Zoats in Space Crusade (Unfinished Rules)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

This post is in part a reply to Captin Kabeered's 'Till All Are One' post about converting stats between games in the HeroQuest Section
I'll admit that as I don't have any Zoat miniatures (for Sci-fi or Fantasy) they've never been the top of my list of things to work on for Space Crusade, however I am aware that others (who do have the miniatures) might be interested so here goes


^ Zoat Blips with the points values not added as I have yet to work them out

Captin Kabeered wrote

Space Crusade:
Zoat
Move= 5  
Armour= 6
Range= 3 white dice
H-T-H= 4 white dice  OR 1 red dice [Life Points = 1 Mind= 7].

The Square Braked Life Points and Mind points are hidden values which are not displayed on Alien Control pannel, or at at all in regards to mind.

Ok, I'm going to come out and say this looks a little off. The most glaringly obvious thing is the Armour Value of 6 – which is higher than a Dreadnought! (The only thing in Space Crusade with a AV6 of is the Tarantula support weapon – and personally I think even that's unjustified)

As point of reference, here is a general overview of Armour in SpaceCrusade

AV 0: No Armour (Gretchin, Hybrids)  
AV 1: Basic Armour (Orks, Scouts)
AV 2: Power Armour (Space Marines)
AV 3: Terminator Armour (Space Marine Terminators, Ork Nobs in Mega Armour)
AV 4: Dreadnought Armour

Notable exceptions are:
Androids have AV2 this accounts for them being machines and essentially being their own Power Armour
Genestealers and Tyranid Warriors have AV3 which I believe is justified along the lines of them being exceptionally tough creatures with thick carapaces and in the case of Genestealers fast-moving, difficult to hit targets (See SpaceHulk - Genestealers are notoriously hard to kill)

I recommend reading Tony1978's 'basical logic of space crusade PDF' for further information

Now, given the above I'd have gone with AV2 for Zoats accounting for their tough carapace (or maybe AV3 at a push)  

The other thing I wasn't sure on was the Hand-To-Hand dice you've assigned them
4W (more powerful than the claws of a Tyranid warrior with Death-Spitter) or 1R (Only slightly more powerful than a Gretchin, but weaker than everything else)

Personally I'd have gone with 3W (accounting for a stomping/kicking attack from the Zoats powerful legs) or possibly 2R 1W for the Zoat champion model with a Power-Glove.

Come to think of it, the Zoat with the Power-Glove has a Flamer in it's other hand - so I'd give that 1R 1W shooting with a 4 Square (2x2) area of effect in accordance with my Sisters of Battle rules

So to sum up so far:

Zoat with 2 Bolters (Flesh Borers?)

Move: 5
Armour: 2
Shooting: 3W
Hand-To-Hand: 3W
 
Zoat with Power-glove and Flamer

Move: 5
Armour: 2
Shooting: 1R 1W
Hand-To-Hand: 2R 1W

and while writing that 2 more (lesser seen) Zoat variants have just come to my attention


A Heavy Weapon Zoat with what is apparently a Multi-Melta (3R, Line of Effect, Roll for each target) and Zoat with a Single Bolter (With this variety of troop weapons Zoats might even make a potential Player Race!)

I suppose I should look up what the Tyranid Weapon Equivalents of the weapons are;  Flesh Borers are obviously Bolters, the look of the organic Multi-Melta is similar to that of the current range's Venom Cannon and the organic Flamer make me think of the Strangleweb guns carried by some of the 40k 2nd edition era Termagants – but of course there is no direct Tyranid equivalent of the Power-Glove (time I dug out my 2nd edition Tyranid Codex I guess!)

Another thing Zoats will need are rules to cover the movement and positioning of their 'cavalry' bases which will take up 2 squares – I'm thinking something similar to the way the Dragon moves in Dragon Strike or the Wolves in the Mage In The Mirror (Elf Quest Pack) expansion for HeroQuest.