After a ten year hiatus from Space Hulk, we have found ourselves full throttle into the Space Hulk Universe in a matter of months. We now find ourselves with two full second editions, a mega set of the Creative Gamescapes pieces, and 5+ squads of terminators, 3 of which were terrifically painted by Shane at reanimatestudios.com (see below…nice!) After fitting in as much Space Hulk we could between the SAGA and WW II Rapid Fire, we have gotten up to speed on standard Space Hulk scenarios and were itching for a big, convention-esque game. Pour Morale Mini-Con and the Messenger of Woe to the rescue!
Initial Conditions
Trying to keep it to 16 terminators, we decided to split the teams to 5 squads of 3 (+1 rogue Rune Priest) and 3 genestealer players (8 total players). If someone did not show, we were planning on shorting a genestealer player. We liked the idea of a cleansing (just kill genestealers) mission, but had a difficult time determining how to motivate the terminators to move across the ship. We ended up with an end goal of reaching a hanger bay to power on and open the bay doors for some reinforcements (triggering the end of the game, not to play with), with a maximum of 85 genestealers and the condition of needing 4 terminators and the main rune priest to be alive for a full victory.
Along the way there were 3 rooms to have surprise genestealer and hormagaunts pop up to slow down and maybe even kill some terminators. One of these rooms, the “Armory”, was 3, 3×3 rooms combined that also had the flamer/assault cannon reloads. The other two rooms could be selected by the genestealer player. The only other scenario piece was the terminators needed to unlock the rune priest (about ⅓ of the way through the game) after which the genestealer player could deploy the Brood Lord. The ‘nids had a limit of 80 genestealers and 20 hormagaunts.
For command points, we were considering two options:
One, big roll by team leader to be shared with the entire terminator team
Two, each squad rolls a D4
We chose option one, and toyed with the math to give us a D12 + D4 +3. Yes, 2 D8 + 3 would have been the same, but this way you got to use a D4! At a minimum of 5 CP, each squad would get one point on the most unluckiest of rolls. This also worked out to an average of 11 CP, and a maximum of 19 that would be nearly the same as each squad having 1 D4 for CP. We really liked this option, as it forced even more communication with the terminators. We also capped the number of CP to be spent on a single terminator to be 6. This prevented a terminator to get blasted with something like 14 actions on a single turn.
Lastly, we did do a few things different from the rules. We used Hormagaunts to slow terminators, force jams, and punish terminators for being very unlucky. They could be deployed at up to 2 at any blip reveal. Their stats were 6AP to be used the same as genestealers, and close combat stats 1D6-1 and losing on ties in close combat! Definitely very weak, but we were unsure how drastically we would effect the game if they were much stronger. We had estimated the kill rate of genestealers to terminators to be 5:1, so the hormagaunts were just a little bit on top to make sure the terminators performed well. We also used the Librarian adjustments from Old School Ron where the Librarian (Rune Priest for these Wolf Guard!) would roll for psi points each turn, and not benefit from CP at all. Since we had 2 rune priests, the junior Rune Priest would roll a D4, and the higher rune priest would roll a D6, capped at 5. This allowed for a maximum of 9 psi points, but on average only one psychic storm per turn. We also adapted the area of effect for flamers and psychic storms to be 3×3 instead of entire spaces. This was very useful as we used Creative Gamescapes pieces that the same formations of the normal pieces.
Classy
Lastly, for real this time, we gave some squad-specific bonuses to make it a little bit more interesting and give one last boost to the terminators. These were all intended to be slight bonuses.
- Frenzy: If a terminator kills two genestealers, they get an extra AP this turn.
- Nimble: Each terminator in this squad can back up for only 1 AP twice per turn.
- Fury: If a terminator dies within LOS of a fellow Wolf Guard, they automatically gain 1 AP and +1 on the next close combat.
- Sharpshooter: Once per turn each terminator may elect to have any shot count as sustained fire.
Since we ran out of time to do any serious board planning, we built the board in the moment with no real sketches for repeatability. We did however make it as much as a maze as possible to benefit the genestealer player. That was about it for map planning other than having an armory and a hanger! See below:
Love the background cloth!
Execution
We learned quite a bit from this game, which was expected as this was our first big Spake hulk event. First thing: Terminators came out victorious. The brood lord killed the junior rune priest, but the higher rune priest killed the brood lord. It does not help when the Brood Lord player rolls a 2, 2, and 1 (adds up to a 3 for crushing blow). In the end, there were 6 terminators remaining and 67 dead genestealers. That was pretty good, at a rate of 6:1 dead genestealers to terminators. On top of that, all of the hormagaunts were dead, but with no kills. While ineffective at killing, they were effective at distracting and slowing down. Even jamming! We will probably continue to use them for the large games, but not for the smaller, standard games, they are not necessary.
We had great success with Old School Ron’s rules with the librarian. This kept the game much more random and in touch with the ebb and flow of the warp. The hoarders out there able to freely use some psi points instead of saving them every turn for…something? The 3×3 area was also effective, as predicted from using the Creative Gamescapes pieces.
Check out the dice box conversion into a force barrier!
We also learned, just like Miniature Scrum did on their big space hulk game, that the timer is rather ineffective for a game this large or with several inexperienced players. While helpful on cutting down on game time, there is no practical way 5 terminators could coordinate under one timer. Next time we may opt to have two timers worth of space marine time.
Showdown!
Unfortunately we did not keep kill score per squad to track of the effectiveness of the squad-specific bonuses, but it seemed like the sharpshooter trait was very effective, and Fury was probably the least useful.
Have another big game planned so standby for some refinement of large game dynamics!
Lethal.
Pour Morale Gaming 