This last month I’ve been playing an awful lot of Battle for Armageddon. It was one of the three “Wargame Series” boardgames released by Games Workshop in the early 90′s (the others being Horus Heresy and Doom of the Eldar).
But it’s not a proper copy, I downloaded it from Games Workshop’s site and printed it off. It was originally stuck up on the site back in 2000 as part of the hype surrounding the Third War for Armageddon campaign. But with the new Ork Codex round the corner Jerv’s drawn our attention back to the ability to download and print off our own copies. You can get it from Games Workshop here.
It’s a bit of a bitch to assemble. Rather than put any thought into digitising the game, it was just scanned in warts and all. (One of the Ork Strategy Cards reads “BUILDING AND MOVMENT” – which I love.) Then, whichever bright spark chopped up the board made all the pieces different sizes. And cropped off some of the edges. And the counters don’t line up.
But hey, it was free. What do you expect?
It’s a great little tactical game, with a surprising amount of depth. You have to think ahead, like Gothic and Aeronautica. You choose Strategy cards detailing what four actions your counters will make in the coming turn, without knowing what your opponent’s are, or what who’ll play theirs first. It can also form the bases for a tightly-structured 40K and Epic campaign, which is interesting.
With my post-GT 40K funk it’s been a great game to bring along and play. As it’s just a folded card map and a bag of counters I’ll be keeping it in my gaming satchel for those nights I can’t find a board.
But that’s not the best bit. In the Chaos Attack supplement it lets you play as Squats. Corr!
