Hell conquered your world. The stars fell, oceans burned, and demons ripped a black hole in the heart of your sun. They took everything: the people you loved; your ideals and dreams; nation-states and continents. Now, only shattered remnants drift through the void, jumbled together with other worlds. Everything here is dead but cannot die. Souls are currency and power—a promise of freedom and literal ammunition. Hell forges you into a weapon to consume other worlds.

You awoke in this shadowy realm, rescued or press-ganged, your captor-saviors a lost order of a dead god or a cult of some ragged prophet. Survivors, rebels, and half-mad pariahs, desperate for souls to consume and strengthen their own. Some few tend an ember of hope that they can reclaim what was lost and save the next world from oblivion. They hide in sanctuaries where Hell’s gaze does not linger—shrines to forgotten heroes, crumbling libraries, or the bones of god-beasts. They scavenge magic and technology from devoured worlds. They blend these arts to forge weapons against their oppressors.

You’ve been claimed, drafted, or baptized, your flesh marked with sigils that shield you from Hell’s corruption. They’ve given you a weapon and a purpose—or perhaps merely grafted you to a gun and driven you into a frenzy. You are hollow, a vessel for souls. Driven by vengeance, a desire for freedom, or a dying ember of hope, you must feed this fire, spread it, or let it gutter and die.

What is this?

Brimstone and Lead: Arena is a set of skirmish rules designed to reproduce the adrenaline-pumping and blood-spattered combat of games like DOOM, Quake, and Gears of War. It is a game with an overpowered arsenal of rocket launchers, miniguns, and magic spells. It’s gothic architecture and inter-dimensional portals. It’s demons and shotguns. It’s a heavy metal album cover.

This book has all the rules you need to play. As a miniatures-agnostic game, the intent is for you to use miniatures you have on hand or kitbash something special.

Why play this game?

This game is about speed: There is no measurement. Movement, Line-of-Sight, and weapon ranges are built into the same system. Concepts like reactions, suppression, and overwatch are built into the action economy, minimizing exceptions, gotchas, do-overs, and subroutines.

This game is about positioning: Brimstone and Lead: Arena gun-chess. Every model controls an area with a specific flavor of violence. Your opponent must respect that and respond, and the only valid response is a different violence from a different angle.

This game is about playing your opponent: The beating, bloody, heart is the Counter mechanic. When your opponent acts, you can spend your Counter token to seize control. But once used, the token passes to them, giving them the same power to use against you. This means that you must study the board, and find your best action, and bait the other player into wasting their counter on something trivial. It isn’t enough to have the best tactics, or the best list, or sheer damn luck. Every turn is a test of your ability to bluff, read, and outsmart the competition.

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Latest Changes

Changelog 4/3/25

Added additional credits

Added rule that models respawn at the end of a Round for free
Corrected text flowing out of frame on page 27 and 28.

Added a ceiling to Adrenaline gain on Glory kills to 1 additional Adrenaline for overkill.

Added note about lingering Hazards and Upkeep effects.

Removed reference to models taking a Damage Roll when entering Flame Zone as that is implied by Hazard.
Changed language on Sanctifier to reference that zones are adjacent to each other and not model.

Changed language on Sanctifier to note that Upkeep Effect Damage Roll does not get cover.
Switched order of sentences in Sanctifier to emphasize that it deals damage every upkeep.
Increased Upkeep on Sanctifier to 3. Legacy issue

Changelog 3/27/25

Included guidance for random item drops and teleporters.

Removed "Clunky" from Sniper Rifle. Legacy issue, simply forgot to delete from earlier versions.
Minor clarifications to grenade launcher regarding zones being adjacent and referencing diagram.