Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Put your hobby and modelling logs in here.
User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:29 pm

AndrewGPaul wrote:You missed a golden opportunity to have the squad leader looking at an Auspex nervously, but other than that, cracking! :)
Ha ha! Oh man I did didn't I? Then the Marine player could be obligated to say "There's movement all over the place. Game over, man!" whenever activating him.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
Primarch
Evil Overlord
Posts: 11392
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 9:33 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by Primarch » Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:44 am

From my experience so far, shouldn't it be the Nids looking at the Auspex and panicking because the marines are coming? :D
Painted Minis in 2014: 510, in 2015: 300, in 2016 :369, in 2019: 417, in 2020: 450

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:42 am

Primarch wrote:From my experience so far, shouldn't it be the Nids looking at the Auspex and panicking because the marines are coming? :D
Heh heh. Hopefully the house rules I'm going to try out for the next game will help with this - I'm going to allow the Tyranid player to use extra actions to teleport in blips straight from the reserves cup during battles. I also think even slightly larger game sizes will help - at 300 points the Marines only have to win one battle to win, so if they finish up with 3 dudes left on the board (as has happened) it's still a win. At 600 points you have to win two battles, and if you win your first with three dudes left, that second battle is going to be hairy since the Nid player will keep getting reinforcements but those three dudes are all you get.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Sat May 28, 2016 12:55 pm

...and now, for some reason, I have two terminator squads.

Image

Well, I mean, I know the reason - I was in a local shop that carries GW stuff and they had a box of terminators and I thought I'd give them some trade, and I wanted a heavy flamer option anyway, so. I'd always been a bit cool on the idea of actually fielding close combat terminators, since shooting is the marines' big advantage over the nids, but may as well have the option that's given in the rules, right? The bits I had necessitated another rules fudge that may never come up anyway, but the RAW say that a terminator sergeant can only ever have a storm bolter and power fist, but I didn't have enough so painted one up with a thunder hammer. Shouldn't be too terribly unbalancing if I ever end up fielding him anyway.

Now, though, I really do think I'm going to have to get some tyrant guard to apply the zoat rules to (and I know I've said this a few times over the course of this thread) just to give the nids an equivalent heavy armor combat powerhouse unit. (But, yeah, mostly because I think they're a cool-if-expensive piece of kit and want to build and paint some.)

May as well talk about how my house rules are shaping up, too. We've played a fair number of games at the 300-point level, and one or two at 600, and as I've said it really seems that the main thing to balance stuff out (aside from dialing back the reaction rules a ways) is just to put more pressure on the marines by giving the nids more blips. To start I've given the nids 20% more blips to start at each game level - 6 instead of 5 at 300 points, 12 instead of 10 at 600, and so on - and am letting them apply a bonus to their reinforcements roll each turn if the marines have penetrated to the core. In secondary objective battles I'm not allowing teleporting in blips straight from reserves, and in primary objective battles I'm letting them do it for, for the moment, 4 extra actions. (I'm giving a bonus to the extra actions roll for revealed blips and for revealed tyranid warriors, so it may actually be a bit easy to get 4, but I'm still getting a feel for that.)

Just some thoughts from Probably The Only Guy Thinking About This Game In TYOOL 2016. :D
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:18 pm

Image
The Norn-Queen Guard, or "Zoat," is a bio-construct encountered exclusively on board Tyranid hive ships, where it acts as a powerful last line of defense against invading organisms.

The "Zoat" is probably my biggest hack for the game so far, both to the rules and to the fluff. Rather than using the Zoat rules in the book, I basically modified the stats for a close-combat Tyranid warrior, lowering its speed and number of attacks, and beefing up its defenses and the power of its hits, and adding the special rule Zoats have that lets them complete their action if killed by reaction fire during a charge move. The main reason is that the modern models with the closest fit to Zoats are Hive / Tyrant guard, and neither allows for simple representation of the Zoat's weaponry, which is a close combat weapon and a fleshborer - I probably could have just reskinned that as acid spit or something, I suppose. The model, too, is driven more by what I think looks cool (crushing claws = yes, very; big shoulder pads = not at all, no) and what rules the model does need (in particular, a parry), so you get this hybrid with mixed weapons that is I'm sure not at all kosher for 40K. (I also, as you can see, had to struggle to fit them on my 30mm square bases, heh.)

But he looks cool, and with his high armor will be nice and scary for the Marines to try and deal with, and that's what's important. :D

I also added some Chaos Cultist Mind Slaves, mostly because I wanted to get the models for Shadow War: Armageddon. :D They'll use the same stats as Genestealer Hybrids.

Image
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Apr 18, 2017 1:39 pm

I mean honestly, how does a thing like this even happen?

Image

Yeah, it's a very small collection by 40K standards, but it's more than twice as much as I originally envisioned ever collecting.

May as well get that devastator squad to round things out, eh?

Plus a command section and maybe a squad of those nifty new storm troopers for the Guard...
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
Lovejoy
Legend
Posts: 1031
Joined: Fri May 28, 2010 6:53 am
Location: Kiyosu City

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by Lovejoy » Wed Apr 19, 2017 12:17 am

Congratulations, is this more or less the end now? Really impressed with the work you've put into Dave Crusade/Advanced Advanced Space Crusade, hopefully I'll give a whirl again during one of my rare visits.
2018 Hobby Progress: A modicum of Middle Earth SBG

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Wed Apr 19, 2017 12:35 am

Lovejoy wrote:Congratulations, is this more or less the end now? Really impressed with the work you've put into Dave Crusade/Advanced Advanced Space Crusade, hopefully I'll give a whirl again during one of my rare visits.
I always think it's more or less the end, and always end up getting more stuff. :lol: (The eternal struggle of the miniatures wargamer, I suppose!)

At this point, I think the chances of my picking up a devastator squad for the marines and some genestealer hybrids for the tyranids are pretty high - although there's no telling when exactly, since I have some communal projects coming up that will want most of my hobby fund-age. And the new storm troopers do look pretty sweet.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Wed May 17, 2017 2:04 am

This dang hobby. :D

So here's what I'm missing from the units in the ASC rulebook-as-written:
-A space marine devastator squad (which, again in the RAW, has 3 bolters, a missile launcher, and a heavy bolter, always and only)
-A selection of genestealer hybrids

The hybrids are easy - a box of neophyte hybrids would give me a nice selection of weapons (and, not incidentally, a nice Shadow War: Armageddon kill team).

The marines are where Pandora's box opens. :D

The first option is to get a box of Mk IV marines (partly because I just really want to get some Mk IV armor). This would give me:
-A RAW devastator squad
-Marines left over to make a second 5-man tactical squad with a plasma gun, which I could paint as a veteran squad just for fun.

Nice!

Ah, but! If I also get a box of Devastators, I could not only mix up the armor marks and make them blend in with my current all Mk-VII force a bit better, but I could build:
-A devastator squad with a nice selection of heavy weapons (any combination of two heavy bolters, missile launchers, and heavy plasma guns)
-Marines left over to make a 5-man tactical squad* with an option of either a plasma gun or a missile launcher.

But but BUT! If I ALSO get a box of Mk III marines, I could do even more mixing and matching of marks, and also build:
-A devastator squad with a nice selection of heavy weapons (any combination of two heavy bolters, missile launchers, and heavy plasma guns)
-A full 10-man tactical squad, broken in to 5-man teams with either plasma or a missile launcher
-A 5-man tactical / veteran squad* with an option of either a plasma gun or a heavy bolter (because the above would use up all the missile launchers I'd get, since the Mk III box sadly doesn't get one.)

Each of these expanding choices ALSO gives me more and more actually-useful forces for full-on 40K as well, if 8th edition helps with a local resurgence of the game. (Squads with *'s could be fielded as 6-man squads in that game, too.)

And because mixing and matching marks is a goal, I'd want to get everything at once. Ah, me. :?

(Edit: Oh, I also don't have grots, but eh. :lol: I'll pick up a bunch of 2nd edition starter box grots from ebay for 500 yen at some point.)
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Project: Advanced Space Crusade

Post by The Other Dave » Fri May 19, 2017 6:15 am

YellowStreak had a cool idea at NagoyaHammer! See, he owns an ASC set as well, so we got to thinking about how we could combine them. The way the game works, having 12 board tiles instead of 6 isn't particularly useful for playing a single battle, but what he figured is that it does allow two battles to be fought simultaneously. So! We could have a big two-flank game, the kind that take all day to play with 2 people because you've got so many battles, and instead have 2 Marine players and 2 Tyranid players, with their exploration and battles going simultaneously. Then you get wrinkles like the players on the same "side" are working both cooperatively (since they have the same goal in the end) and competitively (to see who can achieve that goal quicker / more decisively).

Expect discussions about trying it out soon!
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

Post Reply

Return to “Hobby Logs”