Fantasy Flight Games is known for the quality of their games. I’m pretty sure that I have never heard of a game released by them that was a complete flop. Thus, my hopes for Death Angel were high. When I finally got my hands on the box I was more than happy.
It’s is a Silver Line edition, which apparently means it’s a compact size game stuffed into one small box and that is all you need to play. Well, maybe a bit of a table space, that’s it! The box, as always, has a nice textured feel to it. So do the size 3 cards. They got nice artwork on them fitting the Space Hulk Board Game perfectly by using GW illustrations from codices and rulebooks. All the familiar faces are there: Lorenzo, Omnio and others. It was a big shame putting them into sleeves but… you will want to protect them as most of the cards will be used a lot. The manual is written in a pretty straightforward way, but could do with more examples of gameplay, I think. It is a full colour 32 page booklet with a quick reference on the last page.
The game is designed to be played by one to six players and is played against the deck. Before you start playing you need to set up your gaming area. Yes, it’s a card game that looks like a board game to me, without actually using a board. You set up you blips, set up your locations and then your Space Marines. I will not go into detail on the game itself as I’m pretty sure you want to experience the fun of learning yourself. It takes a while to get your head around the rules, but when you do… oh boy!
When I and my mates played the first couple of games we thought the game is broken. You can’t win. Then I thought of Space Hulk the Board Game. You’re not supposed to win! There’s only couple of you against hordes of pissed of bugs. Winning the game is like getting the right numbers on the lottery. So, don’t worry if you loose! Keep on trying and you will get there.
(Being an OCD person I need to have everything perfectly lined up and fitting into boxes. When you put all the cards in their sleeves they simply don’t fit in the box. Well, not at first they don’t. There is a way to fit them in there and after a trial and error and some maths I managed to find a way: First pile: Genestealers + Brood Lords + Locations, second pile: Events + Space Marines + Actions, and the middle pile on top of the raised area: Terrain cards; all tokens stuffed inside the raised area.)
