Furniture & Homebrew searching rule (inspired by HeroQuest)
Posted: Tuesday March 1st, 2022 12:12pmSo I'm thinking of adding a homebrew rule to Space Crusade, now that I've played my first game (against myself as suggested by youtube's Always Board never Boring).
Furniture! I grabbed a set of "Terrain Crate" for $30 online that features "Starship Scenery." There are 26 (?) pieces of rubbery dark gray plastic in the box, including lots of sci-fi type stuff I thought would be fun... weapons racks (of space guns, rather similar looking to the space crusade weapons), computer terminals, equipment crates, tall cylinders that could be fuel containers, clone vats or generators probably, tables, desks, etc.
The idea of wandering around a Space Hulk (ghost ship or pirate ship basically) and finding rooms with randomly placed (by the Alien player) furniture could be a cool thing, making it less plain and boring and giving more of a reason to go exploring.
It would give the Space Marines (or Eldar, or Ork player) a reason to actually go into rooms that don't show active Blips moving about, and the Alien player would simply place a random piece of furniture.
In some missions the Furniture could represent some objective (like finding an artifact for retrieval), but other times it would not just be decoration but a signal that the player could "search."
The Alien player would have the option, whenever a door is opened, to add furniture (if available) to the room. It would then be a potentially searchable room by one of the player factions (the space marine chapters, eldar, etc) who enters it.
I'm going to say in a room with no monsters (enemy aliens) present a player may search ONCE (for their entire squad) "for useful equipment." The player then rolls 1 combat die. A "regular" character would roll 1 white combat die and if they get a "1" they can draw a random equipment card from the pile of unused (or used up) equipment for that chapter/squad. If a commander character does it, I would count a "1" or "2" that lets them draw the card. Any other outcome would result in "no useable equipment is found" and they are unable to search that room again for the rest of the mission. These equipment cards would of course be temporary for the mission of course. Should they be random? I'm thinking so.
I would also limit each room to one search period... so if an UltraMarine searched a room, a Blood Angel couldn't later search the same room. So the Alien Player just has to keep track of it. An easy way would be "Computer terminal room, searched by Blue" or something like that.
If all of the equipment cards from that particular group have been obtained, then automatically the result will be nothing. So groups could compete to prevent others from getting more equipment or be nice about it and let them search.
ONLY rooms that have furniture in them would be searchable as well. So the Alien player would still have control over whether he wants to be generous to give them a chance to find things.
Is it possible to have "wandering monsters" or hazards? I would tend to say no, because of the fact that so many characters have only 1 life point and there is already the Alien Event deck to spawn such things.
Any feedback on these ideas? I know that unlike HeroQuest, Space Crusade may have all the rooms available in most (all?) missions. So potentially that is a lot of chances to fill up their equipment mid-mission. It would potentially make the game quite a big longer and somewhat easier for the non-Alien players (but then, every turn the Alien Player gets to draw an Event card and brings them closer to winning... if they use up the entire Event deck, the marines/eldar/etc have only one more round to complete their mission before forfeiting those points to the enemy!).
Furniture! I grabbed a set of "Terrain Crate" for $30 online that features "Starship Scenery." There are 26 (?) pieces of rubbery dark gray plastic in the box, including lots of sci-fi type stuff I thought would be fun... weapons racks (of space guns, rather similar looking to the space crusade weapons), computer terminals, equipment crates, tall cylinders that could be fuel containers, clone vats or generators probably, tables, desks, etc.
The idea of wandering around a Space Hulk (ghost ship or pirate ship basically) and finding rooms with randomly placed (by the Alien player) furniture could be a cool thing, making it less plain and boring and giving more of a reason to go exploring.
It would give the Space Marines (or Eldar, or Ork player) a reason to actually go into rooms that don't show active Blips moving about, and the Alien player would simply place a random piece of furniture.
In some missions the Furniture could represent some objective (like finding an artifact for retrieval), but other times it would not just be decoration but a signal that the player could "search."
The Alien player would have the option, whenever a door is opened, to add furniture (if available) to the room. It would then be a potentially searchable room by one of the player factions (the space marine chapters, eldar, etc) who enters it.
I'm going to say in a room with no monsters (enemy aliens) present a player may search ONCE (for their entire squad) "for useful equipment." The player then rolls 1 combat die. A "regular" character would roll 1 white combat die and if they get a "1" they can draw a random equipment card from the pile of unused (or used up) equipment for that chapter/squad. If a commander character does it, I would count a "1" or "2" that lets them draw the card. Any other outcome would result in "no useable equipment is found" and they are unable to search that room again for the rest of the mission. These equipment cards would of course be temporary for the mission of course. Should they be random? I'm thinking so.
I would also limit each room to one search period... so if an UltraMarine searched a room, a Blood Angel couldn't later search the same room. So the Alien Player just has to keep track of it. An easy way would be "Computer terminal room, searched by Blue" or something like that.
If all of the equipment cards from that particular group have been obtained, then automatically the result will be nothing. So groups could compete to prevent others from getting more equipment or be nice about it and let them search.
ONLY rooms that have furniture in them would be searchable as well. So the Alien player would still have control over whether he wants to be generous to give them a chance to find things.
Is it possible to have "wandering monsters" or hazards? I would tend to say no, because of the fact that so many characters have only 1 life point and there is already the Alien Event deck to spawn such things.
Any feedback on these ideas? I know that unlike HeroQuest, Space Crusade may have all the rooms available in most (all?) missions. So potentially that is a lot of chances to fill up their equipment mid-mission. It would potentially make the game quite a big longer and somewhat easier for the non-Alien players (but then, every turn the Alien Player gets to draw an Event card and brings them closer to winning... if they use up the entire Event deck, the marines/eldar/etc have only one more round to complete their mission before forfeiting those points to the enemy!).