Rip Them to Shreds

The Union Aerospace Corporation Martian Facility has been compromised. A malicious plot, masquerading as a grave mistake, has opened the portals between Hell and the mortal world, and you could not be more pleased. With a taste for blood, this new array of victims has you drooling, and your appetite for power has been stirred by the chance to corrupt bodies and minds beyond your wildest dreams. 

Unleash the savagery within as the invader player in DOOM®: The Board Game. Acting as a puppet-master from Hell, you will command hordes of demons to eliminate the UAC’s protective forces and take one step closer to interdimensional domination. Send your demon underlings careening through portal after portal, Hell’s power at their backs as they subdue each mortal marine. Read on to learn more about the demonic forces at your disposal as you strive to cross over and take control of the living world.

Vicious Fiends

Your horde of demons is comprised of a variety of ferocious creatures. Some are small, but numerous, while others tower menacingly over the mortal forces, taking blow after blow without effect. While many of the marine abilities are determined by the size of their squad, their individually assigned class, and the weapons in their arsenal, demons have much more information directly on their cards. This information can indicate inherent strengths as well as abilities that identify a demon’s unique interactions with event cards.

The values and symbols along the right side of the demon card are present on each demon, guiding most actions of your dedicated servants. All of the demons are quite agile, with speed values of four or five, but the demons’ range and power of the attack dice are much more varied. The Revenant shown here can move quickly, but may instead choose to attack from a far, using two red dice and one more powerful black die.

The remaining card values will influence how effective your demons are at defending themselves, and how careful you may have to be should they take damage. Health is straightforward—if a demon takes damage equal to their health, you must remove them from the game board. However, unique to DOOM is a demon’s stagger value, which represents the amount of damage they must take before a marine can barrel into their space and execute a brutal and instantaneous Glory Kill. 

Hellish Power

Opposite the many attack and defense values on the demon card are special abilities which may allow for extra attacks, damage adjustments, and unique actions. Some of the special abilities are not always available, however, but can be triggered by spending Argent Power. Argent Power tokens are collected through a few different means, such as discarding or using event cards or summoning certain demons—all of which we will dig into shortly. 

Once you have Argent Power tokens, though you will distribute them between your demons, allowing you to spend them later on and take advantage of those special abilities. While the abilities cannot be stacked and used for the same action, they may be used more than once per turn, so accumulating Argent Power can be exceptionally powerful. After all, it’s the resource the UAC was so determined to extract from Hell in the first place.

Demonic Resilience

If your demons weren’t already intimidating enough, the actions and abilities in your event deck are sure to send a chill through each of your opponents. These cards function very similarly to the marine’s action deck, providing defense for your demons when they become the target of an attack and offering your demons more options when attacking or defending. During the status phase of each round, you will draw event cards until you have six in your hand, and with so many possibilities and combinations, you’ll always keep the marines on their toes. 

Summon Your Worst

When you set up each mission, you will be presented with a game map covered in pick-up weapons, health packs, and objective tokens for the marines. Scattered amongst these various elements are the portals which will allow you to summon demons of increasing strength and number. Each mission will be accompanied by an invasion card, presenting six different invasion groups, each corresponding with one of the three different portal colors. When a portal is activated, you can select one of the two groups of demons associated with each portal to summon. 

Once you activate a portal in a stack, as shown above, the next one becomes available. With the Hellfire Blast invasion card, you could overwhelm the marines with a flood of Imps from the blue portal, send in a Mancubus and a Cacodemon from the yellow during the next turn, and finally, summon two hulking Barons of Hell from the red. When you call demons from the first blue group or either yellow group, you will also gain Argent Power which you can use enhance the power of any of your active demon groups. 

In the previous example, the demon groups on the Hellfire Blast infestation card are summoned using the rules of the Horde threat card, which allows you to summon from all faceup tokens. Portals function differently in some other missions, though, instead calling for the Assault or Infestation threat cards. When using the Assault threat, for example, you will accumulate threat tokens which you can use to summon from portals of your choice, and with Infestation, the mission map starts teeming with demons and then allows you to summon more when doors to new areas are opened. The varied combinations of infestation card and threat card create vastly different invader experiences with each and every mission.

Yours For The Taking

Now is the time—it’s your chance to turn the tables on the gripping fight, seizing control of the forces you’ve long held at bay. Use your loyal underlings to extinguish the dwindling marine team once and for all to take control of the mortal world. You are the invader from Hell, and you are here for a fight.  

Prepare for the portals to Hell to open by the end of the year, when DOOM :The Board Game is expected to hit store shelves.