I wasn’t able to play BattleLore last night, but I did manage to play both Space Hulk and Advanced Squad Leader.

Space Hulk was a lot of fun. Randy and I were playing the second mission in the set, which requires the Space Marines to hold down two access points that the Genestealers are getting into the area. I sent three marines in one direction and the other two towards the other point.

Unforunately, I managed to completely forget how ineffective the chainsaw is in combat (it kills doors fine, but isn’t any better in melee than a regular powerfist), so the two marines I sent to one entrance were overwhelmed and killed quickly. My other marines successfully captured the other entry-point, though.

From here, my sergeant and my assault-rifle marine went back to kill the rest of the genestealers. Lots and lots of genestealers. Eventually, Randy actually had every genestealer he could use on the map – I wasn’t able to lock down the other entrypoint, and instead needed to just kill them all. The assault-rifle ran out of ammo and that marine bought it. Then too, so did the sergeant. It was all down to a normal Marine with a Bolter and Power Fist.

I set him on overwatch, and Randy started running his mass of Genestealers towards me. Attack after attack after attack, and I just was able to shoot them all. Randy sent some around a side passage, but most didn’t make it that far. I had magic dice, and enough command points that I could unjam my bolter when necessary.

Finally, he was down to 2 Genestealers, only one of which could get to me this turn. It came at me from the sidepassage… and my gun jammed and it was in melee. This one I lost, and Randy won the scenario. But that lone marine had killed about 20 Genestealers. Wow!

ASL – or rather, Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #2 – was also fun. I had a bunch of Commonwealth troops and their anti-aircraft guns, trapped and surrounded by Germans. The game ran in waves, with the initial push by Randy’s men killing one of my weapon crews before I forced his squads to retreat (cutting many of them down to half squads in the process).

Unfortunately, there was a lone squad to the south of me and many to the north of me, and my guns just couldn’t break them! First one, then a second of my three Guns malfunctioned, and with the rest of my support troops broken, Randy was finally able to push back and run over my positions – in the last turn he had to do so. That was an excellent game – took us about 2 hours.

I’ll post pictorial session reports of both up on www.boardgamegeek.com sometime in the near future.