Doom is one hell of a franchise. To call it venerable would be an understatement; this game has followed me from the family PC in the 90s all the way up to the bleeding-edge of graphics on new hardware in 2025. Now, it’s following me into the real world with Modiphius’ new Doom: Arena board game.
What Is Doom: Arena Board Game?
If you’re not already familiar with Modiphius, then where have you been? These guys have been behind some of the greatest miniature games of the past few years, with some of their highlights being the fantastic Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. They also have quite a pedigree in general on the tabletop scene, with a decent number of board and card games under their belts as well. This time around, they’ve licensed one of the greatest FPS titles of all time and turned it into two editions of a solid action board game.
There are two editions of the game available, one based on the recent Doom: The Dark Ages and another with a more classic style. We were lucky enough to have been given access to an early prototype version of the DOS-era-flavoured game and took some time to rip-and-tear through the content and see if it holds up to Modiphius’ reputation. The short answer is: yes.
Rip, Tear…Generally Have a Good Time
The general gist of the gameplay is action-heavy, round-based combat between two players. One player controls the hordes of Hell, the other controls the Doom Slayer, and you each try to cause as much actual bodily harm to the other side as possible. As you do this, you gain blood and arsenal tokens that act as points and upgrades, respectively. The game takes place over 2 or 3 rounds, with each round divided into 6 turns.
On each turn, you activate your models according to the rules for your faction. With the Doom Slayer side, you activate your character and can take up to two actions, usually moving and using weapons, but you also have access to some special abilities as things progress. On the demon side, you get 3 activation tokens and can use them to activate your various units, again with each model taking two actions per activation. It’s a pretty simple system, and before long, you’ll probably be taking quick turns like a pro.
Exponential Complexity
The Doom: Arena board game might sound overly simplistic, and that’s probably because the game appears to have been designed with ease of access in mind. You can jump in and start playing pretty much immediately, especially if you’re already familiar with the way that tabletop games tend to work. The dice are colour-coded, and the use of symbols in place of words on certain cards and other pieces makes it pretty simple to just get stuck in.
That isn’t to say that there’s no strategy or complexity here. After your first round, both players have access to upgrades, and that means moving away from the more basic stuff you start out with. If you both end up winning a round and have to do 3 instead of 2, it can get even deeper, and the fact that you’re able to adjust to your opponent’s play style means that it’s harder for a game to be completely one-sided.
Whoa, Nice Graphics!
It’s worth pointing out before I dig into the visuals and components too much that we don’t have access to the final version of this game. We were missing a few dice, a couple of the different map options, and the blood trackers you use to keep score, but we had access to all of the important bits, like the miniatures and the rules. Obviously, I can only speak about the 1993 edition of the game because that’s what we have, but it looks pretty amazing. Everything is based around the graphical style of the original game, even down to the images of the actual units you’ll be using.
They’ve taken real photos of the miniatures and digitised them in the same way that the original Doom took photos of sculptures of the monsters and turned them into digital sprites for the game. It’s a nice touch, though the results were visually a bit confusing for a moment. The UI design works really well across the pages, and everything from the board to the cards and tokens was nicely tied together.
What Do You Reckon?
The Doom: Arena board game is currently on Kickstarter, so if you want to grab yourself a copy, now is the time to do it. It’s an easy recommendation from us, with the action-heavy gameplay, the simple-to-learn, hard-to-master gameplay and the killer visual style. The replayability of the game lies in the multiple maps included in the final product and the huge, sprawling complexity of strategy that unfolds as the game progresses into the later rounds.
The copy of the game used in this preview was a prototype supplied by the publisher.
