Ye Olde Inn

I've been puzzled reading a few comments about the game where people say it's unbalanced in the Alien Player's favour, they can swarm the blips on the first board and overwhelm the Marine Player(s), which I've never found at all.

I've always been playing hand-to-hand as being the same as firing. So for example, an Ork rocks up to a Space Marine, and in melee rolls two white dice. He has to beat the 2 armour in order to kill the marine.

It came as a shock to find (skimming the rules for something else!) that hand-to-hand involved both sides rolling their appropriate dice and ignoring armour for either miniature involved to die depending on the higher roll.

We are trying the proper rules and they seem mad, suddenly Gretchins are terrifying instead of cannon fodder, genestealers and androids are more formidable, and the dreadnought can be slaughtered by a lucky dice roll. It seems daft that you could attack something and end up killing yourself.

I'm going to argue that playing hand-to-hand like firing (i.e. wrong) improves the game! There is no swarming to win, as melee isn't as devastating, things like androids, dreadnoughts and genestealers are still going to lean towards hand-to-hand to get an easy kill, but an ork or chaos space marine might prefer to shoot at range than get in close. Which kind of makes sense? It seems more balanced.

I suppose it does explain why Gretchen would have 1 white dice for hand-to-hand, I used to assume they were simply too small/weak to damage a Space Marine in full armour. Plus there were always some order/equipment cards that were simply not chosen because melee using the wrong rules wasn't as desirable as some of the more firing orientated ones. I admit these rules perhaps lean a little more to a 1v1 game, where there's one Alien Player and one Marine Player. Maybe I'm biased because I don't tend to play with the 1v3.

Has anyone tried playing the melee rules this way, it would be interesting to see if anyone agreed with me, or if it works still with 1v2 or 1v3.

Space Crusade is a game I had never even heard of until the 2000's, and I didn't own until a couple of years ago (thanks to a really cool guy on BGG giving me a great deal). So as a result I had none of the nostalgia or experience to guide me... and I tended to play it as if I were playing a HeroQuest expansion more than anything and got some things wrong in my early videos. Always Board Never Boring showed how easy it is to play "against yourself" in this game (unlike say, HeroQuest, pre-Companion App). But it takes a long time, and there is a LOT to keep track of for one person!

The first couple of sessions I played by myself I kept forgetting the "no armor for melee" rule and I NEVER realized that you could shoot adjacent enemies on either side until I started playing with veterans of the game (I was still playing like it was HeroQuest with the crossbow not being able to hit targets point blank!). So the last couple of sessions on my youtube channel show what can happen. We typically have played with 2 newbies (myself and another marine player) and one veteran player as another marine faction. It's pretty fun, but yeah I'm trying to play it the way it was intended first (even admitting there are some vague areas where there is just popular fan agreement on how to resolve those ambiguous situations).

Similar to BattleMasters, many people online complain that the game is "Unbalanced" but you get different opinions on which side or faction has the advantage. Many say the UltraMarines are too strong (and the Imperial Fists too weak), while others say that the Alien is too powerful against two squads but against three he has no chance. The Eldar Expansion was supposed to make it "more equal" for 1 v 1 but some people say the Eldar are too strong (or too weak). I'm not experienced enough with the game, and it's community presence is much smaller than HeroQuest, but I like to hear from (and play with) European players who experienced it back in the day and get their feedback and constructive criticism. I've found a lot of good info on BoardGameGeek forums for the game.