Brimstone and Lead: Arena

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 together forging 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 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 skirmish “heartbreaker.” It’s my “fixed” version 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 skirmish game with overpowered arsenals of rocket launchers, miniguns, and magic spells. It’s Gothic architecture and interdimensional portals. It’s demons and shotguns. It’s a heavy metal album cover.

Currently the game is in beta playtests. These rules are feature complete for the basic game, but there is more coming. Including:

• Campaign system for tracking conflicts over longer periods
• More robust classes with special abilities and progression
• Additional cleanup, clarification, and examples
• Index and glossary
• More art

Why play this game?

Brimstone and Lead: Arena is designed to be fast, brutal, and tactical.

Lean and Fast Playing: Concepts like reactions, suppression, and overwatch are all built into the action economy. There is no measurement. Movement, LOS, and weapon ranges are built into the same uniform system. 

Psychological Warfare: At the heart of Brimstone and Lead: Arena is the "Refusal" mechanic. The active player gets more actions, but the reactive may stop a single model from activating. This forces the active player to use lesser actions in an attempt to bait their opponent into wasting their refusal.  

Tactical and Bloody: Positioning is key. Brimstone and Lead: Arena is a game of controlling fire lanes and ensuring overlapping fields of fire. The clever use of models' special abilities is crucial to accomplishing your goals. Models are fragile, but they respawn, so the game is exciting from start to finish.