Space Hulk
Cover of the first edition of Space Hulk
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| Manufacturer(s) | Games Workshop |
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| Designer(s) | Richard Halliwell, Dean Bass |
| Publisher(s) | Games Workshop |
| Years active | 1989— |
| Players | 2 |
Space Hulk is a board game for two players by Games Workshop. It was first released in 1989. The game is set in the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000. In the game, a "space hulk" is a mass of ancient, derelict space ships, asteroids, and other assorted space debris. One player takes the role of Space Marine Terminators, Human elite soldiers who have been sent to investigate such a space hulk. The other player takes the role of Tyranid Genestealers, an aggressive alien species which have made their home aboard such a space hulk.
In Warhammer 40,000, the term "space hulk" is used to refer to any massive derelict space ship. Due to the shifting, immaterial nature of the Warp, an otherworldly realm through which space ships may travel between the stars far quicker than they would be able to through real space, some space hulks are jumbled and twisted agglomerations of multiple vessels lost to the Warp throughout centuries or millennia. Space hulks may house more than just Genestealers; other threats aboard can include human followers of the dark gods of Chaos, nightmarish Warp Daemons, and Orks who use space hulks as their "standard" method of interstellar travel.
Genestealers were described in an entry of the "Aliens and monsters" section of the first edition of Warhammer 40,000 (the 'WH40K - Rogue Trader' manual); but they were very different from their Space Hulk incarnation, which was more influenced by the xenomorphs depicted in the Alien movie franchise. Since the 1990s, subsequent games like Warhammer 40,000 and Epic have absorbed them as part of the overall Tyranid army where they serve as the shock troops, although their origins are not related to any other Tyranid broods. A force composed purely of Genestealers can still be fielded as a sub-type of the Tyranid army, in what is known as a Genestealer Cult. The Cult is described in the in-game background as an infiltration force that weakens a target planet, by infecting the local population and causing civil unrest, in advance of the arrival of the main Tyranid hive fleet.
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