Lost Patrol: Death in the Jungle—A Tabletop Game Unboxing & Review

Games Workshop has produced a lot of games connected to their various products over the years, some of which are fondly remembered as great games in their own right (Blood Bowl, Space Hulk) while others are merely remembered as a less-expensive way to add models to an existing army akin to the "Start Collecting" boxes.

I am assembling a re-release of an old game called "Lost Patrol," but unfortunately it appears that this second version is also out of print now too. It is still available at my local game store and various online retailers at the time of this post.

The game is a decent value when it comes to the included miniatures, since the five scouts are $25 MSRP, and there are a dozen genestealers when a box of eight sells for $30, so the included plastic crack would run around $70. If you just want the minis, then, this is a slight discount. But what about the game itself? Is this worth a look even if you don't play either army?

Inside the box is the rule book for Lost Patrol, assembly instructions for the included miniatures, several sheets of cardboard with hexagonal tiles to punch out for the game, and the plastic frames containing the parts for the miniatures. Like in the Kill Team game, these are color-coded instead of the usual grey, so it is easy to just assemble and play without painting. There is also a bag of bases and a bag of 3 small standard dice. I got an extra bag of bases for some reason. No complaints there!

The Space Marine Scouts weren't the easiest models to assemble. The torsos fit on the legs well enough, but the arms are not well keyed to the shoulders and it is difficult to align the left and right arms when they are holding a shotgun or bolter. A bolt pistol and knife are easy enough to glue in place for the sergeant though.

The Tyranid Genestealers were easier to assemble. Each body had its corresponding leg next to it on the frame. Then a left and right hand were chosen for the lower shoulder joints, a pair of claws were chosen for the upper shoulders, and heads were added on the necks. Ball-and-socket joints at the shoulders made fitting the arms easy and allows more dynamic poses.

I used my Kill Team rules and some research online to choose which clawed arms and heads to use, because while this doesn't matter in Lost Patrol, it does in Kill Team or full games of Warhammer 40,000 where they represent different wargear options with special rules.

As always, it is a good idea to prep parts before assembly. I clipped everything from sprues with flush cutters, shaved leftover nubs and bad mold lines with a hobby knife, and then scraped thin mold lines with the dull side or used jeweler's files for final cleanup. I made a few mistakes on the Marines by mixing up which left arms went with which right hand weapons because they aren't labeled directly on the piece like they were in the Tau Fire Warriors kit. But I am happy with the end result.

I now need to find a victim to play against me. The game is designed to be very difficult for the scouts. Not only are they being hunted by scary aliens, but the jungle shifts as they explore. Their job is to find a crashed drop pod in order to retrieve its intel and call for evac.

The game works by placing the clearing tile in the middle of the game table. The other tiles are stacked to the side, and the drop pod objective tile is placed at the bottom. The Genestealer player then arranges tiles around the clearing, and then if there are any straight paths, new tiles are added until there is no clear line of sight.

The scouts need to burn through the stack of tiles by exploring the jungle. However, what they lose sight of behind them disappears again. Backtracking changes the paths as much as going forward. Monsters can attack from unseen ends of these trails, and it is even possible that the game can form an inescapable loop ending the game for the scouts as the jungle itself consumes them.

All told, this looks like a lot of fun as an asymmetric 1v1 game in its own right, so if you can find it, I recommend it. And if you play Kill Team, you effectively get a bonus Tyranid kill team or an expansion to the starter set Genestealer Cult squad in the bargain, too!

Since I have a friend who plays Tyranids in Warhammer 40,000, I will give him the bonus Rippers that come with every frame of Genestealer parts.