22 February, 2026
Oh hey, it’s me! Chandler and Ben got their hooks into me with sweet nothings like “The Devs are using math to balance things” and “hey you know how you love teleporting things and blocking off the table with terrain? There’s a faction that does BOTH of those” and now I have played a game of Starcraft the Miniatures Game and I have opinions (Spoilers: the game is very good).
I’m going to explain a couple of important concepts before I get into the game, both because if – like me – you have had next to no interaction with this game system it will help you understand what is happening and also because it will help me memorize the rules (which I’m interested in doing as fast as possible).
I have made these collapsible so that if you already know how the game works you can skip past them easily.
First, lists are built with two separate resource mechanics, and my friend/opponent built mine for me so that I would not have to figure it out. The first mechanic is called Vespene Gas, and it lets you select “buildings” that are represented by tactics cards. These do many things, including:
- giving you the framework by which your army is built by unlocking the types of units you are allowed to bring.
- Providing you with cool once per turn or once per game effects which you can use by “exhausting” them (tapping or flipping them over).
- Giving you the resources your units use to activate their special abilities by exhausting them to provide that resource.
These are the ones I had access to this game.
As far as lists go, Ben and I were running ones that he built, so if they’re bad I can accept no blame and if they’re brilliant I will take all the credit.
I understand there is a fair amount of Starcraft lore goodness here, but as someone who has only barely interacted with the IP, I remain unaware of it and thus you are spared a multi-paragraph pontification about the finer points of the lists.
My Zealots all had an enhancement for a bonus move, as well as extra attacks when they make contact with a charge. The adepts almost all have fancy ranged weapons upgrades, and I’m not sure if this is an upgrade or not but the Sentries both can make force fields (more on this later).
I’m not sure what upgrades Ben had other than “my zergling units are all buffed to the gills” so I’m not going to even comment.
Here are some more rules comments to help new players understand what is going on.
Starcraft is played in 3 phases, similar to how a game of Warhammer is divided into phases. There’s a movement phase, an assault phase, and a fighting phase.
The players alternate activating units on each of these phases, and unlike many wargames, nothing starts on the table so the first “movement” of the movement phase is measured from the edge of the board.
Units move from a main troop and then place all the rest of the troops in cohesion – typically three inches, but some of them have more range here – with some specific rules that stop you from abusing placements.
The assault phase lets units shoot or charge but not both, which is interesting, and is also alternating activations. Models can shoot into their own combats, but their targets then get a “feel no pain” effect where they can use armor to stop the damage AND use this extra effect to stop more damage.
Charges are Movement + d6 inches and must end the charging leader model within an inch of the target unit or the charge fails.
Models can also run, which is just another movement like the movement phase, and then their turn is over.
Speaking of fighting, this sequence will feel familiar to most Warhammer players where you roll a d6 for each attack and there are a series of steps. Unlike warhammer, there is no “wound” phase, you roll a hit roll, your opponent rolls an armor roll, and then they maybe get to evade if they’ve got a reason to before taking damage.
There is also a special “surge” ability where if your troops are fighting or shooting their preferred target, you get to roll a dice and some amount of the wounds just go through with no option for an armor save.
In the fight phase, things once again alternate from player to player until everything that can fight fights. They’ve put a good amount of work making it really hard to disengage yourself without all your models dying or specifically running away in the movement phase.
Last – very important – thing. The first player in the movement phase is the player who has the least points. The first player in the assault phase is the first person to pass in the movement phase, and the first player in the fight phase is the first person to pass in the assault phase, so you can manipulate priority by giving up opportunities to shoot or move.
Finally, the mission is pretty simple here – I score points by controlling red objectives or by doing actions on them, Ben scores the blue ones. We both get points by killing each-others’ stuff.
Ben dropped me into the deep end, so we were playing a full size, 2000 point game.
Ben won the roll off, so he got priority turn 1.
Movement Phase:
He started things off by spending a tactics card to make an Omega Worm (pink) model in the center. He also does a lot of other nonsense to make a bunch of creep tokens after he puts his first Queen (dark blue) on the table.
It’s worth noting here – each unit has a “supply” cost, and you are only allowed to have a certain amount of supply on the table at a time. 6 on turn 1, and then 2 more per turn after that. The Queen has a supply cost of one for reference.
I responded by using my once per game to summon a Pylon (pink), and then used my Warp Gate card to bring a unit of Adepts (dark blue) onto the board in the bottom right where they normally could not go – you can normally only walk on from your marked table edges, but Warp Gate breaks that. They spent a CP from one of my other cards to place their Shade token towards the center. If I could go back and re-do this turn I would think pretty hard about deploying them more conservatively and putting the shade on the objective like I did with the other unit later.
Next up, in quick succession, Ben brings in another Queen (teal) – faster this time since he picked a thing where his models are faster in the creep – and Kerrigan (red), while I brought in my Praetor Guardians (teal) and spent a CP to let them move forward again and my second unit of Adepts (red), who also spent a CP to get another Shade down on an objective.
Ben brought some Hydralisks to play (green) and I brought in my Sentries (green), before Ben brought in his Kerrigan’s Raptors to threaten my blue Adepts.
Artanis has a very cool ability where he can pop down on the table touching a unit you control, and send them back to reserves instead, so he dropped to control that bottom right objective with his Supply value of effectively 2, and to make the Zerg charge much harder.
Assault Phase:
Ben had passed first, so he got to try and spend a bunch of resources on his Raptors to charge Artanis. This (fortunately for me) failed. I popped some of my own resources to get to roll two dice for my charge distance (I needed a 5 on 1d6) to get into the Omega Worm with my Praetor Guard.
They made that charge, and got to use their ability to do impact damage on the charge – this is very common – to put a bunch of damage into the Worm.
Ben ran his models around a bunch (Queens forward, Hydralisks forward, Kerrigan forward) and I probably should have ran my Sentries forward as well but I didn’t do that because I was too hyped about my charge succeeding and got lost in the moment.
Fight Phase and End of Turn:
As the first passer, my Praetors got to smack first, and they completely obliterated the Omega Worm because they get +1 damage against Size 3 or bigger models – which it was!
I also used the Adepts ability to teleport next to a Shade to bounce them forward onto the middle red objective, scoring me four points on the mission at the end of round 1 for controlling the two red objectives.
Round 2:
Movement Phase:
I was up 4 – 0 so Ben got to have first turn here.
He first brought a HUGE unit of Raptors on the table (pink) from reserves, and I responded by bringing my Stalker on the board and teleporting it forward (pink).
Ben ran his Queen forward (blue) and I chased after it with my Praetor Guard (also blue).
He then moved a bunch of other stuff forward and right.
Assault Phase:
I had passed first here, which meant I got to charge my Praetor Guard into his Queen (blue). I think in hindsight that this was a mistake, because I didn’t actually understand how his list worked, and there was a decent chance they could have killed most/all of his Raptor unit instead.
He got his Kerrigan’s Raptors into Artanis – killing his shields with impact damage – and I cannot for the life of me recall how Kerrigan got from where she was to in combat with Artanis, but she did.
My Adepts ran away from the Raptors, and the Raptors ran to follow them and take my objective away.
The rest of Ben’s models ran forward and I passed at some moment in there before he did.
Fight Phase:
Artanis fought first and killed 3 special Raptors. The Queen anemically slapped at the Praetor Guard and they exploded her in response because she is size 3 so they got bonus damage against her.
Kerrigan knocked Artanis down to a single wound, which meant I kept that objective as his effective supply 2 beats the supply 1 from the Raptors)
At the end of the turn, Ben scored 2 for his middle blue objective and I scored two for the bottom right objective. I also scored a couple of points for killing 2 supply worth of units here.
Round 3:
Movement Phase:
Ben brought in some Hydralisks from the top edge, so I ran my Praetor Guard away from them towards his Queen, which had come to the center.
I remembered my rules, and warped in some Zealots on the center area around the Pylon.
My Sentries moved up and made some blocking Force Fields so that if the Zerg top left wanted to get to my Stalker, they wouldn’t be able to all get into combat with it.
Kerrigan and the Raptors engaging Artanis both held their action.
Assault Phase:
I once again got priority here, and first action charged my Praetor Guard into the remaining Queen. I, once again, think this was likely a mistake as I probably should have fired into the Raptors with the Adepts before they got charged, but alas.
Hydralisks bottom (green) killed a Zealot with guns next, so they charged him for their impertinence, and the top Hydralisks knocked some damage off the Stalker and took some damage back from its gun.
Kerrigan shot Artanis to death, and I was sad.
Fight Phase and End of Turn:
My Zealots and Praetor Guard obliterated their targets, and my Adepts got wrecked.
Ben had put a special token thing down in the movement phase, so he got to warp some bugs on his top objective, scoring 2 to my nothing on the mission, but I had killed more Supply value of models, so I was still up on points going into turn 3.
Round 3:
Movement Phase:
Kerrigan moved up to threaten my Zealots first, and spent a CP to just deny my Praetor Guard the ability to move at all.
Denied that option, I decided to move my Sentries up and make some Force Fields. I think in hindsight, if my goal was to keep my Stalker alive (which it kind of was) I should have just completely bubble wrapped it with Sentries and Force Fields because the Raptors just get to move over terrain.
Hydralisks came forwards and my lone Adept ran away, big Zergling brick #2 came on the table at some point, and I was able to Warp Gate my second unit of Adepts back to basically where they were before outside 10″ of enemy models, but able to teleport onto the objective again with their Shade token that I spent a CP to put down.
Assault Phase:
I got priority here and sent my Praetor Guard into the Hydralisks (you might have seen this in the previous picture, I forgot to take a screen shot until this point) and Ben shot a Zealot to death with Kerrigan, and then teleported into combat with both units so they couldn’t get the charge off.
Big Zerg bricks made charges into both things they wanted to, and my Adepts shot the Kerrigan’s Raptor unit to death.
Fight Phase:
Pretty much everything died that got charged here. The only surviving model – a hero Zealot – and his buddies who’d been alive before the Zerglings got to attack took that unit down to half. Kerrigan killed the last single Zealot, and the Raptors went crazy and killed both Sentries and the Stalker.
I teleported my Adepts to my own objective to score 2 points to Ben scoring 4 here.
Round 5:
This round started at just shy of midnight Ben’s time, so we were playing a little fast and I forgot to take screenshots.
Fortunately, it was pretty simple for a turn. I warped my last units in – Adepts using Warp Gate on the top edge, then Zealots from the Pylon, and dropped some Shade markers.
Kerrigan decided she wanted nothing to do with the incoming Praetor Guard so she ran down to the bottom objective – getting out of combat for free because her supply of 2 was better than the Zealots’ one – and forced them to stay there.
I made all of my auto charges, with the Zealots (teal) connecting with the remaining 16 Raptors and the Praetor Guard (pink) getting into the remaining Zerglings.
Between the impact damage and their actual attacks, I cleared both big bricks of Zerglings. Kerrigan barely killed enough Adepts for Ben to score a point off reducing their supply, and we both scored two points on the mission to finish the game out thanks to my teleporting Adepts getting onto the far red objective.
At the end of the game, Ben and I had both scored 12 on the Mission – mine entirely from scoring, and his from a combination of scoring and doing actions – but I had destroyed FAR more of his stuff than he had of mine, so I got the edge off the destroyed Supply count. We actually thought we were tied until I remembered to teleport my Adepts and we’d tallied destroyed units.
All in all, an intensely close game, and a very good introduction to the system.
Impressions
Buckle up kids, I have opinions and they are almost entirely very positive.
First, this particular system is a wedding of the best parts of a bunch of games I like (Marvel: Crisis Protocol, Warhammer, Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings) and a bunch of little and large innovations that make it even better.
I fell in love with the way it handles alternating activations while still keeping an army feel – something that most alternating activation games struggle with – and turning having less activations into a potential strength via the priority system is incredible.
Surges felt impactful, and you could definitely tell when you were fighting something that the unit was designed to fight vs. not. The variety of interesting placement effects was refreshing, and a game allowing me to summon actual blocking terrain is a high I haven’t felt in a decade.
I have yet to really dive into list building, but being able to purchase cool upgrades for your units is always good, and I imagine that as more units get released this will continue to hold true. Purchasing building/tactic cards that give you in game effects BUT ALSO give you the framework for your lists is absolutely brilliant game design and something that I expect to see other games copying for years to come.
All-in-all, I am completely hooked and I am excited to play more games on TTS, buy in fully to the pre-orders happening in a few weeks, and writing about, talking about, and painting models for this game.
If you’d like to read more games from our team, you can read Ben’s here (Zerg vs. Protoss) and Chandler’s here (Terran v. Protoss).
Keep an eye out for more battle reports here, thoughts about models and list building, maybe even a podcast? Who knows! The future is bright, and my life is for Aiur.
