Warhammer 40.000: Forbidden Stars Brettspiel

Fantasy Flight Games haben ein neues Brettspiel im Warhammer 40.000 Universum angekündigt, Forbidden Stars.

“There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.”
–Warhammer 40,000

Command your armies and battle for the Herakon Cluster in Forbidden Stars, a Warhammer 40,000 board game of interplanetary conquest for two to four players!

Forbidden Stars puts you in command of massive armies battling to claim the Herakon Cluster at any cost. In every game, you and your opponents build up your forces, expand your strategic options, and clash on the field of glorious battle. You’ll deliver orders to your troops on a strategic level and command your armies through tense tactical battles as you fight to claim your objectives. The first player to capture his objective tokens is the victor, but your opponents will undoubtedly defend them against you. You’ll need all your strategic skill to outwit and outmaneuver your opponents and claim the Herakon Cluster!

Four distinct factions await your command in Forbidden Stars. You may take command of the noble Ultramarines, using cunning tactics to battle for the glory of the Emperor and the Imperium. You may rise to become a warlord of the vicious World Eaters Warband and bathe the Herakon Cluster in blood for Khorne. You may lead the fast riding Evil Sunz Orks and overwhelm your opponents with the weight of numbers. Finally, you may join the seers and warriors of the Craftworld Iyanden Eldar and use your massive power to fight for the survival of the Eldar race.

Issue Your Orders

No matter which faction you command, you command your armies by delivering new orders to your forces every round. At the beginning of each round, you and your opponents take turns secretly assigning an order to any system, meaning that you know where your opponents plan to make their move, but not necessarily what they have in mind. Every turn, you’ll need all your cunning to command your forces and triumph over your foes.

Orders are placed in the center of a system tile and can be stacked on top of each other.

To achieve ultimate victory, you’ll use four different types of orders to command your forces. Each of these orders expands your influence and brings you closer to victory, and choosing the perfect time and place to use an order defines the greatest generals in Forbidden Stars. Orders are assigned to systems, but your opponents can play over your orders, forming a stack of order tokens at the center of a system. The position of your order in the stack is crucial to determining when your order resolves, so if you want to outmaneuver your opponents, you’ll first need to outthink your opponent as you plan your attack.

The first possible order that you can assign is deploy, which you use to field new armies and fleets of ships in the Herakon Cluster. When you choose to deploy, you can spend your gathered materiel to muster new ground troops and create the ships that fly them through the void. You can also build new structures to manufacture weapons, expand your command, or defend your planets.

Choosing the strategize order offers a similar effect, but instead of purchasing new units, you can add new tactics to your repertoire of tricks with upgraded orders and new Combat cards. What’s more, the strategize order allows you to draw an Event card at the end of the turn, which can have powerful effects on the game, potentially giving you a dangerous edge over your opponents.

Order tokens from left to right: deploy, strategize, dominate, and advance.

You issue the dominate order to exercise your ruling might over a system. Every planet in Forbidden Stars has a variety of benefits that it offers to whoever controls it, including caches of valuable technology, reinforcements for battle, or the powerful machinery of a forge world. By using the dominate order, you can harvest these assets for your own ends. The dominate order also invites you to trigger your faction’s special ability, spreading cultists to new planets or using webway portals to transport your armies effortlessly across the sector.

The final possible order is the advance order, which sends your armies marching and your ships flying through the void. Armies can march and take smaller craft from planet to planet, but to cross the great spaces between planets, they need the aid of your voidships. During the game, you’ll use advance orders to reposition your armies and invade new planets in pursuit of the objectives you need to achieve victory!

Into the Breach

As your armies sweep across the sector in search of objectives, conflict is inevitable. Armies will do bloody battle on the surface of planets as voidships clash in space or bombard enemy planets into submission. You may be assaulting a planet that contains one of your vital objectives, or you may battle in the void in an attempt to break your opponent’s supply lines. Whether you fight on a planet or in the crushing darkness of space, every attack offers a new opportunity for glorious victory and valour.

Combat offers you thrilling tactical choices as you decide exactly how you will pursue victory. Your units in the battle allow you to roll dice, which provide you with three different types of combat icons: , , and . These icons deal damage to enemy armies, protect your own forces, and influence your army’s morale.

During each round of combat, you and your opponent also have the chance to surprise your opponent and employ new tactics by playing a Combat card, which contributes additional combat icons and grants powerful special abilities to your forces in battle. For example, Impure Zeal offers additional and icons for your side, as well as special abilities to potentially rally your own units and rout your enemies.

Even as you adapt your tactics within a battle using your Combat cards, you’ll need to evaluate your exact goals for each battle. You can focus on destroying as many of your opponent’s units as possible, or you can attempt to fortify your position and weather the storm until combat ends. A wise general knows when to pull his forces back and when to push the attack in hopes of causing maximum enemy casualties. At the end of the game, the player who has claimed his objectives wins, no matter the cost. You may decide that entire planets and their garrisons must be sacrificed to successfully claim your objectives.

Four Unique Factions to Command

Each faction in Forbidden Stars features units and Combat cards unique to that race, meaning that each faction brings its own flavour to your battles for the Herakon Cluster. You may corrupt countless planets, raising up new warriors to fight alongside the World Eaters and devoting your strength to the Chaos Powers. As the Evil Sunz Orks, you can use the mayhem of battle to your advantage and harness your massive reinforcements to fight longer and harder than almost any other army.

When you play as the Space Marines, you lead the Ultramarines chapter of the Adeptus Astartes – the greatest warriors ever known by Mankind. Your tactical knowledge is second to none, and with the ability to upgrade your units, you can train even the lowliest Scout to become a fearsome warrior. Finally, you may be entrusted with the survival of the Eldar of Craftworld Iyanden. This xenos race is cunning in battle and their tricks can prove the downfall of those who underestimate them.

Plagued by Warp Storms

The battles of Forbidden Stars pan out against the backdrop of the Herakon Cluster: a recently discovered sector of space, previously inaccessible because of the massive Warp Storms that surrounded it. But now, a stable route to and from the Herakon Cluster has opened, and the great powers of the galaxy are eager to reap whatever benefits they can, at whatever cost.

In every game, the Herakon Cluster is constructed out of twelve double-sided system tiles. At the beginning of the game, players construct the board by playing system tiles and placing their starting units and objective tokens, resulting in hundreds of possible boards for any given game. In Forbidden Stars, you must start planning your strategy even before the first orders are placed as you create the Herakon Cluster and determine the starting deployment of your armies.

These two hostile systems are separated this round by an impassable Warp Storm.

Once your armies begin to move from planet to planet, the hyperactive Warp Storms of this sector can easily aid your conquest or stand as a massive obstacle. Warp Storms rest on the edges between two system tiles, cutting off all travel between those two systems until the end of the round, when each player moves a Warp Storm to a new location. By moving Warp Storms strategically, you can protect your flanks from attack or close off your opponent’s chosen avenue of attack. By strategically manipulating Warp Storms, you can bring your campaign much greater success than would otherwise be possible.

Enter the Herakon Cluster

The riches of the Herakon Cluster are yours for the taking, but other armies are already marching to seize their own planets. Take command of your faction’s greatest warriors, and lead your armies to glory and victory in Forbidden Stars!

Warhammer 40.000: Forbidden Stars befindet sich derzeit noch in der Entwicklung und soll 99,95 USD kosten.

Der deutschen Vertrieb der Fantasy Flight Produkte liegt bei Heidelberger.

Link: Fantasy Flight Games