Space Crusade reboot project, the plan

As many I discovered miniatures through the 90’s games HeroQuest and Space Crusade. I owned those games as I was a kid and recently had in mind to open those artifacts and see what remain of them.

Indeed, I remember myself trying to paint those minis when I was 12… And all the horror I did back then! But I was sure at least a good part of the material remained in those dusted boxes…

So, a couple of weeks ago, while visiting my parents, I found these and opened the boxes.

As a game HeroQuest is not very interesting, it’s very basic and targeted for young kids, but Space Crusade on the other hand provides a simple to learn yet complete system to play interesting games. Also, it’s from the Warhammer 40k universe so it’s possible to replace or complete the miniatures with modern and sharper miniatures.

That’s why Space Crusade got my attention: what if I could play the game with modern, fully painted miniatures? On top of that, as I like to play board games in solo mode « against the machine », this would be a perfect opportunity for me to build a solo variant for Space Crusade and report here what I did.

So, I opened the box…

All the Gretchins were still there, unpainted but four Orks were missing, two of the other four remaining undercoated in white.

Regarding the marines I could build 2 squads out of the original three. But when I look at the minis I really find them awful. Even with huge painting talents they would still look « cheap » compared to the current Space Marines Citadel provides.

I take that challenge as an opportunity to paint many different miniatures from the Warhammer 40k universe.

The Motivation

Space Crusade is great for that, as it gives you the opportunity to paint 3 different squads of marines (Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Imperial Fists) and many vilains as Genestealers (Space Hulk is not far!), Orks, Gretchins, Androids (Immortals) and a squad of Chaos corrupted Space Marines.

As I haven’t kept all the original miniatiures of the game I’ll replace some (most) of them by modern Citadel miniatures. I’ll probably only keep the original Gretchins and the Dreadnought. I’ll also paint some of the original Orks but will probably also purchase a box of Clip Boyz Orks to add some variety to the game! Oh, and the Gretchins box is also tempting me… Well well well!

As it will definitely take me quite some time to finish this project, I’ll write here a little plan, a sort of roadmap that I’ll try to follow to make good and efficient progress.

To give you some backaground, the game comes with 50 miniatures, which are composed by the following groups:

• 3 squads of 5 Space Marines (a sergeant included) : Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Imperial Fists
• 8 orks
• 14 gretchins
• 4 Androids
• 3 Genestealers
• 1 squad of Chaos Space Marines (a sergeant included)
• 1 Dreadnought

The Evil Plan

I’ll divide the project in small phases in order to enjoy the work as much as possible, that’s why the order might look a bit chaotic (or this is the Wrap that corrupted me already!).

1. Ultramarines Squad (from a Tactical Squad box) – Done, April 7th
2. Blood Angels Squad (from a Tactical Squad box) – Done, April 10th
3. the Dreadnought and 4 (original) Orks – Done, April 20th
4. 4 Androids (from a Immortal Necrons box) – Done, April 30th
5. 4 (original) Gretchins – Canceled (not really useful and too different with modern Grets)
6. 3 Genestealers (from a Genestealers box) – Done, May, 10th.
7. 4 Orks (from the Clip Boyz Orks box) – Done
8. Chaos Space Marines squad (original or from a Chaos Space Marines box) – Started
9. 10 Gretchins (from a Gretchins box) – Done, May 19th
10. Imperial Fists squad (original)

I’ll update this post as soon as I make progress on it, with links to specific post entries with more details of each step.

Stay tuned!