After having a day or so to mull over the events of Sunday’s assault on the Sin of Damnation, I figured I’d note down a few of my thoughts. I’ll begin with a re-cap of what happened.
Mission 1 was over relatively quickly. After running through the rules with the three players using the Blood Angels, they got off to a flying start, tearing their way through Genestealers left, right and centre before a lucky set of Command Points let the Heavy Flamer have a burst of speed and burn the objective, winning the mission for the Astartes. Admittedly, I was a bit of a one-sided GM in this one, and pretty much gave the Marines the game on a plate when I spotted they were a turn away from victory.
Mission 2 was far closer, with one squad of Marines having to fend off a horde of xenomorphs. Things started well for the Marines until a few inopportune jams and misses meant that the ‘stealers got in and butchered them – leaving it down to just one lone Terminator on overwatch which eventually carried the day, despatching the final few Genestealers in a hail of bullets. For the most part, the Marine players held their own, although there were a few words of advice given here and there.
Mission 3 was where we hit what I feel to be a bit of a snag. It would seem that from the relatively balanced first two missions, the game swings heavily in favour of the Genestealers, making it nigh on impossible for the Space Marines to win. Admittedly, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as possible, lest I end up playing the game for the Marine players (and I’m no expert on the game by any stretch of the imagination). However, my judgement is most likely skewed at this point due to the relative inexperience of the Marine players in comparison to the Genestealer players, so I think a re-match of mission 3 is in order, from both sides of the coin.
Next week we’re continuing with the missions, starting on Mission 4, although I’m tempted to make a few house rules for the game, but also try a version using 40k Rules – although I’ll need to ramp up the amount of Genestealers to compensate (not necessarily a bad thing, however!). I’m not sure how this will sit with the veteran players, as, to quote one of them, ‘the beauty of the game is in it’s simplicity’, which is very true. I think I’ll still give it a go anyway, it’ll be fun to see Terminators taking down lots of Genestealers in their near impenetrable armour!