Space Hulk: 31 March 2010
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Company-Conventions-Stores-Ideas: About the Company:
Game Night at ADB Inc.:
Space Hulk: 31 March 2010
31 March, 2010: We decided to have game night because Joel (the new graphics guy) saw the SPACE HULK game and wanted to play it. We're supposed to have game night every week, but it hasn't happened this year. We asked Customer Service Director Mike Sparks to join us.
Steve Petrick and Mike Sparks took the Space Marines.
Joel Shutts and I (Steve Cole) took the Gene Stealers.
Being a game company, we ignored the scenario book and made up our own scenario. Basically, I snapped together every tile I could, leaving only six in the box. The "close" part of the starship maze was connected to the "far" part by two passages. There were three ways into the close part. The mission was to retrieve two "computer cores" which the scouts had noted an hour earlier before they moved deeper into the ship and were never heard from again. Petrick and Mike had 12 Marines, including the Lieutenant-Librarian, two sergeants, the "claw guy", the gatling gunner, the flamethrower, and six basic Marines with storm bolters and power fists. A few Genestealers had moved into the "near area" (wandering around aimlessly) and Petrick quickly killed them, sending half of his troops down the right-side corridor and leaving the other half in the "near area" to guard his left flank and escape route.
The photo below shows the basic layout and the situation as the game developed. The Genestealers of "brood #1" had come in from the back left corner and had the divided into one team trying (in the "far area") to block the route to the computer core and the second team trying to outflank the Marines through the "near area".
Lieutenant-Librarian Petrick is convinced that attacking in SPACE HULK is all but impossible, and that the defense is supreme. Being told to attack down the corridor and seize an objective left him chanting "We are doomed" over and over.
At the point of the battle shown in the photos, Lieutenant-Librarian Petrick had used three turns of psychic storms on the compartment held by Genestealers without much effect, killing only about three (total). He all but refused to advance, and Joel (who was fully running the Genestealers by this point, as I had shown him enough of the rules to get the job done) also refused to attack, confident that he only had to block the way to the computer core. I suggested that Petrick send Sergeant Rock (with the hammer and shield) into the compartment on a suicidal berzerker attack. Sergeant Rock killed six Genestealers before one of them cut him down.
Meanwhile, back in the "near area", Mike Sparks (who had also learned the game very quickly) had taken over the Second Squad and was holding the flank. He had (with some suggestions from Petrick) set up a three-way ambush, with three stormbolter Marines on overwatch guarding the only axis of attack. (The Genestealers could have gone further around to their left, but this would have taken a while and the Marines had also blocked that route with stormbolters and overwatch fire.) Joel had tried sending a couple of Genestealers into the kill zone with the obvious effect. I told him to build up a pack of his troops, then send one at a time into the kill zone hoping for a jammed gun. It worked, and Sergeant Mike's gun jammed. Joel sent the Genestealer into a side corridor. One Marine missed, and the second jammed. So, the critical corridor was open! The only Marine wih a working gun was blocked by a Genestealer who cleverly stopped moving and triggering overwatch fire. Joel sent the thundering herd into the gap, and brought Brood #2 up the Garbage Chutes (Petrick did not know that was possible). The attack collapsed the left flank, cutting off the Marines!
From that point, the battle ebbed and flowed.
The rest of Horde #1 launched an attack into Petrick's forward Squad and almost wiped it out; one Marine got out, beating his armoed feet down the corridor where the Genestealers had been momemts ago. (Joel had pulled out Horde #2 and sent them to round up and slaughter Mike's last three Marines, killing one of them quickly and leaving only the gunless claw-man and the gunless flamethrower operator.
Petrick had never used the flamethrower but Mike read the rules and started using it on clusters of Genestealers. (Joel had not read the flamethrower rules and did not know that Horde #2 was a huge target.) Joel sent the Brood Lord after the flamethrower, which killed the Brood Lord. This was where the game collapsed. At that point, there were three Marines and six Genestealers. One Genestealer went hand-to-hand with flamethrower man, who was down to his last shot. Petrick said "flame him" but Mike refused, winning a desperate claw-vs-powerfist battle and then using the last flamethrower shot to kill three Genestealers. The last two Genestealers were shot by Petrick's last man.
While Petrick had spent the entire game saying "We cannot win!" Mike said "Do the math, dude, we if we quit trying to get to the computer and just kill these guys, sooner or later we have killed the last of the two broods and we can pick up the computer cores in a walk." And that's what happened.
The next morning, Mike and Petrick checked the rulebook and noticed that the Brood Lord was immune to flame weapons, and at dinner that night told Joel that, in fact, he had won since the Brood Lord had not died.
Sergeant Rock lays waste to Brood #1.
With two of their guns jammed, Sergeant Mike's three-Marine roadblock collapses.
Sergeant Mike's Last stand
