So I love me some Space Hulk and managed to play three games yesterday, all of which were good, but the final one of which was outstanding.
Sean and I were controlling the Terminators and Dave was the Bugs. The mission was to cross the map, grab an artifact and return to the deployment zone. Dave drew our forces forward by having genestealers come in near the throne room so we’d feel the need to advance in force. Once the marines were past the good rearguard positions he started swarming in behind to cut off the retreat. It was all very well done, spoiled slightly by the fact that Dave couldn’t roll worth shit against our guys as they advanced. So we retrieved the artifact nice and easy, losing only one marine.
Coming back though, went poorly. The marines set up to hold the flank could not hit at all and were wiped out as the marines with the artifact had to march through a slavering horde. There was a very sweet handoff of the chalice to Wolverine (the marine with the lightning claws) and they were well set up to advance. Then Wolverine gets killed by his second or third attacker and everyone is getting bogged down, but they’re really close to the objective. The Sergeant takes the grail and marches around the corner to try and fend off the horde while his backup with the heavy flamer ducks into a safe corner. The Librarian uses psychic powers to protect their flanks, but the head on assault is too much for the sergeant, and the guy who was supposed to lay down some supporting fire got mulched real quick, leaving two marines on the table and the artifact on the ground 4 squares from victory.
Which is when it got awesome. It was going to be the last turn no matter what, so we stopped the timer and figured out the last-ditch plan. And man oh man was it ridiculous. One of the things you have to know about Space Hulk is that fighting hand to hand is heavily weighted towards the genestealers. A normal marine has to shoot them before they get in his face or he is dead. The plan we came up with involved the Librarian (who has special hand to hand abilities) cutting down a Genestealer so he could get in position to shoot another so he could possibly (50% chance) fry four more with his psychic powers, opening up a path for the heavy flamer guy to leave his position, grab the artifact and then use the final command points to assault the alien that was in the square he needed to occupy and then move into it. This was a ridiculous plan. This was a Stephen Hassard, Esq. type plan. Foolhardy with many possible points of failure, but if it worked it would be fucking glorious.
Sean rolled to cut down the first Genestealer with the Librarian, then shot another. Boom. Stage 1 complete. Psychic power online and I rolled a 6. Success. Neither Sean nor I wanted to be the person to roll for the idiotic attack by the Flamer against a creature almost predestined to win. But I rolled. Dave rolled horribly on his three dice and I rolled well on my one, so the humans came out victorious. And we shouted and jumped up and down like twelve-year-olds even though we’re all almost thirty. Because it was a balls-to-the-wall awesome action movie ending, and that’s pretty much the reason I play these games.
Also, Hassie got married yesterday. Congratulations.
