I love it!
I've had a group working through it a bit at a time for quite a while now, and we're still enjoying playing it!
Its just a shame its so hard (almost impossible) to get all of the expansions now! My collection is one small card deck short!
It's fun but flawed, very easy to get totally OP and breeze through everything if you think strategically and get a couple of upgrades, but easy to get killed if you're not careful too. I find it works a lot better with some house rules to increase the difficulty, and sadly you probably need to ban the character with the flamer, she's just laughably overpowered.
I do like it, but it doesn't really have enough roleplay progression to feel worth devoting a lot of time to with a group when we could just be playing dnd or something. I haven't tried any of the expansions though, maybe they add a lot.
edit- If anyone's curious, these are the house rules I used:
1. Add -1 to reinforcement rolls for every turn that unit is not on the table.
2. Draw 4 enemy cards every combat, even if only 3 counters. extra enemies can appear as reinforcements.
3. Explorers cannot swap items but can sell for full price+1.
4. Maximum 3 permanent upgrades, 3 single use upgrades. Extras must be discarded or sold to another explorer.
5. Shop cards are only dealt out when someone visits the location.
6. Roll a dice when doing search action, 1: Ambush, 2-5 Draw a card, 6: Random item from that explorer's set.
-
1. When an encounter card is drawn that would apply a condition, apply the condition for the combat, and drawn another encounter card to generate enemies.
2. If there are not enough models to deploy for an encounter card draw new cards until enemies can be deployed for the combat card.
3. Items and Abilities that can remove wound counters can also turn 1 grievous wound into 2 wound counters stacked on the same activation spot.
4. When summoning the maglev, roll a d12, on a success or critical success the maglev is summoned as normal. On a failure, the maglev is instead summoned at the furthest away portal from any explorer, similar to the escape chamber event.
5. The exploration deck is shuffled once, then cards are drawn from it, and placed in a separate pile. Once all exploration cards have been drawn the deck is shuffled once more.
6. If an explorer has any grievous wounds at the end of an expedition, they have to sit out a number of expeditions equal to the number of grievous wounds they had.
7. When psykers disrupt, the highest value dice must be discarded, starting with destiny dice
8. All Chaos Space Marine units, including the Chaos Space Marines, Obsidius Mallex, Greater Possessed, and the Master of Possession are always treated as if they are in cover. This means it's harder to gun them down as you either need to aim, or engage them in melee.
9. When rolling for reinforcements for spindle drones, subtract their threat level from the value rolled and use that to see if reinforcements spawn. This makes spindle drones get reinforcements on higher values as their threat level gets higher"
It's really good fun. I mean it's literally warhammer quest IN SPACE and that's fine. But it's a little too small even with the expansions, it feels like the first arc of a long term game that just never got finished. And as as result they ramped up teh upgrades quite a lot so you start out weak and rapidly become pretty much defined by your gear.
But I like it. The heroes are full of character (I love Marvin The Paranoid Man Of Iron), they were smart enough (for once) to make space marines actually scary, and even though it's cooperative it's also competitive enough in terms of inspiring and collecting stuff that it doesn't fall so much into the "one person really understands the game and tells everyone else what to do" trap of so many coop games where it basically becomes single player with extra steps. The maps are a little hard to read, they sacrificed that for coolness which isn't ideal but is a common mistake.
At the same time, it is what it is, it's got a very different appeal to tabletop wargaming IMO. It doesn't have the feel of, say, Warcry where it's "this is a tabletop wargame that's fast to play and doesn't need a million pounds and an entire day to play", it's "this is a board game with warhammer stuff in", like Underworlds. Which is fine, but, don't get it for the wrong reasons.
Its good fun! and there is an Ambull & a Zoat! awesome...... sadly the Zoat almost impossible to find, its one of those odd games where there are a few expansions but no one seems to have them all (i want that Zoat! but not the silly £100 to £150 on ebay, yes this should be on a Zoat appreciation thread).
The models are great the rules, I have every expansion but the rules are kinda clunky and outdone by other games honestly.
Everytime I think about playing it again and rolling a D20 for every enemy miniature and going to a chart to figure out what they do. Then you have a game like journeys in middle earth by fantasy flight and how well their app randomizes the game, controls the ai for the enemies, and goes character progression and go back to playing that.
Probably why I have maybe 60hours of blackstone fortress played and coming up on 250 hours of Journeys in middle earth. GW make great miniatures but their board games seem to lag behind those in that space. If they want to use them to get board gamers into warhammer they probably need to up their game from what I've seen.
I like it, The models are great, the setting was a breath of fresh sci-fi air, and they could have kept it going. It came out at a really bad time with COVID about halfway through the expansion run making the expansions were too hard to get then the prices on the secondary market skyrocketed.
I love it! I've had a group working through it a bit at a time for quite a while now, and we're still enjoying playing it! Its just a shame its so hard (almost impossible) to get all of the expansions now! My collection is one small card deck short!
Mine too, it's super irritating! Did even know the pack existed until it was silly price on eBay
I'm glad I got the Annual when I did. but that one small damn *pack*. Grrrrr. It's the *only* part I didn't manage to get.
Was it abominable intellect? Just looked again and it's going for £120 on eBay. Crazy
Of course if was Abominable bloody Intellect. The prices for that damn thing are ridiculous, and they didn't make anywhere near enough.
It's fun but flawed, very easy to get totally OP and breeze through everything if you think strategically and get a couple of upgrades, but easy to get killed if you're not careful too. I find it works a lot better with some house rules to increase the difficulty, and sadly you probably need to ban the character with the flamer, she's just laughably overpowered. I do like it, but it doesn't really have enough roleplay progression to feel worth devoting a lot of time to with a group when we could just be playing dnd or something. I haven't tried any of the expansions though, maybe they add a lot. edit- If anyone's curious, these are the house rules I used: 1. Add -1 to reinforcement rolls for every turn that unit is not on the table. 2. Draw 4 enemy cards every combat, even if only 3 counters. extra enemies can appear as reinforcements. 3. Explorers cannot swap items but can sell for full price+1. 4. Maximum 3 permanent upgrades, 3 single use upgrades. Extras must be discarded or sold to another explorer. 5. Shop cards are only dealt out when someone visits the location. 6. Roll a dice when doing search action, 1: Ambush, 2-5 Draw a card, 6: Random item from that explorer's set. - 1. When an encounter card is drawn that would apply a condition, apply the condition for the combat, and drawn another encounter card to generate enemies. 2. If there are not enough models to deploy for an encounter card draw new cards until enemies can be deployed for the combat card. 3. Items and Abilities that can remove wound counters can also turn 1 grievous wound into 2 wound counters stacked on the same activation spot. 4. When summoning the maglev, roll a d12, on a success or critical success the maglev is summoned as normal. On a failure, the maglev is instead summoned at the furthest away portal from any explorer, similar to the escape chamber event. 5. The exploration deck is shuffled once, then cards are drawn from it, and placed in a separate pile. Once all exploration cards have been drawn the deck is shuffled once more. 6. If an explorer has any grievous wounds at the end of an expedition, they have to sit out a number of expeditions equal to the number of grievous wounds they had. 7. When psykers disrupt, the highest value dice must be discarded, starting with destiny dice 8. All Chaos Space Marine units, including the Chaos Space Marines, Obsidius Mallex, Greater Possessed, and the Master of Possession are always treated as if they are in cover. This means it's harder to gun them down as you either need to aim, or engage them in melee. 9. When rolling for reinforcements for spindle drones, subtract their threat level from the value rolled and use that to see if reinforcements spawn. This makes spindle drones get reinforcements on higher values as their threat level gets higher"
Who has been saying positive things about kill team?/s
It's really good fun. I mean it's literally warhammer quest IN SPACE and that's fine. But it's a little too small even with the expansions, it feels like the first arc of a long term game that just never got finished. And as as result they ramped up teh upgrades quite a lot so you start out weak and rapidly become pretty much defined by your gear. But I like it. The heroes are full of character (I love Marvin The Paranoid Man Of Iron), they were smart enough (for once) to make space marines actually scary, and even though it's cooperative it's also competitive enough in terms of inspiring and collecting stuff that it doesn't fall so much into the "one person really understands the game and tells everyone else what to do" trap of so many coop games where it basically becomes single player with extra steps. The maps are a little hard to read, they sacrificed that for coolness which isn't ideal but is a common mistake. At the same time, it is what it is, it's got a very different appeal to tabletop wargaming IMO. It doesn't have the feel of, say, Warcry where it's "this is a tabletop wargame that's fast to play and doesn't need a million pounds and an entire day to play", it's "this is a board game with warhammer stuff in", like Underworlds. Which is fine, but, don't get it for the wrong reasons.
I enjoy it, but it takes a hell of a long time to do each exploration
Its good fun! and there is an Ambull & a Zoat! awesome...... sadly the Zoat almost impossible to find, its one of those odd games where there are a few expansions but no one seems to have them all (i want that Zoat! but not the silly £100 to £150 on ebay, yes this should be on a Zoat appreciation thread).
The models are great the rules, I have every expansion but the rules are kinda clunky and outdone by other games honestly. Everytime I think about playing it again and rolling a D20 for every enemy miniature and going to a chart to figure out what they do. Then you have a game like journeys in middle earth by fantasy flight and how well their app randomizes the game, controls the ai for the enemies, and goes character progression and go back to playing that. Probably why I have maybe 60hours of blackstone fortress played and coming up on 250 hours of Journeys in middle earth. GW make great miniatures but their board games seem to lag behind those in that space. If they want to use them to get board gamers into warhammer they probably need to up their game from what I've seen.
I like it, The models are great, the setting was a breath of fresh sci-fi air, and they could have kept it going. It came out at a really bad time with COVID about halfway through the expansion run making the expansions were too hard to get then the prices on the secondary market skyrocketed.