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After watching the various play-through and review vids, I pre-ordered the game. I am not looking for an evenly matched skirmish out of an "Ameritrash" style board game. That is more the province of miniatures gaming IMO. Lost Patrol is thematically a game about standing firm in a hopeless situation. If the Scout's had better chances, I think most people would win once and forget it. There aren't enough RPG-elements to otherwise make multiple playthroughs appealing. But while the game does lean heavily on dice rolling, that just emphasizes how crucial those tactical choices the Scouts player does have actually are.

For those who want to make it more forgiving, try reducing the Genestealer assault value from 2 to 1 (and maybe use fully-fledged Marine figures). Or roll a D6 for each Scout on the assaulted tile. Or have Scouts shooting at Genestealers kill on 4+. I doubt the published rules include difficulty adjustment as none of the reviews I have seen mention them even though every review mentions how steep a climb the Scouts have. The real problem I see with this game is it is way too simple for board gamers to justify the price for them.

 Panic wrote:

This game has been on BBG for years with various alternative rule sets.
Most with favourable comments !
panic....

Sounds good - I'll download the alternate rules from BGG and buy the game for a basic set of rules + components.

From reading the WD walkthrough and some online stuff, it appears the central balance of the game is speed.
You have to work through 30 tiles in order for the scout player to win.
It's much, much faster to do this if you split your squad up, but a solo scout vs a stealer is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Teams of 2 with hvy bolter support is far more comfortable, but your progress is far slower meaning you'll have more 'stealers to deal with overall.

The other factor the Scout player can control is tile removal. Any tile to which your Scouts do not have LOS, measured from any tile within two moves from the tile on which they are standing (whether or not the Scout could actually move there), get removed - and any genestealers standing on such a tile are also removed.

Therefore another way to adjust the difficulty is to change the LOS measurement from 2 to 1 tile.

RoperPG wrote:
From reading the WD walkthrough and some online stuff, it appears the central balance of the game is speed.
You have to work through 30 tiles in order for the scout player to win.
It's much, much faster to do this if you split your squad up, but a solo scout vs a stealer is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Teams of 2 with hvy bolter support is far more comfortable, but your progress is far slower meaning you'll have more 'stealers to deal with overall.

My understanding is that if you split up and your teams lose cohesion during the tile removal phase (which is inevitable), then the scout player must choose one group to keep and the other is lost.

 Manchu wrote:
The other factor the Scout player can control is tile removal. Any tile to which your Scouts do not have LOS, measured from any tile within two moves from the tile on which they are standing (whether or not the Scout could actually move there), get removed - and any genestealers standing on such a tile are also removed.

Therefore another way to adjust the difficulty is to change the LOS measurement from 2 to 1 tile.

I'd like to try this. The scout movement and tile removal is the most interesting g part of the game to me, so this might be a good way to bring that to the fore.

This feels relevant :

Yeah,
Decided I'm going to buy and paint up the game

Started a little blog here.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/693745.page

Panic...

Don't tell me it's an official GW image.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Don't tell me it's an official GW image.

Of course it is. Rather than admit they made an unplayable game, they just changed the goal of the game.

And here I thought they were making a joke.

yeah,
Brilliant!
I never thought about it like that!


I flicked through the rules and it is indeed a game rigged for the marines to lose!
There is no easy mode.


Marines can do two actions per turn. move then shoot, shoot then move... or move twice or shoot twice.
Normal guys fire once per action (roll one die) and the heavy bolter fires twice per action (rolls two dice)
So if all marines don't move and stand their ground and fire twice they roll 12 dice hitting on 6's killing 2 genestealers per turn average.
Genestealers can spawn 3 per turn... so I guess staying still won't work!

Genestealer HtH combat value is equal to how many on the tile x2
2, 4 or 6.

Marines HtH combat value is D6
+1 if sergeant
+1 supported by heavy bolter.

So if 3 genestealers attack They have a 6, the best odds of not dying marines can hope for is 50/50!
A sergeant with a buddy backed up. needs a 4+ not to die!

There is also a -1 modifier if a marine is alone...
so 3 genestealers on a lone marine is a auto win for stealers... which I guess makes sense.

So keep moving or you die!
But if you don't kill genestealers they will gang up on you and you die...

Also as soon as the drop pod is revealed the genestealer player can put three genestealers on it!
Even if the marine player has all this guys left alive, statistically he won't be able to kill all three genestealers!
it's a game i don't think anyone will ever win!

I will be putting my guys together soon

Panic...

yeah,
I picked up the boxed game at my local FLGs
WarBoar £28 http://www.warboargames.co.uk

Rule book is only 6 pages.
Tiles are great!
Four sheets of card, no duplicate tiles


Standard Combat SM Scouts and Genestealers
In red and purple plastic.


Panic...

Thanks for the photos, Panic, are the tiles as thick as the SH/BaC/EF tiles?

And if you get bored in the jungle you could try out the Alien Ship tiles made for another game of patrolling... ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63011/patrol-lost )

I played several rounds of it tonight. I really liked it. It's fast, which is nice. I think if you want to make it more balanced, reducing the Genestealers to two actions and allowing shooting to hit on a 4 or 5 helps as well. I think mixing the dropship tile in the final 10 tiles adds a nice bit of extra randomness to the tile placement. I don't quit like always knowing where the dropship tile is.

Yup. Gonna get this. Looks fun. Plus, I have no scouts and this could fix that. There couldn't be any harm in painting them green.

I would have picked this up if it had some unique miniatures.

Honestly, it works for me. Then again, as before, I have no scouts. Also my friend wants to start Tyranids so win/win, really.

yeah,
Gonna play a few games as per the rules and see how that goes.

After that I think I'll make some wargear cards that increase the scouts chances and the scout gets one or two at the start of the game.

Extra munitions - Marines roll +1 dice when shooting and defending.
Shotgun/pistol 2 dice
Heavy Bolter 3 dice
2 dice in Close Combat.

Hell Fire rounds - Kills on a 5+

Auspex - The Marines move action can moves up to two squares.

Med Kit - All marines have 2 wounds

I'm sure i can think of others.

Panic...

zeromaeus wrote:
Honestly, it works for me. Then again, as before, I have no scouts. Also my friend wants to start Tyranids so win/win, really.

Starting Tyranids with Genestealers? Oh he is going to be quitting really soon.

Actually, I might be in the minority here, but I'm interested in picking it up because I have some friends that like board games and this could be a nice addition to our usual items. Anyone actually played it yet? How is it?

Davor wrote:

zeromaeus wrote:
Honestly, it works for me. Then again, as before, I have no scouts. Also my friend wants to start Tyranids so win/win, really.

Starting Tyranids with Genestealers? Oh he is going to be quitting really soon.

You could say the same of 90+% of the book really. We're down to Flyrants Mawlocs and Lictors at this point.

Played it much over this weekend.

But you must only play with good friends.

Cause when by the skin of your teeth you make it to the last few cards before the dropship, and your opponent / "friend" makes the path loop around back to your starting point; you'll either:

A. Have a good chuckle together, or;

B. Burn everything

Played through about a dozen games with my son, and the closest either of us got to the escape pod/dropship was 7 tiles away. Also, I just realized there was almost no effort put into this game release. No new mini sculpts, no new rules (that I can see) other than replacing the lurker tokens with actual genestealer models...even the tile art is exactly the same as the original from the early 90s. Would have been nice if the tiles had that durable coating that FFG uses on their card tokens...these seem like they will wear out/scratch more quickly.

Davor wrote:

zeromaeus wrote:
Honestly, it works for me. Then again, as before, I have no scouts. Also my friend wants to start Tyranids so win/win, really.

Starting Tyranids with Genestealers? Oh he is going to be quitting really soon.

Nah. He knows they're not a good faction in the meta. He just likes tyranids. Not everything is about winning.

zeromaeus wrote:

Davor wrote:

zeromaeus wrote:
Honestly, it works for me. Then again, as before, I have no scouts. Also my friend wants to start Tyranids so win/win, really.

Starting Tyranids with Genestealers? Oh he is going to be quitting really soon.

Nah. He knows they're not a good faction in the meta. He just likes tyranids. Not everything is about winning.

I said that as a joke hence the emicon (or what ever they are called.) But that is great he is going to start them. I play them and Dark Angels before 5th edition. So yes I perfectly know about playing and not winning.

Tried the game out in store today. Ran through it as both the scouts and the stealers. My first impressions are that it's easy to pick up, fast and fun. But boy is it hard to win as the scouts. I don't think that's necessarily a problem though, and I don't think it would be hard to alter it to make it easier if you wanted to. Kill on a 4+ or a 5+ for example. It's not rocket science.

Could also be fun to see how a ten man squad of Catachan jungle fighters managed to get through the jungle too, just use sergeant Harker as the heavy bolter!

zeromaeus wrote:

Davor wrote:

zeromaeus wrote:
Honestly, it works for me. Then again, as before, I have no scouts. Also my friend wants to start Tyranids so win/win, really.

Starting Tyranids with Genestealers? Oh he is going to be quitting really soon.

...Not everything is about winning.

Our friendship is perilously close to being at an end, Sir.