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By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, April 03, 2010 - 05:32 pm: Edit

SVC's report on game night serves as one of those examples of the fog and confusion of battle. SVC did the report and recreated (staged) the photos of the action. But as he was not originally planning to write the article, he went by memory.

A few points of clarification.

I did not leave "half" the troops to cover the rear, but a "third" (four men). Three shooters and the flamer. SVC did not remember for sure what I had left as a rear/flank guard, and just winged it.

Of the other eight men, one (when the second horde began collapsing the rear guard) did face to the rear to cover the hallway behind the main body, and at that point sort of became part of the rear guard, but he was still with the main body, just covering the now open approach into the main body's rear.

My observation about the dangers of getting into hand-to-hand and advancing into masses of Genestealers when you could not use ranged weapons was largely borne out when you consider:

1.) the first genestealer horde was divided in attacking the front and rear/flank of column, and suffered very significant losses before the second horde showed up, but despite this was still able (in the forced close combat) to kill seven of the eight Marines in the main body (despite that group including literally all of the "special melee weapon" equipped Marines).

2.) The rear guard, despite having just four men, none equipped with special melee weapons, but able to employ more ranged fire, managed to defeat not only the elements of the first genestealer horde that were originally in the area they were covering, but almost single-handedly stopped the second horde. (Almost only because we found out after the battle that the Broodlord was immune to the flamer.)

My US Army experience leads me to ask "where are the grenade launchers which would make advancing with the Marines more plausible".

Which gets you back to the lessons previously learned: If you cannot mass defensive fires to hit the genestealers repeatedly as they advance, they will get into close combat, and if they do, you are very, very dead. If you advance into melee with the genestealers when they have lots of nearby genestealers to charge in, you are very, very dead. This forces stalemates in that enough firepower (short range) or firepower over a long enough distance can make it very difficult for the Genestealers to advance, but if the genestealers can mass close to the Marines but out of the line of direct fire, say around a corner, they can charge in, as Marine storm bolters jam too often on defensive overwatch for one man to hold a passageway by himself if multiple genestealers are in position to reach him in a single turn. Thus advancing on a one man front running a Marine column into a genestealer column is . . . well Custer had a better chance. So the advantage goes toward the side that can fight defensively. Which is why the Marines won the first couple of games so easily, they could mass firepower on genestealers attacking on a narrow front and pretty much kill them as they came, but the set up this last time optimized the genestealers being able to mass large numbers near the Marines and then rush into their midst. But for some last minute errors on the part of the genestealers (before we discovered the brood lord was immune) they would have won the game.

While Mike was "doing the math", so was I when it came to that last flame shot. I thought one man retreating backwards up a corridor with our available command points had a good chance of stopping four genestealers. A better chance than the flamer guy had of winning a hand to hand fight with a genestealer and then firing his flamer, but I let Mike make that decision and it paid off.

I have, since this last action, actually read many (but not all) of the rules, and I have to say I find them somewhat poorly written to an annoying degree. For example, the brood lord is immune to the flamer . . . but what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that if the brood lord is hit by the flamer he takes no damage (clearly, yes), but can he walk through a burning area? (I would say yes, but the rule is unclear as it only says that the area is blocked). If a non-broodlord is in an area targeted by a flamer, he takes possible damage when the weapon hits, and rolls on possible damage if he moves while in the affected area . . . but what about if he does not move? If he does not move while the area he is in is affected by the flamer, does he roll again to survive or not? And if he rolls again, does he roll once, or six times (once for each of his action points spent in the flaming area if he does not move)? There are other gray areas/areas where argument can occur, such as the brood lord's mighty strike versus the shield. The shield takes away the highest die roll, but the brood lord is allowed to combine his two highest die rolls into one blow. How is this interaction handled?

By Phil Shanton (Mxslade) on Saturday, April 03, 2010 - 08:00 pm: Edit

So when are we going to see the Space Hulk/Intruder cross-over?

By Bill Stec (Billstec2) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 06:25 am: Edit

I looked into getting a copy of Space Hulk, and it's weird; Games Workshop re-releases it in 2009, it sells well, but they don't plan to reprint it again. Huh?

I did a casual search, and I don't see any copies available; I won't do Ebay after many bad experiences there.

I'll keep an eye out at Origins for a copy.

Might be suitable for myself and the boy when he gets older.

Looks to be a pretty decent introductory game.

By Mike Curtis (Nashvillen) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 10:15 am: Edit

Space Hulk is a great game... You give the more experienced person the Marines as the gene stealers tend to regenerate and are more forgiving to mistakes.

Tony Thomas and I have had many fun hours blowing things up.

By Tony L Thomas (Scoutdad) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 12:34 pm: Edit

Unless my wife is the genestealer player.
The genestalers travel along the board as "blips". Small tokens representing a nember of life-forms visible on scanners.
These blip counters are drawn at random by the genenstealer player each turn to represent reinforcements moving in from other parts of the ship.
They are two sided... one side is just a sensor image... the other side is revealed when a marine puts "eyes on" a blip and it's replaced with the appropriate number of minis.
Evey always seemed to draw the "6" 'stealer blips with an amazing regularity.

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Bolo_Mk_Xl) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 02:41 pm: Edit

If you want something along the same lines but simpler to start new/young players on --

"The awful green things from outer space" is a nice one -- if you can round up a copy

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 05:53 pm: Edit

I am a veteran of Awful Green Things From Outer Space.

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Bolo_Mk_Xl) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 09:58 pm: Edit

My copy got all mushy after a Water Heater incident several years ago -- been meaning to grab me another copy so I could slaughter some Green Things ---

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 10:44 pm: Edit

There was talk awhile ago at SJgames of doing a reprint.

No matter I got my old plastic case copy and I will allways be ready to use a can of shwaz on green aliens

By Phil Shanton (Mxslade) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 11:41 pm: Edit

Awful Green Things From Outer Space, Intruder, and Boarding Party; three of my favorites from years ago. Gradutated to Aliens, then Space Hulk/Crusade.

Is this the only game you guys have been playing?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 11:41 pm: Edit

Is there a game with more dice rolling than Awefull Green Things?

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, April 04, 2010 - 11:52 pm: Edit

Axis and Allies

By Fred J. Kreller (Kreller1) on Monday, April 05, 2010 - 02:33 am: Edit

Yahtzee

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Monday, April 05, 2010 - 05:50 am: Edit

SFB when you roll the DAC for a 180-point volley on a battleship?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 05, 2010 - 10:59 am: Edit

The Spacehulk game we have has blips of one, two, and three. No sixes. The photos are not of the game, just where I remembered things the next morning, and I used figs instead of blips to make it more visual.

By Bill Schoeller (Bigbadbill) on Monday, April 05, 2010 - 10:49 pm: Edit

Titan

By Howard Bampton (Bampton) on Tuesday, April 06, 2010 - 09:05 pm: Edit

Come on guys. F&E has to be up there.

By Joe Gallagher (Draxdreadfeare) on Wednesday, April 07, 2010 - 02:42 pm: Edit

The blips over 3 date back to "Genestealer", which was the second expansion for 1st Edition Space Hulk. Most of the cool stuff from the first expansion ("Deathwing") is already in the newest version of the game. If you can find the old Genestealer expansion on EBay, it is fully compatible and adds all sorts of nastiness like:

1) Much more detailed psychic combat, with genestealer magi and patriarchs to give marine Librarians a hard time.
2) Genestealer hybrids, who are more human and can use ranged weapons, although they are "squishier"
3) More blips and board pieces.
4) The Grey Knights, who are so powerful they should probably only be deployed on the marine player's birthday.

Details about both expansions are on boardgamegeek.

By Richard Sherman (Rich) on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 10:47 pm: Edit

The first expansion to Space Hulk, Deathwing, was very cool. The second expansion, with all those hybrids and "magic" was, in my view, lame.

And SPP, if you're looking for grenades on a marine...they were in Deathwing.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 11:58 am: Edit

If anybody sees one of those on Ebay sometime, do let me know.

By Michael Bennett (Mike) on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 03:59 pm: Edit

The Deathwing expansion is on Ebay now...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Games-Workshop-Space-Hulk-DEATHWING-expansion-inc_W0QQitemZ250520928314QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_2?hash=item3a5436003a

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 06:51 pm: Edit

Well, sort of. Doesn't seem to be an auction, just a fixed price. It's an incomplete set, and they want more than I paid for a latest edition SPACE HULK. And the other expansion is more interesting. If this had been an auction I could get for $30-$50 instead of a "pay $130" I would have. Thanks for the head's up, and maybe a better option will appear in due time.

--post by SVC from "Jack" the PC in the back room

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, May 21, 2010 - 02:07 pm: Edit

If there are enough Marine miniatures to go around, have you considered treating one squad as traitor/Chaos Marines and using them as the 'loyalist' Marines' adversaries?


(In the wider 40K setting, true Chaos Marines are somewhat different from loyal Astartes, in terms of what they can and cannot do - but it's not entirely unheard of for members of a supposedly-loyal Chapter to go rogue, for whatever reason.)

By William Stec (Billstec2) on Wednesday, November 07, 2012 - 02:46 pm: Edit

I wanted to let you guys know that Space Hulk as a game is not entirely dead. I got to watch a large game of it being played at Fall-In last weekend. I was not able to play due to my running my ACTA:SF games, but it looked interesting.

http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/oo339/billclodude/DSCN2314.jpg