Space Marine is a great video game exploration of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, but there are some interesting differences between the video game and the wargame.
If it weren’t for the fact that we have a tonne of games to get through for review, and more coming on the horizon, we’d probably be replaying Space Marine right now. Normally, we’re not a replay kinda guy, nor do we normally dig on tasty, tasty ‘chievos, but in this case... we really want to rack up some more kills, collect more audio logs, and bring the pain to more enemies of the Emperor. But... alas.
However, with the game so strongly on our mind, we thought it’d be neat to compare some of the things in the game with how they operate on the table-top; I’m a big fan of the miniatures side of Warhammer. There’s actually some very interesting differences...
Space Marines cannot kill 100 Orks in minutes. Sadly, while the fluff (all the written fiction and background material) represents the Adeptus Astartes as Angles of Death that can kick arse and take names, on the table top they’re a little more down to earth. For game balance reasons, and to help sell more of Games Workshop’s most popular range, your average Marine is only a little more effective than, say, two or three Orks. Sad but true. Interestingly, there was ruleset written in the US version of White Dwarf magazine (GW’s in-house hobby mag) called Movie Marines, which tried to replicate how Marines act in the fluff – using those rules, five Marines could easily take on the kind of numbers the video game represents.
In fact, it’s actually great seeing Marines as they are truly meant to be – righteous instruments of destruction. Going to be hard going back to the stripped back tabletop version...
The meltagun. Vaping a rush of demons with your trusty meltagun in Space Marine is a real rush, but on the tabletop it’s a very different weapon. It pretty much ignores armour, can kill anything it shoots at, and is marvellous for melting tanks. However, it’s also not an area weapon; it can only hit one target at a time. In fact, we kinda prefer Space Marine’s version...
Jump packs. We love the idea of slamming down on a crowd of enemies and either killing them outright or stunning them for a gruesome execution – Space Marine’s jump-pack is a thing of joy. However, this is another item that’s much less exciting on the tabletop. It does let you jump long distances – twice the distance of a similar unit on foot – but you still have to run into actual combat. Frankly, next time we use our jump-pack-equipped Blood Angels it’ll be a letdown after Space Marine.
Chaos Marines don’t disappear. It’s a neat effect, watching Chaos Marines dissolve into ethereal warp-stuff, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It’s right for demons, like the Bloodletters you fight in the game (who actually live in the twisted realms of the Warp), but Chaos Marines are not innate creatures of Chaos, and nor do they need a gate to appear in realspace. It makes for a good drama, though, so who are we to nitpick (too much...). They are twisted by their worship of the Ruinous Powers, gifted with immortality and mutations, but they’re still flesh and blood.
The Vengeance Launcher. As neat as this item is, it’s actually a creation of Relic – there’s nothing like it in 40k cannon. That said, the works of the Adeptus Mechanicus are vast and mysterious... and we certainly wouldn’t say to having access to something like the Launcher.
Plasma weapons. Ah, sweet, burning plasma. Like the meltagun, on the table top these weapons are great for taking down armoured foes. However, they also come with a drawback that Space Marine has ignored – though possibly for a good reason. Plasma weapons are subject to a special rule called ‘Gets Hot!’, which means that every time you roll a one on a six-sided die when you roll to hit a target, that shot not only misses, but the weapon catastrophically overheats – and can actually injure or even kill the user! Thus this great pic, the work of a particularly clever modeller...
SPOILER ALERT!
Captain Titus, and his warp resistance. Most players would have noticed the two studs in the foreheads of both Sidonus and Captain Titus – each one of these signifies at least 100 years service to the Chapter, making Titus around 215 years old at least. Now, this is rather nitpicky (and yeah, I know – I suck), and not so much to do with the wargame but how a Chapter operates, but in those 200 years he would certainly have come under the attention of the Chapter’s own pyskers (known as Librarians), or faced other psychic foes. In other words... how come his resistance is only being noticed now?! Ahem.
We’ll shut up now...
Issue: 137 | June, 2012