One of the trials faced by many gamers as they get older and have to start acting like grown-ups more often is the decline in available time for gaming, which tends to leave many of us having to cut back the number of games we play. The problem with that, of course, is what to do with those piles of miniatures left over from the games that have fallen by the wayside?
This is something I wrestled with as Warhammer 40000 started to lose its shine and Maelstrom's Edge came along to fill in the void. The obvious solution, of course, is to find ways to incorporate those other miniatures into your new game! And so, with bold visions of an Empire of Mankind raising battle flags along the implacable line of advance of the galactic Maelstrom, I set about converting Space Marine statlines and special rules into something that would fit in alongside MEdge's Epirians, Karists and as-yet unborn future factions.
You can find the current (draft) version of these efforts at the below links. The first link contains the cards for all of the Marine units created so far. The second contains a reference sheet for all of the Marine weaponry and their Faction-specific objective. Note that these rules are NOT 'official' rules for Maelstrom's Edge, and are not published or endorsed by Spiral Arm Studios (the makers of MEdge). They're a fan creation that you can use, or not, at your own discretion.
Imperial Marine Reference Sheet
(If you don't have them yet, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge rules from the webstore as a digital download here, or the print copy in the Battle for Zycanthus starter set here.)
These Marine rules are still in progress - I suspect that point costs on some things still need some upwards tweaking, and the roster is currently fairly sparse, including just a selection of the more common units. More will come later.
One of the biggest challenges that arose when I started making up these cards came from the fact that many Warhammer 40K units have a significantly broader range of options than standard MEdge units do. I have sidestepped this somewhat by limiting the options for these initial units to the more obvious ones, with later unit variants to add in other options. I am also intending to add in a 'Veteran Sergeant' card which will be available as an upgrade to other units' sergeants, adding in a wider range of gear for the unit leader - there simply wasn't room on the cards to give these options to standard sergeants.
My hope from putting these out there is that gamers with space marine models sitting around gathering dust, or current 40K players looking for something different, will be tempted to give MEdge a go and in the process kick these rules in the tyres a little to see which bits fall off.
So if you try these out, and have any comments, criticisms or other feedback, please feel free to drop me a line here or on the Maelstrom's Edge Comm Guild Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge/.