Anyone else interested in running a 40k campaign?

[Jye Nicolson]

One thing I'm finding awkward on a closer look is the timing for upgrades, they're largely when adding a card or gaining a rank. That's not helping me stretch my 5RP across two forces!

[Mattb]

It's just a relic, right? The rules don't mention relics locked behind specialist detachments, but the way "specialist reinforcements" work (you can spend crusade points to get a specialist detachment CP upgrade baked in to a unit, explicitly even if you don't have access to the detachment) it seems reasonable to me to say you could get it.

Fair enough, I'll take it if nobody minds. GW seem to be phasing out the specialist detachments given that they're no legal in tournaments, but hoping they'll just roll everything up into the new 9th codexes like they did with some of the Marine vigilus stuff.

[The Other Dave]

That first round of games was good fun - Crusade seems to work as intended, and combat patrol-sized games too. (As Jye noted, we'll probably get sick of those three missions pretty quick, but massaging some other missions to work at the game size shouldn't be *too* much trouble, and with any luck they'll actually put out some support.)

The Death Guard did not have a great showing, although I *almost* got a win against the guard in my third game, and ending with a solid win versus the Sisters helped my morale a bit. And the main point is that even with losses my warband progressed and expanded, so while getting tabled by Space Wolves, twice, is always a grin-and-bear-it situation, knowing there are still bennies to be had makes that grinning easier. (Also knowing that Jye had a similar grin-and-bear-it situation in our last game against The Bloat Drone That Would Not Die puts things in perspective. )

We are going to have to think about what to do about summoning, though, because I think I'm going to get a box or two of plaguebearers, if only as a thing to block Space Wolf charge lanes. My instinct, as it tends to be, is to try summoning rules-as-written first and see how that looks in practice - especially since, as Jye found with Ragnar, any unit you get on the table that's incapable of gaining experience is actually a bit of a detriment to your force as a whole, as kill-stealing is definitely a thing in Crusade. The fact that I need a CP to summon without risk, and CP levels are *much* lower than we're used to, is also a balancing factor. (OTOH, this may be me rationalizing, so again we can see.)

[Jye Nicolson]

(Also knowing that Jye had a similar grin-and-bear-it situation in our last game against The Bloat Drone That Would Not Die puts things in perspective. )

And the Exorcist That Would Not Kill I was happy the psychic shutdown aspect of the list worked well, so all good. The dice luck coming home to roost was thoroughly deserved both from earlier in the day and at Plamojuku yesterday.

I did forget the Inferno Pistols on the superiors though, that would have been a bad time for that drone and our psyker friend!

We are going to have to think about what to do about summoning, though, because I think I'm going to get a box or two of plaguebearers, if only as a thing to block Space Wolf charge lanes. My instinct, as it tends to be, is to try summoning rules-as-written first and see how that looks in practice - especially since, as Jye found with Ragnar, any unit you get on the table that's incapable of gaining experience is actually a bit of a detriment to your force as a whole, as kill-stealing is definitely a thing in Crusade. The fact that I need a CP to summon without risk, and CP levels are *much* lower than we're used to, is also a balancing factor. (OTOH, this may be me rationalizing, so again we can see.)

Well obviously you should feel 100% free to go RAW against me if I'm pulling out stuff like Ragnar, so turn the dial right up vs the Wolves and then figure out where you want to set it for other games.

You might find the Plaguebearers are less kill stealy than Ragnar because they'll be doing a job closer to my Impulsor. Ragnar's in the list for the enablement stuff - charge rerolls, silly consolidate shenanigans, but her personal killing power makes her the backup plan, and vs Death Guard I need the backup plan a *lot*.

[Mattb]

Thanks for the games today guys! I actually think the combat patrols are really great, quick little games - although maybe we can slowly increase the size of games as we get more requisition points. It also seems pretty generous about giving out experience even if you lose, which is nice if you struggle to win like I do.

The Death Guard did not have a great showing, although I *almost* got a win against the guard in my third game,

That game was brilliantly fun, so thanks for that. I think our armies were pretty evenly matched which always makes for a really great, close game.

We are going to have to think about what to do about summoning, though, because I think I'm going to get a box or two of plaguebearers, if only as a thing to block Space Wolf charge lanes. My instinct, as it tends to be, is to try summoning rules-as-written first and see how that looks in practice - especially since, as Jye found with Ragnar, any unit you get on the table that's incapable of gaining experience is actually a bit of a detriment to your force as a whole, as kill-stealing is definitely a thing in Crusade. The fact that I need a CP to summon without risk, and CP levels are *much* lower than we're used to, is also a balancing factor. (OTOH, this may be me rationalizing, so again we can see.)

How do the summoning rules work?

I don't think it should be too much of an issue though and I'm pretty happy to try anything out - honestly, I really just want some daemons for Coteaz to hunt. Although plaguebearers are terrifying to fight - I'm not even sure how I'd kill them.

Also I plan to update my crusade roster here so you guys can check out all of the upgrades I went for.

[The Other Dave]

How do the summoning rules work?

In narrative play, you basically just roll a die and get free daemons - in matched play you have to set aside points before the game, but in narrative and Crusade you explicitly don’t. Usually you roll 3 dice and can summon power level up to your total, but take mortal wounds for doubles and triples. The potential issue is that with my sub-faction I can instead spend a CP and get power level up to the total of one die plus 7 (of course) which means no risk of taking wounds, and guaranteed 8 power’s worth, which just happens to be a unit of 20 Plaguebearers. Technically, the only thing to stop me from doing this every single turn is the number of models I have, but I have zero plans to buy or paint any more than a box or two of Plaguebearers. So in practice, I’d be getting a free 10 or 20 once a game - which ain’t nothing! But it costs CP, and they aren’t on the command roster so can’t get xp, etc.

[Mattb]

In narrative play, you basically just roll a die and get free daemons - in matched play you have to set aside points before the game, but in narrative and Crusade you explicitly don’t. Usually you roll 3 dice and can summon power level up to your total, but take mortal wounds for doubles and triples. The potential issue is that with my sub-faction I can instead spend a CP and get power level up to the total of one die plus 7 (of course) which means no risk of taking wounds, and guaranteed 8 power’s worth, which just happens to be a unit of 20 Plaguebearers. Technically, the only thing to stop me from doing this every single turn is the number of models I have, but I have zero plans to buy or paint any more than a box or two of Plaguebearers. So in practice, I’d be getting a free 10 or 20 once a game - which ain’t nothing! But it costs CP, and they aren’t on the command roster so can’t get xp, etc.

Oh I see! I can imagine how powerful that is might depend on the size of the game - a unit of plaguebearers might be less noticeable and easier to deal with in a 100PL game, but at 25PL it would be pretty unmanageable. But still, I think we should definitely try it out since that's the only way to know - although I'm not that bothered about these kind of things in a fun narrative game.

[The Other Dave]

Oh I see! I can imagine how powerful that is might depend on the size of the game - a unit of plaguebearers might be less noticeable and easier to deal with in a 100PL game, but at 25PL it would be pretty unmanageable. But still, I think we should definitely try it out since that's the only way to know - although I'm not that bothered about these kind of things in a fun narrative game.

That's a good point! I'm not going to get two boxes right off the bat anyway, so we'll probably get a few games with just 4PL worth of summoning anyway. (I'm also being tempted by a Helbrute, since I can actually give them Disgustingly Resilient now...)

[The Other Dave]

OK, thinking about it calmly, since I, y'know, just bought a big box of daemons:

I actually think the best thing to do about summoning might be to import a Matched Play rule into Narrative, and say summoners have to set aside a certain number of PL worth of daemons before the game begins, and then summon up to that during play. So I could have a "daemon pool" of, say, 6 power and then be able to summon up to 6PL of daemons during the game. (Otherwise TBH I'd have to eyeball it and read the room and just try not to summon too many, just thinking of which has been stressful enough for me that I've been thinking of house rules. ) So I'm going to do it this way going forward.

I did briefly consider the idea of going full MP and using points, but quickly discovered the most likely reason they went with Power for Crusade - army building. Since your loadout for each unit is fixed, building lists with points will be nigh-impossible, and you'd be fudging relative army sizes to the point where you may as well use power anyway - for example, I've got:

Lord of Contagion 112 points
Plaguecaster 95 points
Plague Marines 177 points
Plague Marines 107 points
Poxwalkers 100 points
Bloat-drone 138 points

There's literally no way to make 500 points with that - I can get 440, or 510, or 457, or or or... So, yeah - I think this is why Crusade uses Power.

[Karantu]

Unfortunately summoning is in a weird spot right now so I wouldn't blame you for going with the narrative approach but the matched play approach is less stressful for sure.

Also, regarding points, I eventually do want to play 9th edition games with points but since the points on release are pretty silly anyway and like you said its almost impossible to play Crusade with points without homebrewing something in to help fine tune lists. Hopefully they get the points worked out "soon" since its pretty obvious that GW doesn't have the capacity to balance that many units at once without getting lazy and fudging the majority of balance changes. Between that and their lovely app, we should do a GW blunder bingo when the next edition of 40k gets released.

Although, I do love how people keep defending GW concerning things like the app, the not-very-useful Crusade journal with the same number of order of battle and unit card pages, and the 50mm objective markers that just released even though the core rules state that objectives should be 40mm. Oh and apparently their new game boards are 30" by 22.4" (76cm x 56.8cm) which ever so slightly off from their recommended minimum board size (which most people are taking as the new standard). I don't think a company as large and experienced as GW should be making mistakes like this in 2020 but here we are I guess.

Edit: I like the summoning system in AoS and they should eventually adapt it to 40k but I guess they're too busy for that.