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Hey all! I was originally building a primarily Primaris Imperial Fists list, but after realizing how rubbish their chapter abilities were, I wanted to tinker around with running them as Black Templars, what with BT being a successor to the old IF. I realized in doing this that I've unwittingly unlocked the crusader squad, and I kind of liked the idea of a horde of lesser-trained marines to act as the anvil to the otherwise elite hammer of a force I'm using.

That said, what is the state of larger crusader squads in 8th ed, and how do people usually run them? I did some cursory digging on my own, and saw that people were unsurprisingly running MSU to take advantage of the special/heavy weapons, but not a lot on larger squads. Particularly, I was wondering whether to go bolters, or pistols and CCW. I'm stuck in a particularly weird meta where I'm either dealing with dedicated CC units charging and getting dug in no later than turn 2, or an entire army with Fly, making any attempts to tarpit inconsequential. Personally, I was leaning towards some combination of the MSU crew and bolters, and thinking of taking 20 bodies with a combi-plasma, plasmagun, and heavy bolter hidden in there. Alternatively, I could save some points by taking just 5 initiates with their weapons and 10 neophytes to act as ablative wounds.

Does anyone out there with more experience know how well a 20-man squad fares in general play? Can they put out enough hurt on tougher models to make their cost worth it?

In short, no. Because of how morale works in 8th edition, your opponent only has to kill a little more than half of the squad to kill them all. They are only Ld 8. Unless you run nids or certain types of Daemon lists, hordes or blobs arent viable. Its more efficient, costs the same points, and gives you more cp to run multiple 5 man squads.

As the guy above said, morale will hurt these guys a lot. Unless you want to keep spending 2CP at a time to keep them on the board they're not worth it.

That being said, they have an odd use in that a squad of 5 can take a Combi, Special and Heavy weapon, better than what Tacticals can have, so Combi-Melta, Melta and Multi-Melta are an interesting take.

Well, that's rather disappointing - I was kind of into the idea of 20 marines slogging upfield, but if it's inferior to literally any other configuration...

I almost considered fielding the 5 man gunner squad with 5 neophytes tossed in to build out a squad on the cheap, but that saves a mere 10 points compared to simply putting down a tactical squad, and at least the tactical squad gets all its 3+ saves.

You have a 6 point unit called Cenobyte servitors that can solve the morale problem.

Whether they are still viable discounting the morale factor is another matter.

Halfpast_Yellow wrote:
You have a 6 point unit called Cenobyte servitors that can solve the morale problem.

Whether they are still viable discounting the morale factor is another matter.

Oh yah, those are gonna be an auto-include in every list, if only because I can camp them on an objective and force my opponent to waste shooting on a 6 point unit. I thought about them aiding with the morale issue, but the lack of any character rule means that if my opponent wants them gone, they're gone. Whether the diverted fire is enough to give the crusaders any extra ground is a matter for debate and maybe a little research.

They have an enourmous 12" radius of effect and don't require LOS, so I think if you can't keep 3 (or 6) 25mm bases out of harms way then the terrain you're playing with needs a rethink.

Halfpast_Yellow wrote:
They have an enourmous 12" radius of effect and don't require LOS, so I think if you can't keep 3 (or 6) 25mm bases out of harms way then the terrain you're playing with needs a rethink.

Or hide them behind a rhino chassis and pray it does not blow up.