Advanced Space Crusade Arrives... Sort Of

When you collect out of production board games, you tend to spend a lot of time on ebay. A couple of times a day I will do random searches just to see if anything has come up within my price range (and that is, indeed, a very small range), and every couple of days I will do specific searches for games I don't have but wouldn't mind adding to the vault.

When I do those searches I tend to be looking for games that are cheap and complete. Obviously, most lots I find tend to fit into no more than one of those categories. Sometimes I get lucky, like I did with Dragon Strike (mint, unpunched copy scored for 99p) but most of the time I have to accept that I need to pay a bit more for a complete copy.

The alternative is to buy games that are not complete and then purchase the extra bits and pieces needed. I ended up buying three copies of the game Dark World in order to get a single, perfect set. Each time I bought a copy I sold off all the bits I didn't need and used that money to buy another incomplete set. This worked out incredibly cheap (in fact, I ended up with a bit of spare cash to put towards my next purchase), but it took a long time, and to be honest, I don't really like doing it.

Another example was my copy of Ghost Castle, which I bought from a charity shop. It was missing only the glow in the dark skull. I eventually sourced a skull, but it cost more than the rest of the game had cost me!

So, in most cases, I will hold my nerve and wait for complete games that are going at a reasonable price.

That said, sometimes I will take a gamble on a game that is usually expensive but is going cheap because it is obviously missing a few pieces. That is what I did with my recent acquisition of Advanced Space Crusade, a long out of production game from those lovely people at Games Workshop.

Man, I really wish they still made games like this... Okay, maybe not exactly like this. A bit like this. But better.

From what I could gather from the ebay listing and the picture, the game had none of the miniatures but it looked like all the card was there, most of it still in the original cardboard frames. It also looked like it had a few other random bits and pieces from other games. So, I took the risk. This game only comes with 15 marines and six tyranids, so I thought it would be relatively easy and inexpensive to complete the game IF everything else was complete.

The package arrived today, and when I opened it, this is what I was greeted with:

It took quite a while to sort out all the bits. There was a lot of stuff that didn't belong in the box. There were a few miniatures:

Keen eyes will spot a wizard from Warhammer Quest, some genestealers from the old genestealer sprues that Games Workshop used to sell, a metal space marine with no arms (poor chap), some horribly mutilated Slaan, and a random 15mm scale orc catapult. Genestealers are always useful, but everything else will go on ebay at some point when I have the strength.

There were lots of loose cardboard tokens, and they were a real pain to sort through:

I found quite a few bits from Space Crusade, and even some stuff from the rare Mission Dreadnought and Eldar Attack expansions. I will try to find homes for those as well - not because I am a money-grubbing S.O.B; but just because I have no use for those parts.

Possibly the biggest bonus in the box was this:

That, my friends, is a complete set of equipment and order cards from Space Crusade AND a complete set of order, equipment, exarch, and alien event cards from the Space Crusade Eldar Attack expansion. That's a pretty good find, and I am hopeful someone on ebay will take them off my hands.

Unfortunately, after I had sorted out all the cardboard components, I was not left with a complete copy of Advanced Space Crusade as I had originally hoped. I was missing a good chunk of the doors, some of the marine counters, some of the exploration counters, and a few other tokens for things such as transport cysts. On the plus side, most of the components that were there were in lovely condition (most of them have never been punched out) and rule book is almost immaculate - I have never seen such a pristine copy.

So, all in all, I guess the gamble paid off. I should be able to break even by selling off all the bits I don't want, and the bits of Advanced Space Crusade I do have are in great condition. But now I am in that situation where I have to source lots of spare bits.

Ah well, here we go again.

I just hope I don't have to buy three copies of this one...