Return to Space Hulk Revisited

[Brother Tyler]

Kill Team as a separate "game" was originally part of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook in the 4th edition of the game, published in 2004. That version was based on a special scenario for the 3rd edition of the game in which Gav Thorpe's Last Chancers were featured. The original (WH40K) Kill Team was somewhat different from what we have had for the last three editions of the game, but the Joint Ops Mission Pack in the current edition of the game evokes some of the same concepts.

 

Switching gears, the Space Hulk boardgame was originally published in 1989, introducing players to the Adeptus Astartes Terminators, Genestealers, and space hulks. The game was fantastic, earning the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Boardgame in 1989, with the Deathwing expansion receiving the same award in 1990. A 2nd edition of the game was published in 1996. The game fell into the limbo of being not supported by Game Workshop, though it remained beloved by fans.

 

Cut to 2005 and Games Workshop catered to fans of the Space Hulk game by presenting the Return to Space Hulk rules/guidelines via the web, using the Kill Team rules as a framework.

 

 

 

Players were thrilled. And I had the presence of mind to save everything Games Workshop gave us for this offering since I was worried about it later disappearing (spoiler: it did).

 

Of course, Games Workshop later gave us the fantastic 3rd edition of the Space Hulk game in 2009, followed by a 4th edition in 2014 (I consider it edition 3.5, but that's just me being crotchety). The Space Hulk game hasn't received official support from Games Workshop in the time since, however, so it occurred to me that those hobbyists unfortunate enough to not have access to any edition might enjoy using the latest Kill Team rules to sort of play something kind of but not really like it.

 

And then Games Workshop decided to release the Space Marine Heroes Blood Angels [Terminators] as the made to order Heroes of the First Company. While lacking a Terminator Librarian and the appropriate number of Terminators armed solely with power fists and storm bolters, this offering seemed like a great way for hobbyists to get ten Terminators (they would just need a few more power fist/storm bolter Terminators and a box or two of Genestealers). I have the Rise of the Orks game and a few of these Terminator models are in there, and I think they are great as an entry. Naturally, I forked over my hard-earned money for a set.

 

 

So I've begun yet another project. It's still very much a work in progress, but I figured I'd leave this here as a teaser...

 

 

No, nothing on that "card" is final. And no, players won't need to buy the Heroes of the First Company to use these rules (if/when I ever get them finished). I figure that anyone that already has the Space Hulk game doesn't need this, so I'm crafting this around players that don't have the Space Hulk game. I expect to use the Gallowdark terrain (I guess it's a good thing I created the Gallowdark Map Workbook ). This is currently envisioned as a Mission Pack for Kill Team - standard Kill Team rules with a few Space Hulkish things added on to evoke the older game.

 

And for those that have their own Terminator models, I'll probably present image-less datacards for the Terminators so you can substitute your own, just for the cool factor.

 

More to come...

[Brother Tyler]

A work in progress...

 

[Brother Tyler]

If you look closely at the Genestealer datacard above, it will be fairly obvious that I used the Patriarch (from the Brood Brothers team) as a guide. Though I removed the Mind Control portion of the Monster rule, I left Into Shadow as a sort of note to explore whether or not that action should be incorporated into the Genestealer rules for this mission pack. The Patriarch will be modified into the Broodlord, of course.

 

More importantly, I've been considering how to emulate [aspects of] the Space Hulk game into this Kill Team mission pack. Things will, naturally, work differently, but I think it's important to get some things that evoke the feel of Space Hulk into this mission pack else there's no real point (otherwise, I could just create team rules for Genestealers and Terminators and call it a day). Just as the Lieutenant Titus Mission Pack emulates a scenario from the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 video game, including modifications to the Kill Team game rules, this mission pack will include its own modifications to the Kill Team rules to emulate Space Hulk. I hope to include more than one scenario, however.

 

So there are three things I've keyed on as essential to emulating Space Hulk in Kill Team:

• Blips!
• Overwatch (and Guard, I suppose)
• Command Points

Yes, there are many other great things about the game, and if there are any that you think are essential but which I haven't named, please let me know in the discussion.

 

I'm probably going to change the Space Marines' datasheets to include APL and Move, for reasons explained below.

 

Blips!

If you've never played Space Hulk, blips were a mechanism by which the exact numbers of the Genestealers were unknown, with blip counters representing some number of the gribblies until the Terminators had line of sight to them, at which point they were flipped over and replaced with the indicated number of Genestealer models. If you've ever seen the movie Aliens (and shame on you if you haven't), think about the motion trackers that the Colonial Marines used, especially in the defense of the operations center. Working under the premise that people playing this mission pack don't need to have any edition of the Space Hulk game, blips will have to be a downloadable counters file.

 

Overwatch (and Guard)

Models on overwatch can shoot at enemies in their line of sight, while models on guard are better prepared for melee (where the Genestealers excel, so Terminators likely to be in melee with their xenos opponents are slightly less likely to die). This will probably be a special action that certain Terminator operatives can perform, allowing them to perform Shoot actions (and Attack actions, for Guard) if any enemy operatives move through their line of sight. The Visible rule in Kill Team sort of covers aspects of line of sight, but Terminators in Space Hulk only have line of sight in a 90^o arc to their front. I'm on the fence about importing this limitation into the mission pack - there are very strong arguments for it from an emulation standpoint, but arguments against it from a simplicity standpoint (i.e., not making the rules too different from standard Kill Team rules).

 

Command Points

This mechanism allowed the Terminator player in Space Hulk to give models extra actions, with the rules for Sergeants and Captains (back in older editions) giving the possibility of having more Command Points. Basically, The Terminator player could have 1-6 Command Points each turn, drawn at random. Command Points enabled the Terminator player to give Terminators extra actions - and these were vital for their success. There are various options for representing Command Points in a Space Hulk mission pack. The first, of course, is to copy the concept as much as possible. Another is to allow a specified number of extra actions each turning point, possibly limiting them to one per operative (i.e., the Terminators have, say, 3 extra actions each turning point, but each operative may only perform up to 1 extra action). Yet another is to allow extra actions by the leaders present on the board - a Sergeant may grant 1 extra action while a Captain may grant 2 extra actions. And there may be other methods. It will be difficult to determine a proper way to do this without playtesting, however.

 

As far as terrain goes, while the Gallowdark terrain seems like the obvious choice, I'm undecided about whether to limit the amount of terrain to that which came in one of the Kill Team boxes set in that space hulk (if I recall correctly, that would limit players to one game board and less terrain), or to simply use the Boarding Actions terrain set (basically, two game boards and more terrain). I'm interested in anyone's thoughts on this. If I have time, I'll probably also include modified maps for those of us that have any of the Space Hulk sets, but that will be an extra addition.