Using Warhammer 40K "FireTeam" as proxies for Space Crusade

[Anderas]

I am dreaming of a more orcish variant.
I once was an Ork player with around 15 000 points, about 5000 well painted, so that's personal.

There are freebooterz orcs with parrots on their shoulder and weapons that look very, very much like the ones used in Space Crusade.
Those have 40mm bases, so they are not too big for Space Crusade. Those are inspiring! In 40k they are just not good, but the models are great.

I could imagine a playcard "cunning taktik" "If an orc model would die, and there is a gretchin in less than 6 inch distance, remove that gretchin instead" like the matching 40k orc "tactic". That playcard, 2 or 3 times, then some creative rules for those Orc monsters.

Plus some additional standard orcs (variants with shoota, with rocket launcher, big shoota, burna); finally for good measure, two or three Meganobs (I would say those are harder to kill than a dreadnought, maybe one Life Point more, and stronger in close combat, while they have less shooting) and some normal Orc Nobs with close combat stuff on them.

I wouldn't introduce any Deff Dread or Kill Kan or similar stuff - their bases are just too big for Space Crusade, sadly. But I guss a Deff Dread, who can easily kill more than just one Space Marine squad, would be too strong for the game as well. You normally defend against those guys by not letting them come close - which is, of course, impossible in Space Crusade.

I once had a squad Kill Kanz with magnetized feet that I could use without base in Space Crusade, and magnetized arms so that I could attach what I want. Scrap gun, Big Shoota, Rocket Launcher, or extra close combat hand. They would be weaker than Dreadnoughts, with otherwise same-ish rules. Every hit removes a weapon, that makes two life points, 3 armour max. They never got to see their fight.

[Kurgan]

Cool. I certainly have many Orks right now (and a killah kan ? that needs to be assembled, in metal of course).

These Gale Force 9 Xenomorph "Alien warriors" will make nice proxies for Genestealers.

[Kurgan]

Genestealer
instead of placing 1 Genestealer, place 1 Genestealer next to each Commander.

I like this one, nasty! (would need extra figures if there are more than three commanders).

Reinforcements
Take 1 reinforcement blips per Marine player, dreadnoughts excluded. Place these anywhere you like, out of sight, in addition to the usual number. They can immediately be used.

(as opposed to using only 5, only in the R slots and moving them next turn)[/quote]

Per opposing player, right?

Chaos Teleporter
Switch the position of two revealed Figures.
If more than one Marine player is here, additionally place 1 of your reinforcement blips per marine player in one of the two positions, even in plain sight. They can immediately be used.

I'm not quite sure how this one works, you mean they switch places and one gets a partner (the reinforcement token)?

Battle Plan
If there are less than 3 Marine players, choose one. They will receive an additional order card.

Cool!

Report In
All Commanders may not move nor attack this round, as they must report in.

Powerful!

Booby Trap
If there are two or more Marine Players, one Marine (no Commander) steps on a mine. Make a rocket launcher attack on his square.

So it doesn't happen if only one Marine player is left, and only hits one single figure? (splash damage still of course is possible)

Alien Task Force
Mix the unused Reinforcement tokens and then pick one per Marine Player at random to add to your Reinforcement Pool.

I like this.

... you get the gist... everything where it is remotely useful, it becomes "per Marine Player". Sounds hard, but as there are a lot less cards being played per game with more Marine Players, so it is actually not that bad. At the same time, the few "good" cards should be active only if there are less than 3 Marines, some of them should be active only with a single Marine player.

For the Auto-defence cards and Lure of Chaos, don't know if one should roll per Marine Player?

The Lure of Chaos is unlikely to happen but it COULD wipe out three marines, and result in three enemies that don't give points. I like the idea of scalable difficulty. I haven't yet played vs. three marine players but it would seem these would be nice to make it a bit more balanced, because the Alien player would seem to have no chance to win, only the marine players will be working carefully together to divide up the points so none of them loses.

[Kurgan]

If you don't use the Equipment and Order(s) cards, any space marine squad is going to get killed off pretty easily against enemy mobs, much like a Wizard running into battle without his spells. I realize this squad is nerfed if I go by the weapons on the models in-universe, their melee being a bit stronger doesn't make up for them losing three heavy weapons characters (and the commander taking more of a medium position rather than having either really strong melee or really strong ranged).

The other space marines are supposed to have "heavy" bolt pistols, so I think I'm going to give them a re-roll of one of the dice whenever they fire since otherwise it's just identical to the regular pistol (and fairly weak).

[Kurgan]

Now I'm short gretchen ("grots") and chaos space marines. For the latter I considered just grabbing another set of Fireteam (sad they are not as cheap as when I first bought them!) and swapping out the heads/backpacks (not sure if I have the patience/skill to mold them with greenstuff).

Looks like the best sets come out to about $2 per character. Of course a game of space crusade that substituted gretchens for Orcs and had more androids and gene-stealers would be a lot more challenging for the marines!