HeroQuest Vs. Space Crusade combat (highly experimental)

[Kurgan]

Came up with a wild, wacky, homebrew encounter between the HeroQuest characters and Space Crusade. It's an experiment in crossing over two games and probably not in the most efficient way possible, but one that I nevertheless found stimulating...

I know Lore wise someone will say there's no possible way this match-up could work, the 40k characters would destroy the HQ characters every time, etc. but who knows what happens when they step through that warp portal onto foreign soil of another dimension and how legendary heroes with magic could match up? I just thought it was cool to combine the two games and see how to make it work without just converting either to the other game (and just using proxy miniatures).

My goal was to combine the games with few alterations, only to make it compatible, but I did try to imagine what SC would have been like if it had been released in the US (boosting the life points of certain characters).

So I made the following changes:

Chaos Space Marines (and Commanders) get 3 Life Points instead of 1, [untested]
Androids get 3 Life Points instead of 1,
Gene Stealers get 4 Life Points instead of 1,
Dreadnought gets 5 Life Points instead of 3 (2 Life points lost = loss of a weapon),

I was tempted to give the Orks 2 Life Points, but kept them at the default 1.

UNTESTED:
Space Marine Commanders get 8 life points instead of 6
Space Marines get 4 life points instead of 1
(the idea here to bring the party closer to the level of a HeroQuest party in terms of body points)

I also theorized that death saves would be possible (at least for Space Marine characters with a med pack).

I toyed with the idea of Chaos Space Marine characters being able to use orders (an oxymoron?) or at least some random Equipment to make them more interesting (instead of just being Orks with slightly better armor... though you could say the heavy marine has a stronger weapon too, while the Commander version is like an Ork with a better weapon). Letting them get re-rolls on melee from close assault blades or bionic arms... re-rolls on shooting with targeters, or boosted armor with force fields (or healing from a med pack) could make these fights more dramatic. But alas, we didn't get to any actual Marine vs. Hero fights this weekend due to time restrictions.

We played a few games with a team of heroes vs. waves of aliens. The Alien Event cards were used (I ditched my usual usage of the fan Evil Wizard Deck for these experiments). For purposes of making the cards work better, we translated "GSG Player" or "Space Marine player" as "Hero player." One hero was designated the "commander" (leader) of the Heroes for purposes of those cards which call for the Commander to do something.

SC characters still have fixed movement and roll white (light: 0,0,0,0,1,2) or heavy (red: 0,0,0,1,2,3) combat dice while HQ characters roll white combat dice with skulls, etc. and move with red dice.

Space Crusade "BLIPS" are still unknown to the HQ characters until they move into Line of Sight and can still open doors.
SC characters can still move diagonally while HQ characters cannot.
SC characters can still choose to fire at adjacent opponents.

To simulate the benefits of the futuristic armor in Space Crusade, I decided that if an SC character shoots a HQ character, the HQ character defends with 2 less (so a hero not wearing any armor or carrying any shield would not defend against any rolled damage).

If a HQ character shoots a SC character, the HQ character has to roll above the Armor rating of the SC character. So a crossbow could never hope to damage an alien with Armor 3, unless something boosted it (like Courage, Potion of Strength, etc). I would assume a "Sleeping" alien would not be able to defend, maybe the hero can aim into the cracks in the armor. As before, any skulls rolled above the armor rating automatically do damage to the SC character.

If a SC character melee attacks a HQ character, the HQ character rolls defend dice. In our house rules, if they roll 3 white shields (or I suppose if a monster rolled 3 black shields) they can do a "wrestling move" against the attacker, automatically dealing 1 damage. But in this case the HQ character isn't normally attacking back, only defending.If an SC character attacks melee and "misses" (rolls only "0"'s) the HQ character can still roll their defense (since it could be a wrestling move if they're rolling at least 3 dice!).

If a HQ character melee attacks a SC character, the SC character reacts by rolling their attack dice as if they were doing melee combat in Space Crusade. The character who rolled higher wins the combat and any skulls (or points) scored above the other are translated into damage points to the loser. If the numbers are equal (say 3 skulls vs. a "1" and "2" rolled on the SC dice) nothing happens.

MAGIC: Spells that you resist with Red dice were handled the same (Ball of Flame, Fire of Wrath). For spells that use mind points, the Armor rating number would be substituted for the mind points (Armor rating of 3 means roll 1d6 three times trying to get a "6" to counter the spell for example). Genie was treated like shooting (any skulls rolled above the armor rating does damage). Though I guess here I could have treated the Genie differently like saying it bypasses the armor and does instant damage making it very powerful, or nerfing it by saying if used at close range it's like melee and the SC character could attack the caster back.

We played in an arena created by using one of the board tiles from Space Crusade with two "rooms" on either side like the ATOH Arena mode where the characters enter on each side. We'd roll off with a movement dice to see which side gets to activate first, then following the activation rules of HeroQuest's arena mode. We decided on the idea (thanks Jacer) of the Alien player controlling the SC characters to draw his Alien Event card... and roll a movement die to see how many blip tokens to place in the starting room. Avalon Hill's ATOH only includes 10 activation tokens so in practice that was a self imposed limit of 6 activations on the SC side per round (not counting alien cards that would cause say, Gene Stealers to appear and attack).

I used the White Dwarf Magazine tiles (of various "debris") and decided each one had the equivalent of 2 body/life points and blocked line of sight (including to reveal BLIP tokens behind them). Destroying them would reveal one of the ATOH arena reward tokens which any character could land on to claim.

After we do more testing I can report how things worked out!

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To make things even more Chaotic...!
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This part I haven't tried with live players yet, so it's even more experimental... I could imagine doing some of this with the Companion App (simulating activating rooms by sending a summoned Raptor with pass through rock cast upon it to reveal all the rooms in a board quadrant).

For further tests, using Space Marines from Space Crusade vs. HeroQuest monsters could be interesting...

Treating defend dice above 2 as "armor" would mean:

Goblins, Skeletons & Orcs = no armor (direct damage from any points scored by an SC character firing upon them)
Zombies & Fimirs/Abominations = Armor 1
Mummies & Chaos/Dread Warriors = Armor 2
Gargoyles = Armor 3
etc. a character with 6 defend dice would have Armor 4!

Here I'd introduce homebrew "shadow" wandering monster tiles to hide the monsters behind a black tile with glowing eyes that moves much like a BLIP token. Maybe it wouldn't be able to open a door on its own though (unless the monster otherwise could in the game).

I did some early tests with SC marines fighting HQ monsters and they did very badly if their shooting roles failed to land before the melee battles began. However I think proper use of Orders and Equipment by the Marines is their salvation in combat. They have no natural defense against traps, but I wasn't sure if entering a board quadrant their scanners would find all of the traps (which couldn't be disarmed?) and secret doors. Perhaps the marines simply can't get any treasure unless it's an artifact or other item needed to complete the quest then the location is simply found. But their scanning would also trigger the revealing of monster "blips" (shadow tiles). Once LOS is achieved, these monsters would be revealed. Gold would be collected for destroying them instead of points (though the Marines can't really buy anything useful except Alchemist Shop potions I suppose... maybe the potions boost their guns or only their melee attacks?). Then again maybe the Marines can just destroy traps by shooting them with their weapons (give the traps body points equivalent to the potential damage they can normally deal, so a Fallen Block trap has 3 body points, while a spear trap has only 1).

All of this would make parts of the quest much easier, without having to worry about traps (except undetectable ones) but also deny them valuable rewards as found in the treasure deck, but also avoiding hazards and wandering monsters.

Since the Alien Event Deck wouldn't be used, perhaps here the Evil Wizard Deck would be appropriate.

Without the ability to wield certain artifacts (thinking here the Spirit Blade) the Space Marines would be unable to win the base campaign, so I'd allow it.

If any official quest references a specific hero, then one of the Marines would have to be substituted for that character (though a Marine dying and being replaced by the Bard in Spirit Queen's Torment is quite amusing).

In the quest where the Marines are captured, I'd take away their Equipment and Orders, and let them only fight hand to hand (with 2 white combat dice) until their gear was recovered.

Hiring mercenaries would be much harder due to their limited ability to collect gold (though any HQ equipment they found could be traded back to the Armory for half value). Perhaps they could shoot Treasure chests to spill their contents (2 body points per chest) and then walk over them to collect it. As long as they don't trigger an exploding trap at close range that risks damaging them of course!

Could the Marines use spell scrolls? I think so, because "any" hero can use them. But apart from Artifacts, they would not use the HQ equipment (only potions, holy water, that kind of thing).

Between Quests the Marines would still choose their weapon loadouts, Equipment and Orders. The ranking system would probably need some work (they wouldn't automatically win the campaign just by achieving the highest rank, they'd simply max out their Equipment and Order cards). Perhaps they'd do the best if they complete a quest with the entire squad still alive. Although assigning point values to the monsters (in addition to the gold) could be an interesting way to do it. Would Zargon get points for killing the marines too?

[Kurgan]

Other interesting scenarios could appear, like what if the heroes wanted to pick up the weapons dropped by defeated SC characters? Maybe they'd roll to see if the item exploded or would have to roll to see how many shots are left in the clip or something (and the new weapons could not be sold) just to prevent it just from changing completely into the other game at a certain point.

[Kurgan]

A video demonstration (slightly refined from the first public playtest) will appear here (youtube link).