Demon Ship

[Brother Tyler]

Demon Ship, designed by Malev Da Shinobi and available from Black Site Studios, is a great microgame where you control the Survivor after something has gone terribly wrong and the [space]ship is now infested with demonic creatures. The premise is very on brand for the Warhammer 40,000 setting. In fact, it is virtually identical to the premise of the Rogue Trader expansion for the 2018 edition of Kill Team.

 

While the official products available from BSS are great (the magnetized kit is awesome), the game itself allows players to use any 6x6 board. In addition to that magnetized kit, I've created a Lego version of the game as well as a magnetized meeple version. Those are nice and all, but I intend to create a WH40K version, too. Many other hobbyists have used WH40K stuff (Zone Mortalis boards, minis, etc.) to WH40Kify Demon Ship and I want to jump on that bandwagon.

 

While I'll cover my personal efforts in this endeavor in a separate blog in this club, I'd love to see other hobbyists' Demon Ship WH40Kification efforts in this blog, too.

 

The necessary elements that I see are:

• A suitable 6x6 board (note that I didn't give increments, I'll address this later)
• Miniatures (1x survivor, 2x blade demons, 1x gun demon, 1x frog demon, to be expanded as Malev Da Shinobi expands the game)
• Terrain (2x 1x3 walls, 1x 1x2 wall, 1x 1x1 wall, 2x chests, 2x barrels, 1x console, 1x platform, 2x doors)

The game is played on a 6x6 grid. The default is 1" squares, but this can be scaled up or down based on the miniatures. My meeple set, for example, uses smaller squares. With WH40K miniatures, most likely on 32mm bases, I'll need the squares to be 32mm or larger on each side. I may use the Zone Mortalis boards, or I may craft my own bespoke board. If I do the latter, I'll be able to magnetize things, though that will be optional.

 

The miniatures are where I see a lot of room for variability. The "Demon Ship" name automatically lends towards using daemons. It occurred to me, however, that Necrons might be a good fit. Figuring out who the baddies are will help me figure out who/what the Survivor is. If I go with daemons, I'm leaning towards a Grey Knight. If I go with Necrons, I'm leaning towards a member of the Deathwatch. There are lots of other options, however, including a Sister of Silence, an Inquisitor, an Assassin, etc. And I don't need the Survivor to be from the Imperium. What if the Survivor were a Harlequin? Or a Necromunda ganger? Or a voidsman-at-arms? There is a lot of room for interpretation and I'll go into more detail on that when I create my own blog. I'd love to see how other hobbyists decide to WH40Kify this game, however.

 

The terrain, too, allows for a lot of freedom and will depend largely upon the theme/premise. For example, if one uses the premise of an Imperial ship whose Geller fields have failed, the terrain might resemble corrupted Imperial STC architecture. Someone using the premise of a Deathwatch operative inside a Necron tomb world/ship, meanwhile, might lean on architecture appropriate to the Necrons (the Tomb World killzone might provide fodder). Someone else might want to represent their demon ship as Adeptus Astartes warriors clearing an Ork rok during the Third War for Armageddon, with suitably asteroidish features. And at least four other ideas have occurred to me as I've been composing this.

 

Overall, it will be interesting to see how different hobbyists decide to re-theme this gem of a game to fit the WH40K aesthetic.