inconsequential ruminations

I’m selling 17 games on eBay right now. Free shipping in the UK.

I visited Julian on Thursday to play miniatures. I never got into miniatures, simply because I don’t paint, but I’ll play with someone else’s toy soldiers, particularly if they paint well.

We played a game of The Bloody Borders, a super-simple skirmishing rules set from Wargames Illustrated about the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers of the 16th century.

• background
• rules
• campaign rules

We played two linked scenarios. In the first, my English village, populated by the Charltons, was attacked by Julian’s marauding Armstrongs trying to capture livestock. In the second, a posse of Charltons pursued the Armstrongs back towards the border.

Julian used 28mm plastic miniatures. As you can see from my poorly lit photo, they look great. He uses a fast varnish-dipping technique, which he says is considered a bit naff among the cognoscenti, but I think they look very nice. The bulls were adapted from wine bottles, which is why they look Spanish.

I like the free-wheeling, fast, casual nature of miniatures with Julian. It’s about seeing how a narrative unfolds, not about realism or winning.

My friend James played a lot of Space Hulk as a teenager. He was so excited about the new 3rd edition that he bought two copies – at £60 each. Yesterday James, Rob, Chris and I played a round-robin of three games on both sets on one big table.

Space Hulk is basically the game of the movie Aliens, with a Warhammer 40K veneer. It was first published in 1989, just as I dropped out of gaming. Looking back on it now, I would have loved it.

The components of this new edition are superb. Games Workshop have delivered the sort of quality you would normally only expect from Fantasy Flight. The Space Marines and Genestealers are beautifully sculpted plastic models and even units of the same type are modelled differently. They look stunning if painted properly.

BoardGameGeek Image

The board is modular and changes to fit different scenarios. The boards take up a fair amount of room, but we were still able to play two games in parallel.

The rules are pretty simple. Games Workshop have short-sightedly not made the third edition rules available online, but you can read the first edition rules and the main differences between the editions. (You can also get scans of third edition rules if you ask around…)

Main points:

• The Space Marine has to finish their move before a three minute sand timer runs out. This injects a lot of tension.
• Each unit has a number of action points. Space Marines have four. Genestealers have six. The Space Marine gets one to six extra action points each turn to spread among critical units. The Space Marines can use these extra points during the Genestealer turn, so the Genestealers can never exactly predict their turn.
• Space Marines are good at long range; Genestealers are good in hand to claw combat.
• Two to six new Genestealers spawn every round and travel towards their target in hidden “blips” until they get into the line of sight of a Space Marine, when they are exposed.
• The scenario conditions give the Space Marines a goal to complete before they are overrun.

If you have played Dungeon Twister or HeroClix, you’ll find the core movement mechanics very familiar.

There is a lot to like about Space Hulk:

• Tension from the timed objectives and sand timer.
• Beautiful components and well realised theme.
• Simple, well-tested, clever rules. Very few ambiguities or WTF moments.
• Fast playing. Each game took 60-90 minutes.
• Lots of variety from the scenarios. I’m sure there will be lots of fan created scenarios.

Problems:

• The scenarios are solvable. James knows the game well and is a very clever guy. I played the Genestealers against his Space Marines in a scenario he had played before. He steamrollered me, but I’m not sure that anyone else could have done better in my position. This is a problem with any scenario based game. I suppose the solution is to not play any scenario more than a few times.
• The game is more fun as the Space Marines. The time limit is fun and there are more decisions. The Genestealers just have to judge where to build up and when to time their rush. You can get around this by playing a scenario twice, playing each side once.
• Unbalanced scenarios – this isn’t a problem for me, but it might be if you want to play the game a little more seriously. Again, you can bypass this by playing a scenarios both ways.

These problems don’t distract from an excellent game. If you don’t mind a sci-fi horror theme and like simple, dynamic games you should pick this up. It’s the best of its kind.

7/10, but only because I prefer to spend my time on more complex, historical wargames or more simple, multiplayer €urogames. Space Hulk is the best of its genre.

I went to the Isleworth Gamers last night, a new club based in a lovely pub by the river Thames. They are getting organised with a Geek Guild and a blog. They meet every Wednesday at 7.30pm. They are a very relaxed, welcoming bunch and if you are in West London, you should go along.

Last night I taught my favourite game, Age of Steam, to three first-time players. We played the Southern England map, which is little too spacious for four, but it’s simple and it’s always nice playing a game on a local map.

The Age of Steam FAQ is useful. Considering I have played the game so many times, I made two bad rules mistakes:

• I played that only the first player pays full auction price, in fact the first two players pay full price.
• I let someone ship a cube back to its starting city.

Steerpike wrote an amusing post about teaching games to newbies the other day. I bore this in mind and kept the stabilising wheels on. There were no bankruptcies and three of us were in with a chance going into the last round. They seemed to enjoy it, although there were the usual reservations about how the game is so unforgiving and heavy. They all wanted to play it again, so maybe next week.