I had a question for people using GW's WH40K figures for playing Stargrunt 2.
Do you make use of the full Power Armour rules for Space Marines. I realize
that in WH40K these guys are supposed to be in Power Armour, but SG2's Power
Armour seems to give them an unfair advantage. In particular, they get to
double their roll in Close Combat. In a recent game, 9 Orks attacked 5 marines
and the marines completely wasted them with one casualty on average die rolls.
This seemed to be a bit extreme.
What do you guys think?
> I had a question for people using GW's WH40K figures for playing
Though I don't use 40K stuff, from what I recall of the background the Marines
armour really doesn't give them anything like the abilities that SGII PA does.
I would suggest just using it like full combat armour (like our NSL figs).
> Allan Goodall wrote:
I'm not all that sure on what Space Marines are supposed to be able to do,
because they don't go into as much detail in the Epic games as they would in
40K. I know nothing about 40K, so I don't have all the information.
But I have now played a couple of trial games of Stargrunt II using GW's Epic
figures. Stargrunt II will let me do this, I think, because I don't need to
customize much for individual figures. There's only so much I can do with
those little guys.
As I said, I don't know what an individual Space Marine is capable of in 40K.
So my thoughts are just what I picture them being.
I've been using the Space Marines as light PA. Slow, because in Epic I don't
see them moving any faster than other infantry. I'm using Terminators as Heavy
PA. I'd agree with Jon about making the Space Marines light full armor, except
that I like the tacticals as light and terminators as heavy. But neither
really have the look of the PA guys you see in the SGII book. As light full
armor, I'd think of them as Star Wars stormtroopers.
I don't like the idea of giving them that much close assault strength, either.
But I haven't gotten to the close assault rules yet, anyway.
The first game I played was against my wife, and I already described that
here. The second was Saturday night. We only played partway through the game,
because we had decided to demo various games, to see what we'd like to do in
the future. We started with Necromunda, went to SGII, then Squad Leader. We
were going to finish up with Full Thrust, but somebody went home early and we
didn't play.
I had set up the SGII game before hand. I had a battlefield made of 7 Geohex
pieces in this layout:
__
__/ \__ That just gives you a feel for the size of the game, if you
/ \__/ \ are familar with GeoHex. I think it could have been
smaller.
\__/ \__/ There was a stream, a couple of bridges, slopes, and woods.
/ \__/ \ It was very much like my first game, for which I hope to
\__/ \__/ have pictures soon. It did have some appeal in the look of
\__/ the battlefield, which is partly what draws me to it.
I didn't have time for much preparation, so it was another encounter battle. I
explained that we'd prefer to have missions, but I really wasn't intending to
play this game all the way through, just get a feel for it. The Space Marines
were having trouble getting rid of suppression so they could shoot back, and
the Imperial Guard was taking down a bunch of Marines.
General impressions from players:
1) The battlefield just looks neat at that scale. :-)
2) "The rules seem needlessly complex." I think this idea went away as we
played the game, and it became clear that the same mechanics are used pretty
consistently. Everyone got the feel for it pretty quickly. 3) It seemed hard
for people to actually take damage. But we had a lot of people stopping in
cover and then firing from there, at second through fourth range bands. On the
other hand, the PA guys were falling in the woods at one end.:) 4) While
playing Necromunda, we were talking about leaders being the guys with the
biggest stats, typically GW. In SGII, our leaders did nothing the whole game
but activate squads. I still have to read rules for EW, observing, etc. 5) I
think it was pretty clear that morale, leadership, and troop quality were the
most important issues in the game.
I did loan out a rulebook. Next time I'll make sure to prepare with missions,
different kinds of terrain, etc.
Allan spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> I had a question for people using GW's WH40K figures for playing
I think powered armour is very mean. If you think Orks should be as tough as
Adeptus Astartes, then by all means give them (Orks) an extra die shift in
HTH. I think the Marines should mop the floor with them. Imagine Eldar PA....
ouch....
/************************************************
Ground spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> Though I don't use 40K stuff, from what I recall of the background the
> From what I've seen, the fiction always suggested it was amazing, as
Depends whether you want to stick to a flavour that represents their game
mechanics or the supposed universe they claim to represent. In the former
case, full cbt armour is appropriate. In the later case, PA is probably
appropriate.
Tom.
/************************************************
> At 12:59 AM 3/16/98 GMT, you wrote:
Depends on the way you want to play things. If you play the Space Marines as
elite special forces as the fluff would imply than this would be fine. If you
want to play them more like they are in the game than they would definitely
would only have maybe D10 normal armor. The orks also
have similar armor-Ork Mega-Armor is even better than marine but less
than terminator armor.
FWIW
That
Chuk Guy
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
I totally agree - PA is the ultimate evolution of infantry. IIRC,
the original Space Marine background said something to the effect that they
were worth more than ten times their numbers against conventional forces. The
reason they are pretty crappy compared to their background is GW's never
ending quest for profit over internal consistency. Why would anyone buy 50
Space Marines when 5 is all you need in a game?
As for Eldar, they are PA! Their tech levels are much higher than humans, and
their PA is that much more sophisticated. Having reread the Hobbit, Lord of
the Rings, the Lay of Leithan and the Silmarillion (twice) this year, I can
appreciate this fact. Elves are damn tough! Tougher even than Space Marines,
IMO. They do seem cheesy on paper, though.
> On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Andy Skinner wrote:
> I'm not all that sure on what Space Marines are supposed to be able to
Basically, the original Rogue Trader fluff had tons and tons of neat
stuff the armor and the marine bio-mods were supposed to do for them --
yet the most evident game-effect was that they didn't get an encumbrance
penalty for wearing the armor...
Don't double the CC roll for regular marines. Only Terminators should get the
double CC roll, mostly due to their armour protection (which
isn't transferred across to SG2). The +1 die shift for CC weapons is a
big enough advantage. I played a game myself several months ago, with 10
marines & 5 scouts verses 25 guardsmen. Even without the doubled CC, the scout
squad
_captured_ 8 guardsmen & killed 4 in 3 turns. (& I was playing the
guardsmen, teaching someone else. ;-)
'Neath Southern Skies
http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/
*********************
Mary had a little LAM, It's thrusters all aglow; And everywhere that Mary
went, The 'Mechs were sure to blow.
> -----Original Message-----
Thanks to everyone who replied! Tom summarizes what a few of you said:
On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 11:40:29 -0500, Thomas Barclay
> <Thomas.Barclay@sofkin.ca> wrote:
> It was rather powerless PA.
I've decided to approximate the game mechanics instead of the game universe.
Therefore I'll treat the marines as D10 armoured guys, not PA.
I'll let the cat out of the bag a little bit. I've volunteered to run a
Stargrunt 2 scenario at GenCon, the tentative title being "Operation: Chapter
Approved." You've, uh, probably guessed the universe by now... The game will
have a small platoon of marines and a squad of Squat engineers against an
understrength company of Orks. The Marines will be on the defensive. The
facility they are defending is made up of Kryomek buildings. The scenario is
designed to give GW groupies a feel for SG2. For that reason, it's probably a
better idea to be closer to GW's mechanics than to the background. GW cultists
may say they enjoy the background, but they'll be more peeved in a demo game
if the forces play out radically different on the game table.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I'll post a battle report after GenCon,
along with the full scenario details.
> In message <3513c554.4535372@smtp1.sympatico.ca>, Allan Goodall writes:
I always wondered whether this was a good idea or not, and I will be
interested to see how this plays out. I tried with limited success to attract
local 40k'ers to SG2. Who wants to see their Power Armored Genetically
Engineered Super Soldiers get in position and suppress their foes? <:)
I think that (munchkins aside) the GW style of play fits well with their
miniatures (many of which I really like and wish I could afford;). I mean,
if you're dressed in day-glo armor and have a gun whose barrel you can
fit
your arm through, why _not_ run screaming across the battlefield!?!
IIRC, the Space Marine armour didn't do anything except protect the occupent a
bit better. The power was just to off-set the weight of the
armor/weapons/pack.
Randy
One of the biggest changes you'll face is squad reactivation. In particular, a
heroic game like 40K abounds with characters. If they are all allowed to
reactivate line units, reactivation will be fast, furious, and common. You may
have to limit or eliminate this option, too.
On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 22:26:34 -0500, Andy Cowell <cowell@icx.net>
wrote:
> I always wondered whether this was a good idea or not, and I will be
There is that. On the other hand, I find that most GW Cultists (those
indoctrinated in the Evil Empire, not just casual GW gamers) won't usually try
anything new anyway. I suspect that what I'll get is a bunch of people who are
interested in SG2 but have a bunch of GW figures lying around. They are more
interested in how they can use their figs and the background with SG2 as the
rules sets.
That and the fact that it's going to drive some GW Cultists nuts to see the
old figures back in circulation, but this time with funny numbered chits
beside them...
> I think that (munchkins aside) the GW style of play fits well with
I was surprised how well the older figures looked on the battlefield, though.
The only marines that I have come from the original boxed set, Space Crusade
and Space Hulk. The Orks are mostly from the original boxed set and the
plastic Ork boxed set. What's getting most of the comments are the Kryomek
buildings and the two old Ork dreadnoughts.
By the way, I'm using Terrain Creations hills but the dirt road and stream are
from GeoHex's gamescape packs and they don't look too bad. They aren't as
fancy as resin or plastic stream bits, but I got enough stream bits to fit the
width of the board for US$7. I'm buying some more at GenCon this year.
On Tue, 17 Mar 1998 19:01:42 -0400, tmcarth@fox.nstn.ca (Tom McCarthy)
wrote:
> One of the biggest changes you'll face is squad reactivation. In
I'm not using characters. I'm going to emphasize SG2's squad level play. If
anyone asks, I'll mention that they can do characters and snipers.