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OK, I've played a lot of 1E before. Got 3E through at last today.

Played Mission 4 with my son (who's 9, and has played a couple of games of 1E before). He insisted on playing Genestealers as usual. Would have preferred to play Mission 1... but that part of my Mission Book is misprinted. Mission 2 would have been OK, except that I couldn't find any rules in 3E for the Space Marines taking control of areas and/or sealing off Genestealer entry points, which seemed to be 1 of the victory conditions. Mission 3 was misprinted, like 1...

Mission 4 is an old favourite -- 2 termie squads fighting past hordes of stealers to launch a couple of (originally Flamer) heavy weapon hits on rooms that had captured Techmarines in, so that the Stealers couldn't nick the Techies' genetic material.

Now, it could be my elite SH skills... or the fact that my opponent was only 9... but this seemed way too easy -- a lot easier than 1E. Marines are very slightly more effective than they used to be (being able to go *back* onto Overwatch after clearing a jam, being able to get Sustained Fire bonuses on Overwatch, Flamers now damaging surviving stealers if they move while the flame's still there, and the chance to re-pick Command Points if you have Sarge still alive, all made slight but significant differences).

Anyway -- I won the mission with all 10 guys still alive, and with only my TH/SS Sarge having ever been in CC with Stealers (he beat them up repeatedly). I'd have been very happy with a win in Space Hulk -- I always am, as the Marine player. But a win with all my men surviving just seemed to indicate that the game is no longer slightly weighted in the Stealers' favour, but in the Marines' -- which would make me very sad. Part of the fun used to be just how difficult it was for the Marines to ever snatch a victory.

It's too early to tell for certain, of course, but I've *NEVER* won a 1E game that easily -- and I was giving my son plenty of tactical advice on Stealer play, so it's not just down to ability, I don't think. We're going to try the same mission tomorrow with me as Stealers, and see how that plays out.

Edit -- just spotted that we'd been playing it slightly wrongly... which may invalidate this review... not too much though, I hope.

Ian Sturrock wrote:OK, I've played a lot of 1E before. Got 3E through at last today.

Mission 2 would have been OK, except that I couldn't find any rules in 3E for the Space Marines taking control of areas and/or sealing off Genestealer entry points, which seemed to be 1 of the victory conditions.

Sorry to hear about your misprinted rules, there isn't an enormous number of missions to start with without printing errors.

The rule for stopping genestealers from entering the board is simply that a Genestealer MUST lurk if a space marine is within 6 spaces of an entry point, so in mission two one way for space marines to win is to put a marine in close proximity to every entry point. Given that the Genestealers take out their "2" blips before the start of the game and that they can only use each blip once, the other way for a space marine player to win is to kill every genestealer before they can kill you.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, I spotted that rule, but the mission seemed to imply that the entries had to be permanently closed. I remembered in 1E there was a way to do that (building bulkheads, or something?).

My concern right now is that the slight tweaks in the Marines' favour, though they probably balance things out evenly at beginner to intermediate levels of play, are likely to really skew game balance in the Marines' favour at higher levels of play.

The problem arises because the learning curve for Marine player skill is both steep and very high, compared to that for Genestealer player skill. Making the optimal tactical & strategic decisions as Marines requires a *LOT* of experience, whereas there's not that much difference in skill between an intermediately skilled Stealer player and a highly skilled one. So, I suspect that while the game balance might mean that the win/loss ratio between Marines/Stealers is (say) 30/70 for beginners, and hits a 50/50 "sweet spot" at intermediate levels of play (though personally I'd prefer the game balanced a little more towards Stealers even at that level -- it's an important part of the game's atmosphere), it's likely to be 70/30 at advanced levels. I could be wrong. Won't know for certain till I go up against my old opponent John next month, and play a stack of games.

Well I haven't played first edition but I have played a fair bit of the Space Hulk game that Teardown used to have as freeware, and that was very similar. I must agree, overwatch is much better than it was, and it was already crucial.
From my very limited experience commanding the genestealers it seemed that they need a lot more restraint to play than I had thought. My opponent just fed me genestealers to gun down constantly with overwatch but I found it was often more effective to wait for the marines to come to the stealers. But as you say that is probably the difference between beginner and intermediate skill level. As far as the game being balanced I can't really comment with so few games under my belt but I would say that it is much more difficult to begin with Space Marines than to begin with stealers.

I've played 6 games with my friends so far, and we've only managed to get 1 space marine win. (That was in the 1st mission)

Mind you, we haven't got 20 years of experience, but we know how the game works.

Dunno if we're just better 'stealer players or something, hehe

Quick edit: Forgot to mention that the space marine player who won, got extremely lucky and never received less than 4 CPs per turn

Hi guys, have also played first games of space hulk, most enjoyable!!

I have only one question really, some slightly ambiguous wording left my opponent and I at some indecision...

command points; ok so I get that you draw a random counter as the SM player, and that this is placed face down on the '0' and moved by the GS player when command points are used, up to the maximum number of command points. However, does this counter get reset every turn? (e.g. I pick a '3' pointer, do I get a potential '3' command points every turn) or is it 3 command points 'total' to last the entire game?

It doesn't really say for definate (unlike every other lovely simple rule.

If you read the section on Mission Status Phase, it says that the marine player puts his token back in the pot. (Pg18 right hand side) And in the section on the Command Phase it mentions drawing it (Pg 9 bold bit at the top).

Long story short, you draw one at the start of the turn, and throw it back at the end. So it's the number you have for that particualr turn.

Hope that helps

You get a new number of command points at the start of the marine turn (barring any mission specific rules).

One of the core aspects of the game is that every turn the marines get a limited number of command points, but the genestealer player doesn't know how much.

AHA! (I thought that was the case ) would have been nice if this had been made clear!

I though things were a little unwinnable for the marines!

Ian Sturrock wrote:Yeah, I spotted that rule, but the mission seemed to imply that the entries had to be permanently closed. I remembered in 1E there was a way to do that (building bulkheads, or something?).

If you read the mission special rules for the second mission it says that Genestealers cannot lurk. So if you have a Terminator within 6 squares of an entry area Genestealers and blips cannot be placed so that they are lurking.

So the way to win in the second mission is to either wipeout all Genestealers or have a Terminator within 6 squares of both entry point areas.

At least that is how I remember it when me and my son played the other day. I managed to stop the Genestealers from coming in on one side of the map but got overrun on the other side.

I've played a couple games and I can tell you, its still stacked against the marines

we played mission one twice (switching sides). Me as marines, I took a tactical approach, setting rear guards and moving as fast as I could. However, by the time I got the top door open my opponent already had around 9 genestealers in the hallway... effectively blocking it off. Even after overwatch, he kept pumping more into the hallway. Eventually he got me into CC and wiped out my rear guard and top guard, swarming in for the win.

Second game, my opponent rolled insane and picked all 5's for his command points, ensuring he was moving quickly. However, he made a few mistakes, like getting his flamer to the front and not being able to back out. After making a mad dash for the final door, I got him cornered and took out the flamer for the win.

The main issue I've found is that if your opponent floods hallways its almost impossible to get by. Even with a flamer they can constantly pump more and more out!

I've played half a dozen or so games now, and it still seems to be in favour of the marines, so long as the marine player is very competent. The stealer player has way, way more to fear from overwatch now.

I can't recall, but could Genestealers open doors in the previous editions? I know they could destroy them, but could they open them?

IIRC they and Blips could open & close doors, yes.

Ian Sturrock wrote:I've played half a dozen or so games now, and it still seems to be in favour of the marines, so long as the marine player is very competent. The stealer player has way, way more to fear from overwatch now.

I agree that Overwatch is definitely much more deadly, which is why I think they limited sustained fire from going below a 5+ like it could in 1st edition. Essentially your marines are much better at 'holding ground' in the Stealer's turn then they were in 1st edition, but they aren't quite as reliable in their own turn, which makes making big pushes towards objectives harder.

Have you played games with your son playing the marines? Because if you can beat him soundly when *you're* playing the Stealers on the same missions that you dominated him playing Marines then you know that it is your skill that is winning the games, not an imbalance between the marines and stealers.


And another thing to point out: Nothing in the game rules says that the missions are supposed to be perfectly balanced so that the marines win 50% of the time and the stealers win 50% of the time. They recommend that both players take turns playing the SAME mission from both sides and whomever completes the mission in a quicker amount of turns 'wins'.

The game balance is significantly affected by the luck of the draw in getting command points or high value blips.

From what I remember of 1e, the main Genie tactic was to mass out of sight, then swarm in such numbers that the SMs found it hard to gun down everything before they could get into contact. Apart from tactical placement, there wasn't a lot of skill involved. All the Genies were identical and had only one combat mode.

Assuming competent play, the Genie player relied on luck (his good or the SM's bad) or the SM player's mistakes.

I would say that its actually very balanced. A competent genestealer player will use the superior manouverability and agility of the GS's to flank the SM's and batter them in H2H. The competent marine player will do everything that they can to avoid this. I think its somewhat disingenuous to suggest that either side is just relying on luck to win at this game. Its far better balanced than that.

Then again I am biased Man I frikkin love me my Space Hulk!

Played first two games of NuHulk yesterday. Used the first mission.

First time around the Marines didn't make it past the first 'corner' as my 'Stealers ate the Heavy Flamer guy. Second game they almost made it down to the room, but I had amassed enough Genestealers to wipe them out quickly.

Then spent all of today playing part of our ongoing Warhammer Quest campaign, so didn't play any more Hulk.

Our experience so far has been "wow, its a lot harder for the marines than the stealers" lol.

I've been doing some statistical analysis of just how much more effective Overwatch is now, and it seems like as long as the Stealers have to go at least 3 squares under fire, and the Marine keeps at least 1 CP for undoing jams, the Stealer has very little hope of getting to the Marine for CC -- even if he has (say) 3 or 4 Stealers round the corner to waste on running forward and hoping to be the one that survives. Under 1E rules, it was more like 5 squares -- the Marine knew that if he only had 4 squares' worth of Overwatch, he was taking a big risk, especially if he didn't have at least 2 or 3 CP (for unjamming and then for shooting).

I do think that the 2nd pick of CPs lets the Marine player get reliably higher numbers too -- by always re-picking when you get a 1 or 2, but sticking at 3+, or by always picking at 1-3, but sticking at 4+, your average CP number is over 4.

Anyway -- have played about 6 missions now, with my son playing Marines about half the time, and the Marines have only lost once so far, with me playing them (on one of the missions where you roll a die at the end & the Stealer player has to roll higher than the number of Marines who escaped -- 4 escaped, and he rolled a 5). I've given him tactical advice when he's been the Marines, but have played to win as Stealers, nevertheless.