Hey all, Danny from TFG Radio here, and today, I am going to talk a bit about a new project for me, a Narrative league using the 9th edition Crusade rules that some of my local group have slapped together. As much as I often play competitively, I do love me a good Narrative game, so I am excited to bring the Kill! Maim! Burn! to such.
So, in case you haven’t ever really looked at the whole section after the Matched Play rules, GW has a pretty generous page count dedicated to building Narrative campaigns called Crusade. You essentially start with a 1K army, and with a host of special rules and such, you can level up your squads, heroes, and also suffer negative effects of losing battles and such. It is pretty fun all told, and well, GW certainly knows how to make cinematic moments in their games.
Here’s my list:
Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor: Chainaxe. Warlord. Violent Urgency
Daemon Prince of Khorne: Wings. 2x Claws. Warp bolter. Talisman of Burning Blood.
3×5 Chaos Space Marines. Boltguns. Sarge with a Chainaxe.
8x Khorne Berserkers. Icon. Chainxes.
8x Terminators. Chain Axes. Red Butchers. Icon.
Spawn.
So in the Crusade rules, I had to spend 3 of my starting 5 Requisition Points to get a Warlord trait for my Lord, a relic for the Daemon Prince, and the last one to be able to purchase the Red Butchers upgrade. I am saving the last 2 to be able to make some decisions later. I may further bulk out my Daemon Prince and make him truly scary, or I may try to add some more variety to the list. Honestly, I’ll make those decisions based on how my first 2 games go as I want to ensure that the choices are made with the Narrative in mind, not just for sheer kill.
The list really functions on the basic premise of rush the center, kill what you can, and hold it. The Berserkers ride in the Rhino to rush the center along with the DP. The Lord and Red Butchers drop in Turn 2 or 3 where needed. The minimum squads run around to hold objectives, and the Spawn is just there to soak up points and maybe tag me an objective.
The twist in this Narrative league is that our first 2 games are actually 500 points, so the list also had to be able to mostly break in half. This added a fun layer of list building as trying to build 2 equal patrols (or 1 battalion at 1k) made for some interesting choices. I may eventually add a patrol of Chaos Daemons if I save up enough Requisition Points as I feel like the World Eater component is more or less complete.
I am interested to see what befalls my squads as well, Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows, so I imagine I’ll be taking a lot of causalities. Maybe I’ll have to spend my RPs on keeping my Berserkers in the fight at full capacity. Of course, what really matters is that I get in there and do damage since that is the World Eater way. Again, my natural urge is to of course make the most effecient list, but well, that’s not the point of the league. If my warlord does something particularly heroic, he’ll get something shiny, but maybe one of my chump squads does something awesome, so they may need a boost.
I haven’t played in a purely Narrative league in awhile, so it should be a nice break as at least in my neck of the woods, there really isn’t a lot of competitive events to go to thanks to lockdown, so now seems the perfect time to just enjoy some games with the teammates and throw dice. If you’ve been rocking the World Eaters in a crusade, let me know how it’s been going! Thanks for reading all, and get those games in.