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Turning the Tables on Space HulkUpdating and Simplifying a Classic

In the original basic game, a marine firing a storm bolter rolls

two dice . If one of them is a six , the target Genestealer

dies. Thats two simple rules. A storm bolter gets and it takes

a to kill a Genestealer. There are three more rules involvingstorm bolters: sustained fire at the same target lowers the target

number one pip per additional shot, to a minimum of three; the

range of Overwatch is limited to 12 squares; and a storm bolter

fired on Overwatch jams on any roll of doubles. Since two of

these rules have to do with Overwatch, well deal with them later.

The flamer is another interesting case in the base game. Well

come back to it.

So far, we havent deviated from the weapon portion of the

table. We would still describe a storm bolter as:

Name Range Dice Ammo Special

Storm bolter Sustained Fire (3),

Overwatchor as:

Storm Bolter: Sustained Fire (3), Overwatch

The next favorite ranged weapon on the list is the assault

cannon. We want to maintain the flavor of the assault cannon

described in the Deathwing expansion, but we have some room to

make changes toward a common template.

Name Range Dice Ammo Special

Assault cannon 10 4AP Sustained Fire (3),

Overwatch,

Overheats (1),

Full Auto

The range is unlimited. You roll three dice and add one to

each of them. You still roll three dice and only need to roll a five

to kill a Genestealer with its target of . An assault canon can

shoot 10 times before reloading for 4AP. A model can use sus-

tained fire with an assault cannon, up to +3. An assault cannon

can be used with the standard overwatch rule. An assault cannon

risks overheating after the first reload. We still have to describe

Overheats, which might instead be called Malfunction. We also

need to define a Full Auto special rule that does something like

letting you roll one attack against all models in the attacking

models LOS, with an additional +1 per die, for half the Ammo

value of the weapon, five shots for the assault cannon.

Its relatively easy to describe the other available rangedweapons in this way to streamline some rules. Of course, you

wouldnt have models carrying different weapons if they didnt

have different capabilities and some fun special rules. We dont

want to beat out all variation. We just want to describe what I

know about my weapons and what you know about your models

in ways that interact well without reference tables. If I know my

model and its gun, I should be able to look at the summary for

your model and know what I need to do to to remove it from the

board.

If we add a new model to the game, we can do it withoutadding a separate entry for each weapon that exists. For example,we could decide a Genestealer Hybrid is a , making it mucheasier to kill with a storm bolter or assault cannon. This system

doesnt allow for the exact weapon and target interaction pro-vided by a reference table, but it can be rich and flexible, withoutneeding to look up in a table the intersection of every weaponand target. Something particularly hard to kill might be . If Ihave weapons that are , then I could use to indicate modelsthat are relatively easy to kill, but only with weapons that providemore than one die. In my opinion, this is more interesting and lesstedious than the single numeric target listed at each intersection inthe current tables. It also provides more room to add other Tyra-nid species, Space Orks, Traitor Space Marines or other SpaceHulk denizens to the game.

Boss BattlesWithin the existing rules, you cant get the real feel of boss battles.

The Patriarch in Space Hulk Campaigns is incredible in close assault,

4 dice at +3, but would be a , as described in the book, under

our new system. Hes a psychic Genestealer thats really good up

close, but the narrow one die target definition makes him as frag-

ile as any other Genestealer when a Space Marine is shooting at

him. With the wide range of interesting Tyranid models now

available from Games Workshop to support the Genesteal-

ersthe Broodlord comes to mindwe will want to include the

occasional boss in our missions. This should also appeal to

gamers who like a bit of Mario or Metroid feel in their missions.

Two obvious options for bosses come to mind. The first is to

give bosss bigger dice targets that make them very difficult to kill,

. Or you might have to match the bosss target a certainnumber of times to kill it, potentially allowing for multiple full

matches from a single attack . Since these are simple con-

cepts, easy to display and easy to track, we could combine them

for tough enemies . It would take two good hits from

an assault cannon to kill it, although Sustained Fire would help.

take a look at how to adjust close assault for the new dice

target rules. The following issue will offer a different approach to

psionics. The last article will provide new stats for available mod-

els to work under the house rules

Two obvious options for bosses come to mind. The first is to

give bosss bigger dice targets that make them very difficult to kill,

. Or you might have to match the bosss target a certain

number of times to kill it, potentially allowing for multiple full

matches from a single attack . Since these are simple con-

cepts, easy to display and easy to track, we could combine them

for tough enemies . It would take two good hits from

an assault cannon to kill it, although Sustained Fire would help.

In future house rules entries for Space Hulk, well take a look

at how to adjust close assault for the new dice target rules, an al-

ternate approach to psionics, and reference tables to include the

current range of terminators, tyranids, etc. in the game.

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