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Hey guys,

my friends and I are starting a Crusade campaign and i wanted to ask if any of you have any tips?
Is there a summary for the rules or a quick reference sheet?
I would also like to have a source for all the info there is for crusade campaigns in general ,like what source material is available, where to find wha and so on

So far we are planing on using points and the administratum.net website.

Thanks in advance.

Are we allowed to talk about wahapedia here? Because that has all the rules.

How do we summon PenitentJake

For the basic Crusade rules, you'll need the Core Rulebook for 40k. Everything you need to run a campaign is in there.
The Crusade Mission Packs (such as Wars of Faith or Containment) contain rules for specific types of campaigns you want to run. The Wars of Faith pack, for example, gives you missions and rules centered around conflicting religions and ideologies, with missions to defile shrines or in-game Actions to consecrate or desecrate holy sites.
Now for some tips.

1 - Stick to the basic rules in the Core Rulebook first. It can be tempting to jump straight into one of the special Mission Packs but get a feel for the system first. Learn how things like Agendas, Battle Traits and Crusade Relics work before you start adding in even more extra rules on top.

2 - Don't use Points, it'll make it feel less like a tournament or competitive league, and the system is based around using Power anyway. The focus should be on the story of Your Dudes and the evolution of their narrative not on winning the campaign at all costs. Don't deliberately lose of course but don't make it about smashing your opponent every single game and min-maxing your list and skills of your units.

3 - You need to start off small. Stick to Combat Patrol missions at the beginning and don't rush to increase your Power limit. Go for 5/6 games for each size of game so that you actually have a chance to develop and improve your units on your Crusade Roster. I recommend starting off at 25 Power and adding 10 when you want to push up from Combat Patrol to Incursion, slowly increasing the Power each size level until you reach 50-75 Power.

Hope this helps

 Gert wrote:
...How do we summon PenitentJake ...

Someone's mentioned the word Crusade, it's only a matter of time.

As to the general process of organizing the whole thing I'd strongly suggest appointing a GM; Crusade can be less competitive than regular play, but that's very much down to the players, and empowering a referee can really help keep it from drifting off course. I've seen a lot of other GW-based campaign systems (Mordheim, Necromunda, the various proto-Crusade systems they've done for mainline 40k over the years) fall apart because one player got some kind of campaign progression option that felt abusive to other players (Necromunda telepathy psykers, anything to do with Mordheim Dwarves) and without an arbiter to resolve the issue the campaign became unfun and people stopped playing. With Crusade I've seen that happen week one day one, because someone bought the wrong models and someone else bought the right models, and there wasn't an arbiter to resolve the issue when they started telling each other to buy different models.

It's completely possible that your campaign will proceed perfectly; nobody will try and pull out anything too powerful or too bad, and nobody will stumble into a degenerate combo stack by accident, but better to have a GM and not need them than not have a GM when you do. (As to things the GM can do to address issues I wouldn't advise trying to do any major rewrites to any rules during campaign play, but if arguments about what rules/combos are abusive start to get out of hand ad-hoc points handicaps, underdog XP, or asking players to choose a different advance on a unit are fairly minor levers you have to pull if you need them.)

 Gert wrote:
2 - Don't use Points, it'll make it feel less like a tournament or competitive league, and the system is based around using Power anyway. The focus should be on the story of Your Dudes and the evolution of their narrative not on winning the campaign at all costs. Don't deliberately lose of course but don't make it about smashing your opponent every single game and min-maxing your list and skills of your units.

While I agree with everything else you say, I will note that we've had some success using a hybrid, building to PL but trying to be a bit scrupulous about using the unit options to play as close to 20 pts per PL as possible.

I run the Crusade league at our local store, and we've been going strong for almost a year. If you've never played Crusade before, I'd focus on playing matches with the core rulebook first. String together some narrative missions that seem cool and write some fluff justification. The campaign books (Charadon, Octarius, etc.) are not a series of missions to play through; instead, they're a lot of extra special rules. I teach a lot of beginners, and we often have to ignore the campaign rules to help players understand regular Crusade rules first.

Beyond that, I agree with Rake: you'll want a game master, or at least an agreement for how to vote on problems. Issues will come up, and you need to fix them to maintain a fun environment for everyone. If you can, have your players agree for a non-competitive environment upfront. It helps everyone have fun if they already agree to lower the power of their armies.

Here are some more specific rules adjustments we've implemented:

Implement a Crusade Point limit, which means players must have the same amount of upgrades from experience. Players who learn to use Agendas to gain experience quickly will grow much more powerful than the rest. The extra Command Points awarded to the weaker player by the core rulebook aren't enough. In our league, you can choose which upgrades you bring to each battle, so extra upgrades gives you more options rather than more raw power.

We also let everyone pick their upgrades and Battle Scars. Choosing your upgrades is important because getting a useless random upgrade feels awful. At the end of a losing game, rolling for Out of Action tests often feels like insult to injury. Choosing a Battle Scar gives the losing player an opportunity to catch up and get some power, because they can pick a Battle Scar that barely affects the unit. The Battle Scar also decreases their unit's Crusade Points, allowing them to take more upgrades. A player who loses a lot will get more opportunities for Battle Scars, and that'll help them catch up.

Catulle wrote:
While I agree with everything else you say, I will note that we've had some success using a hybrid, building to PL but trying to be a bit scrupulous about using the unit options to play as close to 20 pts per PL as possible.

It's one of those things where it ties into the mentality of it all. You could load up a unit with all the gear it could possibly take that would make it brilliant but then that falls under min-maxing and trying to win through obliteration. It could well be Player A's objective for the campaign is to ensure the total destruction of the enemy force in each game but that campaign is going to end super quick if Player B loses every single game to Player A's steamroller. Player A can still keep that objective but then try to use their tactics and strategies to achieve their personal goal rather than broken units or wombo-combos.
I wouldn't expect that to be too much of a concern for the OP unless their friend is out for revenge

Just to clarify I'm not saying your idea doesn't work, just giving my view on the Points vs Power for a narratively driven system.

Yeah, in practice I've found Points vs Power even out. While you may take some extra upgrades in Power, generally they're stuff you'd consider inefficient in Points anyway. Armies at 50 Power (1000pts) tend to be around 1050-1100 points, but are crammed with cool-but-useless junk (Powerfists on Tempestus Scions, extra pintle-mounted guns, etc.). If somebody really is abusing Power level, that's an issue for a referee or group vote to solve.

Lots of good advice in here.

I very much agree with picking Battle Honours and Scars, I agree on using the main book to start (with the caveat that the Codex Crusade material is really where it's at) and I have really come around to PL (of course, I don't have a crew of min-maxers who are going to go out and buy five boxes of a unit to field the most broken build either).

Think about how to organize the campaign is important- are you putting together something map based, or are you dealing with a series of linked missions in a tree system?

If you need to generate territories, you can take a look at both the GSC and the Tau dexes- their bespoke Crusade content involves building planetary systems for them to conquer. The cool thing is you can use these rules to generate your little corner of the universe whether you're planning on including GSC or Tau players to conquer it or not- the guidelines laid out in the content are loose enough to give you wiggle room, but developed enough to provide ideas and story hooks.

I think having conversations with your players about their long term goals for their armies is really helpful. It can give you ideas for links between games, and you might see ways for one player's goals to interact with those of another player.

One model that I've seen work is to divide the campaign into phases- so your first phase might be limited to Combat Patrol sized games, while the second phase steps up to Incursion, etc. Phases triggers can be real world time (by month for example), escalation (ie army growth) or story triggers.

If there are going to be prizes or winners and losers, come up with "vote for the best story" and best painted/ converted armies are good ways to try and prevent the campaign from being all about the win.

Once you and the players have some experience with the system, you could play out a season- the heavy lifting is already done for you if you go this route, though it may not be as perfect a fit for your group as you could make it by building your own campaign.

Goonhammer is a great tool for reviewing what is in a given Mission Pack or Campaign book. White Dwarf flashpoints can be interesting example for you of things you can do.

There's two of these out here so I'll repeat some of the things I said in the other one.

House Rule some balance stuff that doesn't make any sense - named characters get their Warlord Traits for free, but DIY characters have to pay for it? In a game style supposed to be for narratives? I'd let all HQ Slot DIY's have one free warlord trait.


If everyone has the army for it, I'd start the Order of Battle at 2,000 points. Have everyone make a normal 2,000 point list, Any CP costs (i.e. Extra Relics, Warlord Traits(which are then refunded for the first one on HQ's but not Elites), involved in making the list bump the PL of the list on a 1:1 ratio. That list is your starting order of battle even if its over 100PL, but you can't spend RP on anything else until your Supply Limit is higher than or equal to your current Order of Battle.


Crusade is a decent launch point, but it definitely needs some massaging.

I'd also not tell people how that aspect works until after they've submitted their list so they make a normal list.

Breton wrote:


I'd also not tell people how that aspect works until after they've submitted their list so they make a normal list.

That's a reaaaal gakky thing to do to players. They're not going to trust you after that.

Hecaton wrote:

Breton wrote:


I'd also not tell people how that aspect works until after they've submitted their list so they make a normal list.

That's a reaaaal gakky thing to do to players. They're not going to trust you after that.

I said don't tell them how it works, not don't tell them its going to happen. I'd tell them their 2,000 point list is going to be turned into a Crusade Order of Battle, and that there will be a mechanic turning pre-battle CP spent (so use whichever Pre-battle Strats you want) into PL added to their list (Which they will have to reconcile before they spend any other RP. Give them enough info to have an idea, but not enough to tailor.

That would require some in depth knowladge about how crusade works though. Telling someone his army is not going to change in to a "Crusade Order of Battle" type of an army means nothing, when you don't know what it means. Same as telling them that a mechanic they know , aquiring relics, warlord traits etc is going to be changed according to a mechanic they do not know. On top of using a point system which is normaly not used in out of crusade games.

Karol wrote:
That would require some in depth knowladge about how crusade works though. Telling someone his army is not going to change in to a "Crusade Order of Battle" type of an army means nothing, when you don't know what it means. Same as telling them that a mechanic they know , aquiring relics, warlord traits etc is going to be changed according to a mechanic they do not know. On top of using a point system which is normaly not used in out of crusade games.

The Crusade rules are in the BRB? I would assume/require everyone have access to that and their codex at least. Although you are correct on one thing, I didn't change relics and should have mentioned that would be something they're told - they can't have relics (that don't start on the data sheet i.e Mastercrafted Power Swords on Bladeguard) to start so also no extra relics strats. The point system is only used for initial order generation thus why pre-battle CP Spent = PL increases, and the switch to PL "That list is your starting order of battle even if its over 100PL, but you can't spend RP on anything else until your Supply Limit is higher than or equal to your current Order of Battle."

As far as the Warlord Traits - that's zero sum. If they spend the points, they get them back(on HQ's). if they don't spend the points they get the trait for "free".

Also if they don't know Crusade, wouldn't it be simpler to tell them to make\use a "normal" list with a few warnings about things to avoid like Relics? If they don't know Crusade would they even know how borked Warlord Traits for DIY vs Nameds are in Crusade?

By having them make a points list that is then translated into PL you avoid the freebie listing. Every sgt has a powerfist, every tank has a bonus heavy stubber or icarus rocket pod or both. By allowing some/most of the Pre-game strats and/or Chapter Command and similar upgrades, you also at the least reduce imbalance between the factions and subfactions.

For example - Marneus Calgar is a Chapter Master (command- XP And 1RP), with a Warlord Trait(1RP) surrounded by a Chapter Champion(XP and 1RP) and Chapter Ancient(XP and 1RP) on day 1. Meanwhile Captain Joe Bob of the Sucks To Be Us chapter - and his Company Ancient, AND his Company Champion -- has to go through what? At least a few battles which could mean a few weeks to get enough XP - 31+ on each of the three models scored about 2 at a time, plus spend some RP that the UM player doens't have All because he's DIY? One of the attractive things about Chapter Command is being able to DIY something similar to the Nameds without running the Nameds. And its bad enough comparing the UM with say BA, or DA. It gets worse when its Salamanders, or IF, or the poor Ravenguard and Iron Hands who haven't been this lonely with their one single named/special datasheet since Istvaan. And poor Nids - they may have it worst of all. Or maybe Chaos Knights that don't even have a Canis Rex and be tied for stuck with some of the fewest options in Power Level variation.

Breton wrote:
There's two of these out here so I'll repeat some of the things I said in the other one.

House Rule some balance stuff that doesn't make any sense - named characters get their Warlord Traits for free, but DIY characters have to pay for it? In a game style supposed to be for narratives? I'd let all HQ Slot DIY's have one free warlord trait.

I don't feel like that is an issue. The downside of named characters is not gaining battle honors or experience, so even if they are better than lower ranked counterparts, they tend to fall behind when characters are gaining experience, crusade relics and other upgrades. Keep in mind that many crusade missions also give rewards to your warlord which simply disappear if your warlord is a named character.

If everyone has the army for it, I'd start the Order of Battle at 2,000 points. Have everyone make a normal 2,000 point list, Any CP costs (i.e. Extra Relics, Warlord Traits(which are then refunded for the first one on HQ's but not Elites), involved in making the list bump the PL of the list on a 1:1 ratio. That list is your starting order of battle even if its over 100PL, but you can't spend RP on anything else until your Supply Limit is higher than or equal to your current Order of Battle.

Mixing points and PL is nonsense. Either change the crusade rules to points (not worth the effort IMO) or build lists using PL.

It also is going to bone some people who will be unable to form proper armies at 50 PL or are locked into one type of list for many games, so not telling them is a really bad thing to do.

Either your players want to play a narrative game, or they don't. If they don't, you can't trick them into playing it, the only way is to communicate. If they still don't want, your campaign is bound to fail anyways.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Catulle wrote:

 Gert wrote:
2 - Don't use Points, it'll make it feel less like a tournament or competitive league, and the system is based around using Power anyway. The focus should be on the story of Your Dudes and the evolution of their narrative not on winning the campaign at all costs. Don't deliberately lose of course but don't make it about smashing your opponent every single game and min-maxing your list and skills of your units.

While I agree with everything else you say, I will note that we've had some success using a hybrid, building to PL but trying to be a bit scrupulous about using the unit options to play as close to 20 pts per PL as possible.

Do you also reduce PL for units which are overcosted?

In any case, we had no issues with this whatsoever. A unit which maxes out gear rarely is worth that many points anyways, and the inability to change gear at will combined with WYSIWYG and battle scars put a lid on that anyways.

The one change we did do to the PL system is calculate unit costs on a per-model basis, as especially chaos players were unhappy about not being able to field zerkers, plague marines and noise marines in their holy numbers without paying for the full squad of 10.

 Jidmah wrote:

Breton wrote:
There's two of these out here so I'll repeat some of the things I said in the other one.

House Rule some balance stuff that doesn't make any sense - named characters get their Warlord Traits for free, but DIY characters have to pay for it? In a game style supposed to be for narratives? I'd let all HQ Slot DIY's have one free warlord trait.

I don't feel like that is an issue. The downside of named characters is not gaining battle honors or experience, so even if they are better than lower ranked counterparts, they tend to fall behind when characters are gaining experience, crusade relics and other upgrades. Keep in mind that many crusade missions also give rewards to your warlord which simply disappear if your warlord is a named character.

Which is fine, like I said House Rule the stuff that doesn't make sense to you.

If everyone has the army for it, I'd start the Order of Battle at 2,000 points. Have everyone make a normal 2,000 point list, Any CP costs (i.e. Extra Relics, Warlord Traits(which are then refunded for the first one on HQ's but not Elites), involved in making the list bump the PL of the list on a 1:1 ratio. That list is your starting order of battle even if its over 100PL, but you can't spend RP on anything else until your Supply Limit is higher than or equal to your current Order of Battle.

Mixing points and PL is nonsense. Either change the crusade rules to points (not worth the effort IMO) or build lists using PL.

It also is going to bone some people who will be unable to form proper armies at 50 PL or are locked into one type of list for many games, so not telling them is a really bad thing to do.

Either your players want to play a narrative game, or they don't. If they don't, you can't trick them into playing it, the only way is to communicate. If they still don't want, your campaign is bound to fail anyways.

I'd like to thank you for being as polite to people who have different views about "nonsense" as you were. I'd like to. I'd also wonder where you got the idea someone said don't tell them they'll be playing 50PL games too. Or that this is some sort of trick to get people to play narrative as opposed to ideas to either help people transition or to avoid some of the things that were immediately brought up as issues of switching directly to PL. You asked for advice, and I suggested customizing the rules to fix the issues with Power Level as you see them then gave some examples. You should of course do the same thing with your campaign on the things that stand out to you.

The one change we did do to the PL system is calculate unit costs on a per-model basis, as especially chaos players were unhappy about not being able to field zerkers, plague marines and noise marines in their holy numbers without paying for the full squad of 10.

Oh look.

If you do start at 2k points/ 100 PL, I think Breton's suggestion about starting generic character with WL traits works. I might even go a bit further and start each unit as blooded.

This is because the players who embrace the escalation aspect that is baked into the Crusade rules will ALWAYS have numerous advances by the time their army reaches 100 PL.

For me personally, starting at 25 PL is one of the biggest hooks the Crusade system has to offer. From a modelling perspective, it cuts down on grey plastic by allowing folks to add a unit at a time as it's painted. In a 2k game, you either a) don't play until you've put in the months necessary to paint your army or b) play with some grey plastic. Having said that, making models "Earn Their Paint" can be fun too, and if you happen to be playing a Torchbearer fleet, there are even rules to support earning paint.

But also from a narrative point of view, escalation makes sense in the context of Bespoke Crusade content. If you look at Dark Eldar, for example, they earn control of territories in Commorragh, which entice units to join them for the prestige. No self respecting Commorrite is going to want to join a 2k army that controls no territory; your scourges would be far more likely to join a 500 point army whose ascendent Lord had earned control of an Aerie where the scourges could gather in numbers.

Starting a Tau army at 100PL would mean they hadn't conquered a single system, and GSC wouldn't have a single planet under their control.

Again, it's a difference of playstyle- Breton's approach isn't wrong... But it wouldn't suit my group.

Note: This is rather advanced, but it's cool for those who have some Crusade experience:

Kill Team Spec Ops campaigns have level breaks at the same XP bench marks as Crusade. Kill Teams in the new game also tend to be built around homogenous fireteams, which makes them function more like 40k units. A Druhkari team, for example might be one fireteam of 5 wyches and another of 5 kabalites; on the 40k table this is two MSU units.

What this means is that you can swap KT games for Crusade games as you continue to build your narrative. You can swap battle honours when shifting from one game to the other, or you may hold some units in your Crusade Roster specifically for KT, or you can use Gestalt progression, meaning that each time a fireteam / unit levels, you give them BOTH a KT battle honour AND a Crusade battle honour. Obviouslt, the KT honours apply ONLY when playing KT and Crusade honours apply only when playing Crusade.

If your campaign happens to be map based, even better, because KT spec ops campaigns give each KT a base of operations, which can be expanded with Requisition points. Linking the Base of Operations and its upgrades to locations on your map adds another layer of narrative to the campaign.

Breton wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Breton wrote:


I'd also not tell people how that aspect works until after they've submitted their list so they make a normal list.

That's a reaaaal gakky thing to do to players. They're not going to trust you after that.

I said don't tell them how it works, not don't tell them its going to happen. I'd tell them their 2,000 point list is going to be turned into a Crusade Order of Battle, and that there will be a mechanic turning pre-battle CP spent (so use whichever Pre-battle Strats you want) into PL added to their list (Which they will have to reconcile before they spend any other RP. Give them enough info to have an idea, but not enough to tailor.

Yeah, withholding info on how things are going to work wouldn't fly in my circles.

Praise be to PenitentJake master of Crusade!

Thanks Gert- my issue is I'm SLOW.

I have so much junk I want to share with campaign builders... But it takes me SO long to put it in a shareable format.

For example:

I use 15" X 15" foamcore tiles for my boards instead of GW 22" x 30" boards. This allows me to add 45 x 45 to my board size repertoire so that I can have a bigger board for Incursion games than Combat Patrol games.

But it gets better with map campaigns. I have small paper replicas of my tiles to figure out what I want the board to look like before I build it with large tiles. So I can design an onslaught board and take a picture, even if I'm only playing a combat control game- then I get to choose which set of 2 x 3 tiles I'm going to fight on. So Imagine, fighting in the middle of the board. If you win a mission that pushes your enemy back, in the next game you would use the section of the board that was behind their deployment zone. If they win and push you back, in the next fight, you would fight on the section of the board beyond your deployment zone.

Persistent maps are a buzz!

One other thing I'm working on is a set of KT rules for a custom GSC KT that incorporates Purestrains and Brood Brothers so that the KT Spec Ops missions include growing the cult according the GSC generation/ brood cycle.

These rules are part of a challenge I'm participating in, so they have to be finished by April 1. I will post them in the rules section once they are finished.

There's more of course.... There's always more. (If you combine Crusade rules from GSC and Tau, the Tau rules design the system, while the GSC rules provide a higher level of detail for each of the planets within a system... etc, etc)