Well, before doors and tokens, I want to get down what I don’t remember of Space Hulk, because I’m finding, in thinking about what I need and player aids and such, that I don’t remember some kind of crucial bits. While I’m not entirely clear on my motives, I’m finding that I’d prefer to remake the game I remember rather than just looking it up, which means I feel free to make things more suited to my preferences, but also means I might be failing to use good solutions the designers have already come up with (especially since there’ve been three editions since the one I remember). I expect I’ll change my mind and check out what the 4th edition rules say once I’ve clarified my own version, but part of what I’m aiming to do is leave myself room for expansion to other factions later (which is part of the reason I wanted the map to sit on a grid–looking at what units might make sense for the Necrons, I saw there was a wraith unit which can move through walls, which offers appealing tactical options). One of the dangers of this approach is that there’s a decent chance I’ll do something and feel clever, only to have simply re-created what the official rules already do.
So, my recollection is that genestealers have no facing and get 6 Action Points, while Terminators have facing and get 4. But there are also Command Points which are wild, and I think were about 2 per round, and only for the marines. Genestealers enter as blips, but I don’t recall how that’s metered–maybe a die roll? My recollection is that which blips are available is random, so the genestealer player might draw decoys or 3-unit blips. I don’t recall how heavy weapons worked other than that they had limited ammo, but my recollection is that melee combat was opposing die rolls, with the genestealers substantially favored (and I think only one unit would die–I don’t think they both could), and that there were melee-focused terminators, both lightning claws and hammers, with chain fists on the regular fellas and a sword with the captain, but that I found the melee-specific dudes little better than anyone else, and the distinctions among them seemed to exist to justify the different models, not to make them particularly better or worse. I think guns jammed when you rolled a 1, but I don’t remember if that was only on overwatch. There were psychic dudes in an expansion, and I think some bigger or more specialized aliens, but I couldn’t say anything about them.
So, plugging those holes:
- I’m inclined to have melee combat allow both players to roll, with genestealers rolling a D10 and terminators rolling a D6, and everybody hitting on 6+, so both units could die, or neither. Maybe Captains and Librarians hit on 5+. For the melee guys, I’m divided on whether to make them all the same, or more different from one another–maybe claws gives you hits on 5+ and advantage, while a shield gives your opponent disadvantage? I don’t know. I just remember feeling like melee combat was kind of boring–probably my intention to make good player aids will make that easier, because what I remember is continually referring to the manual to try and distinguish between claws and hammers. Attacks on Terminators from behind should be virtually certain to succeed; I’m inclined to start with it being an automatic hit, and see if it needs a die roll.
- Bolters have a moderate range (I’ll try 8), and hit on 4+ on a single die.
- I’m thinking the flamers will start with a number of tokens representing both ammunition and flames. They’ll be able to place these tokens down in a line starting from a space in front of them up to their max range (8 spaces sounds good, for consistency). So, if they only need to flame the space right in front of them, they can conserve fuel. 20 seems like a good number of fuel to start with.
- Similarly, I’d like to let the chain gun heavy weapon give players a simple decision. I’m thinking you can only fire it once per turn, but for each AP you spend to fire, you get two dice, which hit on 4+ as normal. So if you’re facing a whole column of genestealers, you can spin that gun up and absolutely chew through them. I like the idea of having an additional rule that if you ever roll two 1s, the gun jams, but it feels kind of unnecessary and clunky; the fire-once-per-turn rule seems like it does a pretty good job of making the chain gun feel unwieldy enough to be kind of a pain but powerful enough to be worth it.
- Command Points always bugged me, thematically. I might add something where the captain can spend their last AP to give somebody else a short turn of 2APs, which would both feel a bit more connected to the act of command as a way of chivvying people along, and also yield some tactical choices. And I kind of like the idea that this would be a pretty good deal, so the captain would just be haranguing his forces every turn, which would simultaneously make him seem like someone you want to protect, but also resent.
- I’m thinking you’ll be able to take a stack of overwatch for each AP spent, and fire once per stack.
