Expanding the Hulk

My feeble dithering over my old copy of Space Hulk versus the brand new, shiny copy of third edition Space Hulk have become legendary. However, all is not lost. Out of this stinking mire of qubbling and indecision there can at least be salvaged something worthwhile: an article on getting the very most out of your copy of Space Hulk. As if twelve missions and a variety of Terminator suit payloads wasn't enough.

You see you may or may not be aware that of the twelve missions published in the 3rd edition, eleven of them are basically carbon copies of missions released in the 1st edition base game, the Deathwing expansion and the Campaign Book. Only one of them appears to be brand new. "But wait" I hear you cry, "Deathwing and the base game alone had twelve missions, let alone all those they crammed into the campaign book! What happened to the others?". What indeed.

Well if you know where to look, virtually everything ever published for 1st and 2nd edition Space Hulk has been handily archived on the web. And the places to look are here and here. The latter is a bit confusing at first, but if you look in the drop-down box in the top right-hand corner you'll find the names of all the supplements, campaigns and incidental White Dwarf material published for the game. Select one and you'll find links to the individual missions. Suddenly, it looks like your measly twelve missions has expanded tenfold. But if you want plunge your head into that refreshing barrel of ice-cold Space Hulk water there's a little prep-work we'll need to do first.

What You'll Need

Old-style Marine Captain

The first thing to think about are Marine miniatures. A number of the missions from the older editions of Space Hulk use two "standard" Terminator squads: a sergeant with storm bolter and power fist, a heavy flamer and three standard marines. But many of the missions that have been replicated in 3rd edition simply replace these two standard squads with the two basic squards from the new edition. So it's up to you if you want to acquire the figures for a new squad or just swap in the new miniatures for the old. If you do want to get some new figures then to match scale with the ones in the box you'll need some of the current line of GW plastic terminators - a squad of these will set you back nearly half the price of the boxed game. The the 2nd edition plastics are a possible alternative: they're good sculpts and are pretty common on Ebay since they also got used in Warhammer 40k but they're a head shorter than the current models. Some of the older missions also feature a marine captain. You can find the rules for him in the Deathwing supplement although if you do play with a Captain make sure you're using the whole 1st edition rule set - he's almost unstoppable when set to Guard. You can either get a modern metal Terminator Captain model to match scale or an old fashioned one who is on the short side. However in those missions with a Captain that were re-worked for 3rd edition they simply replaced the Captain with the Librarian. So you might want to do the same, although there are one or two missions which need both a Captain and a Librarian. If you do get any modern GW terminator sculpts be aware they come with bases that are about three and a half feet across, so you'll probably have to re-base them for play.

A number of the older missions also feature Genestealer Hybrids. Now this is a whole different ball-game because most of those missions were designed to work with the psychic rules from the Genestealer expansion and those rules won't port across to the new edition at all (some people are trying, but don't bank on them succeeding. I tried. It's hard). However if you want to play these you'll need some hybrid models: they come in both plastic and metal and are rare and staggeringly expensive on Ebay. Not only that but you'll need to re-create some blips to represent the hybrids. Since anything you create will stand out a mile from the blips included in the game this means creating an entirely new blip set from scratch. Whether you think this is worth it is up to you, although someone has already created the graphics to fit in with the new edition. It is one reason, possibly, to hold on to older editions of the game so you can use the models and blips from that, although in my copy the backs of the hybrid blips are very clearly a different shade of green. Finally it probably is worth your while creating a set of Ambush blips. There's only six of them and they're not mixed in with the basic blip set so it doesn't matter what  they look like. The Ambush rules are fun and can be found in Deathwing.

It turns out that you can re-create a surprising amount of the old missions with the tiles in your 3rd edition box. There are two things you'll be missing. The first is a single room piece 5x5 square with two exits on opposite sides. The other are a bunch of three-square-wide corridor pieces that connected together to make long, wide corridors that were mostly used in the missions with the psychic rules. If you have the 1st edition pieces then they'll just slot in with your new tiles. However it'll probably look a lot better if you re-create them. And here's a handy hint for doing just that: if you kept your cardboard sprues from when you punched out the tiles you'll find you have quite a lot of 3rd edition thickness cardboard, ready equipped with the end piece connectors, from which you can cut and construct new board pieces. Making the corridors is a lot of effort, but making the 5x5 room is probably worthwhile. In fact, there's already a graphic for it you can print out and use.

What else you might want to do or pick up really depends on how obsessive you are and how much you like the game. If you want to go the whole hog and make up all the corridor sections and a new blip set then you can think about getting some Chaos Terminator figures as there are rules and scenarios for those. If you want to get yourself twenty non-terminator marines then there are rules and a scenario for them that can otherwise be played with the standard 3rd edition components.

The Missions

The basic six missions from 1st edition are all included in the reprint. From Deathwing, there are three missions that didn't make the cut. One of them, The Ship's Log can be played pretty much as-is with all the components from 3rd edition although you'll have to swap in a 4-length hall for a 5-length hall at the top of  the map - no big deal. Another one, CAT Hunt can be replicated by using a 2 & 1 length hall together instead of a 3. It also needs a captain, although you can always put the Librarian in instead. The other missing mission is Seek & Retrieve and this is a bit more awkward. You'll need that 5x5 room to start with, and three counters or models to represent CATs. You'll also need another segeant model with standard armament, as one squad includes a non-Sergeant marine with thunder hammer & storm shield - you can always use one of your basic marines, although make sure both players are aware which one is enjoying temporary promotion. You may want to make up some Ambush counters to play these since the rules allow them, but I can't see it being vital.

You can also think about using the mission generator rules and the impossibly tough solo campaign from Deathwing should you so wish. You'll need the ambush tiles for this and if you've got that 5x5 room you can use that too. All you need are copies of the mission geotiles which require no especial work: just print onto a sheet of paper so you can reference them all at once, ignoring all terrain you don't have the tiles for, roll the dice and build your map.

For the Genestealer missions, don't bother. There's only two of them and both require a blip set with hybrids and the long corridor pieces. They're not good enough to worry about.

We then come on to the Campaign Book. Most of the campaign missions require a lot of effort to replicate in 3rd edition. They use the psychic rules and those long corridor pieces. However one of them, The Last Stand series of four missions, uses non-psychic hybrids and more-or-less standard map tiles. These are interesting scenarios because the hybrids have missile weapons and can shoot back at the marines. To play these missions you'll need that 5x5 room piece, some models or stand-ins to represent the hybrids and a blip set that includes the lettered blips used for the hybrids.

The Campaign Book also includes a number of individual missions with their own requirements, usually including new miniatures. Most of these aren't worth bothering about. One, Pitfall, is replicated in the 3rd edition missions.

Finally we come to the 2nd edition missions. There are twelve of these and, as far as I can tell, all of them can be replicated using your 3rd edition pieces. Indeed one enterprising F:ATtie, LilRed, has done a fantastic conversion job on one of the mission sets including 3rd edition style graphic design. They all also use two basic squads so it's up to you whether you get the figures you need for this or use the squads from 3rd edition. The 2nd edition also featured a slightly different blip set with blips for zero, 4, 5 and six 'stealers so if you want to perfectly re-create that edition you'll need to make an alternative blip set anyway although for these missions I can't see using the standard one making a lot of difference. But if you're making up an alternative set to include the hybrids, it's probably worth your while making up the 2nd edition blips while you're about it. 2nd edition has a bad rap compared to 1st and 3rd: I've never played it so I can't comment as to why but clearly it's either going to be down to the quality of the rules or the quality of the missions or both, so you might want to approach these missions with caution in case they're rubbish.

While compiling this article I also came across mention of a couple of other short campaigns for 2nd edition that were published in White Dwarf. These were called "Duty and Honor" and "Bringer of Sorrow" - you can find copies of both by googling. Both, unfortunately, require some more tile construction although 3rd edition style graphics can be found if you go looking on a certain popular boardgame site.

Pimp my Space Hulk

In the unlikely event that the stunning production values of 3rd edition aren't enough for you, or in the rather more likely event that you've really enjoyed painting up your miniatures and want some more modelling action, there's a stunning amount of ways you can continue to add detail to your space hulk set should you want to.

I've heard a lot of reports of people complaining that the miniatures fall over during play. If so you might want to invest in some Space Hulk style resin bases for your models. Simply carve off the existing bases with a scalpel and pin to the new base by drilling holes in the base and the figure and connecting with copper wire. You can obvioulsy paint the base for a suitable effect. There are a number of European outlets for these base styles. I'm not sure where you can get them in the US but you can find some examples internationally by going to your local version of Ebay and searching on DS Sulaco. A cheaper alternative is to get some embossed plasticard to cover standard bases such as that produced by Slaters Plastikard, which is available internationally.

If, like me, you think the idea that every single door in a spaceship  is a different design is pretty weird, then you can invest in some sci-fi wargame scenery as a cool 3D alternative. There's a huge range out there but just so you know what I'm talking about here's one example from Europe.

And if that' not enough for you, you can go hunting for and paint up the figures we discussed earlier: Chaos Terminators, Space Marines and Genestealer Hybrids. If you want to go mad there are even rules somewhere for including the Eldar in Space Hulk missions although by the time you've gone that far you might as well be playing 40k in any case. Remember that older GW figures are a different scale to the ones that come with the game, and may look odd.

Conclusion

This isn't the sort of article that requires a conclusion, really. It's most unlike Games Workshop to capitalize on potential merchandising material or indeed not to crack down on unauthorised reproduction of their copyright material but in the case of Space Hulk they seem to have done both. The result is that your humble copy of 3rd edition isn't just any old game with twelve missions you can replay until you get bored - it's more like a huge, sprawling game system that you can play for the rest of your life. And given how good Space Hulk is as long as this material remains available it may just be the only 2-player game you'll ever need.