Games: Space Crusade

Spurred by a post on EAB, I wanted to talk about a game that I both played to death as a teenager and still play regularly as an adult: The Amiga version of Space Crusade.

As always photos are taken by phone from my Amiga 1200.

Now, as you may know this is based on a board game by Milton Bradley games, licensed from Games Workshop similar to the much better known Hero Quest. The board game was, to my knowledge, mainly sold in Europe but was the first introduction a lot of us had to the Warhammer 40.000 franchise.

As far as board game conversions goes, its quite faithful. There are a number of small changes to accommodate or take advantage of the format but if you know how to play one you can basically play the other just fine.

“Check those corners!”

Rather than do a big overview, I thought I would just talk a bit about some things you may not be aware of. I do encourage you to read the game manual before playing, as it helps explain the system a bit. These items are not in any particular order of importance:

• The game has in-game music! It took me literally years to discover this. It is really good too! When you are in the tactical game, hit F10 and you get the music.
• When the game displays the dice rolls, the numbers are just added together. It makes no difference if you roll 20 or 02.
• The manual doesnt explain what the dice actually look like. The “light weapons dice” (the white dice) have faces showing 0,0,0,0,1,2. The “heavy weapons dice” (the red dice) have faces showing 0,0,0,1,2,3.
• The Melta bomb item “carries over” into the alien turn if you use the card and then don’t launch a close assault. It will be triggered the first time an alien attacks one of your marines in close assault.
• Points are scored for killing aliens and completing the primary and secondary objectives. You are penalized for the loss of marines.
• Each space marine chapter uses its own save file. If you are playing from disks, each player could potentially load their own file from a different save disk. We used to do this back in the day. This probably isn’t all that helpful today, but it does mean that even if you get one chapter wiped out, you can still save your progress for a different chapter.
• A very viable tactic is to forego the scanner completely and simply rely on line of sight to discover aliens. This prevents the aliens from massing against you and lets you pick them apart in small groups. Give it a try.
• The most devastating alien event card is the Booby Trap. Until this card has come up, make sure your marines are positioned with an empty space between them at all times.
• If you are playing the game from disk, the original release seemed to have difficulty running on an Amiga 1200. Cracked versions seem to work okay as does of course the WHDLoad install.
• One of the more strange changes is the Genestealer alien being replaced with the “Soul Sucker”. I suspect the multi-limbed Genestealer turned out to be too difficult to animate. They are also missing from the title screen animation (which is otherwise based on the board game box).
• The expansion disk is MUCH harder than the base missions, though it also gives you some cool new kit to play with.
• Don’t get too frustrated. The game is very random and even the best laid plans can get foiled by the mixture of the dice and cards.

I hope these tips help you get more enjoyment out of this fantastic game and make sure to hang out on the menu screen for that fantastic music.