Noob impressions of this game compared to HQ
Posted: January 13th, 2022, 2:06 am
[wanted to get my raw thoughts out here before doing extensive research on a game I may or may not get...]
So I've been curious about this sci-fi fantasy game for awhile and have started reading up on it recently. I am starting to see, judging by the rulebook, where a lot of homebrew ideas on the Inn for HeroQuest were adapted from this game. For instance some of the Dragon ideas are clearly drawn from the Dreadnought enemy. The Alien Event cards and some action cards used by the space marines remind me of the Combat Cards and Evil Wizard cards.
So we've got a game of space marines (like mercenary knights of the future) vs. chaos marines (chaos warriors), androids ("necron" robot skeletons, like the terminator), orks (space orcs), gretchen (space goblins) and gene stealers (multi-armed monstrosities) moving around a board made up of four boards (no modular dungeon) and some cardboard doors and things and lots and lots of tokens. It came out in 1990, but I didn't realize Space Hulk (which everyone talks about) came out first, and there was an "Advanced Space Crusade" that came out the same year (similar to how the original HeroQuest was followed by Advanced HeroQuest in '89). So kind of like the equivalent to Warhammer 40,000 what HeroQuest was to Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
I thought maybe this game wouldn't be of interest if it wasn't similar to HeroQuest in terms of simplicity and expand-ability but it looks somewhat promising. The biggest downside though seems to be its relative rarity compared to the more popular HeroQuest. It seems to sell for $250+ on ebay. I'm intrigued by the "less violent" German version known as StarQuest (with Chaos robots and zero time guns). I guess you can homebrew your lore together as you wish.
Another thing I'm wondering about is whether these 40K Orks I inherited would be "compatible" with a set. They have more dynamic poses and might be a larger scale, but I guess they could just be super ork mutants or something. But if the scale is similar I suppose a person could supplement their sets with Warhammer 40k miniatures, possibly? I see they use the slot-in-tab style miniatures with the generic black round bases also used in Advanced HeroQuest and several other tabletop games.
The dice are wooden and have 1, 2, 3, and three 0's? White dice for weak attacks and red for strong. And bolt on weapons (I hope they fit better than the HQ merc weapons!).
There's a number of missions (12?) included in the base game and expansions that introduce eldar (space elves) and gun turrets to blow up the big mechs (dreadnoughts).
I'll have to do some more research into this game. The idea of controlling a squad of generic stormtroopers seems a little boring to me vs. a group of heroes but I guess it isn't that more annoying than having a bunch of mercenaries as you would in the later quests. And the idea that the "Alien Player" (the equivalent of Zargon) is trying to score points to rank up and win ahead of the space marines is kind of a cool thing.
I am also thinking those plastic styrene bases that are used to hold the counters (represented by switches) might not hold up well over time.
But back to the number of figures. It looks like there are about twice as many bad guys as good. There are only four players this time instead of five, and one person controls all the aliens while the rest each control five marines (four regular grunts and their leader), but if you are missing human players you don't have those extra guys. Still, I could imagine a game lasting a long time with each playing have to manage at least 5 characters. But then if each marine has just two weapons (his chosen bolt on weapon and melee... or just melee in one case) and there are no magic spells to worry about, maybe it wouldn't take that long. BGG estimates 2 hours for a typical game. But then you have the cards to play too. I'd have to see it in action I guess.
If it's fun to play, that's the real reason to own it. I've now heard from several people who owned it but never or rarely played it. I wonder why?
Any helpful hints for a beginner here on where to get started?
So I've been curious about this sci-fi fantasy game for awhile and have started reading up on it recently. I am starting to see, judging by the rulebook, where a lot of homebrew ideas on the Inn for HeroQuest were adapted from this game. For instance some of the Dragon ideas are clearly drawn from the Dreadnought enemy. The Alien Event cards and some action cards used by the space marines remind me of the Combat Cards and Evil Wizard cards.
So we've got a game of space marines (like mercenary knights of the future) vs. chaos marines (chaos warriors), androids ("necron" robot skeletons, like the terminator), orks (space orcs), gretchen (space goblins) and gene stealers (multi-armed monstrosities) moving around a board made up of four boards (no modular dungeon) and some cardboard doors and things and lots and lots of tokens. It came out in 1990, but I didn't realize Space Hulk (which everyone talks about) came out first, and there was an "Advanced Space Crusade" that came out the same year (similar to how the original HeroQuest was followed by Advanced HeroQuest in '89). So kind of like the equivalent to Warhammer 40,000 what HeroQuest was to Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
I thought maybe this game wouldn't be of interest if it wasn't similar to HeroQuest in terms of simplicity and expand-ability but it looks somewhat promising. The biggest downside though seems to be its relative rarity compared to the more popular HeroQuest. It seems to sell for $250+ on ebay. I'm intrigued by the "less violent" German version known as StarQuest (with Chaos robots and zero time guns). I guess you can homebrew your lore together as you wish.
Another thing I'm wondering about is whether these 40K Orks I inherited would be "compatible" with a set. They have more dynamic poses and might be a larger scale, but I guess they could just be super ork mutants or something. But if the scale is similar I suppose a person could supplement their sets with Warhammer 40k miniatures, possibly? I see they use the slot-in-tab style miniatures with the generic black round bases also used in Advanced HeroQuest and several other tabletop games.
The dice are wooden and have 1, 2, 3, and three 0's? White dice for weak attacks and red for strong. And bolt on weapons (I hope they fit better than the HQ merc weapons!).
There's a number of missions (12?) included in the base game and expansions that introduce eldar (space elves) and gun turrets to blow up the big mechs (dreadnoughts).
I'll have to do some more research into this game. The idea of controlling a squad of generic stormtroopers seems a little boring to me vs. a group of heroes but I guess it isn't that more annoying than having a bunch of mercenaries as you would in the later quests. And the idea that the "Alien Player" (the equivalent of Zargon) is trying to score points to rank up and win ahead of the space marines is kind of a cool thing.
I am also thinking those plastic styrene bases that are used to hold the counters (represented by switches) might not hold up well over time.
But back to the number of figures. It looks like there are about twice as many bad guys as good. There are only four players this time instead of five, and one person controls all the aliens while the rest each control five marines (four regular grunts and their leader), but if you are missing human players you don't have those extra guys. Still, I could imagine a game lasting a long time with each playing have to manage at least 5 characters. But then if each marine has just two weapons (his chosen bolt on weapon and melee... or just melee in one case) and there are no magic spells to worry about, maybe it wouldn't take that long. BGG estimates 2 hours for a typical game. But then you have the cards to play too. I'd have to see it in action I guess.
If it's fun to play, that's the real reason to own it. I've now heard from several people who owned it but never or rarely played it. I wonder why?
Any helpful hints for a beginner here on where to get started?