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| Image by NIKOLAUS INGENERI |
We decided to go back and replay our custom campaign using the rules we created or modified during our play since we started years ago.
Where It Started
I started playing Space Hulk at my FLGS with my friend, Ron, in the fall of 2014. Ron and I had played normal games of 40k on and off for quite some time before that. We tended to favor games involving low numbers of models that were fast vs. the cumbersome high point games that took hours to play (and a long time to set up and tear down). So the Space Hulk setting, ease of play and the use of a handful of models was an instant win for me (4th edition was my first introduction to the game while Ron had played earlier versions). After a few games, I bought the boxed set for Christmas and since that purchase, I can count on 1 hand how many times I have played an actual game of 40k as I have almost exclusively played Space Hulk since then.
Our First Campaign
After playing a random games either from the 4th edition mission book or from other sources, we decided to play the 16 missions from start to end and keep track of the results of each mission. Each of us would play each mission as the Space Marine player and as the Genestealer player and record the number of Marines and Genestealers killed and keep a running total over the whole campaign.
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| Mission results from Games Workshop Space Hulk 4th Edition. (pdf version) |
The effort took us nearly a year to complete and Ron cleaned my clock in total wins. After our sessions, my family just stopped asking who won! But it was great fun win or lose.
What Came Next
Somewhere during this, we started questioning some of the rules as written. So our game sessions began to include not just playing the mission at hand but discussions over does this rule make sense or not. A lot of the changes were born out of trying to make what we felt was a more balanced game or something we thought made more sense than as written. The goal for our games is to create a certain level of stress (in a good way), mainly for the Marine player and eliminate (mostly) the ability to "game the system" from which there is a definite winning outcome each time it is played. After a couple of years of doing this, our rules set is pretty tight. Since they have evolved over time, we decided to start over with our custom campaign using our current rules and see how they play out. Each mission we have created has been play tested over and over by us before it gets the final "stamp of approval" and we know each mission is winnable by the Marine player. But the mission designs, especially the first few, didn't have our rule changes in mind when they were created. So....
A Pretty Big Difference
So we played mission 1 yesterday and discovered that our current rules do make a difference. Neither of us playing the Marines made it to the objective but we do think it is still winnable so we are going to give it another go here in the near future. The games were definitely fun so we didn't lose that (the most important part) as far we are concerned. Here are some photos from our game (I play Salamanders and Ron plays Deathwing).
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| Mission 1 - Deploy the Probe |
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| Clearing a choke point |
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| Everything goes to crap from here. Don't think we're going to make it boys! |
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| Ron's Deathwing at the same choke point. |
- My write up on mission creation can be found here.
- Ron posted an excellent article on the mechanics behind our rule changes here.
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