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Space CrusadeSpace Crusade is a board game produced by Milton Bradley in conjunction with Games Workshop and was first made in 1990. While produced in the UK and available in some other countries including Australia and New Zealand it was not ever sold in North America. In Germany it is known as Star Quest. It is a sister game to HeroQuest also produced by MB with Games Workshop. Hero Quest enjoyed extended sales with numerous expansion packs in North America. Hero Quest's success in North America may have contributed to result in Space Crusade not being sold in North America. It uses many of the concepts of the Games Workshop Space Hulk and Warhammer 40,000 games but at a much simpler level of game play. The Game Itself The game is designed to be played with 2 to 4 players. One player takes the role of the Alien Player, controlling all the aliens and monsters on the space hulk which were a mixture of Chaos, Orks, Genestealer and other evil aliens from Warhammer 40,000. The Alien Player takes on a vastly reduced role than that of a Game Master in traditional tabletop RPGs. Like the Marine Player, the alien player's mission is to stop the marine players from accomplishing their missions. The other players are Marine Players, and each controls a squad of 5 Space Marines in standard power armour. Each squad is further equiped with order commands as well as equipment cards. Marines can be armed with different weapons, light weapons allows marines to move faster at the cost of reduced firepower. Close range combat rules is enforced when two units engaging are next to each other. Otherwise, ranged combat rules is followed as long as there is line of sight between the two squares that each unit is occupying. The squad based system gives each player greater access for strategy and planning. Most of the game is careful calculations of avoiding line of sight, and rushing to attack either from around the corridor, through open doors, or close in with close combat. The mission based system sometimes allows a player to sacrifice units to score points in order to win. Each game consists of the marine players receiving their primary mission, docking and entering the space hulk (and later dreadnought factories), completing their mission before the other marine players, and returning their team back to the docking claw. Points are scored for units killed and missions completed, deducted for units lost. The player with sufficient points at the end of the game (including the Alien Player), can be promoted to the next rank, which gives them access to additional order or equipments for the subsequent games. The minatures are not of the same high standard that minaturer gamers normally expect from companies like Games Workshop, but are of much better quality than normally found in boxed board games. The cards are mostly in color, exceeding the quality of the earlier sister game HeroQuest. Contents of the Box - 50 Figures
- 32 Blip Tokens
- 12 Rank Badges
- 6 Honour Badges
- 1 Alien Control Panel
- 24 Doors
- 6 Combat Dice
- 3 Marine Reference Charts
- 32 Reinforcement Counters
- 1 Primary Mission Token
- 1 Secondary Mission Token
- 4 Marks of Chaos
- 4 Piece Gameboard with Walls
- 3 Marine Landing Docks with Airlocks (extra boad bits where the pace marines start)
- 3 Commander Scanners with Slides
- 64 Alien Event Cards
- Rules Book
- 24 page Mission Manual
- Advanced Rules Book
Translations The German version of the game has very interesting explanations (translations) for the various effects of the weapons. The aliens are 'robots', not living creatures. And a player does not kill a robot, the robot is merely removed from this dimension. Expansion Games & Sequel Eldar Attack A boxed expansion set that introduced Eldar with special abilities including psychic powers. This expansion pack allowed one extra player to control the Eldar miniatures. Thus allow the game to be played by 2-5 people. Of note, one of the alient event allows the player to select a game board and rotate it to any degree. While this has interesting gameplay due to the line of sight required for range attacks, in practice it usually ends up with players knocking over doors and miniatures in the process. Most players treat this particular event as a null-event (ignore). - 10 Figures (1 Eldar Exarch & 9 Warriors)
- 16 Weapons - for use on figures
- 9 Shuriken Catapults
- 2 Las-Cannons
- 2 Shuriken Cannons
- 2 Missile Launchers
- 1 Shuriken Pistol
- 1 Force Wall
- 1 Psychic Screen
- 12 Equipment Cards
- 10 Exarch Skill and Equipment Cards
- 4 Order Cards
- 22 Alien Event Cards
- 1 Gameboard Section
- 8 Blip Tokens
- Reference Chart
Operation Dreadnaught A boxed expansion set. This expansion pack gives the marine player access to additional space marine miniatures, boosting the squad to 6 space marines and the commander. Space marines may carry extra heavy weapons or the tarantula mobile turret. The alien player gains extra heavy dreadnoughts, which are extremely powerful and capable of wiping out an entire squad. The last mission in the additional mission book allows the alien player to continuously construct additional dreadnoughts for more firepower from the dreadnought factory board. The additional bulkhead doors and corridor tiles allows players to build more interesting board constructions, where as the initial game is quite limited to either the square 2x2 mode or the long 3x1 mode. - 12 Figures
- 6 Space Marines
- 4 Androids
- 2 Dreadnoughts
- 3 Dreadnought Heavy Weapons
- 3 Dreadnought Extra-Heavy Weapons
- 3 Tarantula Mobile Support Weapons
- 3 Tarantula Control Consoles
- 9 Extra-Heavy Marine Weapons
- 6 Bolters
- 6 Backpacks
- 6 Bulkhead Doors
- 1 Marine Reference Chart
- 2 Corridors
- 2 walls
- 1 Dreadnought Factory Gameboard
- 2 Combat Dice
- 8 Blip Tokens
- 3 Clips
- 3 Bases
White Dwarf - White Dwarf 134 February 1991 had an article for using Terminators, Space Marine Scouts, Ork Mobs, Tyranids and Genestealer Hybrids in Space Crusade. Players could then use minatures for Warhammer 40,0000 and other related games in Space Crusade.
- White Dwarf 145 had a Space Crusade campaign called Renegade.
Advanced Space Crusade This game appears to be named similarly to entice Space Crusade players into other games Workshop games. This game is set with Space Marines boarding a Tyranid ship and really has no greater relationship to Space Crusade than any other Warhammer 40,000 game. External Links
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