Doom the Board Game: Arena Mode

I purchased Doom: The Board Game way back in 2017 and, as per my initial review, absolutely loved this game. It felt like an old-school shoot-em-up arcade game with quick skirmish style missions and asymmetric gameplay with one player being the Invader and the other (up to 4) players taking on the roles of the UAC marines, aptly designed as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

My only issue with the game was that it wasn't co-op which was the flavor of our gaming group back then. Then, a few months later managed to find a co-op variant called Horde Mode on BGG. I tried it out, played a few games, reviewed it and well, that was that. The game kind of sat on the back of my shelf for the latter part of 2 years.

But I still seriously loved this game. Fast forward a few years to 2020 and suddenly we're all in a pandemic which meant goodbye face-to-face gaming-groups and hello solo-play (or well, online play). I've done a LOT of solo board gaming lately from the usual D&D adventure games stuff to LCGs to some favorites (Hellboy, Legendary Encounters etc). Heck, I even played a few rounds of Doom solo using the Horde mode variant.

But I wanted to be able to play a sort of arena-style mode of the game with ALL the marines and ALL the tiles and ALL the guns and firepower and of course, ALL the baddies including (and especially so), the really cool Cyberdemon. I wanted it to be an immersive full on slugfest but keeping with that arcade-like skirmish feel that seemed to blast synth music into my eardrums with each dice roll. Also, most importantly, I wanted it to be easy to pick up and play. 

After some tweaking with the rules and all the variants I came across online, I think I nailed it. All you need is a copy of the game and the below ruleset.

Special note: The ruleset below does borrow some ideas off Mark Thomas' Horde Mode variant.

Lemme know in the comments section how it played for you!