I'm currently running the first of the three adventures in the book, each of which looks like it could be fun. Anyway, the Genestealers presented in Final Sanction were fairly disappointing given their awesome close combat reputation (earned through inumerable games of Space Hulk).

However the Aurum Genestealers are absolutely brutal. They have 4 attacks (lightning attack plus multiple arms) with an awesome chance of hitting and a substantial chance of having penetration 14 with an average damage of abbout 21 per hit, uncomfortable even with toughness bonuses of 10 and 12. In addition to that they will act first by virtue of their unnatural agility, move incredibly quickly, have two dodges with a 80% per cent chance of success (Ag 60, Dodge +10, Improve difficulty one step for unnatural Ag)and possess the hard target trait. Admittedly they aren't super tough but neither will they be put down by one bolt shell or a single close combat attack without a bit of luck (certainly not by rank 2 marines).

Most of the initial encounters in Grensvayl start with a couple of Genestealers and after two rounds 1d5 will show up around 50m away if the team aren't stealthy. With a team of six marines I figure the Genestealers will act and get moving, with the smoke, hard target and running the 'stealers will probably have -60 to hit, mitigated by the obligatory full auto (goodbye stealth) and short range for -30. With BS scores of around 50-60 plus some talents, sights, etc. I figure at least half of the marines will miss, of the ones that hit it is fairly likely that the 'stealers will dodge. On the second round the 'stealers charge into combat and use preternatural speed to unleash hell - they can probably take out one marine if they focus their attacks (especially with the bonus from charging and for a friend in combat, conservative estimate would be about 45 wounds) or injure two otherwise. Given that they aren't stupid they've probably neutralised the heavy weapon(s) by engaging them in melee so everyone else is forced to fire into combat or charge in. It seems unlikely that everyone will charge into combat and if they do not many marines have more than one melee attack so it is unlikely that they'll take out both 'stealers. I assume someone will hit upon an alternative tactic in round two that might well ensure one of them is taken out but then at the start of round three 1d5 more of them show up and it all starts again, except with one already engaged in melee.

The cleansing of Grensvayl seems like an extremely difficult mission - based on Final Sanction my players are likely to rub their hands with glee when they hear there is a town full of Genestealers to take out. I'm tempted to give them a Forbidden Lore: Xenos test to strongly suggest that these things are ridiculously dangerous.

Anyone else surprised (and a little pleased) at how meaty these Genestealers are? These are the kind of guys someone in Terminator armour could fear!

There does seem to be an inbuilt mechanic to make things a little easier when the Genestealers form a horde though I don't know how comfortable I am with the notion that the Genestealers go from being absolutely lethal killing machines to being chopped down by the dozen just by virtue of numbers. 15 of them form a horde with magnitude 10, assuming the horde only gets the two dodges and is easier to hit then the marines quickly go from struggling to take out one or two genestealers to hitting the horde with bolter fire and taking out Genestealers by the half dozen, swift attacks with power weapons start carving away three genestealers at a time. It just seems like such a weird change of pace right in the middle of combat. One minute the marines are filling their pants at being outnumbered and the next they are breezing through the baddies like a hot knife through butter. Anyone got any thoughts on how to balance it up a little better?

Personally I don't like how fast Genestealers tend to show up in the first adventure once the team's inside the infested village. Couple of rounds and they start to build up nearby, and will turn into HORDES?! Anyway, even a couple of the Aurum Genestealers can tear through a Rank 2 party if they get the on the party. Just reading over the stats of the adversaries for the next two adventures in the book makes me wince because it seems like the genestealers in the first adventure are the deadliest foes in the book, aside from the very final boss.

Oh and what's the point in including the stats for *SPOILERS* necrons, if a combat encounter with them is entirely optional and is entirely avoidable? I'm happy to have the stats for them finally, but the second adventure could make a better use of them.

Snipped for brevity, quoted for ease of reference.

Shaun said:

I don't have the book, but I can think of some ideas that might help your players survival. While some on the boards complain about enemies being too weak, you seem to have the opposite problem. It appears you have that problem because you play your characters too cleverly, strangely enough .

Try not concentrating your fire on a single marine- split the stealer's up unless there is an assault marine that has multiple dodges/parries. Also figure your marines will be using full auto, which means the dodge may not doge all the shots- you only dodge 1 hit per DoS with autofire. Play them clever, but don't act like a PC in order to give your players a fighting chance. It also will allow the GS's to scale as your players go up in rank over time, as the hive fleet they're fighting will learn and adapt, keeping the fights difficult (meaning you use more clever tactics against them).

Also, you could consider hybridizing the genestealser from FS and make them a little tougher, or rather make the EP ones less deadly, or just use the ones from FS (which IMHO were deadly enough with their average 22 damage pen 5-10, which means marines take 13 to 18 damage with each hit, or dead in two rounds, 70% dodge).

When they go to make the horde, if you want it to be easier, use descriptive terms to illustrate why things are getting easier, such as the GSs are getting in each others way, not fighting as a team, etc., and 'accidentally' making it an easier job for the Pcs to cut through them. Also consider giving the horde more magnitude without giving them more members- the mag damage that doesn't blast away steales can represent one marine cutting off avenues of escape, or the horde concentrating on dodging that marine while the other marines cut into them, or just you making the encounter longer and making it feel not quite such a drastic change of difficulty- remember magnitude doesn't equate to numbers directly.

Oh, and don't forget your players will have things like special ammo which may change the tide a bit.

Are you telling them to go in with stealth or is that something that's discovered on the ground- if you tell them ahead of time you could suggest stalker rounds in order to reduce the chance of the bonus stealers from finding them while they're engaged.

Last but not least, aren't DW Marines trained in Knowledge Xenos already? So they'd at least get a chance to roll.