Back when the Arks of Omen ravaged the galaxy, the action in Warhammer 40,000 moved to the claustrophobic corridors of voidcraft in a game format known as Boarding Actions. These small-scale skirmishes challenged players to take a compact infantry force into close quarters where death lurks around every blind corner. Though the rules were updated when the latest edition of the game arrived, we’ve seen fewer Boarding Actions over the last year or so.
Until now.
Plunge back into the world of door-to-door firefights and desperate charges with Warhammer 40,000: Boarding Actions, a hefty new compendium rammed with fully updated rules and missions for the current edition. This book refreshes dozens of missions from the Arks of Omen series, including both narrative and competitive options as well as larger multiplayer games for up to four people.
Main billing goes to the complete list of Boarding Actions Detachments for every faction in the game,* giving you quick and easy options for building a balanced Boarding Patrol around thematic army lists. Every faction has at least two Detachments with their own Detachment rules, Enhancements, and Stratagems, as well as unit rosters that determine how many of each unit you can take.
For example, the Genestealer Cults have two Detachments – the Cult Unveiled and the Genespawn Onslaught. The former leans closer to the more recognisably human side of the cult that sends waves of expendable Acolyte Hybrids and Neophyte Hybrids into the tunnels, while the latter prefers the more monstrous Aberrants and Hybrid Metamorphs for some brutal close-quarters combat.
As Boarding Patrols are typically just 500 points, these cut-down unit selections still offer a diverse range of choices despite leaving anything larger than a Terminator at the door. Vehicles and Monsters are almost entirely off-limits, while corridors and hatchways keep the action close-ranged and tense for factions that prefer to stay safe behind their firing lines.
The wide assortment of missions on offer makes good use of the unique Boarding Actions terrain to present tactical challenges found nowhere else. Some are asymmetric, tasking a player with destroying vital infrastructure behind their opponent’s defences, while others are narrative reenactments that relive pivotal moments from Vashtorr the Arkifane’s fiendish campaign.
One of our personal favourites, the Dark Depths mission, even allows each player to select half of the board layout – ideally a layout that suits their playstyle – before slamming them together into a chaotic warren of mismatched killing fields. If you’ve ever wanted to paint your terrain to match your army and take it on tour against like-minded Boarding Patrols, it’s the perfect place to start.
Warhammer 40,000: Boarding Actions is on its way soon, and we’ll have more from the book as we get closer to release.
* Except Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights, who struggled to fit up the loading ramp.