Overview
This guide attempts to explain all the things you will need to play the game properly. Formulas, strategies, FAQs, and the like.There will not be maps or specific level strategies, you will need to adapt to the conditions and the structure of your squads. This guide will help you with everything else.
Introduction
This guide is for veterans and newbies alike. It will attempt to explain some of the mechanics that the game manual leaves vague and give you the formulas you need to make decisions on equipping your squad.
While I have tested everything in this guide personally, I am only one (non-superhuman, non-power-armoured) man, and input is welcomed. If you spot an error, be sure to let me know.
This guide will likely be useful even if you’ve played the game extensively, as it may contain some aspect of a piece of equipment or skill you’ve overlooked. Read it all.
[However, much of the guide is outdated at this point. I have not kept it up to speed with the latest patches, since I don’t play the game anymore. The strategies are still largely correct, but some of the bugs have been removed and features were added. Use your judgement, the Emperor will guide you.]
Update History
Version 1.01 (May 4th, 2017)
-Updated a section on moving-and-shooting doors since that was patched out. Being polite to people on the internet works, who would have guessed?
Version 1.00 (Dec 20th, 2014)
-First release of the guide. Doesn’t include any information on the Imperial Fists (because I don’t have the DLC yet).
-Thanks to Marionette for the editing and being a zebra or something.
Help! My Game is Really Laggy!
Turn off the shoulder cam. Is it still laggy?
But wait, it’s off! Why is the game still lagging?
The cam gets turned back on every time a turn starts (genestealers or yours) and also whenever you select a terminator right after deploying him.
If the camera controls in the top right are expanded, the shoulder cam is causing the game to lag, even if it is not visible.
If you disable the shoulder cam in the options menu, it will stay disabled each turn.
If your game is still lagging after that, turn off volumetric lights, terminator visibility cones, and lower the texture detail.
Your Terminators
Introduction
These are the chapter’s finest. Augmented through surgeries and implants to become more than men, equipped in the mightiest armour, veterans of countless battles, and purgers of xenos, mutants, and heretics. These are your terminators, and they have a starting ballistic skill of 2-3. Cripes.
Chapters
You can choose to play as three chapters when you start a new game: The Ultramarines, the Blood Angels, and the Space Wolves.
The Ultramarines get +5% to ranged, -5% to melee, and can equip the cyclone missile launchers on their heavies. They never get melee specialists, only ranged specialists.
The Blood Angels get +5 focus points on their librarians. They get 4 ranged specialists and 5 melee specialists.
The Space Poodles get +5% to melee, -5% to ranged, and get rune-priests instead of librarians. They only get melee specialists, but get 2 rune-priests and 2 sergeants instead of 1 and 3.
Space Puppies are widely considered to be Space Hulk on hard mode, since their ranged accuracy is abysmal and leveling them up is going to be a challenge. Their rune-priests are all kinds of violent, though.
Ultrasmurfs are usually considered the easier way to play, but the Space Vampires are more flexible and have more potent librarians. I consider them equally useful.
Levels and Equipment
If you’re a returning veteran from previous Space Hulk games, you’ll be delighted to know you can now customize your terminators! Pick from a small subset of faces and assorted bling veneration of the God-Emperor to tack onto your tactical dreadnought armour. Wunnaful!
In addition, if a terminator survives a mission they will gain experience and can level up. When leveling up, they get 4 points to spend on stats and may unlock new skills, equipment, and weapons.
Statistics cost more to level up the higher they are. A statistic of value 2 requires 2 points to level up, while 3 requires 4, 4 requires 8, and 5 requires 16. The highest value for a stat is 6.
The maximum level for a terminator is 10.
Statistics are:
Weapon Skill gives +10% hit chance in melee. Applies during your attack and during the counter-attack, if applicable.
Ballistic Skill gives +10% hit chance at ranged during all shots, including the use of flamers. The formula for hit chance is ((BS – 3) * 0.10) + (bonuses) = hits per shot.
Agility gives an additional AP for every rank.
Willpower adds 5 focus points for each rank, but only for librarians. When broodlord psychic attacks are added in the future, this stat may become more useful. Otherwise, ignore it for anyone except librarians.
Toughness reduces the chance for a genestealer to land a damaging blow in melee. Remember that you need to block the hit with toughness, then perform a counter-attack with weapon skill, so both are vital to surviving close combat.
Toughness may also periodically save your bacon from an acid splash, but it’s extremely rare.
Perception increases the range of your auto-sense, meaning your terminators can spot blips of genestealers 1 tile further away. Auto-sense goes through walls, so you will be able to spot assaults slightly sooner. It also increases the range you can overwatch at, as it increases the range your bolter will suffer -5% accuracy penalties at.
When a terminator is rolled up, they will have 4 stats at 2, and 2 at 3. Hopefully the 3-stats will be Ballistic Skill and Agility, but you may not always be so lucky.
Stat Recommendations
Don’t waste points on willpower unless you’re a librarian. It does nothing. A librarian with a bit of willpower is great, but don’t forget that you can meditate to get some FP back. Consider how much you would use in one go before needing to recharge.
Perception is nice to have, but the equivalent of 3 perception can be gained by equipping a motion-tracker. You don’t need much.
Toughness is a better overall investment than weapon skill, as the base to-hit of a melee attack is quite high as it is. You have to survive multiple attacks before you get to counter-attack, and toughness will get you that far. Sink points into toughness once your BS and Agility are at 5.
Weapon Skill could be good for a melee oriented terminator, but see the section on melee combat for all the ways that can go horribly wrong. If you have no other stats to buff, buff this.
Ballistic Skill is vital because missing can send even the best strategy down the space-toilet. Each point adds +10%, but with a bit of finagling you can get your hit rate to 100% (sustained fire, skills, close range, and a high BS). Get this to 5.
Agility is also vital because AP is everything. You use AP for reloading, cooling, murdering, and moving. Get this to 5 as well. 6 agility sounds nice but 16 skill points is a monumental investment that could be better placed elsewhere.
Classes
Terminators come in several flavours. You are allowed to mix your squad a little, but you must have a heavy terminator at all times, since some missions mandate that.
Your squad needs either a sergeant or a librarian.
Your squad always has a heavy.
You squad will then have 3 ranged or melee terminators in any combination you like.
Sergeants provide a passive +1 AP to everyone within their vox caster range, which is a yellow circle on the map around the sergeant. He provides this at the start of the turn; moving him closer to another terminator will not provide the extra AP until the next turn. This extra AP is orange on your terminator’s display. Also, he cannot provide this AP during the deployment phase.
Sergeants can equip a Power Sword at level 2, Lightning Claws at level 5, and a Thunder Hammer or a Combi-Plasma at level 8.
Sergeants do not get mines in their equipment slots, but can get a vox-caster skill to improve the range of their +1AP by 1.
When a sergeant reaches level 8, their vox caster gives +2AP instead of +1.
Librarians provide a bit of mind bullet fun to your squad. They can buff them to provide +1AP for 1 turn, kill a genestealer (even out of LOS!) with a psychic attack, kill a crowd of genestealers with a psychic storm, or meditate to get focus points back. Their weapon choices are reduced, though, limited to just a Storm Bolter and Force Sword or Force Axe.
Heavies carry the big guns, either a Heavy Flamer or an Assault Cannon. They cannot carry equipment, though. Ballistic Skill is not as important for them due to the obscenely high hit rates their weapons have. They can also carry the cyclone missile launcher if you’re an Ultramarine.
They can carry Chainfists in their melee slot, and why not? It’s marginally better than a Power Fist.
Ranged terminators get a passive +5% ranged accuracy. They can equip Combi-Flamers at level 5 and Combi-Meltas at level 8.
Melee terminators get a passive +5% melee accuracy. They can equip Chainfists, Lightning Claws, and Thunder Hammers, but only ever get a Storm Bolter for ranged weapons.
Skills
Introduction
You can further buff your terminators with skills, which are unlocked as they level up. You also unlock more skill slots with level ups, to a maximum of 3 slots. Skills are unique, and can only be equipped in one slot – hence why some skills seem to do the same thing. Putting both on will give you a bigger bonus.
Unlock Table
A useful reference. You can also see what skills unlock when by mousing over them when customizing terminators.
All terminators start with ‘sustained-fire upgrade’ and ‘heat management’ even though neither are worth anything to a starting heavy. Oops.
All terminators unlock an additional skill slot at levels 5 and 8.
Sergeants
-Level 2: Blade Master, Improved Photo-lenses.
-Level 3: Eagle Eye, Tear-and-Rend
-Level 4: Command Vox Range
-Level 5: Auto-senses Upgrade, Move + Fire Upgrade
-Level 6: Overwatch Upgrade
-Level 7: Fire-proof
-Level 8: Broodlord Slayer, Hammerfall
-Level 9: Annihilator, Acid-proof
-Level 10: Door Breacher (Really?)
Librarians
-Level 2: Improved Photolenses
-Level 3: Executioner, Eagle Eye
-Level 4: Psi Booster
-Level 5: Auto-senses Upgrade, Move & Fire Upgrade
-Level 6: Blade Master, Overwatch Upgrade
-Level 7: Targeting Reticules Upgrade
-Level 8: Broodlord Slayer, Reinforced Greaves
-Level 9: Acid Proof
-Level 10: Door Breacher (only a psi-master can shoot doors open.)
Heavies
-Level 2: Incinerator, Door Breacher
-Level 3: Eagle Eye, Auto-senses Upgrade
-Level 4: Nothing
-Level 5: Storm of Iron, Move & Fire Upgrade
-Level 6: Overwatch Upgrade, Targetting Reticules Upgrade
-Level 7: Fire-proof
-Level 8: Broodlord Slayer
-Level 9: Acid-proof
-Level 10: Battle Hero
Ranged Terminators
-Level 2: Improved Photolenses
-Level 3: Eagle Eye, Door Breacher
-Level 4: Reinforced Greaves
-Level 5: Auto-senses Upgrade, Move & Fire Upgrade
-Level 6: Targeting Reticules Upgrade, Overwatch Upgrade
-Level 7: Fire-proof, Battle Hero
-Level 8: Acid-proof
-Level 9: Broodlord Slayer
-Level 10: Nothing
Melee Terminators
-Level 2: Reinforced Greaves, Improved Photolenses
-Level 3: Eagle Eye, Door Breacher
-Level 4: Auto-senses Upgrade
-Level 5: Move & Fire Upgrade, Tear & Rend
-Level 6: Overwatch Upgrade, Targeting Reticules Upgrade
-Level 7: Fire-proof
-Level 8: Hammer Fall, Battle Hero
-Level 9: Broodlord Slayer, Acid-proof
-Level 10: Nothing
What They Do
Sustained Fire Upgrade allows a terminator to keep their sustained fire bonus even if they move. This is mostly for move-while-firing cases. Good in the early game, loses its sting later when your accuracy is higher.
Heat Management doubles the amount of heat reduced when you perform an action, such as moving or turning, but does not double the heat reduction for manually cooling the weapon. Not as useful as you probably think it is, since camping on overwatch will receive no benefit from this. Depending on your strategy, an accuracy increase will probably be more useful.
Improved Photolenses increases accuracy by 5% when using a bolter. Very useful.
Reinforced Greaves increases melee accuracy by 5%. A must for melee builds, otherwise skip it.
Eagle Eye gives sustained fire +10% to accuracy. Very useful, when combined with a high BS this can get your accuracy on a sustained-fire close-range shot over 100%.
Door Breacher gives 100% accuracy when smashing doors. While not a bad thing, the move-shoot-for-0-AP buff makes smashing doors pretty easy, so another skill is probably a better fit. Totally useless for a terminator using a chainfist/flamer combo.
Auto-senses Upgrade gives +1 to perception. A motion tracker (equipment) will give you all the perception you need, so take an accuracy upgrade instead.
Move and Fire Upgrade allows a terminator to move while firing without taking the usual -30% penalty. Very situational, as some missions practically require you to move-while-firing to advance or retreat safely. If you find yourself move-while-firing 5 or more times per mission and it saves your bacon, use this. If you don’t (or you don’t care if you kill while firing, your strategy/accuracy is handling it) then take something like photolenses.
Targeting Reticules Upgrade is +5% to hit with a ranged weapon. Similar to Improved Photolenses, but since skills are unique you can stack them together. Also works for weapons like flamers and autocannons, which generally don’t need the extra accuracy but – hey – more is better.
Overwatch Upgrade increases accuracy on overwatch by 5%. Use this only if you’re doing a full ranged build and the other 2 slots are Improved Photolenses and Targeting Reticules, otherwise those skills are better as they apply to overwatch and more.
Fire Proof makes your terminator impervious to flame. It also allows you to voluntarily move into a burning tile. Remember to cackle maniacally when you stride through a burning corridor and impale a genestealer with your molten powerfist.
Good for heavies with flamers, as it allows them solo some missions by always advancing through flames. Most of the time, torching your terminators is not necessary. Readjust your strategy if you intend to use this.
Battle Hero will make your terminator a mini-sergeant, providing +1AP to units within 5 squares. Doesn’t stack with a sergeant, but quite useful if you’re a Space Wolf and make extensive use of rune priests. Also very useful if the map is very large and requires you to split up your terminators. Overall, a good pick.
Acid Proof makes your terminator not take any damage from an acid maw genestealer spitting or exploding on him. While it’s unlocked very late, it’s an excellent skill since the one thing that kills a terminator when taking or overwatching a corner is an exploding genestealer. I recommend this skill.
Broodlord Slayer doubles the damage your terminator does to broodlords. This effectively halves their HP, so they can only ever take 2 shots to kill (regardless of if they have 3 or 4 HP). Since broodlords love to spawn in clumps of 6 when you least expect it, this can really reduce the pain of fighting them. It doesn’t work on the 85% of genestealers who are not broodlords, and it will probably spend the entire mission being useless. It’s not 100% vital, but it’s a good 3rd skill slot filler.
Tear and Rend is great for targets with huge guts. It gives +5% hit when using lightning claws. I don’t need to tell you when to use this, but use reinforced greaves to complement.
Hammer Fall is +5% to hit with a thunder hammer. Melee builds, duh.
Blade Master is +5% to hit with a power sword. Look up two lines. That’s how you use this.
Command Vox Range is for sergeants only. Increases their vox range by 1. Not all that useful, oddly enough, as the vox range is pretty long already and it’s easy enough to reposition the sergeant if you really need that extra AP.
Incinerator is a heavy-only skill. Increases the ammo of the flamer by 2 per clip, for a total of 4. Improves flamer ammo from 12 to 16? Sign me up!
Storm of Iron increases assault cannon hit rate by 5%. Not that great considering it has an incredible 10 rolls and thus rarely misses, but what else are you going to put in this slot?
Executioner increases AXEurracy of a librarian’s force-axe by 5%. Other than the pun, it’s a run-of-the-mill melee upgrade. Since it’s the first one a librarian gets, you’ll probably put it to better use than reinforced greaves (which is level 8 for a librarian!).
Psi-Booster adds 5 extra focus points, the equivalent of 1 level in Willpower. Choose carefully between an accuracy improvement and a willpower boost, because librarians benefit from both.
Annihilator is a sergeant-only skill that doubles the chance of a combi-plasma shot exploding (from 10% to 20%).
Equipment
Introduction
Equipment is extra gear your terminators can store in their invisible pockets. A piece of equipment is either passive or can be used once per mission. Using equipment costs 1AP and may either be deployed immediately in front of you or have a range where it can be deployed.
Librarians and heavies never get to carry equipment. New equipment slots are unlocked at levels 5 and 8 for sergeants, and 4 and 7 for everyone else.
Everyone who can carry equipment starts with a Servo Skull Scanner.
Sergeants
-Level 2: Nothing
-Level 3: Motion Detector
-Level 4: Power Field Generator
-Level 5: Nothing
-Level 6: Teleport Homer
-Level 7: Nothing
-Level 8: Teleport Unit
Melee and Ranged Terminators
-Level 2: Nothing
-Level 3: Proximity Mine (Frag)
-Level 4: Motion Detector
-Level 5: Nothing
-Level 6: Proximity Mine (Flamer)
-Level 7: Teleport Homer
-Level 8: Power Field Generator
-Level 9: Teleport Unit
What they do
Servo Skulls () provide a perception radius on the tile they are centered on. They otherwise don’t do anything: they don’t block movement or LOS, don’t attack, and the genestealers will not try to smash them. But, they come free with all terminators except heavies and librarians at level 1.
You get 1 per mission and can deploy them onto the tile directly in front of your terminator for 1AP.
Motion Detectors provide a passive +3 to perception.
Proximity Mines come in two flavours: Frag and Flamer. The frag version instantly explodes when a genestealer approaches it and has a very high chance of dealing 1HP damage to genestealers who are adjacent to it, which is (in practice) just the one that triggered it. The flamer version lights a 3×3 section of tiles around the mine on fire, doing all the things flames usually do.
Both versions block LOS and movement over them, but genestealers will still try to path through them and blow themselves up. In both cases, the effects are dangerous for your terminators, so don’t stand next to your own bombs.
You get 1 per mission and can deploy them directly in front of your terminator for 1AP. You can bring a frag and flamer on the same mission if you like.
Teleport Homer is an item that allows you to create a temporary deployment zone around your terminator. Any terminators who haven’t already deployed can deploy there.
Teleport Unit allows your terminator to teleport to a target tile for 2AP, with a range of 5.
Power Field Generator will create a 1-tile power field within 6 tiles of the user. This field blocks movement and LOS, but genestealers will try to path to it smash it with their melee attacks.
What to use
Motion Detectors are a no-brainer, as they provide a passive buff that is quite useful. With these on every terminator, you won’t need to stack stat points in perception and genestealers will have a harder time ambushing you.
Servo Skulls aren’t that useful once you have Motion Detectors. While it could be theoretically handy to have a perception radius halfway across the map from your terminators to spot incoming genestealers, the enemy usually spawns as close as possible anyway.
In addition, you need to footslog to any position you want to deploy these skulls. Which means any spot you can deploy it is a spot you’ve already cleared. They really don’t serve much purpose.
Proximity Mines are great fun for the whole family. They take a lot of effort to deploy, since they block movement and you generally don’t want to deploy them in front of an advance, so you’ll spend AP turning around, deploying, then turning back around.
Despite this, they can either provide an early warning for an ambush, or more importantly, block off genestealer spawns. Simply block the spawn with your terminator’s body, place the mine directly in front of the spawn point, and leave when the situation allows it. Genestealers cannot move onto the square blocked by the mine, and will no longer spawn.
However, this doesn’t mean that approach is safe. It’s possible for another genestealer to run by, trigger the bomb, and unplug the spawn point.
Power Field Generators are a ‘might as well’ for your sergeant, since sergeants don’t get mines. They perform a similar purpose but are easier to deploy since they have a range instead of being directly in front. The power field will slow the genestealers down by 2-4AP as they smash the field. It still buys you some time to get out of the way or reload your bolter, so it’s good for clutch scenarios.
Because they block movement, power fields can block spawn points just like mines do. Genestealers can and will target power fields for attacks, unlike mines, so you cannot leave a power field behind and expect it to stay active.
Teleport Homers will allow you to create a deployment area around the user in mid-mission. It can be useful if you use a Teleport Unit to move someone across a gap and then use the teleport homer to bring your other terminators there, but that’s about the only real use for them. Otherwise, it’s usually better to deploy all your terminators, since more guns means more overwatch.
Teleport Units allow your terminators to teleport to any tile within 5 spaces of them, regardless of facing direction. This costs 2AP and may be done once per mission. It allows them to transport through walls and genestealers, and can be quite useful to skip a hallway to reach an objective sooner. If nothing else, it can allow you to move 3 spaces further than normal for no cost.
(If you teleport onto an exit objective tile, your terminator will not exit the level. Move off the tile and back on again to exit correctly).
Psionics
Introduction
Both librarians and rune-priests get an extra psychic skill slot at levels 2 and 4, despite the fact that a rune-priest can’t actually use a second skill until level 4.
Librarians
Prescience at level 1. This skill gives +1AP to all terminators within 6 tiles. Similar to what a sergeant does, but limited by how many focus points you have. Costs 1FP.
Psychic Storm (Target) at level 1. Hits a 1 target genestealer for 1HP damage. If the librarian fails a willpower check, nothing happens. The target doesn’t need to be within LOS (!). Costs 3FP.
Force Barrier at level 1. Creates an uncrossable, unshootable barrier within 12 tiles for 1 turn. The genestealers cannot cross that tile no matter what. Costs 2FP. Good for plugging up spawn points or halting advancing conga lines to allow time to reposition.
Psychic Storm (Area) at level 2. Hits a 7×7 area for the same effects as the single-target version. Doesn’t require LOS. Can’t hurt friendly terminators. Costs 3FP. Presumably, the chance to hit is lower than Psychic Storm Target since they cost the same FP, but that is not stated anywhere. Can only target walkable tiles.
Rune-Priests
Rune of Command at Level 1. Identical to Prescience.
Living Lightning at Level 4. Single-target, requires LOS. While Psychic Storm is a good single-target, it has a short range (even if it doesn’t require LOS). Living Lightning is a single-target, LOS, no range limit attack. Basically a very powerful and accurate bolter shot. Considering you already have long range weapons, its utility is dubious.
Murderous Hurricane at Level 6. Same as Psychic Storm (area).
Blood Angels Only
Note: All of the Blood Angel’s special powers are available at level 1.
Blood Boil is a 2FP attack that hits a 5×5 area within 5 tiles, meaning its effective range is 7. Targets will swell up and explode. The explosion doesn’t damage nearby targets or anything, it’s purely visual. Blood Boil may only be targetted at walkable tiles.
Shield of Sanguinus increases Toughness of all terminators within 6 tiles by 2, for 2FP. Generally, if things are about to get hairy and you know it, you can use this to try to weather the storm. Bear in mind that simply killing the enemy is usually a better approach. Useful for melee terminators, though.
Smite is basically Living Lightning.
Meditation
Meditation is a skill that all librarians have by default. Unlike the other powers, it has an AP cost and does not count as using a power, so you can meditate and then immediately shoot more mind bullets.
Meditate costs 4AP and restores FP equal to your librarian’s willpower. You can use it once per turn, but can’t use it at full FP.
How to use Psykers
Your librarian is basically another bolter-brother, though he can never use the combi-gear. His psionics allow him to attack indirectly or support the team without needing LOS. Most important is his ability to kill genestealers cowering in positions they can’t normally be hurt, like air ducts.
Psyker attacks don’t cost any AP to use, but you will be turning down the advantage a sergeant gives of the constant +1AP buff (and later, +2AP when he reaches level 8). You can use prescience to emulate this buff, but the range is shorter and it will disallow using any other psychic attacks that turn.
Curiously enough, using psychic attacks will cause the Storm Bolter to cool down, even though it costs no AP to do so. Heat Management is thus a more useful skill for librarians.
Movement, Doors, and Shooting
Introduction
Wait, don’t skip this section! There are several components of these three concepts that the game does not explain to you, even in the manual. You might be missing valuable information, so read up.
Movement
The simplest part of the game, memorize the AP costs.
-Moving forward, including diagonally, costs 1AP. A terminator may not move forward diagonally if this would require them to move through a ‘sandwiched’ corridor. If, for example, a marine is diagonal to a wall, your terminator cannot squeeze through the gap. This does not include fire and acid!
-Turning costs 1AP.
-Stepping backwards costs 2AP. You can step backwards diagonally following the same rules as moving forwards diagonally (no squeezing through gaps).
A terminator, when moving, can shoot at any genestealer they can see. Usually they will fire at the closest one, though the AI is a little finicky on this. It doesn’t come up that often, though. This does not cost any extra AP, though your will have a -30% to-hit penalty while firing in this way. In addition, firing while moving will cause your Storm Bolter to heat up as usual (normally, moving causes it to cool down).
If your bolter has overheated, you will not fire. Instead, it will cool down as normal. You obviously can’t fire while moving if the bolter is out of ammo.
Heavy flamers cannot be fired while moving, if that wasn’t obvious.
In order to perform a move-and-fire, the terminator must be able to see the genestealer after they have moved. If you move to a tile that cannot see the genestealer, such as by backing up diagonally, the terminator will not fire.
Turning follows all the same rules. If a terminator turns a corner and sees a genestealer, they will take a shot as normal. Opening a door, however, does not follow this rule. If you open a door and see a genestealer, you cannot take a free shot.
Doors
Doors can be opened by standing next to them and using the open-door icon on your terminator’s action bar. It costs 1AP to open a door. You can close it by the same method for the same cost.
A terminator does not need to stand directly in front of a door to open it! He merely needs to be a position where he could move onto the door’s tile, which means he can do this diagonally if necessary. However, you cannot back through doors, you will need to turn around.
You can also shoot doors from a distance, permanently opening them. The shooting rules follow the same to-hit rates as shooting genestealers, and can also give sustained-fire and close-range bonuses. You cannot use suppressive fire on doors (but why would you want to?).
[In older versions of the game, you could move-and-shoot doors. This has since been patched out.
Notes on Shot Types
For more on the shot types, see the Storm Bolter and Other Ranged Weapons sections. For reference:
Storm Bolters can fire in normal, burst, aimed, and suppression.
Combi-bolters can fire in normal and aimed.
Assault Cannons can fire in normal and full-auto mode.
Flamers fire in wide, focused, and long flame.
Combi-flamers can fire in focused flame only.
For the flamer types, see the flame section.
Normal vs. Aimed
Normal bolter fire costs 1AP, while aimed fire costs 2AP and provides a 20% to-hit bonus. Which is better?
First, both consume the same ammo (2 for a Storm Bolter, 1 for a combi-bolter), but aimed has a higher hit rate. Therefore, if you need to be sure you hit before reloading, aimed will be better. However, if you use a normal shot and hit, you can use the extra AP to reload. Consider that!
Second, both generate the same amount of heat, so aimed-shots will generate less heat at the cost of more AP. Once again, you can get a lucky hit on the first normal shot and then use the extra AP to cool your bolter.
Finally, aimed fire adds a +20% chance to hit (the game lists it incorrectly as 10%). This is the most important part because of how Storm Bolters work. Storm Bolters roll twice, meaning +20% is bigger than it looks. At long ranges and low ballistic skills, the +20% on an aimed shot can become +36%, bumping up your miserable hit rate to something reasonable. On combi-bolters, +20% is a flat bonus and not as important.
Conversely, normal fire will give you a sustained-fire bonus on the second shot. If you miss, your next shot becomes much more accurate, though it will cost extra heat and ammo. Weigh your AP versus ammo and heat to determine which shot is best. You will find that firing multiple normal shots is usually better at long ranges unless you have a miserable ballistic skill.
Normal vs. Burst
Burst is awful. It costs twice the AP, causes twice the overheating, and costs twice the ammo. The big problem being that it doesn’t give you a sustained fire bonus!
If you fire a normal shot and miss, the second shot becomes more likely to hit due to sustained fire. And, of course, if you fire and hit the first shot, you only spend 1AP and use less ammo and overheating. There is therefore no reason at all to use burst fire, it sucks.
Further, burst fire does not deal extra damage to brood lords, it will only deal 1HP if any one of the bullets hits. Two normal shots can deal 2HP damage for the same costs.
Also, burst fire is listed as having -10% to its hit rate. This is wrong, it has no penalty at all.
Burst fire sucks, don’t waste your AP
Suppressive Fire
There are some use-cases for this. First, the emergency case. If your terminator is facing down a conga-line of genestealers that he cannot possibly kill all of in overwatch (as his bolter will probably jam and they will eat him) he could spend the 2 overwatch AP to suppress them instead.
If he does this, the frontal genestealer will only move 3 tiles, gumming up the conga line and buying him time to back up, retreat, or get a friend with a flamer to even the odds.
By the same token it can be useful at very long ranges. Your hit rate will be pathetic anyway, but suppressing the genestealers will gum up the conga line and allow you time to cool your bolter and reload to mow them down. It will also give you sustained fire bonuses on a shot that would probably have missed anyway.
Just be careful not to accidentally murder the genestealer you suppressed. If you suppress then move to back up, your terminator may take a free shot – and kill the genestealer! The conga line will advance unimpeded if the genestealer behind him was not suppressed!
Gee, that’s the one case where killing a genestealer is a bad thing. Fortunately, suppression does have an area-of-effect. The only case where this may happen is if a genestealer in front has an empty slot behind him, meaning the conga line will advance by 4 instead of the suppressed 3 (they will burn 2 AP advancing). This is still bad, just not that bad.
Note: While I have seen one of the devs state that suppressive fire is supposed to always suppress, it doesn’t always. Bug?
The Storm Bolter
Introduction
The Storm Bolter gets its own section because you will be using it a lot, and it has some unique mechanics. Even if you want to upgrade to combi-weapons later, your melee terminators will be stuck with Storm Bolters for the entire game if they want a ranged weapon at all.
For reference:
-The sergeant uses a Storm Bolter until level 8, when he can equip a combi-plasma.
-The librarian/rune-priest uses a Storm Bolter for the entire game.
-Heavies only use Storm Bolters if equipped with a Cyclone Missile Launcher.
-Ranged terminators can equip combi-flamers at level 5, and combi-meltas at level 8.
-Melee terminators are stuck with Storm Bolters unless they swap out for two-handed melee weapons. The Storm Bolter is their only ranged weapon.
Therefore, you’ll be using these guns for a long while. Learn them, love them.
Basics
The returning champion and the iconic weapon of the space marine terminators, this standby has a few changes from the previous games.
First, the Storm Bolter has a heat meter, unlike the previous game where it would jam on any doubles roll (1/6th chance). In Ascension, this bolter may be fired 5 times before it overheats. Note that, on overwatch, the bolter is fired once for each square a genestealer attempts to cross within LOS of the terminator. Therefore, if a genestealer crosses and survives 5 squares, the bolter will jam.
The bolter can also jam from overheating when firing off overwatch, which is again different from the previous game. A shot fired on overwatch is identical in every way to a shot fired normally, so watch those heat meters. Any action taken by the terminator that does not cause an increase in heat will cause a decrease in heat. These actions include:
-Moving
-Turning
-Opening and closing doors
-Reloading
-Handing off items
-Using objectives or opening chests.
If you have the Heat Management skill, these actions reduce heat at double the normal rate.
You may also manually cool down a storm bolter using the icon to the above-right of the bolter’s heat display. This will reduce the heat by 50%. Heat Management does not affect manually cooling the bolter.
A storm bolter has 20 rounds in its magazine and costs 1AP to reload.
Firing Modes
Storm Bolters can be fired in one of four modes.
Bolter Fire
This is the standard firing mode, costing 1AP and consuming 2 ammo. Any properties possessed by this firing mode also apply to overwatch except some skills which exclusively apply to overwatch (their descriptions are explicit about this). That is, sustained fire and close-range bonuses apply to this and all other firing modes.
Burst Fire
Secondary firing mode, costing 2AP and consuming 4 ammo. While the games states this shot receives a -10% accuracy penalty, the math does not bear this out. Ignore that.
Aimed Fire
Secondary firing mode. Costing 2AP and consuming 2 ammo. The game states that this receives +10% accuracy, but it’s actually +20% accuracy.
Suppressing Fire
Secondary firing mode. Costs 2AP and consumes 2 ammo. Any genestealer in the area of effect of the shot (it has a small splash radius behind the target) will have its AP reduced by half at the start of the next turn, meaning most genestealers start with 3 and broodlords with 2. However, this firing mode receives a -45% chance to actually kill the genestealer, meaning it will often have a 0% kill rate. It will still suppress.
You can tell if a target has been suppressed by a small red icon above their name, which will be next to the sustained-fire icon if you didn’t kill them. You can suppress blips even if you can’t see them, but you won’t know their AP (broodlords) until they are revealed.
Formulas
The standard ranged to-hit formula is as follows:
( (Ballistic Skill – 3) * 0.10) + (listed bonuses/penalties) = hits per shot
The Storm Bolter fires 2 shots in standard firing modes and 4 shots in burst mode. However, you only need to score 1 hit for the shot to be lethal to a standard genestealer. Therefore, if you want to do the math:
1.0 – ((1.0 – hits per shot) ^ number of shots) = hit rate
To give an example, say you have a hit rate of 50%. Since the Storm Bolter fires 2 shots, only 1 shot needs to hit to drop the genestealer. This will give you a listed hit rate of 75%, since there’s a 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4 chance of missing both shots.
Oddities
The Storm Bolter will deal 2 damage to an extended-carapace genestealer if both shots happen to hit.
When two terminators are overwatching the same tile and a genestealer moves into it, both terminators will fire simultaneously. If either one kills it, they both fire anyway, which tends to animate oddly (it will look like one terminator is firing at nothing). To compensate for this, the rolls for the bolters take place in a different order:
Both terminators roll once, consuming 1 ammo at their normal firing rate. If either one kills the genestealer, they both fire once and then stop. If neither kills the genestealer, they both fire another shot, consuming 1 more ammo for 2 total.
Hence you will periodically see your terminators with odd-numbered ammo counters on overwatch. This is good: less firing = less heat and ammo usage. Having multiple terminators overwatching the same square thus reduces wasted firing potential, though 2 bullets are still consumed even if spread across 2 terminators.
Storm Bolters also do not list the correct buffs when determining hit rate. For example, Improved Photolenses (+5% hit rate) will not be listed on the buffs list for hit rate, but they do affect the hit percentage. If your run the formulas and notice a discrepancy, chances are some buff is not listed but is affecting your hit rate.
Why should I use this jalopy?
The Storm Bolter may seem to compare poorly against the combi-weapons because of its tendency to jam. In case you’re new, combi-bolters do not overheat at all, and have all the lovely skills like 4 flame bursts (combi-flamers) or quickly murdering brood lords (combi-meltas).
So why would you ever want to use a Storm Bolter? Well, the reason is in the math.
Combi-bolters only get one shot per AP, while a Storm Bolter gets two. This is probably going to seem unimpressive, but it isn’t. When your terminators have poor accuracy ratings, the two-shot nature of the Storm Bolter greatly improves their odds of hitting.
If your to-hit was 10%, which it might be at very long range and poor ballistic skill, your hit rating with a combi-bolter would be 10%. With a Storm Bolter, it goes up to 19%. If your base hit is 20%, then the Storm Bolter’s hit rate goes up to 36%.
Since the Storm Bolter gets almost (but not-quite) double the hit rate at low ballistic skill, it becomes that much more valuable in close-quarters fighting. If a genestealer has to move 3 tiles to reach melee range, the Storm Bolter can have upwards of 90% kill rates over those 3 tiles, while a combi-bolter will suffer from around 50%.
Once your ballistic skill gets higher, though, the appeal of the combi-bolter grows. At close range, with sustained fire and the overwatch/sustained-fire/improved-photolenses skills, your hit rate can reach 100% and the double-roll bonus of the Storm Bolter means nothing. At that point, its overheating causes too many jams and is a liability. Until you reach that point, it can be amazingly useful.
Care and Feeding
Nominally it will take 3AP to service a jammed bolter: 2 to cool it and 1 to reload it. Remember that you can only fire 5 times on overwatch, so if you have only enough AP to cool it but still have 10 rounds (because you reloaded it last turn) then you don’t need to reload it this turn.
Otherwise, see the overwatch and firing modes sections for more on how to use this piece of technology.
Other Ranged Weapons
So now that you’ve read up on your Storm Bolter and actually know why you’d want to use it, you’re probably wondering about the other guns.
In case you’re coming in from the previous Space Hulk games (or Emperor-forbid, the board game) then you’ll be delighted at all the choices. Meltas for all!
Combi-Bolters
There are three subtypes of this gun, but they all have the same basic properties. They are bolters with 12 shots per magazine, and they fire 1 shot for each AP. On overwatch, they fire once for each tile a genestealer moves through. Therefore, they can fire 12 times on overwatch before requiring a reload.
Combi-bolters never overheat. Thank the Emperor! They don’t even have a heat gauge!
Remember, though, that they only fire 1 bullet for each shot, and therefore are less likely to actually hit. See the section on the Storm Bolter for reasons why this might be a bad thing.
For most players, the fact that they don’t overheat greatly outweighs the lower hit rate. In addition, they only require 1AP to restore to working order after overwatching (to reload the bolter) so you can spend any extra AP on your turn to shoot down genestealers or advance.
If that wasn’t good enough, the combi-bolters also come with a bit of extra punch.
Combi-Flamers come with 4 shots of a flamer on the secondary fire. This is identical to the Heavy Flamer but can only be used in the Focused-Flame mode. Wide-Flame and Long-Flame are not available. Also, you cannot reload the flamer, 4 is all you get. Ranged-class terminators get this at level 5.
Combi-Meltas come with 4 shots of melta goodness (the loadout screen says 6; it is lying!), dealing extra HP damage. This is used to murder brood lords that dare to get close. Once again, you cannot reload the melta. Ranged-class terminators get this at level 8.
The range of the melta is 2 tiles, and insta-kills anything that gets hit.
Combi-Plasmas come with 40 shots of plasma fire. They fire like normal bolters do when in plasma-mode, but are less likely to hit since they have a lower base hit rate. If the plasma shot hits a target, it has a 10% chance of exploding and killing it instantly. If the plasma kills a target, it will punch through and hit the next target, which may cascade for multiple kills.
Plasma-mode has a heat gauge, but it takes around 6 shots to overheat the gun, which is most of your sergeant’s turn. The gun instantly cools down when the turn ends, so it’s hard to overheat it unless you’re really trying to.
Heavy Flamer
This is the stock equipment for your heavy-class terminators, and can only be used by them. It comes with 12 shots of promethium flame goodness. After the first 6 shots, it can be reloaded at a cost of 4AP.
You can equip a skill at level 3 which gives +2 flames per clip for 16 total. I highly recommend it.
See the section on flame weapons for more on how to use these. They share some properties with combi-flamers and therefore are used in a similar role.
The base hit rate is +60 for this thing, so your heavy can invest in agility instead of ballistic skill and still be a great killer.
Assault Cannon
Unlocked for the heavy at level 5, this is a rotating-barrel autocannon with 100 (!) rounds per clip. It may be reloaded once. Unlike the previous games, it will not randomly explode when reloading (phew) but will instead randomly explode if you try to fire it when it’s overheating (crud!). Watch the heat gauge and cool it down between overwatching.
The Assault Cannon fires in 10-shot bursts, following the same rolling and ballistic skill formula that the Storm Bolter follows. Since it fires 10 rounds, it’s unlikely to miss. It also deals splash damage in two flavours, based on whether you used wide or auto shot. Ammo is limited, but your heavy can easily lock down an entire hallway with little effort until he runs dry.
If you have full AP, you can also fire in full-auto mode. This consumes the rest of your clip and all your AP, but will hit with 100% chance against everything in a straight line. It can clear an entire hallway in one use.
Cyclone Missile Launcher
A back-mounted missile launcher only usable by heavies at level 8, and you must be playing as the Ultramarines too. When using one of these, your heavy pulls out an ordinary Storm Bolter as his main weapon.
It comes with either 12 rounds of Frag, 12 of Krak, or 6 of each, depending on your loadout. Frag hits a 3×3 area for 1 damage with a decently high hit rate, while Krak hits 1 target for 4 damage, killing broodlords easily. Overall, the CML is an excellent weapon since it allows your heavy to remain useful indefinitely while getting a bit of extra punch in splash damage. A good complement to Combi-Flamers.
Unfortunately, Krak missiles are singularly awful because of the pathetic hit rate of the missile launcher and the high toughness of brood lords. I recommend using only the frag payload to kill clumps of genestealers or score kills from around corners.
Overwatch
Introduction
Overwatch is how you win this game.
During the genestealer turn, overwatch allows your terminators to fire on them before they do anything awful. You already knew that, though, and surviving even a single level without using overwatch is quite a challenge.
Overwatch costs 2AP, and remains until either cancelled or the terminator is forced to stop. If a genestealer, for example, uses a flesh hook, the overwatch will be cancelled. Overwatch stays on if the terminator runs out of ammo or his bolter jams, but you will need to cool or reload the bolter to keep him firing.
Performing an action during your turn other than reloading or cooling your bolter will also remove overwatch. It will give you the 2AP back when it does this, and you can re-enter overwatch immediately after.
Mechanics
With the exception of a few skills which apply only to overwatch, there is nothing special. The shots fired are identical to normal bolter fire, including how they respond to sustained fire and close range bonuses.
Overwatch shots can only be taken at targets that are within the perception range of the terminator. Therefore, on the maps with extremely long corridors, it may be possible to see a target but not shoot it during overwatch since it’s so far away. You can shoot the target during your turn if you can see it, though.
In order to fire an overwatch shot, the target must perform an action within line of sight of the terminator, including moving. Terminators have a 45 degree vision cone, meaning the tiles immediately to their left and right are not visible to them.
To fire the overwatch shot, the action must be visible *after* it is complete. That is, if a genestealer moves out of the LOS of a terminator, the terminator cannot take the shot. If it moves into the LOS, the shot takes place immediately. In addition, turning counts as an action for overwatch even if it costs 0AP for a genestealer to turn.
The number of shots that can be fired on overwatch is limited either by ammo or cooling, depending on the weapon. A standard Storm Bolter can fire 5 times before jamming, unless it runs out of ammo first. Combi-bolters can fire 12 times if fully loaded. The odds of your Assault Cannon terminators overheating are pretty low if used properly, but make sure to cool the weapon down before overwatching, and it shouldn’t overheat.
Considering it costs 2AP for overwatch, which would normally allow you to fire 2 shots, overwatch is a pretty good deal for a Storm Bolter and fantastic for a combi-bolter.
Advancing with Overwatch
While overwatch allows you to mow down hordes of genestealers, you will constantly have problems if you try to camp your way to victory. In most maps, your goal is to activate something or escape onto a tile. Unless the map objective is just to kill all the genestealers, you need to advance.
Moving up as many tiles as possible and overwatching is one way to get this done, but will be lethal if you don’t know what you’re doing. Corners are particularly dangerous.
Ideally, you want to keep as many tiles as possible between you and a genestealer, covering them with overwatch. Remember: genestealers take the shortest path between you and them. You can use this to bait them down a corridor that you are overwatching while you move other terminators to flank. Once you have two terminators covering the same area, the first terminator can advance. In this way, you can avoid having to take a blind corner which could have an acid maw genestealer waiting to say hello.
If it’s not possible to flank a position, it may be necessary to take the corner from the front. The best way to do this is with your heavies, using flames. This may not always be possible.
In these cases, you will want to allow yourself at least two tiles that you can overwatch over. More is ideal, but you may not have enough AP to take the corner if you’re farther away without investments in agility.
Two tiles is the best since it guarantees your terminator will get sustained fire bonuses before the genestealer attacks. Sustained fire combined with short range produces extremely high kill rates. If you are two tiles from a corner, you need to kill 4 genestealers in one overwatch cycle to advance (if a full conga line has developed) because the 2 in the back won’t be able to move far enough and attack.
If there’s an endless conga line coming and you simply can’t reload, cool, and advance all in the same turn without getting eaten, your only choice is to flank or come in with a flamer/assault cannon.
If you don’t have these and you still need to advance through an unflankable choke point, you can attempt to draw spawns away by positioning terminators elsewhere. Spawns are selected according to proximity but are finite each turn, so if you position terminators across the map to shoot at different targets, eventually the tide of genestealers will abate and allow you to advance. Only the later missions in each campaign have a totally unflankable choke point like this.
Overwatch and Vents
A genestealer emerging from a vent can be overwatch-shot as normal once it exits the vent, but it can’t be fired on if it’s inside the vent. On the positive side, the vent may only be exited orthogonally, not diagonally. This means the genestealer will both need to exit it (1 shot) and turn to face you (2) and then cross any remaining distance. As long as you are not right on top of the vent exit, you will still get at least 2 shots. More range is better, though!
Confidence Intervals
First, you will need to know your accuracy when firing a normal shot. The formula is:
((BS – 3) * 0.10) + (other bonuses)) = hits per shot (average)
Remember: A Storm Bolter fires twice.
If a genestealer needs to cross one tile to melee attack you, and does not need to turn when they have done so, you will get 1 overwatch shot on them. Your survival rate is therefore your hit rate. Remember that you will get a +20% hit rate for close range. Good luck.
If a genestealer needs to cross 2 tiles or turn, then you get 2 shots, and the second shot has +10% sustained fire. In these cases, your death odds are:
(1.0 – (hit %)) * (1.0 – (hit % + 10))
Of course, having the sustained-fire bonus skill increases this to +20.
Example:
A terminator has a 50% hit rate and gets to fire twice at an approaching genestealer. His odds of dying are:
(1.0 – (0.5)) * (1.0 – (0.6)) = (0.5 * 0.4) = 20% chance of dying.
The chances of dying become smaller and smaller with each tile the genestealer must cross, and become 0 at 6 tiles, since the genestealer can’t attack at all past that range.
Your odds of surviving on overwatch are actually pretty good at 3 tiles. Unfortunately, Storm Bolters tend to jam which is the leading cause of death. The only thing you can do to prevent that is to use combi-bolters, stay far back, or use flames instead. Every time you overwatch near a corner, you are taking a risk. Risk is what makes the game fun.
Overwatch with Multiple Terminators
Introduction
As mentioned in the Storm Bolter section, the rules for overwatch are different if multiple marines can see the genestealer. Here’s a break down of how it works.
At first, the lowest numbered terminator will fire one shot at the genestealer. Terminators who are leftmost on your HUD are lowered numbers, with Squad 1’s sergeant/librarian going first.
The terminators will each fire one shot at the genestealer until all have fired once. Note that Storm Bolters have 2 shots, but each will only fire once during this step.
If the genestealer died, the procedure ends here, with all terminators firing one bullet.
If the genestealer did not die, the marines fire one more shot, starting at the lowest terminator. As soon as the genestealer dies, the process stops. It is therefore possible for your sergeant to fire 2 shots while the other terminators fire 1 each. A terminator always fires a minimum of one shot per overwatch action.
If, for some reason, a genestealer is standing on a burning tile, then the flame attack also takes place in the first round. Your terminators will all fire once, and the genestealer will suffer flame damage afterwards if it fails that roll. It’s possible for the flames to claim the genestealer instead of the bullets doing so.
If a weapon has more than the standard number of attacks, it continues rolling attacks past the first one until it has used all its attacks or the victim dies. For example, picking up a +1 Attacks upgrade for your Storm Bolter will allow it to fire 3 times in one overwatch cycle instead of 2.
Since a marine must fire at least once per overwatch round, if 11 or more genestealers charge 3 terminators (with Storm Bolters) through the same tile, the last one will always get through, since the Storm Bolter can only fire 10 times without overheating. Even though there are 30 shots between everyone, 10 is the max kills.
You can mitigate this effect but changing the LOS of your terminators so one sees targets earlier than the others. Only genestealers that get past him will get shot by the others.
Flame
Introduction
Fire. Man’s best friend, and a filthy xeno’s worst enemy. Fire can be generated from a Heavy Flamer, a Combi-Flamer, or a Proximity Flame Bomb. Once the fire is generated, it all has the same properties.
Heavy Flamers can produce 12 flame bursts: 6 initially, then another 6 once the heavy terminator has reloaded (for 4AP). They can flame in focused, long, and wide flame arcs. You can increase the ammo capacity by 4 (2 per clip) with a special skill.
Combi-Flamers can produce 4 flame bursts, and only in a focused arc.
Proximity Flamers are mines you can deploy once if they are equipped. You can only deploy one mine per mission. If a genestealer stands next to one, they explode and coat the area in a 3×3 flame bath.
Images of Flame Arcs
How Fire Works
First, you must lay down the flame. This is done using the ballistic skill of whoever happens to be holding the flamer. It follows the usual ranged to-hit formula, but flamers get an impressive +60% to their accuracy. Ballistic skill is thus not as important to a heavy using a flamer, but it can help.
You cannot lay down flame in tiles adjacent to you. The target must be at least 2 tiles away. You also cannot flame any tile you cannot see, such as ones behind genestealers.
Once the flame is down, all genestealers in the contact area perform the to-hit roll. Most of them will be burnt to a crisp. The ones that don’t die get to take their turn as usual. You can flame the area again on the same turn if you want to finish off any genestealers in the cloud of fire.
Flames block LOS. A terminator may not voluntarily move into a burning tile unless they have the Fireproof skill (unlocked at level 8 for most classes) which makes them impervious to flame. A flame blocks the LOS to the tile behind it, but you can still see one tile into a blaze, should something come lumbering out of it during overwatch.
Genestealers and Fire
Genestealers follow the same rules as terminators, in that they cannot voluntarily enter a burning tile unless they are fireproof (Broodlords are fireproof!). They will therefore cluster up on the edges of the flame, waiting to charge you when it subsides.
If a genestealer is set on fire but does not die horribly righteously, they are allowed to move into other tiles that are on fire. First, before the genestealer can move, it must take a test with an 80% failure rate. If it fails the test, it dies. Otherwise, it gets to move onto the other burning tile and take another test at 80% failure. It may do this for each tile until it either dies, exits the flame, or runs out of AP.
It is therefore possible for a genestealer to come charging out of a wall of flame to attack your terminators. This is extremely rare, but it’s still a good idea to overwatch the flame cloud if there’s a blip 1 or 2 tiles from the edge. Remember genestealers can move diagonally out of the flame, or dart around flames that touch edges of doors.
The odds of a genestealer surviving more than one tile are vanishingly low, but not zero. The odds are calculated with the formula: (0.2 ^ number of tiles). If a genestealer were to try to cross 6 burning tiles, their odds of living would be 1/15625. Since this game hates you, expect that 1/15625 genestealer to gank you in the back right before you escape with your last terminator.
Genestealers damaged by flame always die, even if they have extended carapace. Flamers are thus useful for killing crowds of armoured genestealers.
Doors
If you flame a door, it will jam open or closed, and cannot be operated normally for the duration of the turn. To activate, the tile immediately in front of the door must be on fire. You will see the lightning bolt symbol above the door when it is jammed.
Genestealers will have to melee a door open when it is jammed, while your terminators can shoot it or chainfist it to get it open.
There isn’t much point to this, as the genestealers will melee open the door and then… move 1 tile and stand in front of a wall of flame they cannot cross. If you just touch the edge of the door with a wide-arc flame, this can possibly stall an advance, but it doesn’t come up very often.
Melee Combat
Introduction
The first rule of melee is that the genestealers are better at it than you. This is why you have guns.
Melee is still unavoidable in this game. Sooner or later those genestealers are gonna getcha. Unlike ranged fire, melee allows counterattacks. Failing to kill something in melee means it will have the opportunity to kill you instead. Melee combat is thus extremely dangerous at anything under a 100% hit rate.
Rules
Melee combat works like this: the attacker rolls their attacks. In the case of most genestealers, this is 2 attacks. The melee to-hit roll can be reduced by the toughness of your terminators, but not zeroed. If you are the one doing the attacking, your weapon skill buffs your hit percentage.
If none of the attacks connected, then the defender will roll for a counter-attack. This is the same as performing a usual attack, so in the case of genestealers, they get 2 counter-attacks.
If none of the counter-attacks connect, the whole thing restarts while the terminator and genestealer give each other a little hug. The attacker then rolls again, and the process repeats until one or the other emerges victorious.
When your terminators are attacked in melee, the fact that the genestealer has 2 attacks and you have 1 means that you may not get to roll a counter-attack. In this case, your terminator will die. This is usually what happens when your terminators get melee’d. If they survive, you probably got lucky (or built for defense, see below).
Flank Attacks
If you (or a genestealer) scores an attack from the side or behind, the hit-rate is 100% and the victim doesn’t get to roll a counter-attack.
If you melee strike a genestealer in the side who has 2HP, they will take the hit and then turn to face you, but not counter-attack.
Weapons
When engaging in melee, your weapons may help you in that effort.
+Attack will increase your hit rate when attacking or counter-attacking.
+Defense will decrease the genestealer’s hit rate when attacking you.
Power Fists are the standard loadout for most terminators. They provide +10% Attack, meaning they provide no bonus when defending.
Chain Fists are identical to Power Fists, but provide 100% hit rate against a closed door. You may as well equip them if the alternative is a Power Fist.
Power Swords can be equipped by your sergeant or librarian (it’s called a force sword for a librarian, but is otherwise identical) and provides a +20% bonus on defense.
Force Axes are librarian-only weapons that provide a +20% defense bonus. Since they are identical to the Force Sword, their utility is dubious, but librarians do unlock the +5% to-hit skill for axes earlier than for swords.
Lightning Claws are equipped on both hands, and provide +20% to attack and defense.
Thunder Hammers are the ultimate melee weapon. You are required to equip a Storm Shield in your off hand when you equip this, giving you a cumulative +30% attack and +20% defense.
Note: Ultramarines do not get to use Lightning Claws or Thunder Hammers. Their sergeants cannot use them and they have no melee specialists.
General Advice
Don’t melee. The genestealers have a huge edge against you in close combat and, even with a 96% hit rate, you will still die the other 4% of the time. 4% is roughly once every 25 genestealers. A ranged terminator can easily mow down hundreds of genestealers without ever getting in trouble.
If you stacked toughness, weapon skill, and the close-combat skills on a Space Wolf, you would have a very viable terminator, so long as you didn’t get flanked. Or hit by an acid maw genestealer. Or shlorp’d by a feeder tendrils genestealer (which reduces toughness and AP). Or flesh hooked and yanked out of position to be mulched. Suffice is to say, melee is risky even when spec’d for.
Melee can be useful if you’re out of options though. If a genestealer happens to expose his side, feel free to take the easy kill. Also, if you have multiple terminators in a larger room, sometimes it’s easier to kill a brood lord by walking up to its side (firing as you do) and punching it to death. This will allow you to cool your bolters instead of heating them up by firing, since punching is a non-firing action and causes cooling.
Those Crafty Xenos
Introduction
The space hulks are infested with genestealers for some reason, despite there not being much organic material around. If you are returning from previous Space Hulk games, you should be advised that there are now multiple types of genestealers trying to kill you. Luckily, they still die when you shoot them.
You can see what kind of genestealer you’re dealing with when their blip has been revealed. Just mouse over them while preparing a shot, and their type will be shown in a green info box.
Despite all the special attacks they have, 99% of the time the AI elects to just bum-rush your terminators for a melee attack. They will typically only use their special ranged attacks if they start their turn in range of your terminator, which is rare since you’re supposed to be shooting them before they do that.
Rending Claws
The ‘stock’ genestealer. If you’ve played Space Hulk before, these are your guys. No special attacks at all, 2 swings in melee, and 6 AP. These are the first genestealers you will meet and you will literally be killing thousands of them.
Scything Talons
Similar to the rending claws version, but doubles the number of attacks they get in melee to 4. They otherwise have no special attacks.
Feeder Tendrils
A Cthulhu looking fellow who tries to eat your brain. In melee, they may use their special attack instead of doing a melee attack. The special attack halves the victim’s toughness and AP for one turn. It doesn’t affect weapon skill, so your terminator can still kill it in close combat.
Generally, when one of these has shlorp’d your terminator, he’s probably dead, but sometimes the RNG will favour you. 99% of the time you should be shooting them down before they get close.
Flesh Hook
Genestealers with the ability to (slowly) drag your terminator around. Typically they only use the flesh hook if they can see the terminator at the start of their turn, as it consumes multiple AP to use it. It also can only be used orthogonally in my experience. The terminator will be dragged directly in front of the genestealer, at which point it will try a melee attack. This dragging also implicitly removes overwatch, so be sure to reset it if you survive. Which you won’t.
For the most part, they rarely use their flesh hooks and just get mowed down like the other genestealer varieties. Apparently, the flesh hooks have a 10% miss rate, which may or may not be a bug.
Extended Carapace
A rending claws or scything talons genestealer with an extra point of HP. They will appear to have heavy carapace on their backs, but they are not fireproof. Setting one of these on fire will kill them even if they have 2HP.
Because of the extra HP, they are extremely lethal at close range. Your terminator must get a lucky defense roll not once, but twice. They also will mess up your overwatches by sucking up all the ammo and heat. When extended carapace is around, stay far away and use fire liberally.
Brood Lord
Big, lumbering, and heavy. These genestealers are big and make a lot of noise when they move. They also have 3 HP and are immune to fire damage, meaning your Heavy Flamer marines need to stay away. However, they have 4AP instead of the usual 6.
The devs intend to add psychic attacks to these guys at some point, but for now they are melee-only.
A Brood Lord can get Extended Carapace, bringing them up to 4 HP. You can, however, get the Broodlord Slayer skill to deal double damage to them.
These guys can spawn in large packs, there doesn’t seem to be a limit to them. Worst-case scenario are 6-7 of these lumbering out of the vents, requiring a lot of panic fire to take them down. Don’t forget that you can suppress them if you can’t kill them, slowing them further.
Acid Maw
This guy is mentioned last because he’s the most incidentally-lethal of the bunch. While they ostensibly have a ranged attack, it’s so short-range that they prefer to try their luck at melee. When they die, they explode in a shower of acid which will deal 1 point of damage to anything caught in the blast. Worse, the blast can extend up to 2 tiles! They can therefore charge a terminator and kill him when they get shot, so be extremely careful around corners!
Hilariously, their acid can also kill other genestealers. Like flame, you cannot voluntarily enter an acidified tile, though acid does not block LOS. They can therefore hold up the entire conga line for a turn when they die, in addition to frying some nearby genestealers.
These are the rarest of the spawns, as well. Brood lords are actually more common. The RNG gods are indeed fickle, though, so always expect the worst.
Oddities
In the previous version, genestealers randomly had one more AP than they were supposed to. As of path 1.10, this has been fixed.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere else, genestealers are hyper-agile and can turn in place without using any AP. This means they can take corners faster than your terminators can. Turning in place still counts as an overwatch-able action, though.
The Hive Mind
Introduction
The AI in Space Hulk: Ascension is pretty easy to outsmart. It relies on having way more genestealers than you have bullets. You will need to manipulate the AI programmer and lure genestealers into traps to have a chance of winning.
Spawn Rates
Spawn rate is determined by the difficulty of the level plus a bit of luck. On normal, you can expect 1-3 genestealers per turn, while on Impossible you can expect 10+. The spawn rate varies between turns, and is probably rolled randomly or has a points-based spawning system. If you’re facing too many genestealers to move up, try holding position and slaughtering them for a few turns until the spawn rate eases up.
Spawns per Spawn Point
The AI is not constrained in how many genestealers can pop out of a spawn point. It’s entirely possible for all the spawns in a turn to pop out of the same point, or for each point to receive one genestealer.
The AI will generally pick the spawn point that is closest to a terminator, though there is a random element to this. It is rare for a genestealer to spawn on the other side of the map if there is a closer vent, but if two vents are equally close they may split their spawns.
However, the AI does not check distance to walk, but rather absolute distance. If a terminator is standing on the other side of a wall, but is otherwise 4 tiles from a spawn point, the genestealers will often spawn in that vent and then go the long way around to get to him. You can use this to direct the spawns to easily dealt-with passages.
You can take advantage of this behavior by placing terminators to draw spawns away from positions you want to advance on. Once the genestealers have spawned, advance your terminators close to the target and block the vent off. This is vital on bulkhead-closing missions since the genestealers will be pouring out of the objective you’re trying to advance on.
Since genestealers cannot voluntarily move into a burning tile, if you flame (or splash with acid) a spawn tile, that tile is effectively blocked for a turn.
Placing a frag or flamer mine directly in front of a vent also blocks off the vent and prevents genestealers from spawning there, unless another genestealer triggers the bomb and unplugs the vent.
Types of Spawn
The types of genestealer you will run into is rolled on a lookup table. On normal, you will only be dealing with rending claws and scything talons. On hard you will start to see a few of the more exotic genestealers. On impossible you can expect broodlords often and loads of specialists, many of whom will have extended carapace.
There is an outstanding bug somewhere deep in the AI code. Periodically, a level will not reset some variable and will cause constant, unending waves of heavy units like broodlords and acid maws genestealers, even on normal difficulty! If you restart the game, though, this bug will go away and you will deal with the usual rending claws goons. If you’re having a lot of trouble on an early mission, try this to clear up the bug.
Pathing
Genestealers will, without exception, pick the shortest path to your terminator and go for a melee attack. Amusingly, this will often cause them to fail a flanking move which could have been lethal. Stupid, stupid xenos!
If the genestealer has no path to your terminator (such as by being blocked by another genestealer) they will form into a line along the closest path as if they were not blocked. Eventually, the line can get so large that they will begin splitting up to use vents or alternative paths, but in general they will go for the nearest terminator. They will also do this if flames or acid are blocking their way.
If a genestealer can, it will move diagonally to duck into a cubbyhole when running along a corridor. This will reduce your overwatch shots by 1 (since the cubbyhole cannot be seen if you are watching the hallway) but may hilariously backfire if the position right after the cubbyhole would give you a close-range bonus. This will actually improve your overall overwatch hit rate. Genestealers sure are stupid!
Because they take the shortest path, a genestealer will often not even attempt to flank a terminator for a melee kill. They will usually run straight at your face and try to attack you from the front, even if spending 1 extra AP would allow a flank and instant-kill. Apparently this is the one time where a filthy xeno has a sense of honour. If the shortest path leads to your side, though, they will attack your terminator’s side!
Corners
It does not cost a genestealer any AP to turn in place. Despite this fact, the AI will not turn in place unless it absolutely has to. This means a genestealer will often move around a corner facing the wrong direction, then pivot 90 degrees after taking the corner. This will allow you to take a free overwatch shot.
Even more hilarious is the fact that, if a genestealer has consumed their last AP, they will not turn in place. If their final move places them right in front of a terminator, but they are facing the wrong direction, they will not turn. You can then melee them in the side for a free kill. Cackling maniacally is optional.
Can I Hide?
No. The AI knows exactly where all your terminators are at all times. Unlike your terminators, it has no perception limitations. You can’t hide, but that’s okay, you’re a space marine.
Miscellaneous Stuff
If a genestealer has reduced AP for any reason, it will never voluntarily duck out of the way to let others pass. It may do this incidentally if it would normally move through a cubbyhole and that also happened to be its last AP, but if you suppress a genestealer then it will usually block up the whole line of enemies behind it. This is also true of the naturally slow broodlords.
Genestealers pick their targets solely based on proximity, not chance-to-kill. If you have a melee specialist with a 100% defense rate, the genestealers will throw themselves at him and die in droves. Just watch out for acid maw genestealers.
Treasure and Lucre
Introduction
Periodically in your missions you will run across glowing treasure chests, which probably contain secrets of ages long past.
To activate the chest, kill your way to it and stand adjacent to it. It costs 1AP to open a chest.
The effect of the item in the chest is not determined until it is opened. If you don’t mind being a heretic, you can save right before you open it and load if you don’t like what you got. Unless you’re on Impossible, since you can’t save during a mission. There is no real reason not to get +60% XP instead of +10%. The type of the item, however, is determined when the mission is created.
Types of Filthy Lucre
Melee or Ranged Accuracy upgrades are exactly what they sound like. They provide a bonus to-hit of the corresponding type during the next mission. Getting a +20% ranged to-hit can make some missions a walk in the park, so pick the hardest mission available if you get one of those.
EXP Bonuses will give extra EXP for all terminators who survive the current mission. The tooltip says it applies to the next mission, but the tooltop is a liar. The current mission is the one that gives the bonus.
The highest I’ve seen this go is 60%. If you get a bonus, farm some genestealers before you complete the mission to make the most of it.
Weapon Accuracy Upgrades apply to a specific weapon and give it a fixed %age of extra to-hit. This can apply to melee or ranged accuracy, depending on the weapon. Every terminator using that weapon gets the bonus, so if your Storm Bolter gets an accuracy bonus, count yourself lucky.
Range Bonus is only for ranged weapons (but of course) and increases the range at which they suffer from a -5% accuracy penalty. Expect to get this on your Heavy Flamer, making it totally useless.
Attacks + Magazine increases the number of attacks the weapon gets, and the number of shots in its magazine. For example, a Storm Bolter might go to 3 shots and have 24 rounds instead of 2/20. Note that this doesn’t affect heating gauges.
Extra Heat increases the heat gauge of weapons prone to overheating, like the Storm Bolter. By default, the Storm Bolter has 10 heat and generates 1 per shot (firing twice means it generates 2 per volley, 5 total before it overheats). Getting +2 heat will allow the Storm Bolter to fire 6 times before the gun jams.
Damage Increase doesn’t do anything to genestealers with 1HP, but does make taking down Extended Carapace genestealers and Broodlords much easier. Each shot does more damage per hit, 1 being the minimum.
Flash Missions
Introduction
A flash mission is represented as a yellow lightning bolt on the campaign map. Unlike regular missions, flash missions are optional and are generated once the previous mission is completed.
If you do a flash mission on a branching path, you can only do the mission that comes after it on the map, you cannot do the flash of one and then do the other mission.
It is possible for both missions in a branch to have different flash missions on them, or even the same one (oddly enough).
(Two flash missions on a branching path).
Flash missions come in several varieties:
Kill all genestealers
Exit with X Terminators
Flame a captured techmarine, then escape with X terminators
Survive for X rounds
The map is selected randomly for the flash mission, and there is some variance between the space hulks. The Jotunheim, for example, has different layouts than the Sin of Damnation.
Flash missions may be of a higher difficulty than the missions adjacent to them, pay attention to the top-right corner on the tooltip.
Techniques
Introduction
So now you’ve read up on what everything does and how to use it, now you want to know how to put it all together to win. Okay, but listen up.
There’s no one-size-fits-all for this game. Some strategies are better than others, but a series of bad rolls can banjax the whole mission. It’s possible to fail through no fault of your own, especially early on when your terminators are shooting like PDF forces.
The best overall remedy is patience and luck. You’ll need to adapt your plans when things inevitably go wrong. Always be thinking about the worst possible scenario and how you will deal with it. Don’t assume your terminator will score a kill on the first shot, assume his bolter will jam. How will you fix that? Is anyone covering? Can you move up a flamer to buy him time? That’s how you win at the harder missions: Planning for the inevitable failure.
Suppressive Retreat
Suppressing Fire seems quite underwhelming when you see what it does. Often, you will just want to overwatch and slaughter the genestealers, or shoot them the old fashioned way. 99% of the time, brutality is the correct answer (this is Warhammer; that’s just how it is).
However, you can’t retreat by backing up very quickly, while the genestealers are very quick to advance. And sometimes you have no other option. What do you do? Turn and run? They’ll catch up to you and score a guaranteed kill if you do that. No, you use suppression to slow them down.
When backing down a hallway, each movement backwards consumes 2AP. Your terminator will fire a shot while doing this, but you’re not guaranteed to hit. Be that as it may, most terminators (once you level up a bit) should have 5AP plus (hopefully) a sergeant nearby or a librarian to give them the extra AP. This brings the total to 6.
With 6AP you can back up one square while firing, then do it again while firing. Unless your luck is miserable, you should have killed at least 1 genestealer, sometimes 2 (pray to the Big E for 2). This means the genestealer conga-line that is chasing you has been pushed back a bit. You have also moved back 2 spaces.
Now you have 2AP left. Do you overwatch? If you do, your bolter will probably jam and you won’t have time to cool it. You’ve fired twice, meaning your bolter can fire 3 more times on overwatch. Even if you hit every single shot, your maximum kills is 5 on that turn. Genestealers can move 6 spaces, and worse, your bolter has now overheated and you have to clear the jam. You’re not in a good position.
Instead, try suppressive fire. This will reduce the genestealer move speed down to 3 and (rarely) kill another genestealer. Don’t worry, it hits in a splash area, so it will suppress the one behind it. Now, when the genestealer move, they will slowly advance 3 spaces.
If you’ve followed the math here, you will see that you are probably keeping the conga line the same distance from you as when it started. If you luck out, you back up 2 spaces and kill a max of 3 genestealers, meaning the conga-line is now 5 spaces further away and only advancing 3 meaning you have some freaking breathing room.
But plan for the worst! If you miss every shot, you back up two spaces and kill 0 genestealers. This means the conga line advances by 1. So you’ll have as many turns as you originally had spaces between you and the conga line if everything goes horribly wrong (and it will). If that’s 3 spaces, that’s 3 turns.
Do you know how far you can move a heavy flamer in 3 turns? Do you know how many other marines you can get in position to flank, provide cover, or use a psychic attack, in 3 turns? Tons.
This is the power of suppressive fire. It swaps out randomized killing on overwatch for a guaranteed (if slow) tactical retreat. Even if your accuracy rating is miserable, suppression is reliable and buys you the time you need, because it doesn’t need to actually hit to be useful.
Melee Trap
When playing as the Space Terriers, you’ll find your miserable accuracy really holding you back. The Ultramarines and Blood Angels shoot a lot better than you, but you’re better at melee. What does this mean?
In close combat, you will likely win the fight if you attack first. Power Fists are a standard piece of gear while still allowing usage of a bolter, and they are only good on offense (they provide no defensive buffs). This means you will want to be the one laying the hits on the enemy.
But the genestealers are fast. How can you possibly guarantee you’ll get the first strike when they are numerous and fast?
Suppressive Fire! Did you expect anything else?
You can suppress targets to force them to move 3 tiles, which usually causes genestealers to stupidly walk right in front of your (drunk, angry) Space Rottweiler, who will then sock them in the jaw with a 95% success rate. A melee terminator with a halfway decent weapon skill and a powerfist is extremely killy if he gets the first strike. And if you can lure a genestealer into a wide room, you can punch them from the side for a 100% kill rate.
Using this technique will allow you to make up for the miserable accuracy of the Space Wolves. It’s also quite useful to gank brood lords – just suppress them and let them walk 2 tiles into the middle of a pack of terminators. Punch him in the side, then punch him in the other side when he rotates to face his attacker.
Sadly this strategy loses its effectiveness on the harder levels, when melee becomes a serious liability when facing 50 genestealers from every angle. Hey, you didn’t play Space Wolves because you wanted an easy job.
The Lure
Genestealers are dumb and like to charge after the closest target. This normally doesn’t mean much, since the closest path to your terminators happens to be the path they’re trying to advance on. But what about when it isn’t?
Genestealers like to funnel into choke points. If there’s only one way to advance, they will spawn and charge indefinitely, gumming up the choke point and making it impossible to advance. If you could just get a terminator in to overwatch you could pin back the whole conga line. But you’ll never get him in there!
This is where the lure comes in. Either place a terminator on a path which will divert the genestealers towards him, or place him near a vent on the other side of the map. Genestealers will spawn at that vent to attack him instead of clogging up the choke point you need to advance to.
Here we have a case where a Lure can work, based on an actual flash mission. The unending tide of xenos will make taking that narrow corner perilous, and we don’t have the AP to push safely. What to do?
Once the lure has escaped safely, you could try retreating with suppressive fire and escape without a casualty. Or you could use a flamer to block the hallway while you run for it.
Miscellaneous Tricks/Notes
You do not have to deploy your terminators on the first turn, only however many your objectives require you to. Some missions will require you to deploy 3 terminators on the first turn, for example.
You can deploy a terminator and then move him. Using this technique you can deploy-move-deploy-move so all your terminators started on the same tile and moved out as far as possible.
It is possible for genestealers to be active on the map before the first turn! These are map-specific, but it is unwise to charge forward during deployment. Move one tile at a time and protect yourself with overwatch until you establish a perimeter.
In ambush maps, you can deploy all your terminators off the same tile. No reason to get spread out!
The vox range on your sergeant is soft. It actually extends about half a tile farther than the radius would suggest, and can buff marines further than you’d think.
When traveling down a hallway, bring marines equal to the number of intersections you want to overwatch. If a hallway splits into two, bring two so each can watch one. Don’t bring more than that, because if you get rushed then having marines in the way may making retreating more difficult than it has to be.
When flaming a crowd of genestealers, don’t flame the one in the front of the pack, flame the tile in front of him. If he survives, he’ll have to cross a burning tile, which greatly reduces his chances of surviving. If you have no choice, be sure to overwatch the flames. There is nothing worse/more awesome than a burning genestealer running screaming out of the flames to stab a terminator.
Genestealers can’t enter a burning tile, so you can corral them with flames. Purposefully place a short flame in a hallway and wait for the genestealers to clump next to it, then move up the next turn and burn the entire conga line in one move.
Your heavy flamers have a lot of ammo. 12 is a lot for most missions. Don’t be shy about using them to block off passageways or cover air ducts.
The assault cannon is not that dangerous on overwatch when compared to a storm bolter. Its best use is firing without overwatch so you can line up the genestealers. Count out how many tiles the enemy can move and position yourself to splatter them.
Genestealers popping out of a vent when spawning do not count as having used an AP. They spawn on the tile in front of the spawn point with their full 6!
Genestealers cannot pop out of a spawn point onto a blocked tile. Mines, flames, or acid can block their spawning even if your terminator isn’t around to block it with his body.
Try to keep a marine overwatching a hallway one turn away from danger. If too many genestealers come, suppress them and run away. Have a heavy flamer ready to provide fire support when the hallway gets cleared.
Combi-bolters are wonderful. Try to give your ranged terminators more kills so they can reach level 5 sooner for that combi-goodness.
Close-range to-hit bonus is +20% on an adjacent tile, and +10% within 3 tiles. Diagonals count as 2 tiles.
If you want to retreat without firing, the only way to do that is to turn around. You cannot voluntarily move without firing, so backing up while a genestealer is visible will force your terminator to fire. The only exception is when his bolter is out of ammo or has jammed.
If your heavy runs out of ammo, he’s basically a melee terminator without the Ginsu knives. Weapon Skill can be a good investment of skill points.
Psychic attacks don’t work on brood lords. If a blip seems to refuse to die from psychic attacks, it’s probably a brood lord. The same is true when flaming out of LOS.
Using the Cyclone Missile Launcher will not cause your Storm Bolter to cool down, for no readily apparent reason.
Frag missiles force the genestealer to pass a toughness test, not an accuracy test. Broodlords are extremely hard to injure with frag missiles, and doors are fairly resilient.
When turning a corner to reveal a blip at close range, your terminator may elect not to move-and-fire on the genestealer that gets revealed. If this happens, you can still fire a shot manually for zero AP (including an aimed or burst shot!), but beware: The reason this happens is to prevent a terminator detonating an acid-maw genestealer. Check your target before you fire.