Ye Olde Inn

by **Goblin-King** » Tuesday September 25th, 2012 5:19pm

So yesterday I picked up Space crusade from the post office and today I played with two friends. We love it!

It's a nice change of pace compared to Hero Quest. Much more simple, yet very fun! It's definitively an action game, not exploration.
I especially love how the Alien player can toss the mission book away once the game is set up. No quest notes, traps or secrets.

Like my friend said: Uuh! This game you can actually play while drunk! :lol:

One tip for anyone playing: DON'T EFFING MAKE A BLOOD ANGLES CLOSE COMBAT SPECIALIZED SQUAD!!!

Close combat is just too much of a gamble unless it's your commander. Both roll their dice, lowest score is killed. Both a marine and most aliens have two white dice. I lost my entire squad in three rounds TWO times in a row! Most of them died in my OWN freaking turn! I'll go back to shooting next time...

by **Zenithfleet** » Sunday December 9th, 2012 7:55am

Woah, both expansions?

You lucky son of a... previous Goblin King... 8-)

Glad you like the game. I definitely agree that close combat is too dangerous for the Marines. It's probably the biggest flaw in the game, actually - the Alien player can win too easily by just walloping people instead of shooting. If and when I get to play SC again, I'll probably give the Marines a boost in hth (they're supposed to be the greatest warriors in the galaxy after all...)

by the way, you do still need to keep the Mission book handy in case you need to refer to the placement of reinforcements during the game. And to read out the Secondary Mission. (It's not really clear in the rules, but we used to play that you don't tell the Marine players what the Secondary Mssion is until you draw the Event card for it.)

Speaking of unclear rules, what do you count the Ork Mekaniak's 'Devastator' as? Mysterious weapon is mysterious. :roll:

by **Goblin-King** » Sunday December 9th, 2012 2:22pm

Oh yeah... Reinforcements! But still... It's nothing compared to how much you need the book in HQ.

I have to admit that although CC sucked big time, I actually won a game. The reason being that Marines with CC weapons are worth less points and the commander being able to kill stuff alone.

We also play that the secondary mission is first read when the event card is drawn OR if a player unintentionally completes it (e.g. kill the android).

When we finally drew that card and actually had an orc on the board we were all like whaaaaaat?
But we use it as a rocket launcher. He DOES blow himself up after all

by **Zenithfleet** » Friday December 28th, 2012 9:13am

if I recall correctly, the Devastator is also referred to in the captions to the illustrated story in the rulebook. I think it's either meant to be a Plasma Gun or a generic term for 'heavy weapon' (because 'Devastator squad' is the Warhammer 40K term for Space Marine squads equipped with lots of heavy weapons). We always used to count it as a heavy bolter though...

Anyway, In an ideal word, that event card would be called 'More Dakka'. :lol:

In other news, I finally managed to scrounge up all the pieces for my old Space Crusade set -- it's only taken me 17 years, two incomplete boxes off eBay and a lot of begging on wargaming forums. :roll:

Managed to get a couple of games in with my cousins over Christmas. Ahh the memories!... and curse those fiddly wall clips!

Cousins were quite taken with it too (and quickly learned to fear the Dreadnought), especially the younger brother. The older sister remains adamant that HeroQuest is better.

For the hand to hand combat, we didn't like the idea of Marines dropping like flies whenever a Gretchin so much as sneezed on them, so we tried a house rule: You have to roll higher than the other model and roll higher than their Armour value to wound them. There's precedent for this in Mission: Dreadnought (you have to roll to beat the Armour value of inanimate objects like bulkhead doors). This made the Marines' armour of 2 more appropriately tough to get past.

However, it also caused a few problems. Gretchin only roll one white die, so they can't ever beat a Marine using this rule. Also, Blood Angel close assault blades reduce their opponent's dice by 1, so the other aliens who normally roll 2 white dice (Orks and Chaos Marines) would suffer the same inability to hurt Marines. A pretty impressive result for sticking a slightly heavier-than-usual sharp bit of metal onto the end of your gun. On the other hand, ordinary Marines would stand absolutely no chance of damaging the Dreadnought in close combat.

To get around this, we tried ruling that you had to roll equal or greater than your foe's Armour value (and roll higher than them). This means Gretchin can fluke a hit on a Marine if they roll a 2, other aliens stand a chance if the BAs have close assault blades, and Marines can fluke hits on Dreadnoughts if they roll a double 2.

It all sounds good in theory, but we haven't really played enough to know if it's worthwhile yet.

by the way, Goblin-King, awesome work with the magnetised Marines over in the showcase

I've thought about magnetising mine, but have decided to glue them instead. All that mucking about with extra sets means I have just enough spare Marines for every weapon variant. Including Mission: Dreadnought, as long as nobody's insane enough to take a maxed-out squad with five bolters...

by **Goblin-King** » Friday December 28th, 2012 9:22am

I thought about just gluing them too - I also have spares - But I plan to paint them, so naah...
And then there are the thing about insane people... They exist!
Also remember you need 2 marines with bolters. One of the event cards makes a heavy weapon marine malfunction or go out of ammor - And he have to just use his bolter.

And overall I would agree HQ is the better game, but they are both very very different in almost every way. SC is a welcome change of pace.

by **roomandu** » Wednesday August 7th, 2013 12:20am

hehe well I have both space hulk (I think its the first edition. It is from the 90's lol) and I have SPACE CRUSADE.
My vote goes to SPACE CRUSADE.
I have looked through SPACE HULK but it seems to follow the typical GW type of game play. SPACE CRUSADE on the other hand is easy to play and a fair bit of fun, and its still playable between a bunch of mates who have had a few bevvies

. Best part is that there is MISSION DREADNAUGHT as a box set. There is an ELDAR expansion (drat ... I missed this

) and there is a bunch of additional rules, missions AND characters in several issues of WHITE DWARF magazine. Best part is that they also have the stats for using terminators, chaos termies, a bunch of ORKISH odds n bits and changing the whole game to be able to play squad/s against squad/s.

by **HeroQuestFrance** » Wednesday August 7th, 2013 4:47am

Then I have good news to you : HeroQuest Remaster and I (HeroQuestFactory) are working on Space Crusade !
Not a remaster changing things because Space Crusade is an excellent boardgame.
The copyright is not taken right now so we have decided to revamp a little bit this gameboard. (Booklets, cards, control panel etc)

For the GW fanatics, ok Space Crusade is less tactical than Space Hulk I'm agreed.
But Space Crusade is involving an enhacement for each squad with gear and order cards, minimum points to get to survive in each mission and try to reach the next level.
The only thing I'm gonna "change" is the first expansion MISSION DREADNOUGHT because it has never been tested at all and it's impossible.
The ELDAR ATTACK the second expansion is excellent so you'll just have to print the cards (printer studios) and the board + blips and buy a Games Workshop basic eldar box.
Less than 25€ with better minis than the original ones !
Of course, I will include the eldar squad for the basic game and mission dreadnought since no one planed this.

By the way, you can forgot the extra rules and expansions of the white dwarf magazines.
One more time it has never been tested and it's just a useless marketing strategy to guide people on Space Hulk or Wh 40k.