Space Crusade Squad Information Sheet (WIP)

[Kurgan]

Even if I didn't know that Stephen Baker was lead designer on this as well as HeroQuest, and that Milton Bradley derived it from source material produced by the same company (GamesWorkshop's Warhammer Fantasy inspired the setting of HQ, Space Crusade's setting is inspired from Warhammer 40,000) and were even advertised together in some of the early HQ boxes, it would seem obvious after a little play that they are cut from the same cloth. Despite similar monsters ("Orks" being the equivalent of Orcs, "Gretchen" from Goblins, "Chaos Space Marines" from Chaos Warriors) it goes further into gameplay mechanics and provides some interesting hints of other things that the two games could share... I am finally discovering since I didn't start learning about it in depth until recently and finally playing it this month!

I love how some of the features of this game have ended up in HeroQuest mods (yeoldeinn's "dragon" is basically a modification of the Dreadnought, the "Combat Cards" are a variation on Orders/Equipment and "Evil Wizard Deck" is clearly inspired by the "Alien Event" deck to name some examples, and of course the official Mercenary mechanics are similar, minus the gold, to how squads are treated in the game with the Commander taking the place of the Hero who leads them). But some things HeroQuest has that Space Crusade could still really use...

If anyone watched my recent solo games on twitch or youtube, you'll see I got confused keeping track of everything. While the game already encourages you to use the chapter "scanners" (little plastic bases that let you track 6 body points for a commander, one type of upgrade for four of the weapons and 0-45 points in score) they don't quite organize everything as easily as they could, especially if you're doing what I was doing and managing multiple players at once! (which makes playing as four heroes in HeroQuest look easy by comparison!). Also I realized my table is really small, so cards can get out of sight and out of mind...

So I've attached some basic, compact character sheets that can easily be printed out.

Samples included (the PDFs are the newest versions).

Multiple pages including a 5 man squad (extra slot for a special like the Psyker) and 10 man squad for the Orks (with extra slot for Freebooter) or Eldar.

Perhaps a better title is Squad Information Sheet since it covers multiple characters intended for a single player.

Edit: Fixed some spacing issues (Image is of the OLDer version)

[Kurgan]

Nothing fancy, but a quick change of the title allows for the StarQuest version of the spreadsheet. Feedback welcome!

Edit: Perhaps they should be called "enforcers" instead of "soldiers" here (since it's GSG, rather than the Imperial Space Marines).

Updated!

[Kurgan]

Tweaked the two documents...

Feedback is welcome

[HispaZargon]

Progress and equipment tracking is always welcome in any board game designed to be played in campaign mode.

I am surprised about Space Crusade did not include any standarized sheet for it like yours, even taking into account I remember there was not too much info to be tracked between missions, but there was a little.

[Kurgan]

All you really have to do is count up your points, but since I'm controlling multiple factions at once and the GM duties, it can be somewhat overwhelming as you see me forgetting who had what bonus when during the video recordings at times! So this should help out a lot. There is also not really a GM screen (Alien player must master slight of hand like a card magician).

The Chapter based "Trackers" do help a little, by keeping track of points (up to 45 anyway) and commander body points, and give you a hint what weapons have bonuses (just not exactly what they are).

I can see Baker and whomever worked with him trying to simplify the gameplay of HeroQuest and make as much automated as possible to focus on the "action" but in the process some things were left out that I think shouldn't have been like this.

It's a little more challenging in general since nearly everyone has ranged weaponry, so having to figure out angles and things (at one point I had my soldier fire straight through a wall, just because from the angle I was looking at, he could do it, in reality he should have severely damaged his captain by shooting through him to hit the enemy!).

But it's a lot worse than one person controlling 4 heroes in HeroQuest. It's like controlling all of them plus each of their mercenaries... trying to play solo anyway