First Look: The StarCraft Tabletop Miniatures Game

“Make no mistake, war is coming. With all its glory and all its horror.”

Archon Studio, known for adapting popular IPs into board and tabletop games (Masters of the Universe as well as Wolfenstein) have scooped up the license to make a StarCraft tabletop wargame. “Hell, it’s about time.”

The upcoming starter sets for the game were available for demos during Cancon, a gaming event held in Canberra, Australia every January. As this may be the first contact many hobbyists may have with the game, we here at Goonhammer are happy to share our initial thoughts with you.

The StarCraft tabletop game was demonstrated to us by the lovely team at Local Game Stores, who were incredibly patient with our questions and are just about as jazzed for the full release of this game as we are! Big respect to the team.

Please note that we were advised during our discussions that these are not the final rules of the game, so Goonhammer apologises for any inconsistencies between what we are reporting and what the game looks like on release.

Models and Sculpts

StarCraft Tabletop Miniatures Game

Talking about sculpt quality, Archon Studio has everything on lock. All of the models I've seen thus far are nearly perfect representations of their game counterparts. It's everything we have all wanted in a StarCraft wargame. Chef kisses of the highest order.

The scale for the game feels a little bit larger than 40k. A Terran marine has a similar physicality to that of a modern (i.e. Age of Leviathan) Space Marine Terminator. They’re chunky, look incredibly true to the original vision and we think they’ll take paint quite nicely. Marauders, the Heavy Infantry of the Terran faction are absolute chonky bois: Oh lawd, he comin’, even. Zerglings are huge compared to, say, Termagaunts or Hormagaunts. They’ve got a mass that nearly matches a Terran Marine, honestly. In news that will surprise no-one, Zerg are a faction that are going to love contrast paints. The Zerg Queen is positively huge, as well.

This scale is really evocative but it can also make a map feel a little cramped; we played our demos on something like a 3x3 map. Apparently, the proper game (2,000 points, about double what you get in the Starter boxes for each faction) is to be played on a 4x4 table. However, cadence of reinforcements over the course of a game should mean that the table isn’t drowning in models too often.

Terrain

What's your APM?

The terrain is quite lovely; it has a strong ‘Age of Sigmar/Warcry’ feel to it. Lots of thin L-shaped walls done in plastic, some statues of long forgotten Protoss heroes lying half submerged in the ground. The aesthetic is entirely in keeping with the environmental assets you may remember from StarCraft and I’m absolutely here for it. Slam dunk here, Archon Studio.

Assembly and Materials

Zeratul Convention Exclusive on Sprue

I purchased a Convention Exclusive Zeratul and was quite happy to note that the plastics are GW-tier in quality. They’re hard but not brittle, bend just enough to resist minor impacts, clip off the sprue nicely (some other miniature plastics I find to be quite brittle and it feels like a gamble every time you try to clip a fragile component off a sprue/vent), and they hold a lot of detail. The Convention Zeratul also comes with a clear/cloaked version that you can either use instead of the flat grey (or, an excellent suggestion that came up, is mixing the clear and flat grey components to make him look like he's mid-cloaking. Rad.). Though, it only ships with one base, so you're only making one play model out of the kit (I was told that there is an STL out there for people wanting to 3D print another base but I have not investigated this further).

Zeratul facing off against some Zerglings

Translucent/Transparent materials: All three factions appear to have a tonne of clear or coloured plastic parts to the sculpts. Initially, I had very mixed feelings on them at first because, as snooty wargamers, we don’t deal with coloured plastics (please disregard the classic Necron line), we paint our grey plastic to look like muzzle-flashes or glass visors and we damned well like it. Leave the coloured plastics to…cough other games.* On closer inspection though, the coloured plastics are quite nice and don’t seem to be terribly brittle (a pet peeve of mine when it comes to clear and coloured plastics). The Zeratul came with a decent set of instructions that provide colour-coding on assembling different options, which is quite nice.

Gameplay

StarCraft Stat Card

40k players will be right at home here; the rule concepts and practice are all close enough in execution that you'll understand most of what's happening relatively quickly.

List Building

In an inspired departure from the usual wargaming conception of list building, just like the computer game your ‘build’ is more defined by the Structures/Buildings that you select at the start of the game. Yup, you don’t build an army, you build your base. The buildings you choose will both provide you with a selection of units to deploy during the battle (i.e. for Terrans, taking a Barracks will let you spawn squads of Marines while taking a Factory will allow for Armoured units to be deployed) but different buildings have different resource allocations during different rounds of the game. You can play a Rush style, maximising your Supply during the early game but if your opponent survives long enough they might start pumping out some hefty forces to lock in the end game. This balance of building choices defining your army but also influencing the resource pacing for your army is a really neat nod to how the computer game is played.

Phases

Terran Marines laying down suppressing fire.

This is a wargame, so naturally it's a series of rounds broken down into turns and phases. The exact number of rounds hasn't been finalised in the rules yet, however. A round progresses by moving through each phase, generally with alternating activations within each phase.

Reinforcements/Supply: The buildings you selected in list building will provide you with a certain amount of Supply you spend to deploy troops on the table. Depending on your tech-tree/building line up and which round of the game you're up to, you'll get a different amount of supply to spend.

Movement: Standard wargame business; pick a unit and move one model within it a number of inches equal to its movement value. Though, next you simply place the rest of the squad somewhere partially within squad coherency of the first (3" I'm told) as long as they're not in melee with an enemy models. Some of you might be reading this and thinking that this will allow for bunny-hopping and other movement exploits, but it's been factored into the game balance. A model's movement value is generally quite low (Marines are 4"), so sliding a Marine forward ahead of the squad's originally placed model won't get you that far forward.

Running, Shooting and Charging (Oh, my!): This is the phase where units will choose to either Run (your movement stat again), Shoot (we'll get to that) or Charge (D6 + your movement stat, failed charges apparently still move the distance rolled but, as with everything here, the rules may change).

40k veterans will be relatively at home here. You roll a number of dice to hit with a flat target value (3+, 5+, so on), no roll to Wound. Your opponent then takes Armour saves against those hits, with wound allocation working a lot like 40k. However, if you are targeting a unit that has a keyword that matches one on your Attacks 'Surge' type, you will get to roll a Surge dice to generate a few extra wounds that ignore Armour. The Surge value is a flat die roll for your unit, regardless of model count. It's also worth noting that, just like in the computer game, some attacks can only target ground units and some can only target air units.

Do you know what that means?

Mutalisks confirmed, baby! (And other Air units, I guess.)

Running is just running, no wild revelations here. For Charging, you just need one model to make base contact and then you perform a pile-in equivalent, placing your models in base contact with the enemy to maximise your attacks.

Assault: Take turns punching each other. Same as shooting except you get to use that cheeky Evade stat on your unit card, then any failed Evade saves are taken as Armour saves. Melee also has the Surge mechanic, and likely other kooky special rules to contend with. Casualties are taken from the back (or rather non-engaged models), to ensure that you don't lose potential attacks just because you didn't strike first.

Scoring: This is a game about objectives. In order to see who controls/scores an objective, you count the amount of 'Supply' within a certain radius of it. If you check the Marine stat card above, you'll see that in the top right of the card there's a tracker for how much supply a Marine squad is worth. This drops as the unit takes casualties. Seems fair.

Terran Marauder

Looking Forward

Zerg Queen (looking mighty fine)

Release Date: The advice I got when I asked was that they're expecting to release the initial wave of starter boxes in June 2026, logistics permitting, and then follow through with a roadmap of regular releases from there on.

Competition: I’m not entirely sure whether the game will adopt a competitive scene or not. I can’t imagine Archon Studios has failed to notice that tournaments and a healthy meta are the key to a wargame that will be successful in the long run. I hope something evolves for this game to keep people interested. As a computer game, StarCraft has had one of the longest running competitive scenes in gaming history, so surely Archon Studio can borrow a little of that magic to keep this game going?

Lifespan of the game: I never mustered up any interest in the Star Wars tabletop games as I always felt like it was a two, maybe two-and-a-half, faction setting (Imperials, Rebels, and Mercenaries/Scum) and that felt like it was missing a depth in factions that I enjoy in wargames. StarCraft, nominally, has three factions and that might be problematic for the long-term health of the game. However, I note two counter-points: The first, the StarCraft computers games have survived decades with only three factions. The second point is that apparently, your choice of Hero/Leader will influence your factions playstyle/unit selections (strong caveat: all subject to change), just like how the Coop-mode in StarCraft 2 lets you mix up your faction’s playstyles with different leaders.

Limited unit variety within factions: A mild concern is that the StarCraft IP has already shown us a lot of what we can expect as far as units and options are concerned. Once they've exhausted all of the canon StarCraft (and StarCraft 2) units, what happens to the release schedule (and by extension, support) for this game? There's a lot of units I'm looking forwards to seeing on the tabletop, so this might be problem that takes years to manifest.

I would be surprised if we see multiple versions of some characters. Simply put, the developers would be leaving money on the table if they didn't have sculpts (and different rules) for characters such as: O.G. Queen of Blades Kerrigan, Ghost Kerrigan (post- Xel'Naga Bad Medicine), and Primal Kerrigan (AKA Queen of Blades Kerrigan 2: Revenge of the Swarm), and so on.

Final Thoughts

Zerg Roaches

Simply put: This is everything we've all been collectively manifesting for years (if not decades), people. Our wargamer Hivemind has made it happen and it's time to reap the rewards of our fervent prayers and wishes.

En Taro Tassadar.

*Asinine elitist opinions outlined above are the author’s alone, Goonhammer as a collective does not actually have any strong opinion on coloured plastics.

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Tags: Starcraft