So I've come up with a set of house rules to use with the base game to make the game more challenging. These house rules have a few concepts to them:
- Simplify and streamline the game, not create more rolls or book-keeping as much as possible
- Make hostiles tougher and scarier, not simply flood the board with them
- Make the game progressively different the deeper explorers are
As you'll see, I was able to summarize most of them on the back of the Combat rulebook as references, so it hasn't really complicated the game at all, but it feels much more challenging when we are playing, especially at the latter levels where bad events and constant reinforcements are a reality.
I've scribbled these rules in the back of my rulebook as easy reminders.
Some of these are drawn from various forum topics on BGG, but I wanted to have them centralized somewhere.
Deadlier Events
I hate the swingy aspect of the event table, especially if we constantly roll good results that can easily make the dungeon delve easier and unrewarding. The alteration I made simply states that you "reduce the event roll by -1 for each exploration card already drawn, excluding the current one".
What that means is that the deeper explorers go, the deadlier these events become, such that strongholds that require six exploration cards to be drawn become extremely deadly.
We've also made it so that Changing Conditions always applies a twist, so draw encounter cards until one is drawn.
Assured Reinforcements
It gets really boring if you wipe-out the enemies and all you have left to do is walk along the dungeon to get to the elevator. This rule follows the above and basically says that you "reduce the reinforcement roll by -1 for each exploration card already drawn, excluding the current one".
This makes it feel like the deeper you go, the deadlier it gets, with hexes near portals becoming a much feared place to be in the later dungeons if you have hostiles nearby or wiped-out. It's incredible how much deadlier it gets on the 5th floor down with a -4 or greater modifier to the reinforcement roll.
Uncertain elevator
After you spend a die to summon the elevator, roll a D12, if the roll is a failure, the elevator does not come, and the current portal becomes locked (move it away from the tile it is placed on to remind your group of that). Enemies can still come from this portal, but the elevator cannot be summoned at it anymore. If all other portals are locked, ignore this rule, the last portal is an automatic success.
This rule, coupled with the others, makes summoning an elevator a group effort, because it it fails, you have explorers adjacent to it and in great peril. Since it uses a d12 it is likely to be a success, but the catastrophic chance of failure means the group approaches that roll with much more planning and preparation.
Nemesis dice rolls
This rule acts in a similar manner to events and adds more challenges for the group to deal with at the start of a new combat phase.
Any unused Destiny dice are converted to nemesis dice that will have a negative effect on the battle:
- Nemesis dice of 1 - Choose a single closest available hostile, different per each dice, to immediately make an attack on a visible explorer.
- Nemesis dice of 2 - During this Combat Turn, incur a -2 modifier to each reinforcement roll for each nemesis dice of this type (keep these dice on top of the hostile initiative card as a reminder, move it along across the cards as the groups are activated).
- Nemesis dice of 3 - The first hostile behavior rolled receives a +5 modifier for each nemesis dice of 3 present (keep these dice on top of the hostile initiative card as a reminder) *draw two behavior cards and use the highest if using behavior cards instead of dice.
- Nemesis dice of 4 - Roll a D6 skill test dice for each hostile group in the initiative track. On a success, swap that hostile group's initiative card with the one in front of it. Re-roll the failures if there are more than one of this nemesis dice present.
- Nemesis dice of 5 and 6 - Immediately make a reinforcement roll for each hostile group, only a single roll is made per group despite the number of 5/6 nemesis dice present.
With this rule we also allow inspiration tokens to be used to re-roll destiny dice as a means to provide more usefulness to inspiration rolls as well as to drain them from players (they tend to accumulate after everyone is inspired in our games).
Enemy armor
I find that there are two groups of enemies who deserve defense rolls just like explorers, the space marines and Chaos Beastmen.
- Obsidius Mallex and the two Chaos Space Marines have a defense roll of d12
- Chaos Beastmen have a defense roll of d6
This simple change make them much more deadlier, especially the chaos space marines who tend to stay in cover and have 4 wounds.
limited use of Exhausted cards
Cards that are exhausted can only be refreshed on the recovery step that happens between exploration cards, not once every combat turn. This significantly lowers the efficacy and dependability of cards and artifacts for beefed-up explorers.
Improved Elevator Recovery
To counter-balance all the increased difficulty settings above and to keep adventures streamlined, we have expanded the role of recovery in the elevators between explorations.
Explorers can roll 1 recovery dice per wound sustained, and while in the elevator, a critical success can turn a Grievous wound into a Regular wound.
Behavior Cards
Behavior cards make it much faster to execute hostile activation.
The "behavior roll, check hostile model state, check table" routine would be fine if it wasn't done dozens of times per combat turn. With this in mind I printed 20 behavior cards per hostile group and simply point to a model and draw a card to execute them. You could even draw a single card per hostile group, but I find that can be extremely swingy for large enemy groups like renegade guardsmen, so I only do this for groups of two models.
You can find my file on Scribd.
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