Using Space Hulk for boarding actions during BFG, any experiences?

[Malika]

Hmm, not sure if this place or the Space Hulk section would have been more appropriate since it involved both games.

I remember when BFG came out there were all sorts of articles in WD about how to combine the game with Epic and 40k during campaigns. Heck, you can even use some BFG models in Epic as orbital support!

However, I haven't seen the same with Space Hulk, it would make perfect sense to me. Play a game of BFG, ships are shooting at each other, then some boarding torpedo hits your ship *BAM* we're entering a Space Hulk game in which some Terminators try to get to the bridge or something.

I was wondering if anybody has ever tried something like this, and if so: how did it work out?

Note that I'm not looking for specific Space Hulk rules here or anything (I'll post about that in the appropriate section), just curious about how to combine these two awesome games!

[Islacrusez]

Having boarding actions played out that way would slow the game down painfully I think. It's a theory I've entertained too, and much as I like the idea of small squad-based tactical combat, it's too long to occur multiple times per turn, or even just once every few turns. One potential way to do it would be have it as part of a campaign sequence, where the objective in space is to board, and the way you accomplished it would then dictate what units you get and what units you face and such.

[connahr]

you could make it an "end game " objective to board the enemy commanders ship and eliminate him, thus ending the game
or
the boarding team has to extract data from a particular ships computer as the game winning objective

this way you'd only have to do it once and at the end of the game

you could go further and have like a hostage/prisoner rescue mission based on attacking a spacestation, getting to the prisoner(s), then extracting them by getting the ship that initated the boarding action off the board

oh i'm gonna have to try this now

[AndrewChristlieb]

If you're going to be doing a game like this I would set it up as something before or in-between games. These types of games and others like Inquisitor and even 40k are great for triggering key effects in a larger scale game like BFG. Boarding actions are hard to setup because it stops the other game for another game then you have to come back and its just a pain. But! By setting up a "pregame" match you can represent a small scale action similar to a boarding action, think a group of assault boats slipping through the fleets defense net to board a ship and take out a key system on the ship or to disrupt their battle plans.

A couple ideas would be to have the fleet commanders flag ship gain an un-repairable critical effect or even a slight reduction in base stats (-1 shield or half speed etc..) You could also do something like the winner automatically gains the first turn or free re-rolls, the loser could have -1 to all leadership checks for the first turn or even something like no carriers in the next game. Really anything you can come up with can be worked into a game like this.

[radu lykan]

how about a regular bfg game where the objective is to board the enemy flagship. for every ship that manages it you get 500points for the zone mortalis finale where you have to hunt down the chaos lord/imperial admiral etc

[AndrewChristlieb]

That sounds pretty cool too, kind of the inverse of my thoughts. You could maybe do bonus points if the assault is especially successful even.

[Malika]

Hmm, it seems to be that I can either have the SH game influence the BFG game, or do it the other way around. I was kinda hoping to find a way to have the two games run parallel to each other, but time wise that would be almost impossible. I mean, a turn in Space Hulk would be a couple of seconds (minutes at most) in 'real life' (for the units that is), whilst a turn in BFG could last several hours.

An idea could then be to play the game of BFG, but once you have boarded an enemy ship, the game switches to Space Hulk/Zone Mortalis/whatever. Since each turn in BFG symbolizes a couple of hours, a complete game of Space Hulk also does that (all the turns put together). After the game of Space Hulk is done, the BFG battle continues as normal (of course counting in the effect of the SH game).

It would almost be as a campaign, but it's a single BFG battle, with multiple smaller battles (boarding actions, dogfights, etc) in it. Perhaps even use Aeronautica Imperialis for dog fights (would need different stats though).

[connahr]

my gods, this idea is getting more awsome all the time
you could even then have multiple players commanding the dog fights at the same time as the BFG game.......*head explodes*

[Malika]

my gods, this idea is getting more awsome all the time
you could even then have multiple players commanding the dog fights at the same time as the BFG game.......*head explodes*

OMG, running the campaign/battle with more than 2 people? That would be awesome! You could do this with four players: two players commanding their fleets, the other two commanding the boarding parties/ship security. Just make sure there are plenty of beers, chips and all that!

[Islacrusez]

This just sounds like an all-day thing now...

[Malika]

It does, but then again playing multiple SH and BFG battles would be the same I think...right?

[Islacrusez]

So far I've not managed to fit more than one consecutive game into my schedule; rarely being able to manage even that. If you intend to devote a whole day to the game, sure, but can you?

[Malika]

Good point indeed! But I'd imagine that combining SH and BFG wouldn't really work in a single match, especially if you're playing out multiple boarding actions and dogfights. I think it would be best to then approach it as some sort of campaign to make it workable.

[Islacrusez]

True enough, but if you play a regular campaign, it is made of a number of discrete matches that can be played one at a time. An SH-BFG battle of the kind you suggest cannot be played over a number of days - it can only be split (reasonably) when each BFG battle ends, otherwise you will have to rearrange your ships each time; at that point, why even bother with the BFG?

Similarly, it should be noted that while BFG and SH in-game time is so very different and it is reasonable to have a full SH game occurring in a single BFG turn, real-world time would pass. Quite a lot of it. Would you like to go read a book for 20-40 minutes between each BFG turn, or would that break flow a little bit? Would you know what your strategy was, which ship was damaged in what way (if you didn't take laborious notes), which ship had loaded torpedoes or craft? What happens if you do bring two more friends over to play your dogfights? What are they to do while you're messing around in SH?

[Malika]

Hmm, what if it's a single game of BFG and multiple SH games? You have the BFG table set up normally, and the SH table changes for each battle (boarding action). So the game would then be played either on two tables, or a large table split in two.

What you would do is play the BFG game, and then each time there's a boarding action, switch over to playing SH. The BFG table stays the same, you then return to the BFG game once the SH game is finished.

As for the dog fights, hmm..I wonder how it would work if you have multiple games running at the same time. Bit in dubio how that would work...