Collection 421: Space Hulk, by Games Workshop

A new installment of Collection 421 is here. My name is Juanma La Volpe, and I'll be your guide through this world of collectibles, fetishes, and objects of power. Few games are as influential —or have shaped science fiction across so many media— like Games Workshop's Warhammer-adjacent board game Space Hulk.

In this entry, we'll take a close look at the 2nd Edition starter box, the game and its components, and then trace Space Hulk's influence across the games and works that followed.

Space Hulk: Dungeons and Aliens

In 1986, James Cameron reshaped the Alien saga —stepping a bit away from pure horror and turning it into military action with Aliens. That sequel introduced the universe's Space Marines, colliding a certain kind of military "ethics" with corporate obedience. The film puts a small squad inside a futuristic structure that's full —full— of xenomorphs.

Games Workshop had already been working on board games that aimed to feel like classic dungeons —HeroQuest being the big reference point— and in 1989 it released the first true "space-dungeon" board game with the first edition of Space Hulk, clearly built on that same spark.

The game's core concept comes straight from the Aliens imagination: a squad of Space Marines must carry out missions aboard derelict ships drifting in space, infested with the xenos known as Genestealers. But you're not piloting just any Marine. You're commanding a squad of elite veteran Terminators.

Designed for two players, Space Hulk runs on an asymmetrical system where the Marines are always under pressure, because the "monster" player's resources are consistently greater. One of the game's best qualities is its lethality: killing and dying comes easy, which makes positioning and action choices absolutely crucial if you don't want to get knocked out fast. That's where the tension turns into story —because the Marines have to complete the mission no matter what, whether you finish with the whole squad alive or only one warrior left standing.

These ideas opened doors and shaped plenty of imaginaries, but the biggest shockwave landed in video games. Games Workshop's Warhammer universe had already served as inspiration for Blizzard titles like Warcraft and StarCraft, but Space Hulk didn't just push forward a new kind of adaptation: alongside the arrival of X-COM, it helped define a style of turn-based strategy with resource management that simply didn't exist in the same way before.

The Box, Its Components, and the Game

The edition we're looking at here is the 2nd Edition (1996) —a revised version of the original, with rules and components adjusted to make sessions much faster than its predecessor. It's also extremely hard to find in Argentina, because it was never officially imported. The copies you do see are usually ones someone brought in back then, either to sell or to keep.

Another key issue when collecting pieces like this is completeness. These boxes tend to include a lot: tokens, miniatures, manuals —and that makes it very easy to run into a copy that's missing something. With collectibles like this, a single missing piece can significantly drop the price.

And then there's the box condition itself. Because of its size, it's easy for it to get battered: dents, scuffs, corner damage —on top of the usual wear of time and humidity. As of January 2026, a sealed copy of Space Hulk on eBay tends to go for $400–$600 USD, while an opened but complete copy in good condition usually lands around $200–$350 USD.

The contents are genuinely impressive. You get two manuals: one devoted entirely to rules —arguably one of Games Workshop's clearest rulebooks (a real contrast with the disasters of recent years)— and another with 12 missions in a campaign that gives the game a lot, a lot, to offer. The cardboard components are high quality too, both the gameplay tokens and the tiles that build the board. There are more than 200 pieces in total, which even lets you invent your own scenarios if you feel like it, using those same board tiles.

As for miniatures, you get 10 Terminator Marines —including two Captains with swords and two flamethrower units that show up across multiple missions. The sculpting detail holds up remarkably well for its era, and the models include waist rotation, which matters because the game cares about exactly how a character is facing. You also get 20 Genestealers, all from a single mold, but still high-quality —and cast in an aggressive violet-blue.

Yes, these boxes are rare and expensive. But there are newer, more accessible versions out there, and you can also build your own Space Hulk experience with print-and-play files and 3D-printed minis. Official or DIY, physical or digital: Space Hulk is a tense experience that's absolutely worth playing. Among Games Workshop's designs, if it's not the best, it's comfortably the second-best in terms of rules, fun, and narrative.

I hope you enjoyed this entry on one of the strongest games in the Warhammer orbit. Once again: thanks for reading, and I encourage you to keep exploring. Through these objects, we get a clearer sense of where we're standing. Influence is a contagious kind of magic —and just as Aliens gave birth to Space Hulk, and Space Hulk later helped give rise to X-COM, it can happen that something moves you to create. And that, honestly, is one of the best things we get in this life.