A Terminator piece has few action points and a Genestealer piece has many action points. The pieces are moved by the players through a system of 'action points', where each piece has a certain amount specified for it. The Terminator pieces move slowly and the Genestealer pieces move quickly.ДЇourth, in that in regard to combat: the Terminator pieces excel in ranged combat, but they are weak in close combat and the Genestealer pieces excel in close combat, but they cannot perform ranged combat at all. Third, in that the pieces of the two players move differently. The Terminator player may have the objective of destroying a specified area of the board or a specified Genestealer piece or some other objective ДЄnd the Genestealer player may have the objective of destroying a specified Terminator piece or all of the Terminator pieces or some other objective. Second, in that the two players may have different objectives to fullfill during a 'mission' (the in-game term for a particular scenario of the game). One player controls the Space Marine Terminators, and the other player controls the Tyranid Genestealers.ДЇirst, in that the two players have different forces to begin with. The game is set on a modular board made up of various board sections which represent corridors and rooms and which can be freely arranged and locked together like a jigsaw puzzle to represent the interior of a space hulk.

Space hulks may house more than just Genestealers other threats aboard can include human followers of the dark gods of Chaos, nightmarish Warp Daemons, and Orks who use space hulks as their 'standard' method of interstellar travel. Due to the shifting, immaterial nature of the Warp, an otherworldly realm through which space ships may travel between the stars far quicker than they would be able to through real space, some space hulks are jumbled and twisted agglomerations of multiple vessels lost to the Warp throughout centuries or millennia.

In Warhammer 40,000, the term 'space hulk' is used to refer to any massive derelict space ship.

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