Silent Death is a game of starship combat. It was originally published in 1990 by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) as Silent Death: Metal Express, the latter moniker to denote its usage of metal spaces ships in an era that predominantly used cardboard markers in games. The game received a rules revamp in 1995 and was rebranded Silent Death: The Next Millennium.
The game was originally a derivative of ICE’s SpaceMaster Star Strike battle system aimed at small fast skirmishes using an innovative Combined Attack Dice mechanism already piloted in ICE’s Blade Storm Fantasy Skirmish game. ICE no longer exists and the rights to Silent Death now belong to silent-death.mx. They hold all legal rights to the source material and run a going concern shop where books and miniatures may be be purchased.
The silent-death.mx site provides a detailed history of the game. Further to this yours truly wrote two articles for Black Gate Magazine to remind people that this awesome game still exists. The articles were inspired by the cover of Megan E. O’Keefe’s book Chaos Vector. The spaceship by the artist Sparth (Nicholas Bouvier) was similar enough to the Silent Death Talon ship that John O’Neal and I were inspired to collaborate on a write up. The articles can be found here and here.