Space Hulk

[chrisvenus]

http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/375/space-hulk-10-released

It seems that somebody has made a conversion of the Space Hulk board game from way back. Not like the previous computer games which was an adaptation or something but this is meant to be a conversion so following the proper rules and so on. I've downloaded it and loaded it long enough to see that it looks to be a good conversion of the game. The AI is described as good but I've not done more than the tutorial mission on walking around and the one on flaming a room.

I figured there were enough people who would squee fanboyishly about space hulk that this was worth posting.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately this isn't as squee-worthy as you might think. Despite ripping off GW's IP they actually haven't implemented the original game's rules.

This version might be good, but really it's a completely new turn-based strategy game which has very little to do with Space Hulk.

[chrisvenus]

YAs I say I didn't look that closely but it seemed to have AP, CP and a similar kind of movement system going on. I had another quick glance at the site but couldn't see any comments on the ruleset. Is there a discussion somewhere you can link to on how it differs or anything or did you just have a more extensive play than I did?

[chrisvenus]

And as I said that I saw http://www.teardown.se/games/spacehulk/www/documentations_designchanges.html


Oh well. :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Particularly amusing is comments like "also we felt that there were no real need for this feature since some players never used it at all", which translates roughly as "we play this game at such a low level it's a complete mystery why we bother". ;-)

[chrisvenus]

Yeah, I saw that and wondered how on earth killing genestealers while moving was ever a bad thing. And I always thought it not so much as a free movement after firing as a free shot while moving. And it sounds much more worthwhile that way too. :)

The flamer changes of always killing is nice though. It was always annoying when you had a great plan to block the genestealers by flaming a room, killing the two in it and then the rest can't get past... Until one of the ones in the room survives and runs out the other side to butcher your squad.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

The flamer changes of always killing is nice though.

It is if you're the marines, but it makes the game much less interesting. In the original game the point of the 1 in 6 kill failure was that it meant if you flamed a room packed with Stealers it was quite likely one would survive. This discouraged insane flamer sprints where you'd use 4AP/6CP to run your Flamer seven spaces, turn, then flame a heavily occupied room. Doing this was sometimes correct, but it would usually cost you the Flamer. By contrast if you have a 100% kill rate it's always correct, which is dull.

Also 100% kills let you do the "rolling thunder" trick where you flame a room, then as soon as the flame clears you walk into it and flame the next room and so on. With other marines supporting the advance from behind this is basically unstoppable.

Of course, both effects are reduced in importance by their reduction of the flame burst size, but that is in itself a bad thing since it means the Flamer is more like a random big gun than a strategic tool.

[elethiomel.livejournal.com]

Doing this was sometimes correct, but it would usually cost you the Flamer. By contrast if you have a 100% kill rate it's always correct, which is dull.

Agreed. As far as I was concerned the flamer was far less about killing things and far more sensibly employed for tactical area denial - never flame a room full of stealers, flame the corridor in front of it to rap them.

As I recall, the final mission of the original campaign (hold off the stealers for x turns (possibly 16?) while a neurotoxin is dispersed through the hulk) was all but impossible to lose as Marines with appropriate deployment of flamers to hold the two choke-points.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's winnable as Stealers, you just have to be really, really careful with your blip deployment. The flamers do indeed eat up a lot of the time, but during that time the Stealers still get reinforcements, so the trick as Stealers is to set up to rush the room. Stealers win about 3/4 of the time if the Marines play along.

The catch is, of course, that a smart Marine player won't play along. Timing things correctly the marines can often set up turns where they can hold fire relatively safely on one flamer. The Stealers then have to decide whether to commit serious resources to the breach or to hold off. It's a delicate balance.

Let's put it this way: I've won that mission as Stealers far more often than I've lost "CAT Hunt" or "Decoy". I used to claim "CAT Hunt" was unwinnable for the Marines, but then lathany beat me. Still, that's something like 12-1 to the Stealers!

[elethiomel.livejournal.com]

the trick as Stealers is to set up to rush the room.

But even then if set up correctly the final room is so easily defensible. As I recall it's a 3x3 with one way in, a 5 tile corridor and then a T-junction. You keep three men across the back of the room on overwatch, giving one of them 9 shots and two of them 3 shots at any advancing stealer. You also keep your two sergeants just inside the door, facing across the doorway at each other - they'll also get 3 overwatch shots at any advancing stealer. Plus all marines in the room will get additional overwatch shots in response to a melee. Command points are saved for clearing jams and going back onto overwatch.

That makes the room a real strong point. Combined with the two flamers to hold things up and three other marines to whittle down numbers / sacrifice themselves to buy time, it can make it very hard to build up the necessary stealer forces to assault the control room.

far more often than I've lost "CAT Hunt" or "Decoy"

I don't recall Decoy. I do recall CAT Hunt, and as I recall the main thing was to keep the squads together and move through systematically rather than separate and try to go for all the CATs at once, although I may be misremembering.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

The defence you describe isn't quite possible. Marines block other marines' line of sight, so if you have units to the sides of the doors then the ones on the back walls cannot fire three spaces, only two.

It's still a viable option, but that many Marines in the room leaves very little to slow the attack on the flamers, so they'll have to start flaming on turn two. That means they run out of flame fuel after turn five (only four shots each), the stealers eat them on turn six or seven and then the marines in the room have to survive a full ten turns. The guy on the far wall jams for free most of the time (a decoy Stealer from the right runs into LoS and dances around until he jams or it dies, then another, etc.). Then the Stealers won't rush the room in one, they'll fill the tunnel. Only the first Stealer gets shot at whilst doing this, the others shuffle up for free. On a 4+ CP turn you'll usually clear your jams and as good as reset your position. On a 2- CP turn you'll lose ground on average. Then at the start of the next move you'll be looking at stand and fire actions to clear the corridor before you can reset overwatch. You'll get two cheap kills that way, then the Stealers begin their turn with (on average) two steps of progress.

Sure, you still win a fair proportion of the time, but nothing like 100%. Jam on the first shot during one of the key turns and you'll likely start your next turn with Stealers in the room!

Decoy is Mission 5 in the original set. It's the one with a vaguely S-shaped board in which you have two squads and have to save a minimum of five marines. It's insanely hard because part of the route is a single long corridor. You need a CP sprint to get you round the corner at the end and even then you need to get a bit lucky on your overwatch to hold it for the turn needed to bring backup.

I'm wrong about "CAT Hunt" (having just looked it up). The mission has a CAT in, but it's called "Rescue". It's the one where you start off holding the little sod with one of your squads and the other one starts at the exit. Basically as the Stealers you just need to kill the guy holding the CAT and have it wander off for a turn then you can shut a door behind it (ha ha!) and the Marines will likely never see it again. (The time Dawn completed the mission it involved a systematic programme of pre-emptive door shooting!)

[chrisvenus]

I note in looking at the forums that they are re-introducing it in 1.1 due to popular demand. :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Cool... maybe eventually they'll converge on the original rules!

[chrisvenus]

Looking at it I wouldn't be that surprised. A lot of the changes seem to be made to "simplify the interface" and I can't help but think that as versions go up that they will happily add new features and complexify the interface.

One of the amusing design decisions that I've seen is that there are two more downloadable space marine chapters. available at launch but you have to replace one of the original four with each of them. You'd think if they had that sort of thing in mind they'd have made the chapter select interface a bit less limited... :)

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't make much difference to pelsfjaes and T, as we ended up with a Space Hulk set sans instructions, and so 'Space Quest' was born - a campaign setting with pelsfjaes's rules for playing...
After that, Hack Quest was born (or possibly before...), with a box of Advanced Hero Quest which had... no instructions.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Is pelsfjaes who I think he is?

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

He's tall, Danish and has more z's than is normal.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Heh. That's a yes. :)

[monarda-if.livejournal.com]

I remember playing and loving Space Hulk as a wee stripling, in fact I graduated from Space Crusade (which I blame for my lasting love of the colour yellow, and possibly more embarrassingly the Imperial Fists!) which I loved too.

I don't think I actually played Space Hulk too much since my brother, who would have been my chief opponent, was younger than me and I think the rules were pitched at a complexity level I could only just handle myself at that age.

What I remembered particularly loving though was the fluff and background. I have no idea how well it would stand up to rereading but in my head it's become the ideal version of that universe.

In summary: Yay! for Space Hulk

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Squee! Although I don't think I can manage fanboyishly.

Here's hoping that the original rules appear though.