GW just revealed Crusade, a new game mode, and way to play Warhammer 40k with the release of 9th Edition. Check out the big reveal on this narrative style!
Warhammer Community gave us a small taste of some of the things we can expect out of Crusade in 9th Edition. But it’s not entirely the first time we’ve heard of this new Crusade mode, we’ve gathered everything we know about it here below as well as the new teasers.
Earlier Mentions of 40k Crusade Mode
Taken from the Livestream on Twitch, the GW team answered questions about what Crusade was going to be:
- New codexes will involve an in-depth look at Crusade elements, which is a new narrative play system. They mentioned how characters may get wounded and you put them in a Dreadnought. Blood Angels can fall to the Black Rage, etc.
- Different crusade missions will be dependent on the size of the game you’re playing. (i.e you won’t be playing a 3,000 pt game on a 2X2 board). That is to say, Board size will be determined by the size of game for Crusade mission.
- Crusade can be played in a large group of people as a campaign over weeks. This is something great for LGSs to get behind.
Beyond that small mention, we’ve been pretty much left in the dark on what to truly expect. Until now!
GW Reveals Crusade: a New Way to Play 9th Edition 40k
From humble beginnings, your army will grow in size and strength as you spend resources you’ve earned on adding reinforcements while your units unlock new skills from their hard-won experience in battle.
Over the course of a campaign, your Crusade force will forge its own narrative, winning glory and earning enmities with each fresh victory and defeat. Heroes will rise from among your ranks, earning great renown or the honour of bearing mighty relics
One of the relics, which as far as we know are strictly limited to Crusade play (sorry Matched Play guys), is a Xenotech Digital laser pistol. All you have to do is hit and you’ve just scored yourself D3 mortal wounds on the target. That’s bananas.
As the game progresses, your units might come out unscathed or pretty beat up. If you play campaign games like Necromunda, this shouldn’t be anything new to you. As you finish your games you’ll have to roll on a table and, looking at the one result, we have Walking Wounded. You’ll subtract one from pretty much anything to do with movement in your games as long as this applies to your squad.
Getting Started With Crusade
To take part in a Crusade campaign, you first need to create an Order of Battle – a list of units drawn from one of seven factions (Imperium, Chaos, Aeldari, Tyranids, Orks, Necrons, T’au Empire) with a maximum Power Rating of 50.* This is your Crusade force’s initial Supply Limit, from which you can choose an army list to field in each battle. Your Supply Limit can grow in size as you gain resources over the course of the campaign, enabling you to gradually recruit new units to strengthen the existing pool at your disposal.
As you gain more resources, you can spend them on different things. One of those things is opening up your supply lines even more and giving you more spending power for units to add in your army.
You’ll Keep Track Of Unit Status on Cards
So how do you track progress?
Each unit has its own Crusade card to keep track of its progress, experience, upgrades and bonuses, as well as any Battle Scars they’ve picked up along the way. As the campaign continues, your Characters and units will become increasingly defined by the battles they’ve fought in and the narrative you’ve created for them, making it an entirely different gaming experience. As if that wasn’t already awesome enough, each new codex released in the future will include a wealth of additional, thematic options for that army specifically for Crusade campaigns for even more narrative-driven punch.
Well, while GW hasn’t spilled all of the beans on the new campaign mode, this has certainly been an eye-opener for us. It’ll be interesting to see just how popular Crusade really is once 9th Edition goes live.
What do you think about a new narrative campaign mode for 40k? Will it freshen up the grimdark scene for you? Have you already started getting your collection ready?
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About the Author: Wesley Floyd
Wesley Floyd
Job Title: Staff Writer
Joined: 2018
Socials:@RealmbrushPainting
About Wesley Floyd: Wes has been in the Warhammer hobby since 2015 and joined the Spikey Bits writing team in 2018. He is known for his satirist takes on trending topics and imaginative yet amazingly affordable hobby solutions to painting Warhammer miniatures.
Imperial fanboy, tabletop fanatic, and the self-proclaimed King of Sprues. He knows for a fact that Mephiston red is the best-tasting paint and is the commission painting equivalent of a Wendy’s 4 for $4. If you like what he writes and want to contact him or have your tabletop minatures painted (to a mostly okayish standard), message him on Instagram.
