Space Hulk Dilemma

Okay, so I gave in and bought the new edition, even though I've got the old one. I haven't broken the shrink on it yet though, even though it's been in the house for a week, and here's why.

I'm not a collector. Having two copies of what's pretty much the same game is just stupid. So I need to decide which one is going to be the keeper. Until I do that, I'm reluctant to break the seal because the game is already valuable second hand and breaking the seal will lower the value. But I can't decide which one to keep until I've seen the missions and rules. Can anyone help?

* Is there any sort of consensus emerging about which edition *plays* better? My hunch is that the newer edition is a marginal improvement: the psychic rules are great, and the more pro-Marine balance pleases me as some of the old missions looked 100% impossible for the Marines to win. But has anyone actually played both and made a comparison?

* There's virtually nothing in the new missions booklet that doesn't pretty much replicate what's in the original box and Deathwing, right?

* The horrendously difficult but strangely compelling solo mission "Cloud Runners' last stand" from Deathwing should be easy to replicate if I want to. I'd be missing a few tiles but that's not a big deal to simply replace them on a randomly generated map. I'd just need some ambush counters.

* Which leaves the hybrids from Genestealer. I'm not interested in playing the Genestealer missions or the psychic card deck but I *am* interested in playing the first space hulk campaign which features non-psychic hybrids with big guns. I don't suppose anyone knows if this is any good, or indeed playable with the tiles in the new base-game box?

Feel sorry for a guy at our minis club who pre-ordered from the GW website as soon as it was announced ... and he has never received it. But this is the interesting post he put on our website:

"Called up GW last week and looks like they f$$ked up my order and so apparantly have to get the maker's to create a new batch"

Limited Edition ?

Southernman wrote:

Feel sorry for a guy at our minis club who pre-ordered from the GW website as soon as it was announced ... and he has never received it. But this is the interesting post he put on our website:

"Called up GW last week and looks like they f$$ked up my order and so apparantly have to get the maker's to create a new batch"

Limited Edition ?

Interesting, although I seriously doubt they'll need to go back to the printers to sort this out. There's still stock in the states as far as I know, plus there may be returns to GW stores and other ways of getting some of the existing stock.

But still, I wouldn't entirely discount another print run in the future. That's why I haven't kept any "investment copies".

* Is there any sort of consensus emerging about which edition *plays* better? My hunch is that the newer edition is a marginal improvement: the psychic rules are great, and the more pro-Marine balance pleases me as some of the old missions looked 100% impossible for the Marines to win. But has anyone actually played both and made a comparison?


Look Matt, I HAVEN'T TRIED 3RD ED YET, but I can confirm having won every single mission in 1st Ed, as the Marines. Granted some of the missions will not be won if you're rolling shit-- but what else is new? To be perfectly honest this whole "pro marine bias" thing is a major turn of for me.

I'll tell you what, how about you sell me your Deathwing and Genestealer while you figure it out?

Christ Almighty Matt, the amount of debating you have done over the last 3 weeks you'd think you were picking a university to attend or something. Just man up and open the fucking thing already, otherwise what the fuck did you buy it for?

The @nd printing is supposedly only for GW inventory only, as they are running out of copies to use for spare parts to fulfill broken pieces request. Supposedly none of this small second batch will be going on sale.

Just think of 3rd Edition as an expansion to your first edition. The plastic dudes are cool. Your first edition has no dead guys on thrones, if I'm not mistaken.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Christ Almighty Matt, the amount of debating you have done over the last 3 weeks you'd think you were picking a university to attend or something. Just man up and open the fucking thing already, otherwise what the fuck did you buy it for?

Fair point. It's the price of the thing that terrifies me.

billyz wrote:

Look Matt, I HAVEN'T TRIED 3RD ED YET, but I can confirm having won every single mission in 1st Ed, as the Marines. Granted some of the missions will not be won if you're rolling shit-- but what else is new? To be perfectly honest this whole "pro marine bias" thing is a major turn of for me.

Ok then, how the hell to you beat the 1st edition CAT mission? Seriously - I don't know how many times I've played that both face-to-face and in the Teardown implementation - and I've never seen the Marines win.

Are there times when perhaps you might want to play 4 player? Two sets would enable that, no? I'm speculating, I don't know if that would work per se...

FFS keep both! You can't have too much of a good thing! Shut up and play it already. You can always decide to sell later. (tho selling space hulk will upset the ameritrash gods and will curse your dicerolls for years to come)

Not only should you open the damned shrink, you need to download yourself a copy of this "popular space game experience enhancement program" to go with it.




EDIT: As for missing tiles for older missions, don't the end-cuts on the earlier editions match/mate to these? I would think you'd be able to recreate old missions exactly if you don't mind dropping a few bits of cardboard underneath some old tiles to bring them up to height. [Wonder if Doom tiles are the right height...]

You need to man up and crack that bad boy open. The rules do seem to be the best version of the three, and the minis are awesome.

The real problem comes from deciding if you wanna risk painting the models, or, if you're like me, converting them.

Until I do that, I'm reluctant to break the seal because the game is already valuable second hand and breaking the seal will lower the value.

Not by that much. If people can sell beat-to-shit copies of Dune, Magic Realm, or 1st ed. Space Hulk for ridiculous money on eBay, your opened 3rd ed. will be able to fetch a good price.

There are only two kinds of people who'd actually pay more money for a shrinkwrapped copy of an OoP game; serious collectors, and morons.

If you buy a game that is confirmed to be complete and in good condition, not only do you know what you're getting, but if it doesn't turn out to be as advertised, you at least have some recourse.

If you buy a shrinkwrapped OoP game, and it isn't complete due to a manufacturer's error, or the contents were damaged during the years of transport, you're beat. Not only are you probably not going to be able to replace the parts cheaply, but you also were delivered what was promised, so now you're stuck with it. So why the hell would you pay more for that?

mjl1783 wrote:

If you buy a shrinkwrapped OoP game, and it isn't complete due to a manufacturer's error, or the contents were damaged during the years of transport, you're beat. Not only are you probably not going to be able to replace the parts cheaply, but you also were delivered what was promised, so now you're stuck with it. So why the hell would you pay more for that?

You're right on the money. In my experience selling OOP games on ebay, in-shrink games regularly go for lower prices than an open but unpunched version--*far* less for older titles because collectors know that re-shrinkwrapping isn't an uncommon practice, and even the seller may not know whether or not it's original shrink.

For a game this new, in-shrink will likely command a bit of a premium during the Xmas buying season because people often want gifts to look new even if bought secondhand. Outside of the Xmas window though, I suspect open/unpunched will be valued about the same as in-shrink.

MattDP wrote:

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Christ Almighty Matt, the amount of debating you have done over the last 3 weeks you'd think you were picking a university to attend or something. Just man up and open the fucking thing already, otherwise what the fuck did you buy it for?

Fair point. It's the price of the thing that terrifies me.

Just pretend you went on a hooker binge.