Warhammer 40,000 – Crusade Progress
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Warhammer 40,000 – Crusade is by far my favorite way to play Warhammer 40,000 Ninth Edition. Rather than focusing on building a hyper competitive list that can maximize the score in a fixed set of missions, you focus on starting with a relatively small force and focus on growing it through gameplay. Many of the abilities that you would typically spend command points or actual points to upgrade units and characters each game are instead a fixed purchase that can be gained via Requisition Points which are earned by playing games.
My gaming group started our crusade in November and have been attempting to get together weekly. Of course with the pandemic and other real life obstacles not everyone has been able to play each week. Couple that with some players changing factions each time we play means not everyone is on equal footing for the campaign. In any other system that would have been the death of the campaign, however crusade institutes a system in which players compare Crusade Points at the start of the game. If one player has more upgrades they have more crusade points and as a balancing factor their opponent gets a number of extra Command Points to spend during the game. So far this balance has worked out really well.
The other unique thing about this system is the lack of a map or other territory control means your primary focus of the campaign is to improve your force and tell your own story. Upgrades and injuries aren’t random instead you select them from the table (or you can roll if you want to make it random) so you can tell the story you want to tell with your units.
I’ve managed to stick with my original list for the whole campaign so far. The only unit I dropped was the Eliminators because they didn’t really fit with the theme of my list and performed poorly with my chosen tactics. I’m playing a Blood Angel Successor Chapter with Whirlwind of Rage and Master Artisans as my two chosen traits.
My force is currently being led by my Librarian who is accompanied by a Sanguinary Priest. The force is full of veteran squads as their mission is to investigate rumors of a cure tied to the Dark imperium and some potential Archeotech. This ties well with the Agendas I typically choose (Agendas are the equivalent of secondaries, except rather than gaining you points in game you gain campaign benefits by accomplishing them.) My goal is that over the course of the campaign my priest gains enough experience to become the Master Apothecary for my chapter.
My roster is currently up to 90 Power Level which gives me a pretty solid list of units to pick from in the 25-50 PL games we typically play. Hopefully some of the other players catch up with their roster size so we can start playing larger games eventually.
I have two small Tactical Squads, an Intercessor Squad and a Land Speeder as the core of my force. When I’m running a battalion they fill up the mandatory slots and give me a solid base of units to score objectives.
As of late I’ve been running a Vanguard Detachment consisting of a ten man Vanguard Veteran Squads with dual chainswords and a few stormsheilds, a ten man Sternguard squad all with combi-flamers, a five man Death Company squad and a five man Reiver Squad.
For heavy support I added a Sicaran Arcus, this fast little tank has a missile launcher that can target units it can’t see as well as some las-cannons and a heavy bolter. So far i haven’t been super impressed with it’s performance, but I love how the tank looks so I’m sticking with it for now.
