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It hardly seems fair that someone is given just extra command points equal to half the crusade point difference between the two armies and a crusade.

Now, if you could assign your opponent negative CP it might work out a little fairer.
Take any number of CP that you have as the weaker player and assign that may negative CP to your opponent. With a difference of 16 crusade points, you starting out with two CP and him starting out with -6cp could make the game a little fairer.

I used to play a lot of Crusade. Our group sort of agreed to end it partially because of this discrepancy. It turns out that half a CP (essentially) is just not even close to compensation for the upgrades that are available.

Maybe it would be closer to compensation if you rolled all the upgrades randomly, but we were picking and choosing. Even if you rolled randomly, I still think it's not enough compensation.

While I like your idea, I think you'll still find that its a poor deal for the player lagging behind.

1 cp per crusade point would be *fairer*, but still probably not enough.

Put it this way: if you had a stratagem you could play turn 1 which for 1 CP could give an entire unit of yours +1 BS for the rest of the game, would you play it? Absolutely you would. You'd play it every single game and you'd consider it a bargain.

This is exactly the sort of thing that Crusade offers. Literally; the Space Marine book has this exact thing as a Crusade upgrade, and this was the first upgrade I was picking for my Crusade space marines, and it was brutal.

So even 1 CP per crusade point difference is just not enough. I don't know how I'd balance it. Maybe 1.5 or 2 CP per Crusade point difference. And I like your idea of being able to assign your opponent negative CP.

Good luck!

I don't think either player would be happy. Having to play more than half the game before you get your first CP point simply because you've played longer/better would be no fun. And as you point out it probably isn't enough anyway.