Need Help Painting Space Crusade

[Baylor_OgreBane]

Hey guys.

I side with kk on this. But each to their own.

Orange shading for yellow was how I first learnt to paint yellow, over a base of elf flesh. They looked like wotsit marines (Wotsits, probably being a UK cultural reference)

Jackboy be careful, all the new GW gumph completely re-writes each of the chapters and colour schemes. (no black and white checkers on marines for starters)
Your best bet would be to pick up some old white dwarfs on ebay from the early-mid 90's. There was a series of background book released on the different marine chapters with all the different colour schemes depending on rank and so on for each chapter and their sub chapters called "Index Astartes" I would try looking for those book if you really want to get it all correct.
They might even be a few PDF copies flying about somewhere, I am sure I have seen one or two, as they are so old and irrelevant to modern 40k GW don't bother with them.

[slev]

actually, old colour schemes and weapons have been retconned to be *outdated* colour schemes and weapons, so you should be fine regardless.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I never played Space Crusade although I do still play Space Hulk (2nd Edition) from time to time, have I lost out on another gem?

[Anderas]

Space Crusade has a number of Problems in the gameplay and Mission design.

I would say.... no you didn't miss anything.

If you want to try it, play it with two Space Marine Groups only. The balancing basically does the opposite it should be doing. For one Group it is too difficult, for three groups it is too easy. Play it with two Groups then it works more or less.

Draw the first encounter card after the Marine Player took the second turn, not earlier.

I was trying to fix the problems two years long but it didn't solve. Then I threw away the original system and invented my own, with built in balance from the first brick and new play cards all along. That promises to work, but it was so much work that I never finished...

[Goblin-King]

I never played Space Crusade although I do still play Space Hulk (2nd Edition) from time to time, have I lost out on another gem?

I would say.... no you didn't miss anything.

Yes you ARE missing out! It's every bit as fun as HeroQuest! Don't listen to Andreas!

Space Crusade has a number of Problems in the gameplay and Mission design.

True, but in my opinion nothing gamebreaking. HeroQuest has lots of flaws too after all.
Fixing SC is like fixing HQ. You can try or you can just play the game for what it is.
We always have a blast when we pull out SC... (Been a while though because the minis has been on the bench)

The only real problem is the scoring system which awards both the marine- and alien players points for each kill and for completing certain objectives).
This leads to a lot of technical wins to the alien player. It's like, if the three marine squads kills an equal amount (of a limited amount of monsters) the aliens probably wins.
It would be better if one squad killed a whole lot to beat the alien score. But this all happens after the game. It doesn't take away from how fun the actual gameplay is.

[Jackyboy]

@ KK - I assumed that the rant wasn't meant in any personal way to me, don't worry buddy! And as for the way that guy was regarding Orange wash over Yellow... what an idiot! I most certainly wasn't looking for exact colours the way GW states, I was more looking for paint schemes others have done so I could get some ideas BUT I would like the symbols and trim to be painted the way the Chapter is intended (I am like Goblin King here and like reading the background guff ) Also thanks for the mixing tips I will give it a go!

As for giving Space Crusade a try - Most definitely!!! There are problems with it but I am very much looking forward to getting my figures painted, High res boards printed up and playing around with homebrew rules (try to make it a little more Advanced Space Crusade like)

Regarding the points scheme. Perhaps the Marines could add all their points together to fight the alien player; with the blips giving a little less and maybe adding extra reinforcements in??? Just an idea.

[Anderas]

I love Space Crusade. Don't get me wrong here.

The Problem is not the concept. I love to play the concept even with the flawed rules.
I even love big parts of the flawed rules, that's why i tried to keep them two years.

The problem is that certain things just don't work.
Like the event card deck for a single marine squad: It's enough to play the Event Card Deck against a single Marine Squad, you will kill everybody. The event card deck is still hard for 2 Squads, but supersoft for 3 squads, because you need a lot less turns with three squads. Inverse Balancing. You can reduce the effect by placing as many Genestealers as there are Commanders, one for each squad.
Then, the amount of Monsters for a three squad game is not sufficient. Inverse Balancing from the Event Card Deck plus not enough Monsters for three squads. That's why i say, best case you play with two marine squads, then it works, mostly.

Plus, most of the missions are just go in and kill. Real objectives would be better, but are rare.



The most obvious failures can be corrected if you reduce the commanders to 3 BP and hand out 3 medikits to each Squad, each with the text: "Heal immediately one BP of one of your Marines".
That way the total number of Body Points in the Squad stays the same, but it is less Commanderquest because you can save a heavy weapon one time or two.

[Jackyboy]

The most obvious failures can be corrected if you reduce the commanders to 3 BP and hand out 3 medikits to each Squad, each with the text: "Heal immediately one BP of one of your Marines".
That way the total number of Body Points in the Squad stays the same, but it is less Commanderquest because you can save a heavy weapon one time or two.

A very good idea! I will try that the next game I play. hahaha CommanderQuest... love it!

Maybe when you play a campaign there should be an amount of blips used when 1 marine player is playing, an amount when 2 marine players are playing and finally another amount of blips to use when 3 marine players are playing...

[Goblin-King]

Here we go! Photo time!
I've included a couple of tyranid models which aren't really SC as such, but they are bought and painted to be used somehow.
The colors are a little washed out, but I'm getting too old to apologize for poor photos

[cornixt]

None of these style games from that period are very good at balancing the number of players with the difficulty. A simple solution is the Imperial Assault version where you give extra turns to the heroes so that there is always the same number of player turns against the evil player turn.