Hi all
We are continuing on in our weekly series looking at ways to modify the existing crusade system. As with the last article, these suggestions are just the opinion of myself and the club I play with. I would love to hear what custom rules you are using in your local area.
The Problem:
One issue we have been facing in our club is the hassle of organizing and tracking crusade rosters. It can be hard to remember how every unit has been upgraded, and the what scars it has. There are apps that help in this process but even then the task is enormous. Furthermore, some players dislike that they are limited to much smaller battles in the beginning. As you tend to have the largest pool of participants at the start of a campaign, by the time you have a variety of units it, it be difficult to find an opponent.
Our Solution:
To that end we are trying something new in our club. Instead of tracking all units in a roster we decided to instead allow players to track just a handful. This is to represent that these are the elite units that are being tracked in the narrative. Thus their ability to accrue powers and bonuses feels more organic than starting with a whole army of nobodies and ending up with all epic units. The rules are posted below:
Crusade Roster Changes
- A roster may only include up to 3 CHARACTERS
- A roster may include up to 2 units with the TROOPS battlefield role
- A roster may include a single unit (excluding CHARACTERS) from each of the ELITES, FAST ATTACK, HEAVY SUPPORT, FLIER and LORD OF WAR battlefield roles
- A roster may include an additional single VEHICLE or MONSTER unit
- A roster may include an additional CHARACTER that has the ELITES battlefield role
- Your roster must otherwise follow Chapter Approved 2022 restrictions, except it may include LEGENDS units.
Character Restrictions
- Each character with the HQ battlefield role added to your starting Crusade Roster must be given a Warlord Trait and/or Relic.
- Your total number of characters with the HQ battlefield role cannot exceed 3. This limit can be expanded via requisitions.
- Your Crusade Roster cannot have more than 3 characters of any other battlefield role. Again, this limit can be expanded via requisitions.
Change the “Increase Supply Limit” to: Increase the limit of Characters your Crusade Roster may have by 1. (Choose either HQ or non-HQ battlefield roles when this is used)
Additionally if armies have rules that add units to their roster through requisitions, Soul Points, etc. this is still allowed, but their army lists still have the above restrictions such that they can’t fill out a whole list with tracked units.
This has several benefits in that it allows players to scale their armies up or down depending on the battle size they want to play. Players can also swap into more or less competitive builds based on their opponents, or the missions they pick. Players don’t have to worry about sticking with one army style for a long campaign and be flexible based on their purchases and desires. This change also adds an element of risk as some agendas might not get you any experience if a unit not on your crusade roster completes it. It also allows players more freedom to sacrifice units to achieve mission goals and can improve sportsmanship as losing some units to engage in an epic moment is less punishing (if you don’t have to worry about battle scars). Finally, this also serves as a balancing function as even though certain units will become quite powerful they still only make up part of the army. It keeps the campaign from getting lopsided too quickly as players who rush through a lot of games can have a laundry list of upgrades on each unit that neither they nor their opponent can remember.
It does come with some downsides though. You need to to make sure to explain the rules clearly to anyone coming in late to the campaign. The GM will also need to exercise some oversight over the rosters to make sure their isn’t any confusion as well. As with our other changes the response has been quite positive with our locals happy to have a smaller bookkeeping burden.
But what do you think? Do you like the change or think the old system is better? Let me know on the comments.
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