A player recently pointed out to me something very unfortunate. He has announced that upon completing his current career, he plans to never finish another career. Instead, he will pick a mostly-compatible career with useful Primary Characteristics and 2 Fortune Advances. He'll adopt that career, spend 2 XP on Fortune dice, then change careers. Again and again. At first, I thought this was crazy talk. Then I ran the math. Completing a career and transitioning to a new one costs 10 to 13 XP. For whatever specific die pool you feel is most important to your character, your time in that career will probably gain you 1 Yellow die and 1 to 3 White dice. That's a skill, a specialization, and up to 2 Fortune Dice. The cheesier approach, of cherry-picking just the fortune dice, and then transitioning out of a career will cost you 2 to 6 XP. If you choose really uncompatible careers, you're looking at a mere 4 White dice for the 12 XP or so that got the career completist 1 Yellow and 3 White, so that's suboptimal. But if you're Human and the careers all have 2 or more keywords in common, those 12 XP could score you 8 to 12 Fortune Dice! I haven't looked closely at the giant stack of careers since he pointed this out, so I may very well be missing something here. It's possible that there just aren't enough careers with Primary Characteristic and Keyword overlap and the 2 Fortune advances needed to make this work. Dear god, I hope there isn't, but I suspect that stack of careers is big enough for this to be viable for at least a rank or two. Has anyone encountered this loophole before? It seems abusive to me, not in the spirit of the game, yet I see nothing in the rules that would stop it. It makes mechanical and mathematical sense, but boy does it leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I mean this really is the best way to improve your dice pool in a focused area, but it's just so **** cheesy. Especially when you get to Rank 4 and are already maxed out on Skill dice anyway, and don't really want any more Stance Pieces or Talents, there's a strong motivation to just cycle through careers cherry-picking white dice as fast as possible. When the PCs are 4th Rank, I'd rather they be taking the flavorful high-end careers like Knight of the Inner Circle, not inexplicably dabbling in Boatman and Thug for 2 sessions a piece to score dice. There's definitely a disconnect between what makes sense in-character and what makes for the strongest character. My kneejerk reaction to this is to house-rule that career completion is mandatory, so as to just nip this in the bud. Any thoughts? Are there any compelling arguments for keeping things as written instead of house-ruling over this exploit?

Emirikol said: How does the target get to approach you on your next action? They're _not_ saying the target gets bonus movement on your next turn. What the card intends is that the target cannot approach you on the target's next 1 to 2 turns. The slightly odd phrasing is because of initiative rolls belonging to the group, not to individuals. The card in ensuring you get to act again before the target can approach. Let's assume, for relative simplicity, that the scene involves 1 PC vs 2 monsters. The PC has an initiative token on space 2 of the Initiative track. The monsters have initiative tokens on spaces 3 and 1. On #3, a monster attacks (or whatever) On #2 the player in question uses Steely Gaze on the monster that hasn't acted yet. On #1, the target monster acts, but is forced to manoeuvre away from the PC. During this action, it can't approach the PC. (As GM, I'd probably require that the target must manoeuvre away before using an action, but as written the card doesn't technically prevent them from making an attack and then retreating.) The new round starts. On #3, one of the monsters gets to act again. If the GM chooses to activate the monster that was the target of steely gaze, it still can't approach the PC, because the PC hasn't taken his next action yet. On #2 the PC gets to act. Nothing special happens at this time. On #1 the other monster gets to act. Even if the monster activated now is the one previously targeted by steely gaze, that monster is now free to approach the PC, because that PC has already taken "your next action". It gets more complicated with more initiative tokens on the track. Assuming the initiative rolls allow it, it is entirely legal for the PC to go first one round and go last in the next round so as to intentionally keep the target beyond arm's length for two entire turns. (And, of course, any time I wrote monster, that could just as well be a NPC nobleman or cultist engaged in some sort of social shenanigan as opposed to a full-on battle.)

khaali said: Emirikol said: Interesting idea. You could simplify it with simply adding "damaged" to your chaos star effects. I've thought about it but I discarded the idea since the chaos star is on your dice roll; damaging the armor not when the ennemy hit you but when you hit the ennemy would be very illogical. Well, you could add it to your Sigmar's Comet or universal Double Boon effects. PCs probably wouldn't choose to invoke them very often, but the GM certainly could. Or, you could make it a consequence of getting a critical injury. If you take a crit, the clothing or armour of any associated body part is damaged. Personally, if I were to use something like this, I'd want it to be simple, universal, and require a minimum of tracking or table space. So, I'd have a single "damaged clothing" status, which I'd probably print on some sort of Condition card kind of thing, and could just hand to the player whenever it happened. I'd make it a binary state, so I don't care how much damaged the clothing is, just whether or not it's been damaged at all. Your clothes are in tatters, have yourself a "-1 soak, and a black die on Fellowship checks" card. I'd figure out some basic repair costs based on social tier and cloth vs metal, and probably let PCs make Simple (1d) Tradecraft rolls to fix it themselves.

Emirikol said: rb: I want to alert you to the iniate of ranald. There really aren't many/any interesting rank 2 spells for Ranald. I allowed them to choose one spell outside of their order that was relevant. Also the find object spell becomes problematic sometimes. Be ready for it. Thank you for the head's up on both of those issues. I'll take a little walk through the blessings today and see how bad it gets.

Amazing thread here, folks. Lots of helpful ideas. Valvorik, expect a PM from me today to beg you for your table aids and stuff. My group just made characters yesterday, we'll be starting The Enemy Within next week. It went amazingly well. Really love the background cards, and everything that brought to their back stories. Our characters are: Human Gently-Born Pistolier Human Academic Wizard (of the Bright Order) Human Criminal Initiate (of Ranald) Dwarf Battle-Scarred Apprentice Runesmith The dwarf player wanted to be a troll-slayer, and so has asked me to intentionally dishonor him with some horrible tragedy somewhere around session 8 to 11 so he can troll-slayer as his second career. I love it when players actually ask you to be mean to their characters! His starting with the runesmith skills and intelligence will give a lot of depth to the otherwise sometimes one-dimensional slayer concept. Any suggestions on how to dishonor him within the framework of the adventure? Figure I'm going to have to buff up the fight scenes a bit beyond what the scenario lists, as 3 of our 4 characters are going to be very good in a fight. The pistolier and runesmith both have very solid attack actions, large dice pools, and decent defences. The bright order wizard is a glass cannon, but should be able to pull off at least one really remarkable attack at the start of each battle. The least martial of the group is the Initiate, but even she's got plenty of defences and a few buff-blessings to contribute significantly when blades are drawn. 50% more foes per fight seems like a good start. There was some confusion about which background cards got picked, which resulted in several players answering questions about the "outcast character" - who didn't exist. But their answers were really good, so we decided the Pistolier's brother was the Outcast, and had been disowned by their villainous father. If anyone dies (or loses a leg thanks to Omens of War), they'll grab the outcast card and have an easy entry for their next character by playing the brother. The other awesome thing that came up out of this outcast situation was that the players made up all sorts of background about the Pistolier's family. They decided that Pistolier's father has possibly dabbled in black magic, spontaneously creating an NPC for me to use as red herring or perhaps a liutenant to the BC. They took the Oathbound Party card to represent that they are all sworn to prevent the father's villainy from coming to fruition -OR- ruining the family name. So they can't just pass him off to the witch-hunters. Observation about Pistolier and starting funds: A riding horse is 2 gold. A pistol is 5 gold. The career ability (and fluff text) pretty much begs that you start with both, but Affluent only gives you 5 gold to play with. Even with a poor-quality (half price, but adds misfortune die) pistol, that leaves you no money for armour or other equipment. This seems like a huge flaw in that Basic Career card. My player solved this with a great answer to question #5 on the Gently Born card: she'd recently pawned the family heirloom pistol to Mathilda Durbein, and was hoping to buy it back soon. Explains her bad starting equipment, and establishes both a plot hook and the existence of a superior-quality gun on the market for once they've earned some spending cash.

Mexorlon said: I know he sux outside combat, but he dosent care, he will just sit and morer or less wait for combat. I just ran a homemade adventure (3x6hours) with 1 very small combat, and 1 larger combat. Alle the others in the group have made background, traits, and a lot of fluff… But he just follows undtil combat where he "over"shines/shadows the others in the group. Im considering just minimizing the combat, thus he will be bored, I have NOTHING to work with in his char. it might aswell be a npc number 5 ironbreaker… So, one of two things are happening. Either: A) He's being disruptive in some way during the non-combat scenes. or B) He's waiting around patiently during those non-combat scenes and not causing trouble or distracting people from the game. If it's A, then why are you even playing with him? Honestly, the best thing you can do is toss him from the game & group. I know that sounds harsh. And I'd totally have a talk with him about it first and see if he's willing to change his behavior, etc, but disruptive players should be dealt with firmly, and quickly. If he's intentionally ruining anyone's fun, you're better off not having him at the table. Kicking him out is actually much kinder (to everyone) than intentionally making your game boring. If it's only B, then what's the problem? Some people show up to game just for the social camraderie of hangin' with their friends, and are totally happy playing the supporting cast. That's ok. Some other people game for the chance to look or feel like a badass and have fun smashing face. That's ok, too. As long as he's not being disruptive jerk in some way you haven't mentioned, then it's perfectly ok that he's twiddling his thumbs during the social scenes and totally tanking it up in the combat scenes. It's not ideal, perhaps, but it's not really a major problem. As for in-character ways to make sure the fight scenes aren't pathetic? There's plenty of magic and special attacks that can skip the armor, so you can always swamp him in stress, terror, shame, or unsoakable damage. Also, you could play a little loose with the henchman rules to have your villains surrounded by a pack of bodyguards that give them bonus white dice on their attacks. 4 to 8 bonus white dice from henchman assists on the villain's attack to counter his 6 Defence is a perfectly fine solution, provide you have a large dice collection (and big hands). But here's the catch: Don't subvert his armor every time, and don't do it for your first fight or two. That guy spent a bunch of his character points trying to be an unassailable badass. That's what he thinks is fun. Let him have his spotlight moment from time to time. A big nasty ork breaks an axe on his helmet, and the PC doesn't miss a beat. If and when you do pile on the henchmen to get those bonus dice, narrate it in an over-the-top fashion, so it won't feel like he's being picked on, it'll feel epic and heroic instead. Unless, like I said, he's being a disruptive jerk that's ruining your game. If so, just get rid him.

Personally, I'd like to see more going on in the blip piles. When I first got the game, it was a bit of a bummer that the only difference between blips was what symbols they moved on. I'd love to see a few GS hybrids, or other Tyranid nasties in the piles, with some "comes into play" abilities or simple active powers. Nothing terribly complicated, but just a little different to spice it up. Even if you just kept it genestealers, there could be a few blip cards intended to play up that they are indeed just "blips on a scanner" until you can confirm them visually. So you could have a card that's not a stealer, but just a sensor anomaly, and is discarded upon being drawn. Then, to compensate for that, you'd have cards that when they come into play either make you spawn another genestealer at their location, or cause you to put another couple blips in the smallest blip pile, etc. Of course, this would further ramp up the random elements of a game that is already largely dominated by luck, but I think it might be fun and kinda cool.

Ignatz_Von_Zwakh said: Imperial Guard Vs. Flayed Ones? An abandoned bunker? Cue the ambient music, the sound of cold metal dragged along rusted corridor floors? Trapped in the trenches? Anyone think this sounds bitchin'? Sounds awesome in terms of flavor and thematics. However, the Marines die way too easy in the game already, I can't imagine how squishy Imp Guard would have to be. If they died by the same statistics as the current marines, it'd make terminator armor a big joke. So it'd probably only work as another standalone game using similar mechanics, not really as a compatible expansion.

Hando said: OK further update. Played a 3player, 6 team game (Yellow/Grey/Green (yes green)/Orange/Red/Purple) and we cruised through with no team re-rolls required. It was actually to easy in the end and we found that a lot of the time teams sat inactive as they werent close enough to the entry points to contribute that much. Lost 2 Space Marines but got 1 back with the resupply card, so comfortable win for the Marines but it was good to finish without getting creamed. Maybe for these bigger games there should be more than 4 entry points for the Stealers...maybe a fifth would make it more interesting. Then again it was our first larger game. Has anyone else found this with the 6 team games ? No, indeed in my experience it's been exactly the opposite. My group doesn't play 3-player nearly as often as 2- or 4- player, but when we've tried it we've found we always do better with an even number of players. Better than 75% win record in 2- and 4- player, and lost every single 3-player game we've ever tried. So if you felt your first 3-player game was a cakewalk, I'd expect that it was just a case of getting a lucky draw on the event cards. Are you certain you were using the 3-player void lock card? 1 out of every 3 event cards should result in 2 different locations getting 5 genestealers each. That should rarely feel "easy". One failed attack roll (or two major spawns on the same location drawn back to back) and the automatic marine death cycle starts grinding. In my experience 3-player games tend to start off strong, but then somewhere along the line there's a critical turn after which everything tanks. Also three thoughts pop into my head when I read where you wrote "teams sat inactive", especially when you say that you had marines out of range to contribute yet felt the game was too easy. So I ask: 1) Was the green team one of the frequently inactive ones? 2) Just to be sure, you are playing cards for those "inactive" teams, right? Just choosing not to take any actions when the cards resolve. I'm trying to picture how a team would "sit inactive" and half the time it'd be at least placing a support token somewhere. So that "inactive" phrasing kinda raises a flag for me (as in, it makes me wonder if you've got all the rules right), unless what you really meant was just some fire teams hardly ever played attack cards. 3) How did people take it when they had to "sit inactive" and couldn't make a useful play? We have one person we play with from time to time that feels the need to always have an effective turn. To the point where if the best thing they could do is to sit still and wait while others deal with the current threat, they'll instead interfere with somebody else's obvious moves just so they can make a single attack themselves with their least potent marine, or disrupt the whole formation and prevent attacks just so they can personally put a token on a door. It's a weird sort of self-centered short sightedness. Needless to say, we don't tend to win much when that person is playing. TL;DR version: 3-player games are usually pretty tough, yours might have been a lucky fluke.

The game is definitely much more about tactics than strategy. There is a lot of "thinking ahead" and planning to do, but there's a strong random component as well which keeps the game hard to predict. If you try to prepare and anticipate for what's coming up (instead of just respond as things happen) you'll do a lot better, but a few bad die rolls can cause even the best plans to fall apart. In a game with two or more players, if they don't cooperate / communicate / coordinate, things will go badly. Luck in this game mostly exists just to hurt you. There's plenty of things that can randomly go wrong and ruin you without warning, but there are relatively few things that can randomly and unexpectedly save you from what looked like impeding doom. As to the other part of your question, there's really no deckbuilding component at all. You can pick which team of marines you're playing -- and if you have the expansions you can choose whether to play against the green deck or the red deck -- but you don't intentionally customize the decks beyond that simple initial choice.

Emirikol said: D&D 5e is on it's way. Double-check your source on that, Emirikol. I just googled "D&D 5th" and the front page of the search results was comprised of April Fool's jokes, several admitted hoaxes, and a couple of ridiculous trolling threads (all locked) on various gaming forums. Notably there was not a single thing looking like a legit press release. Someone pulled a fast one on you.

A few other relevant details: You can only activate a terrain card if you're at its position and facing it. Each terrain card can only be activated once per round. So even if the marine at the door, and the two marines adjacent to them, all used Move + Activate this turn, you'd only get at most one support token put on the door.

cim said: I'd disagree there. I think the 6-team game is easier - or at least, not harder than the others. Aside from my anecdotal win-loss ratios, here's the math that makes me think 3-player should be harder than 2-player... In 2-player you have 8 marines and 4 actions per turn, in 3-player you have 12 marines and 6 actions per turn. So 3-player gives you 150% of the resources. So far, so good. In 2-player, each event card spits up an average of 3.87 genestealers (the mean number would be 4, the minimum 2). In 3-player, the average goes up to 7.87 (and the mean is 8, the minimum is 6). So that's 200% the number of genestealers per turn on average, but 300% more at the low end. In other words, you're more outnumbered and there's no time to rest. In 2-player it generally takes 2 unlucky turns (either cosecutive spawns on the same spot, or with some movement bringing them together) to get a swarm to the critical stage where it's "out of control" and automatically eats a marine per turn. Essentially you have to make a play mistake (not put enough firepower into a swarm) in order for it to happen. In 3-player, it's possible to get two such super-swarms spawned from a single Event, and will happen nearly 1 turn in 3. Speaking anecdotally again, I'd bet it comes down to how many blips are left in piles you move past. If you get lucky and the double-spawn empties a pile while only placing 7 of 10 blips from that pile, then you'll probably be okay. With a poor draw, you end up with a 5-GS stack on each side of the formation and when you eventually move one there's just 1 or 2 'stealers left in the smaller blip pile. Thanks again for your input, I'm now excited to try 3-player again.

cim said: - you have the special powers of all six teams. That's a lot of heavy weapons, and a lot of powerful support powers. You're also guaranteed to have Yellow team, so you can move people around the formation fairly quickly if your initial set up isn't great. - you can have at least one, possibly two support tokens added a turn without losing firepower. Furthermore, four of your six teams have support actions which are either guaranteed or very likely to hold off a swarm for a turn without loss, if you time it right. It also occurs to me that every time I've played 3-player we used random team assignment and at least some of the time that included the extra marines expansion. So there was no guarantee that we'd have 6 specific teams and they weren't necessarily paired well. Perhaps my group should re-evaluate and try again sometime using the original 6 teams to see if we were inadvertently making it harder on ourselves. So thanks again for your feedback and observations. Very interesting!

cim said: - while the formation is much longer, once you get past area 1A, almost all the Genestealers will be appearing very near the top or bottom of the formation, so you can set up your defensive and offensive marines accordingly. That's an interesting observation, and one I was certainly overlooking. I'm guessing from your comments that we're not using Yellow's move power often enough. I've never played 6-player, but in 3-player we're 0 for 4. We never made it to the end game where the length of the formation might be a benefit... and the early game would have to play out very differently for the formation to still be lengthy when we got there. They were all such rapid slaughters (dead before leaving Location 2, IIRC), we've stopped breaking the game out when there's three of us. In contrast, we've got about a 75% win ratio in 2- and 4- player. Around 13 or 14 wins in like 17 or 18 plays. We lost both times we've played with 5-players, but IIRC they were long games with the last marine going down in Location 4. Lots of Intimidation and PowerField shenanigans that eventually backfired near the end.

Interesting argument, Berf. I freely admit I lack the experience with solitaire to really know how it feels in play, but the math suggests to me that 2-player should be tougher than single-player. The number of player marines and actions increases by 33% going to 2-player (from solitaire), while the average number of genestealers per room goes up by only 32% (once taking into account the weighting of the spawn-types in the deck), so, yeah, in that regards it's a tiny bit easier on the players. That said, a major spawn that goes unanswered has at best a 50% chance of killing a marine in solitaire, and a 66% chance in 2-player, so in theory at least the 2-player game should be less forgiving. To get accumulate a single super-swarm (one that kills automatically unless mitigated by a special power) all you need is to get major spawn on the same color two turns in a row, even if you kill one from the swarm in between. In solitaire, it would take 3 such turns in a row, which is both significantly less likely to occur, and also gives you one more turn to roll a skull or two and defuse it before it gets ugly. Given those factors, it would seem to me that having one bad turn or making one play mistake should be far easier to recover from in solo play than in games with more players. And there's certainly more chances to make such mistakes in multi-player games. The Instinct mechanic starts to make these bad choices more likely once you add more players into the mix. With one player, you've eliminated the dangers associated with incomplete information or selfishness. You add a 1C room to the mission as well, adding 25% to the length of the mission (another 6 to 13 genestealers you have to kill before the game ends, and several extra event cards to draw), which should also increase the chances of losing the war of attrition. Lastly, with an 8-marine line-up, I would expect it gets trickier trying to get good weapon coverage. A 2-range marine can theoretically cover 40% of the battlefield in a solo game, but can only cover at most 31% of the battlefield in multiplayer (at least until marines start dying). In some locations that's more important than others (with spawn points more densely arranged or more spread out), but it's yet another thing that incrementally complicates multi-player games. In a solo game, a marine with nothing better to do is closer to the Door or other Activate-able terrain, but with more players it's increasingly likely that the characters who could be spared for Move+Activate are at some far end of the line where they can't get to the relevant terrain cards. I would expect all that would add up to slightly more difficulty at 2 players than at 1.

Destructor said: That's odd, I played my first ever coop (non-solo, I mean) game last Sunday with two other friends- even though it was their first game, we still won fairly handily. I was surprised since I've been told often what a difficult game it is to win on the first try. I should add a caveat that, because ti was their first game, we all freely discussed in advance what action cards to use with each other before we used them. Good job! Glad to hear the mighty servants of the Emperor ground the foul beasts beneath their armored boots. Given that one-thirds of cards in the deck place two swarms of 5 simultaneously (in 3-player), and every single turn at least 6 genestealers come into play, it's just astounding to me that you got a win "handily". What was the secret to your success? What teams were you playing? What was your strategy? Was there a particular action that really saved the day? Which end location did you get? Was the die rolling hot? Did the event cards come up really favorably?

I believe what loken14 is saying is that the rule is really meant for games with 2 or more players. When playing with 2 or more, you get to look at the action cards of all the marines you are playing, but not at the action cards of marines being controlled by other players. In a 2-player game, each person controls 4 marines from 2 fire teams, and thus gets to hold and look at 2 sets of cards, but can't look at the 2 sets of cards their fellow player is holding. When playing solitaire, you can essentially ignore the rule, as it doesn't really do or mean anything in a solo game. You're playing 6 marines from 3 fire teams, so you get to hold and look at 3 sets of cards. There's another thread where we discuss the rationale and significance of this rule in multi-player, you may find it helps you understand why the rule exists in the first place, and thus why it's not important in 1-player play. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=189&efcid=43&efidt=417763

This is just a heads-up for those who find Space Hulk Death Angel too hard or too easy: your best bet at tweaking it might be to change how many players you have at the table. The math behind the various void lock cards is not exactly even, it has some swing to it depending on number of players. 3-Player games are much harder than 2-Player games, for example, which was a big shock to us the first time we played 3-player. In order from easiest to hardest, the configurations would be: Solo game (easiest) 2-Player / 4-Player 5-Player 3-Player / 6-Player (hardest) The math on the void locks leads me to say 2-player is about 25% more difficult than 1-player, 5-player is about 50% more difficult, and 3-player is 75% to 100% more difficult than solo. Marines die really fast in 3-Player, thanks to the "auto-kill" major Swarms of 5. About a third of the cards in the Event Deck generate TWO of these killer swarms simultaneously in 3-Player mode. My wife and I win a lot more often than we lose in 2-player and have done nearly as well in 4-player with friends, but IIRC, I don't think we've ever won a game with 3, 5, or 6 players.

Irxson said: What worries me is that if they lower the quality of their cards for all their games to allow them to make POD expansions. From what I heard, Mansions of Madness board game cards are thinner amd weaker than the ones from Arkham horror. I wouldn't worry about it, as that seems very unlikely to happen. The POD cards are indeed thinner (and thus probably weaker) than the non-POD cards, but if you read this thread closely, you'll find that normal Death Angel cards remain high-quality thick textured cards. It's just the POD expansion that's thinner and lighter. That's why people say you need to put them in card sleeves so you can't tell them apart on sight or by touch. Similar statements can be found at the page on the Mansions of Madness POD expansion, where it specifically mentions that the POD cards are thinner and that the POD expansion includes reprints of some cards from the base game so that you can't tell by the backs of the cards which ones are from the expansion. Every indication is that FFG expects the POD expansions to be thinner stock than the normal cards, and is _not_ changing existing (or future) games to match the POD. Since the POD is not done by their normal printer, it may even be that they couldn't match the thickness or texture even if they wanted to. The whole point of the POD is to cut costs and risks on mini-expansions, so that they can print things that would otherwise never see print because they'd be too expensive (or not sell enough copies). Given the choice between a micro-expansion either being on thinner cardstock, or not existing at all, I'd choose the lighter cards.

Mestrahd said: Also, when moving the swarms, is there any particular order to do it? For example, sometimes if I were to flank A across the bottom into B, I could then move B up one slot and have just one swarm instead of 2. Obviously this is only advantageous if the resulting combo is 3 or less, but sometimes it could make a difference. Per page 22 of the rulebook, each individual genestealer card can only move once per round, regardless of whether that 1 move is up/down or flanking. So, effectively, it's simultaneous. In your example, A & B would _not_ combine, they'd be two different swarms. EDIT: Had to revise my answer, and then unrevise it. I wasn't certain at first if I was correctly picturing the situation you were describing. I'm going to add a diagram. 1 | 2 3A | 4B So we have four spaces, numbered 1 to 4. A is on Space 3, B is on Space 4. The event card indicates that A will flank, and B will move up. If that's _not_ the situation you're describing, let me know and I'll take another stab at it. If, as I assumed intially, that is the situation you're describing, the final position after movement would be: 1 | 2B 3 | 4A Regardless of the order it happens in (other parts of the rules imply it's left to right, top to bottom, but it could just as easily be simultaneous), the cards from A will only move once. Whether or not B has/have already moved is irrelevant.

Mestrahd said: I just played my first solo game with Blue, Yellow and Green (Chosen randomly) and I had some questions come up. 1) If I roll a 3-skull while attacking do I kill 3 GS or just 1? 2) If I use team A's MOVE + ACTIVATE card to swap with B, can I change the facing on B as well since he also moved? 3) I had a Swarm of like 7 on Lorenzo? from Blue and I used Counterstrike that turn, would that keep him alive as long as he kept rolling skulls? or is 7 just an instakill? 4) If your Space Marine is facing the wrong direction, he can still defend right? Just not use a support token to reroll. If the answer to 1 is 1, then how on earth do you keep up with the spawning? If you had all three teams attack AND they were all facing the appropriate direction AND they all rolled skulls, you could kill 6 GS per turn. But the chances of all 3 of those conditions happening at once are slim and none. Even in the solo mode of spawns of 2/1 I had swarms of 5-7 by the 4th or 5th turn. 1) You kill just a single genestealer. There are special abilities that may change that, but in general most marines kill 0 or 1 genestealer, depending on whether or not they get a skull. 2) No, only the team whose Move + Activate card is being used gets to change facing. 3) You still roll the die no matter how many genestealers are in the swarm, so if he rolled a lot of skulls in a row he could whittle them down or even wipe them out. Or he could get unlucky and die by rolling a 0, 4, or 5. 4) Correct. If you're flanked by the attacking genestealers, you can't spend support tokens, but you still make a normal defense roll. Un-numbered question) Keeping up with the spawning can indeed be difficult, and is the primary source of dramatic tension in the game. Note however that there are a number of teams that have special attack abilities that will let you get ahead of the odds a bit. In just the Blue, Yellow, and Green you used in that game, there are 4 abilities for doing so. Blue has his defensive counter-strike and the ability to intimidate 'stealers back into the blip piles. Yellow has a special attack that kills 3 genestealers automatically (but is sometimes sacrificial). Green can sometimes get lucky and kill 3 Genestealers on one roll. In addition, support tokens can be used to reroll attacks, and are definitely worth using to keep swarms from getting to 5 or more in size. Also, just how difficult the game is depends a lot on what Event cards you draw in what order, so it's possible you may have experienced a harder-than-average run on the event deck. Shuffle well and try again.

Destructor said: Aristocrap said: I've got another question: if I draw 'For My Battle Brothers,' do I have to remove a Support Token from a marine even if there are no Genestealers engaged with him? No. I disagree. I think that yes, you do have to discard the support token, even if there's not GS to kill. The language of the card is "pick a marine who has tokens" _not_ "pick a marine who has tokens and is engage with genestealers". So if the only marine(s) in play with support tokens are not engaged with 'stealers, you still have to pick him (them). Then you follow the rest of the cards instructions, which involves discarding 1 of the tokens and discarding 1 engaged genestealer. But the wording of the card does _not_ give any indications that you must have a GS to discard in order to discard the support token. Nor does it indicate that the discarding is optional. Here's the actual text of the card: "Instinct: Choose a Space Marine that has at least 1 Support Token (if able). Discard 1 Support Token from him and 1 Genestealer engaged with him (of your choice)."Now compare that to the text of "Rewarded Faith", which does something similar: "Instinct: Choose a Space Marine. You may discard any number of Support Tokens from him to slay an equal number of Genestealers engaged with him."Notice how Rewarded Faith uses "may" to indicate that it's optional? It also uses "to" to indicate that the death of the 'stealers is dependent upon and linked to the discarding of the tokens. For My Battle Brothers doesn't use either of these indicators, so I don't interpret it to be optional, nor do I think that the lack of a 'stealer to kill would prevent the discard of the token. There are, after all, plenty of cards in the game that remove tokens without any benefit to the marines ("Outnumbered" and "Stalking From The Shadows", for example).

Destructor said: Wait, what? Are you saying there are only ever four locations in a solo game? The void lock, then three other cards? So in a single player you'd play: Void Lock -> One 2 card -> One 3 card -> One 4 card? I have to be honest I have not been playing it that way! I've been playing it: Void lock -> all three 2 cards - > all three 3 cards -> The first 4 card to come up. And I won the second game and came very close to beating the first! I imagine if I'd had to do 1/2 of the locations I'd have won a lot faster! Thanks for this clarification- very useful! Yep, that's what I'm saying. Just four or five cards, depending on how many players you have. Glad I could help. Um... My apologies in advance if this comes off as rude... but might I suggest you carefully reread the entire rulebook? Now, it may be that you're doing everything right, and solo play is just that much easier than the 2-player and 3-player games I'm used to. I could believe that, because 3-player is so much harder than 2-player, and I have yet to play solo. But the idea that the game went 3 times as long as intended, with 3 times as many genestealers, and yet you still won suggests to me that there may be some other factor at work. It might be worth looking to see if there's some other rule you're missing that's making the game easier than the designers intended. Here's some things that could radically alter the play balance, I'd recommend double-checking that you're doing all of these right: Starting with the correct number of marines (6 in a solo game). Support tokens cannot be used when the swarm is flanking the marine. Only 1 support token placed per support card played. Maximum number of support tokens is limited to those that came in the box. (So if you have a lot of them on a door or other special situation, it means you don't have as many available for your marines.) Support tokens can only be used for normal offense and normal defense rolls, _not_ most special rolls (like Claudio's "do I die?" roll). Doors (and other beneficial terrain cards) can only be activated once per round. (The only way to put more than 1 token on a door in a round is with Red team's special ability, which can put 2 on it.) No single fire team can use the same card in two consecutive rounds. (So you can't just shoot round after round). On defense, you must roll higher than (not equal to) the number of genestealers in the swarm in order to survive. Spawning the correct number of genestealers. (In a solo game that'd be 2 on a yellow/red triangle, and 1 on a white triangle.) No offense intended, Just trying to help.

TheWagon said: You forgot the Genestealer Attack phase. Yep, that I did. I was typing in a hurry, trying to fit in a reply before heading out the door.