Space Crusade house rules (inc Dark Angels and Space Wolves)

[Gold Bearer]

Dark Angels

Orders: Move it, Fire, Heavy Weapon, Photon Grenades (Although I always thought this should be an equipment card.)
Equipment: Heavy Weapon Enhancers (Fire with 2 red + 1 white), Grenade Launcher (For the commander which can be fired instead of the Storm Bolter, one of each dice, fires like Missile Launcher accept red dice on surrounding squares and white dice on 16 surrounding that.), Light Combiweapon (Storm Bolter can be used as Light Flamer possibly with smaller area of effect but definitely using one of each dice.), + the other five that they all have. Slow but powerful.

New commander weapon: Power Maul/Storm Bolter (One of each dice for shooting and hand-to-hand.)
New heavy weapon: Flamer (From Voyage Beyond but possibly with bigger area of effect.)
Blood Angles don't get Plasma Gun, Imperial Fists don't get Flamer, Ultra Marines don't get Assault Cannon, Dark Angles don't get Missile Launcher.

Prototype Androids: Move: 6, Armour: 3, rest the same. Androids are too weak in my opinion. When an android appears roll a white dice. On a 0 it's a normal one, 1 or 2 it's a prototype. You could turn the base up side down to show this.

Dreadnoughts can fire twice at the same target with their twin bolters.

Another change that would be interesting is to allow up to 8 honour bages and give them one equipment card for each. The way it is now the choices are pretty much set. Why would an Imperial Fist commander have anything other than a heavy bolter for example?

[Goblin-King]

Way too few SC threads!

I like how you introduce a new HW and make one of each unavailable to the different squads. Gives a little more flavor to which squad you choose.
I'm not sure how you imagine the flamer to work though.

Personally I don't think there's reason to tweak the androids. I've never heard anyone say "Phew! It's just an android".

If anything I think some tweaks to the cards would be in order. Make the lame cards more useful and nerf the must-have ones.
Not sure how to go about this though...

[Gold Bearer]

You've never played Voyage Beyond then. The flamer basically fires in a triangle shape. It gets the square in front, the three in front of that, then three again I think, then five, but only affects squares in the marines line of sight. I wrote this more with the computer game in mind to be honest. in my opinion Hero Quest is a much better board game than Space Crusade but SC was a much better computer game. It worked really well. I was disappointed they never did a Mission Dreadnought expansion.

The Android thing isn't about game play at all. I just always thought they looked like they should be faster and definitely tougher. If there's an extra marine chapter then the enemies will need beefing up. Chaos commanders should have six life points as well. I never understood why they didn't give chaos marines one of each heavy weapon and one bolter. I also think the commander would have been better of with the bolt gun and power axe combination to make him a bit different from the marines.

I'm not sure if these rules for the new chapter fit with the dark angles or not. I don't know much about it. I just though red, yellow, blue...green.

[Goblin-King]

Only played the board game...

Well, since you have no deeper intentions with Dark Angles beyond basic color scheme, you could go with Salamanders instead.

They are close associated with fire, so your introduction of the flamer goes kinda hand in hand with that. Just an idea
The flamer is a cone? Got'cha. Why don't you just use the pattern and LoS rules from the Tarantula? I think I would just make it 3 "lines". 1, 3, 5. That's a huge area already when you compare it to the other heavies.
You don't want the squad without a flamer to have a disadvantage after all. Is it 2 red dice like the others?

You want to play with 4 marine squads, not just have an alternative for one of the three? Yes, then you need some more power. One thing to consider here is the distribution of points.
We tried playing with only two squads, and it played fairly well... That's until we counted the points. The Alien player lost devastatingly. Suddenly the points from all the aliens were divided between only two players instead of three. And the alien only got points for two killed squads. If you add another squad you need to throw more points in for the marines. It won't help balance if you just increase stats, but not points.

After all the winner IS determined by point score...

In Eldar Attacks the rule for playing with 4 players is using both deck of event cards and drawing 2 instead of 1 each round. But that still leaves us with the same problem as above.

[Gold Bearer]

You should definitely download the game. I think it's much better than the board game because it's quicker, scanning works realistically and there's a lot more variety with the layout of the aeras.You'll need dosbox. The biggest drawback is the order of play is fixed. This makes it far too unbalanced. The Blood Angles always do really well and the Ultra Marines never progress. It should be random every turn. Even the initial placements of the docking claws favour the BAs and screws the UMs.

Yea the flamer uses 2 red. It's actually the weakest weapon in Voyage Beyond. It's not as good as it sounds because a lot of the time the enemies are simply too far away. You've also got to think about where you're putting your marines so it can be used without hitting them. If anything I think it needs an upgrade.

I forgot about this, heavy weapon upgrades for captain sinorious and captain supremus. Again though, this is with the computer game in mind. All weapons have ranges. L1 Missile Launcher uses the lower of the 2 dice on the surrounding squares, L2 is standard rules, L3 standard rules plus the 16 surrounding squares get hit with the lower of the 2 dice as well. L2 Assault Cannon gets an extra white dice, L3 gets another white dice. Flamers get an increased area. Plasmaguns get a longer range.

L2 commander weapons. Power Maul + Power Fist - 2R+3W. Heavy Bolter with blade attached - 3W H-H. Power Axe + Bolt Pistol instead of Bolt Gun (Bolter without the blade) 2R+1W H-H. Storm Bolter + Power Fist 1R+2W H-H.

L3 commander weapons. Chainsword + Power Fist (Directly lifted from Voyage Beyond) - Can attack diagonally with opponent rolling 1 dice less (a red one if they use both). Heavy Bolter with targeter and blade attached. Heavy Bolter with blade attached + Bolt Pistol - 4W H-H. Storm Bolter + Power Mace - 2R+1W H-H.

Any type of bolters Bolters can fire twice if they don't move.

The defender has to beat the attackers armour value as well as their score (whichever is highest) to hurt them in hand-hand. I think the biggest flaw in the rules system is that armour value isn't used at all in h-h.

Edit: The L2 bolt pistol should be targeted because it will have a shorter range than the bolt gun.

The Storm Bolters sholud be targeted as well because they look short range.

Blood Angles Force Field doesn't work in H-H.

[Goblin-King]

I actually own SC for Commodore 64; but Voyage Beyond was only PC right?

About the flamer, let me turn it around. Which role/function is it supposed to fill? What do you want to be able to do with it?
And yeah, h2h is pretty broken from the marine's point of view. Even a fully pimped h2h BA squad doesn't stand a chance.

By the way, do you own Mission: Dreadnought? This expansion has rules for Extra Heavy weapons and a Tarantula cannon. Seems like it would fit your style pretty well.

[Gold Bearer]

Yea I used to have Mission Dreadnought. I thought it was a really good expansion. The conversion beamer was a bit bizarre. These rules should work just as well with MD. I never owned or played Eldar Attack. The only game I still own is Talisman and the 3 expansions because people who aren't into this kind of thing really enjoy that too.

I had the games on the Atari ST. The one I downloaded was the Amega version and there's a few annoying bugs. The assault cannon by far the worst. You have to use the left over score by hitting someone, so if there's no one to hit you're completely stuck and if you score too high you have to kill a marine. It means you can only use when there's enough, or good enough enemies about. Also you can't possibly score 4 with two white dice with a reroll in both versions and I think in the Amega one you can't get 6 with two white dice either without the reroll. Very strange. The Chaos marine are messed up as well. In the ST version the commander and missile launcher are the wrong way round and in the Amega version the bolters and missile launcher are. The ST one has much better sound effects but the Amega one looks nicer and has more variation in the graphics.

[Gold Bearer]

Space Wolves

Equipment
Assault Weapons: The standard marine weapons are replaced with a power sword (1R), power maul (1R+1W), power fist (1R+2W) and power axe (2R). All marines have bolt guns (bolters without the blades to make them one handed). I replaced the commander's bolt pistol with a bolt gun as well so it makes sense.

Chain Axe: The commander replaces the power axe with a chain axe that can attack diagonally with the same rules as the BA's Close Assault Blades.

The two standard targetters each work on two of the bolt guns and there's a third one just for the commander. The other three cards are blind grenades, melta bomb and bolt pistols.

Orders
Frag Grenades: All the marines can make missile launcher like attacks.

Crack Grenades: All the marines can make las cannon like attacks with two red dice.

The other two orders are fire and move it. The grenades would maybe better as equipment but the BAs have photon grenades as an order so sod it. I wouldn't have done it otherwise.

[Gold Bearer]

Thinking about it, the space wolves frag a crack grenades could be better as equipment cards. They could have one targetter that works on all the bolt guns including the commander's. Bolt pistols could be mini bolter blades. That would leave space for two more orders. I think the dark angels might be a bit under powered as well. With the MD weapons there wouldn't be a lot of point in having the old heavy weapons with the enhancers. 2R+1W dice with a reroll isn't a lot better than 3R and they need targetters to get the reroll. The grenade launchers could work on the heavy weapons to make them better than MD heavy weapons.

New commander weapon: Power Maul and Storm Bolter: 1R+1W dice for shooting and h-t-h.
New heavy weapon: Flamer: From Voyage Beyond (fires in a cone shape) but possibly with a bigger area of effect.
BAs don't get the Plasma Gun, IFs don't get the Flamer, UMs don't get the Assault Cannon and DAs don't get the Missile Launcher.
In MD they could all have access to all four heavy weapons so they don't have to have an MD weapon besides the tarantula or another bolter.

Dark Angels
Orders
Move It, Fire, Heavy Weapon, Photon Grenades.

Equipment
Heavy Weapon Enhancers: Heavy weapons fire with an extra white dice when firing normally.

Grenade Launchers: Heavy weapons are fitted with grenade launchers that fire with the total of 1R+1W dice in the targeted square, the red dice in the eight surrounding squares and the white dice in the sixteen squares surrounding those.

Light Combi-Weapons: Allows the commander to fire a storm bolter as a light flamer (1R+1W dice) and fits either a power maul or power fist with a grenade launcher.

Blind Grenades, Melta Bomb, Bolt Pistols and two Targetters.

Space Wolves
Orders
K9 Assault: All marines attacking in h-t-h combat this turn roll an extra red dice.

Wolf Pack: All marines armed with bolters or bolt guns can concentrate their fire against a single target, combining their attack dice.

Move It and Fire.

Equipment
Assault Weapons: The standard marine weapons are replaced with a power sword (1R), power maul (1R+1W), power fist (1R+2W) and power axe (2R). All marines have bolt guns (bolters without the blades to make them one handed). In MD other two marines could have a free choice of the standard and MD weapons.

Chain Weapon: Replaces the commander's power sword or power axe with a chain sword or chain axe, allowing him to attack diagonally in the same way as the BAs close assault blades.

Frag Grenades: Any or all of the marines can using their attacking action to throw a frag grenade that attacks two red dice in the same way as a missile launcher.

Crack Grenades: Any or all of the marines can using their attacking action to throw a crack grenade that attacks with two red dice in the same way as a las cannon.

Targetter: One equipment card for a targetter that works in the same way as other targetters and can be used for all the bolt guns, including the commanders.

Bolt Pistols/Bolt Gun Blades, Blind Grenades and Melta Bomb.

[slev]

I'm with Goblin King that you'd want the Salamanders Chapter with that set-up. I'd assume you'd want to stick to the classic nine.

As for the Space Wolves, a Frost Axe would be more "in-lore" than a Chain Axe.