The Nardio Board Game Review
Space Marine The Board Game
Games Workshop embarrasses itself with this half ass mess.
Space Marine The Board Game had everything going for it.
Everything.
Indie board game devs would kill to work with such a beloved IP. Collectors, gamers and 40K players wanted the exclusive mini. Space Marine The Board Game was piggy backing off one already beloved and successful video game game and was helping to user in the sequel this game was based on…..
Then Games Workshop released this unfinished mess of a game.
Check out the video review below if you want a brief version of the review and to see my handsome face.
We’ve played Space Marine the Board Game about seven times before the review. Several times on stream and a few times by ourselves. We were always left disappointed with just about everything Space Marine the Board Game had to offer. Parts of the book contradict each other and the game is a slow unbalance slog that never manages to feel complete.
Space Marines The Board Game by Games Workshop is a hollow rushed unfinished mess that shows zero respect for the customers who pay for it. There are two tutorials and ONLY two missions to play.
That wouldn’t be so bad if the two missions for Space Marine The Board Game were fun. Heck, even if there were one really good mission but instead
BOTH missions are trash.
The missions instead feel like tutorials, but unfinished and untested tutorials…. They aren’t fun and they leave players with more questions than answers but that’s it.
There is nothing else to do with this $40 “game”.
How Games Workshop had the nerve to shit this game out and offer it up for sale is beyond me.
As a Tyrinid player you go from being excited to control the horde of minis to quickly being bored and frustrated of having to move each, individual miniature.
One by One.
One by One.
It get’s old quickly.
As the game goes on you will have to roll a lot of dice sometimes about 20. But we are only given SIX DICE!
So unless you have plenty of spare dice to mix in, you are going to be going even slower.
All to often you are just going to nuke the Space Marine player off the board with a huge volley of shots before they can even do anything.
It’s NOT FUN.
As the Space Marine Player you will find yourself wishing to get into close combat with the NIDS to have a sliver of a chance to survive. You have a gun, but it only has two shots vs an army of 22 enemies. Enemies that can spawn and come at you from multiple locations.
That said, when you are in CLOSE combat with the NIDS you are unable to be shot at. But, that doesn’t make it better because you have a limited number of hits to dish out with your sword. At most your chainsword can hit five enemies at once. But you can be swarmed with and the Tyrinid player can endlessly generate minions to tie you up and eventually overwhelm you.
It’s NOT FUN.
Sure there is a 50/50 chance to regain healthy when you kill a tyrinad, but those rolls are harder to pull off than you would think. This leads to some very unsatisfying game endings.
Space Marine The Board Game’s game board is surprisingly large, but once you start playing, it get’s claustrophobic quickly. There isn’t room to maneuver or hide for the space marine player. Meanwhile, it’s too easy for the Tyrinid player to respawn and swarm back in.
The Space Marine player is always locked in combat when there is an enemy in engagement range so the idea of going from objective to seems stupid, broken and moot. As a Space Marine Player you are lucky if you make it to the second objective.
There are some quality of life issues as well.
The data sheets for both factions aren’t on cards each player can keep close by. Instead they are in the back of the manual. This never happens with these sorts of games and makes checking on your abilities harder than it needs to be.
The clear ruler is insanely easy to misplace when playing the game.
As I mentioned before, if the Tyrinid player needs 20 dice to shoot, why are you only including 6?!?!
The rule book isn’t clear and key information is splattered around in a stupid way. It’s hard to go back and reference things. I love the artwork, but the two page spreads could have easily made space more more actual missions and greatly helped the experience.
This feels like an unpolished untested alpha of a homebrew game that is just in it’s conceptual stage at best. Not something from a multimillion dollar game company with the team and resources to release a polished experience.
Knowing this is from games workshop, knowing that I paid full price for this, I feel that Space Marine the Board game is a lazy cash grab that shows zero respect for the players who bought/buy this game.
If this came out a few years ago, it would still suck, but it’s even worse now with games like Blitz Bowl, Labyrinth of the Necrons and even Fireteam to compare it to. All of those games offered a better gameplay experience and vastly more replay.
It feels like Games Workshop management took Space Marine the Board Game and released it before it was ready. But before doing that, ripped out most of the pages of the manual that would have explained the mechanics, threw away all the pages that contained the missions and lazily replaced them with product shots and more product shots, but didn’t bother looking over what they were doing.
It’s insulting.
AS IS, I cannot recommend Space Marine the Board Game as a board game. It’s just not fun, it doesn’t make sense and it’s just not polished or good.
That said, if you are looking at this for the minis, then go ahead and get them. Sure to most normies outside the cult of Games Workshop, paying $40 for 23 tiny unpainted plastic bits is insanity. But, if you are one of us, one of the indoctrinated who have come to begrudgingly accept Games Workshop prices, then this is a steal. Titus himself will go for more than this box when released and the same can be said for the Termagaunts. The game board is also of great quality. So for the parts, this is a great buy.
The only problem is, I wanted a damn board game. It says board game on the box, but this ain’t it.
Don’t Buy Space Marine The Board Game if you want a board game.
