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Warhammer 40,000: Regicide - Does it kill the king?

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Warhammer 40,000: Regicide - Does it kill the king?

Warhammer 40,000: Regicide isn't just chess with Space Marines and Orks. Well, it is if you want it to be,as you can ignore all the fancy schmancy shooty bang it adds and play a straight-up version of the boardgame.

But if you'd rather get doused in the blood of the Emperor's enemies, use your stomping pawns to throw grenades, and launch your knights into the sky on roaring jetpacks, then you're in luck.

This mode of the game is still based loosely on chess, and while mashing together violent futuristic strategy with one of the oldest games known to man might seem a bit weird, it actually works surprisingly well.

Chess plus space violence

There are a variety of different ways to play the game. In campaign mode you're given a specific force of marines and some goals to complete. You might have to kill a certain enemy, or get one of your pieces to a specific square on the board.

You get two phases - movement and initiative. You can only move one piece each turn, but the twist is you have to. Different characters represent different chess pieces, and they move accordingly.

Taking pieces is a legitimate move, and you're treated to a violent animation with lots of spurting gore and explosions if you head down that route.

Once you've moved, you get some initiative to spend. You're given three every turn, but they stack if you don't use them, meaning you can have up to five at once.

These points can be spent on firing your weapons, getting into melee fights, throwing grenades, or using special skills like shields and psychic attacks that can give you the edge in battle.

The game shows you the chance your attacks have to hit, and you can use cover and going to ground to try and negate the damage you'll receive.

It makes for an interesting double-layered game. It's all about positioning, making sure you're not leaving your troops vulnerable to attacks in the initiative phase, but also ensuring they're not going to suffer an ignominious chess-based death at the hands of that pawn you didn't take into consideration.

There's plenty to do elsewhere. There's pass-and-play and asynchronous online multiplayer, a skirmish mode that lets you tweak a bunch of settings, and an armoury that lets you play around with the equipment of your marines.

Stabby shooty checkmatey

And it all comes together really well. This is a dense game, for sure, and it's pretty challenging until you start getting to grips with all of its ins-and-outs. But once you do you'll find a rich and engaging experience.

It blends together its two influences wonderfully, leaving you with a variation of chess that's dripping with the gloriously faux-gothic future-facist nonsense of 40k.

If you like either of those things, then this will be a treat.

Warhammer 40,000: Regicide - Does it kill the king?

A brilliant mashing together of chess and giant space warriors
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.