3, that only the Genestealer player knows until it is revealed by choice or by being seen by a Marine. This allows the Genestealer player a real element of surprise at times. So the game moves like that basically, back and forth, with the aliens attempting to close the gaps to get past the Marines powerful ranged Storm Bolters, and rip them apart with tooth and claw.

6. Replayability
Each mission offers a lot of replayability, and there are lots of custom maps here on the geek. Also you can design your own. But the custom maps included with the game in the mission book are very fun, and offer much more replayability than other games I’ve played with fixed maps and missions.

7. The “Luck” Factor
Those who read my reviews know how much I hate games with dice, really in any form. I suppose Space Hulk doesn’t bother me, even though dice determine the combat outcomes, mostly because there are some modifiers to make it less luck based. For instance, if a Space Marine shoots at the same target multiple times, he can hit on more numbers than if he shoots simply once. So is there luck involved? Yes, but this luck is minimal in my opinion.

Conclusions:
Space Hulk is a great game. Actually, I’d probably put it as easily my favorite game right now. Maybe this will change, but I hope not, because I love seeing my beautifully painted pieces on the table

The name of this very portable game is a misnomer as it consists of a single, large, beautiful custom 12-sided die with Lovecraftian symbols: Yellow Sign (5 sides), Tentacle (4 sides), Elder Sign (1 side), Cthulhu (1 side) and Eye (1 side). The single die is all you need to play and comes in a variety of luminescent colors: black, green, purple, glow-in-the-dark, and glowing-ink. While the Cthulhu Dice package also contains 18 glass Sanity marbles, any tokens handy, including pennies or peanuts, can be substituted to keep track of each player’s Sanity. Play is quick, 10 to 20 minutes, making this a good filler.

All players start with 3 Sanity marbles (or whatever tokens you have handy). The Goal: be the only player with any Sanity left. Each player chooses a player to “attack,” then rolls the die. The die determines the effects of the attack:
* Yellow Sign – Target loses 1 Sanity to Cthulhu (place in middle of table).
* Tentacle – Caster (active player) takes a Sanity token from the Victim (Tentacle). The Tentacle is always bad for the Victim: if the Victim rolls a Tentacle in defense, he still has to give the Caster a Sanity token.
* Cthulhu – Everyone gives 1 Sanity to Cthulhu (middle of table).
* Elder Sign – Gain 1 Sanity from Cthulhu (if he has any).
* Eye – Choose any result above.

The defender (Victim) gets his chance to respond: rolling the same die in the hopes of thwarting the attack with the Caster as his target. Use the same chart to determine the results. This completes the Caster’s turn and play passes to the Caster’s left.

The Madness Factor
When a player loses all of his marbles, he’s gone Mad. A Mad player can still attack on his turn, but cannot be attacked. When a Mad player steals Sanity from another player as the result of an attack, he must give it to Cthulhu. The only way for a player to get his Sanity back is to roll the Elder Sign on his turn.

Game End
The game ends when there is only one sane player at the end of a player’s turn. If everyone goes Mad, then Cthulhu wins! Ah, ha, ha, ha!

Observations
Generally play is quick and lively, once players learn the meaning of the symbols. Laughter and groans are to be expected.

Personally, I don’t like Cthulhu Dice nearly as much as Zombie Dice for a filler. While the die is pretty, the game itself just doesn’t do anything for me. The glowing-ink die looks really cool. Fans of Lovecraft will want a copy of the game just because of the cool, pretty die. I’m sure many other uses could be found for it. Perhaps it could be worked into some other Cthulhu-themed game.

I think the best thing about Cthulhu Dice is the single-die component that makes it extremely portable so you can play it anywhere: while you’re waiting for food at a restaurant (use the sugar packets for Sanity tokens), at the park (a few pebbles with do). Well, you get the picture

This is a game of resource management. Your Meeples are a resource – and you breed and nurture them to provide more options. Time is also a resource. As you work your guys harder, you spend time. Spend too much time and your Meeple will pass away. Don’t be too upset though – this provides just another opportunity to score Vips.

The game flow is as follows: Each round, the action spaces are seeded with cubes from a bag – providing a limited number of activations for each part of the board. Four categories of cubes are resources for you to collect and spend. Black, plague cubes also offer the chance to take that action – at the cost of two time – ushering your guys faster towards death.

It is much to easy to corrupt the RingBearers in any senario. I have been able to get the Ring Bearer’s to Mordor with 0 corruption and still have 5 companions to kill of corruption. But sometimes thats just not good enough, due to a combination of Red Hunt Tiles, Eye Tiles and a host of nasty Even Cards. For Exp. lets say the Shelob Hunt tile is drawn, well the fellowship doesn’t get to move one space like they thought they could and the SP gets to roll a dice and add that many corruption points. So if a 6 is rolled then the SP is half way to victory because of one hunt tile. Some tiles will reveal the Fellowship allowing the SP to play Event Cards because its revealed, that can separate companions, add corruption and really **** off the FPP.

The FPP has no defense in Military. If the SP plays it right then he can put FP nations Strongholds under siege before they ever get to War to muster in some kind of defense. Victory points come all to easy for the SP if he gets the right combination of action dice (which is normally the case). There has been many times where Gondor has been completely taken by the SP before I can roll one Will of the West to bring in Aragorn. The SP can basically pick out any strong hold he wants and take it over without to much trouble. He just has to make sure he can do it before that ring is destroyed.

Talking about destroying the ring. Its a sweet victory when the SP has 10 or 11 victory points, the corruption is on 11, and a rare blue hunt tile is drawn to prevent frodos corruption and claim saurons defeat. The ring to the SP is a ticking timb bomb heading right for him. Most games I can make it tough for the SP to get even close to 10 Victory Points before I get into Mordor. Then the problem for me is getting it throught Mordor with all the corruption hitting me. In my opinion it is much to easy to corrupt the Ring Bearers in Morodor. There has been a few times when I have gone in with Gollum and keep the SP from revealing it so much. There are some Event Cards that really help if Gollum is the guide. And it prevents the SP from putting so many eyes in the hunt box.

This game is very overwhelming but just a ton of fun. I have lost alot more than I have won. But I keep finding myself trying new things to help the Fellowship do thier job in destroying the One. Alot of People complain that the pieces arent different colors and its to hard to distinguish them apart from one another. Well Im glad they made them like that cause I had a blast painting them in full detail. This is by far my number 1 game of all time, and i do reccomend it to anyone who is a Tolkien fan or just a war gamer. If your both, then you have to get this game. It will make you forget about all your other ones.

I actually like the card based game. My in-laws always want to play it when we get together for the Hollidays. This Thanksgiving we played the card game three times, than I brought out the dice game. We then were able to play about ten games in a row.

The dice game is just so much quicker, in setup and play. We didn’t have to access the rules as much as the card game version.

I think its a really good pick to get new players into gaming. Young and old alike have a great time with this game. Easy to learn for all ages. Played with my son, 11 and an aunt 75, and all ages in between.

Easy to learn. Love the theme. Plays well with 3 or 4. Different ways to victory, can do the quests to win or use your lords ability.

This is the game I use to introduce news players to board gaming. I played with my sister in law and brother in law, they are new to gaming. They were a little overwhelmed by all the components during setup. They quickly picked up the game play. They actually wanted to play again as soon as the first game was finished.

Great game, and my kids love it. They ask to play t all the time. You can order a set of replacement cards and get the space crane in the new set.
Took it to a game night with some friends, taught it to them while we played our first game, they all really enjoyed it. They commented on the uniqueness of the die placement. Overall was a huge success. Cannot wait to buy the new expansion, really looking forward to be able to play with five players.