I don’t get into card games on my own, but I was invited to try out Space Hulk Death Angel.

It’s a game that tries to translate the experience of Space Hulk into a more portable, and faster playing card game.

The game is entirely co-op, which I very much appreciated. It is frustrating for somebody to pull out a competitive board or card game and expect you to have fun while they stomp you as you are just trying to pick up the rules. The co-op nature of the game makes jumping in much smoother. All players take control of a portion of the space marine terminators sent aboard the hulk, while the genestealers are procedurally controlled.

Marines are limited by various action cards which are specific to each marine pair and the same card can not be played back to back. Using the marines, the goal is to move through four sections of the hulk to reach a random final goal. In my game’s case it was to set targeting coordinates and fire some kind of weapon. The more turns I spent fine tuning adjustments, the higher chance of final success, which I thought was interesting.

The combat was brutal and fast, which did feel like regular Space Hulk. Combat could take wild swings. Swarms of genestealers could spawn and bear down on a seemingly doomed marine, but then a chained blast of psychic powers or a flurry of lightning claw special attacks could cut them down. The marines could be making steady progress with the situation under control until an event card scrambles their facings and leaves their carefully planned sector control open to genestealers.

It was fun and quick. If you travel and can’t pack up a whole game of Space Hulk it does partially fill the niche.