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Lost Patrol: Space Hulk Edition - Fan-made Solo Rules
Hello there everyone. Here is my battle report for my first go at Lost Patrol using home-brew adaptations to the original rules that came with the original release in 2000 written by Jake Thornton.

First off. This is my first ever battle report. Please tell me if I've got the right idea, happy to learn a better way of doing this.

Secondly, this was the first ever game of anything I have played since the age of 14. Nearly 20 years later I want to play the games as well as paint, but have no easy way to get to gaming groups and my children are too young to take part. That's why I thought I'd try our Lost Patrol - it looked easy to adapt for solo play, compact and I had the scouts already. The Lurker counters needed I just couldn't seem to get to look right, so I just went for 2p coins. Did the job well actually.

I've included a pdf of my adapted rules, no infringement of copyright intended and I acknowledge the rights belong with Games Workshop and Jake Thornton. I had permission from Mark Nutter who designed the "Star Freighter" tiles I used and adapted for their use in the rule sheet.

I used a D6 component in the rules to add a random element to gameplay that yielded surprising changes to gameplay.

Setup:
Here are the five marines on the clearing tile and with the initial ring of corridor tiles around it. I used one of the shotgun marines to proxy for the Heavy Bolter in the rules having not painted mine up yet.


Turn 1:
I spread the scouts out into the surrounding corridors but left the Heavy Bolter in the clearing to provide covering fire in the event of an ambush to increase the scout ambush score with a bonus. I realised luckily that I had forgotten to add further tiles after the straight corridor due to line of sight so corrected this here. No corridors needed clearing and when I laid down new there was a run of straights making a very different layout to the hulk's insides. I created three new Lurker stacks as my Lurker actions to increase their presence on the board.


Turn 2:
I opted to advance the scouts as a group down the only corridor without fireball (tumbleweed) tiles to ensure consistent movement. My tactic at this point was to spread as far away as possible from the clearing down one path to force new tiles to be placed and reach the extraction point after exhausting the stack of tiles. I was able to test the D6 control of Lurker ambush and it was strange for them not to attempt to kill the scouts.


Turn 3:
No success with scout fire (although I later realised that I was only rolling one D6 per scout and not 3D6 (6D6 for the Heavy Bolter)). Removal of the corridor tiles is a crazy and cool element to the game. The geography is so fluid and fits perfectly with the idea of an ever-changing hulk.


When scout firing goes right:
When I realised my mistake with D6 rolls in scout firing my first go resulted in 3 6s and 3 Lurkers gone. Boom!


Death Turn:
Up until this point I had thought that it was a mistake to use D6 rolls in my modified rules to determine Lurker ambush, because the scouts were seemingly having a breeze of a time. That said then Death turn happened - two tiles with lurkers and scouts. Both resulted in ambushes. The tile with the heavy Bolter had the scouts roll a 5 with no bonuses and the lurkers were a stack of 6 so they won and one marine was killed. The tile with the sergeant rolled a 3 and with the +1 bonus for his presence and +1 bonus for heavy Bolter covering fire got them a 5, and the lurkers had 5 in the stack so the scouts were driven back to the only tile they could with the other scouts. At the end of the turn there were 4 scouts on the tile so was overstacked and one scout was killed
(EDIT Have just realised that the overstack should not have been a problem because I didn't drive the scouts from the first tile back. If I had done this then the tile would not have been over stacked and I would have only lost 1 scout - an important lesson, but no big deal because I am still learning.)


Sergeant alone:
Two more deaths and the sergeant is all alone


Endgame:
But not for long. He dies in the next turn with only 3 tiles left to lay from the stack which included the extraction point.


Result:
Lurkers win

Analysis:
THAT WAS AWESOME FUN!!!
I have stated at these models for so long and to play a game with them was brilliant. The gameplay was great, I had no idea what was going to happen and I am glad there is an element of randomness to the Lurker side. There is still tactics to play and the random element is not out of the realms of normality, so for the scouts to win a careful consideration of the two possible outcomes is required. No different therefore to a normal game.

I will be playing this a lot more. Oh yes!

Nice one, sounds like a fun and tense game

It was a lot of fun! Think the fact that I took so much time and effort to make the board pieces added a bit to the whole experience too. Think the 2 player rules would be great too, but this works well for me at the moment as a solo game. That said I've now played 3 games with scouts winning twice. Will need to keep an eye on that, if they keep winning the rules may need to be tweaked.

You made the tiles? Nice work man! Love the DIY ethic :-D

Lol! Thanks for the compliment

I know the new version is on the horizon, but have spent loads of money on wargames over the last 12 months but have no one to play with. Therefore this was a way to see if it were playable solo, which it is. Needs tweaking though, scouts just won again

I was uner the impression from my quick read-through of the original rules that you couldn't place a tile where it would block an existing path. Other than that, it looks cracking!

Thanks!

The rules say that when placing tiles you can't intentionally block a path, but because the tiles are drawn at random it will happen from time to time and then block as few as possible.

Tonight's game had me being pretty ruthless with the Lurker moves - I was going full throttle at the scouts, but the Scouts still won. Therefore I'm going to try having the lurkers ambush on a D6 roll of 1 to 4 next time round instead of 1 to 3. Increasing the chance of an ambush from 1 in 2 to 2 in 3 will hopefully increase the difficulty a little. It's also a bit more realistic I think, these beasties are very keen to attack and not Lurk in the shadows after all.