One of the things that I love about Pulp Alley is that you can grab a handful of miniatures from any genre, setting or period, define them as a Pulp Alley League and it all just works. I often say that over the years I’ve used Pulp Alley for Cavemen to Spacemen with just about everything in between.

When my friend Mathew asked me if I’d like the Space Marine part of the Warhammer 40K Kill Team starter set, as he was collecting Chaos Marines, I was delighted as looking at the seven miniatures, I immediately though that they would make a great league for Pulp Alley. I had also read an article about painting yellow (over a pink undercoat!) and as yellow has always been a tricky colour to get right, I decided to paint the Space Marines up as Imperial Fists in there distinctive yellow liveries.

Mathew had done a great job of painting up the Plague Marines. Both our leagues consisted of a leader, two sidekick and an alley. They were defined using the optional sci-fi rules from Pulp Alley (so had an extra dice added to one combat and one non combat skill). Mathew had not played Pulp Alley before, so I defined both sets of characters. A pdf of the character cards can be downloaded by clicking here, In Warhammer 40K / Kill Team Plague Marines have a special rule, ‘Disgustingly Resilient’. To give them the same feel in Pulp Alley, I gave all the Plague Marines ‘Armoured’ ability (which I renamed in line with WH40K to ‘Disgustingly Resilient’. This was a move I later regretted as it di make them very resilient and difficult to injure. I gave the Space Marine characters abilities that reflected there Warhammer ‘Bolt Gun Discipline’ allowing them to take extra shots plus some Veteran and Moxie skills to allow them to participate in multiple combats.

As it was Mathews first game, I choose a straightforward scenario from the main Pulp Alley rulebook, Treasure Hunt. Terrain was set up to represent an alien planet with ancient alien structures and debris from a crashed spaceship used by previous teams attempting to recover the powerful alien artefact. Four satellite dishes were placed as minor plot points around the table. These were programmed to reveal the location of the alien artefact that was the major plot point. Unfortunately the planet also has a Tyrannid infestation, so a Genestealer was placed D8″ in a random direction from the plot points. The reward deck included one red herring card, so one of the satellite dishes was not going to be where we thought it should be.

The Plague Marines elected to deploy on the high ground, on top of the cliffs. This gave them an excellent field of fire, but meant they had to overcome a peril to climb down the cliff. This certainly hindered there advance on the beacons.

The Imperial Fists moved quickly to take up positions amongst the wreckage of the spaceship. From this cover the troopers could give covering fire as the captain and the sergeant sallied forth to secure the beacons. The character at the end of the line, with the long rifle and black cloak is my Space Marine Sniper. I gave him the ‘Snipe’ ability from the Pulp Alley characters book. This allows you to play a peril from your hand onto an enemy in line of sight, a particular nasty ability as you will of course save up all those three perils Fortune cards to use.

Here we see the Imperial Fists heavy weapons specialist firing a ‘burst’ on to a clumped group of Plague Marines.

At this point the battle is well underway. The Imperial Fists Sergeant is the man of the match, having coolly advanced under heavy fire and first secured the beacon and then used it to discover the location and subsequently secure the alien artefact. The Space Marine Captain almost acted as a decoy attracting the majority of incoming fire from the Plague Marines.

Heavy Weapons Specialist Trent bravely fought off repeated Genestealer assaults for many turns.

After a protracted fire fight, and the best efforts of nearby Marines to protect him the Space Marine Captain eventually succumbed to his wounds and failed to recover (in fact I don’t think he passed a successful recovery check the whole game!)

Luck was not with the Specialist Trent. His name will be sewn with reverence on to the banner of remembrance in the Imperial Fists chapel. His power armour failed to protect him and he was eventually overwhelmed and torn to pieces by the Genestealers.

The Plague Marines bring there heavy weapon specialist up to close range where his ‘long burst’ can do most damage.

The Space Marine Sergeant had seized the artefact on the forth turn and following mission SOP’s had tactically withdrawn to the most defensible position, supported by the rest of the squad. At the end of the final turn, after valiant attempts to seize the artefact from him, it and a minor plot point was still in his control giving the Space Marines four victory points and the Plague Marines one victory point for a minor plot point. The Plague Marines had inflicted the most combat damage taking down several Marines including there Captain. The ‘Disgustingly Resilient’ trait had proved just that and had protected the forces of corruption right up to the end.

The game was a lot of fun and could have gone either way. Mathew is eying up his Star Wars and Halo miniature collection to try out in Pulp Alley and we are planning a return match seeing how the same scenario would play out using Warhammer Kill Team.

Useful Links

Pulp Alley Rules, miniatures and cards in the Sally 4th WebStore

Click here to download the free PDF of character cards we used in the game.