Hi all,

I got the game and the expansions and I've tried repeatedly to play a single-player game before introducing it to friends so I can get my head around the rules first- and every single time I try I never even begin turn one because the rules seem so obscure to me.

The setup goes fine. I lay everything out as is shown clearly in the manual. Then I choose orders, that's fine too. There's no genestealers on the board so that round goes by. Then I draw an encounter card and... I'm utterly lost. How do genestealers spawn? It says they spawn on 'terrain cards of that colour', but there ARE no terrain cards out at this stage, and I haven't seen anything that indicates when they should be drawn. It's utterly baffling. The game just grinds to a halt because... I don't know what any of it means or how to proceed.

Can someone lay out to me the turn sequence in a SUPER easy-to-understand fashion? Like, pretend I am a person of very low IQ or draw me lictures or something, because I am stumped. I've done this over and over and the answer is never clearer to me. The rules then start going on about combat and movement but I can't proceed until I get my brain around these first steps.

Please help me!

Thanks.

Destructor said:

Look at your Void Lock setup Location card. See thos icons/pics/symbols, two on each side with a number and an arrow below them? There's a Door, Ventilation Duct, Corridor and Dark Corner you need to place (at least in the 1- and 2-player Void Locks).

"2. Place Terrain Cards: The current player
discards all Terrain cards from the formation.

He then places the appropriate Terrain cards as
listed on the current Location card (the two white
icons listed on the left and the two white icons
on the right of the Location card).

Each terrain icon listed on the Location card
also has a number and an arrow. If the arrow
is pointing down, the matching Terrain card is
placed this number of positions from the top of
the formation. If the arrow is pointing up, then it is
placed this number of positions from the bottom of
the formation (see diagram on following page)." (p. 26)

Placing them is step #7 during Setup (p. 8)

Destructor said:

Effectively, you're skipping a couple steps in set-up. Look on page 8 of the rulebook, and re-read steps 7 and 8 on that page. If that still leaves you confused, page 9 and page 26 might also be helpful. Here's what I suspect you're missing:

Step 7: After you build the formation of marines, you need to place the Void Lock card (referred to as the "Setup Location card" on page 8 of the rules), which will tell you where the initial terrain cards are placed near the formation. Terrain cards aren't really a deck: you don't draw them at random, you place them at each location in a pattern specified by the symbols on the location card (the first of which is always a Void Lock). If it's still alluding you, look closely at the setup diagram on page 9; it shows you where the four location cards go in a 4-player game so that may help you figure out the symbols on the void lock.

Step 8: You also mentioned that there's no genestealers on the board when you choose orders for the first round, which indicates that you're missing step 8. Before the marines ever choose their first action card, there will already be some genestealers on the board. You draw one Event card as the final step of set-up and only resolve the bottom portion of it that indicates how many genestealers to place at which terrain cards. The setup diagram on page 9 shows a swarm of genestealers in place, though their number and position is just a random example.

Ah ha!

Thank you all, I followed this advice and played two solo games last night, both very fun. I got *this close* to winning the first one (I was literally on the last card and the last two stealers before winning when they took me down) and won the second game which I played with the expansion set. It was a lot of fun and I understand the rules now so I feel confident in introducing it to my friends- thanks for the help.

-Dan