Hi All,
As we are close to all factions having received crusade rules, we can start comparing them. Now, it is important to note that these rankings are subjective and you are welcome to disagree. Also it is important to note that these rankings don’t men that you can’t build a good (or even oppressive) crusade army with these factions. Rather I see these rankings as comparing the relative completeness of each army’s rules and how fun and/or engaging they are. Crusade is an inherently unbalanced system, and if you go into it trying to min-max it you will make the experience worse for you and everyone you play with. The most important rankings to pay attention to is your own internal ranking for which armies you enjoy playing. If it helps, think of these not as power rankings, but grades I would give each faction for the completeness/fun-ness of their rules.
Anyway let’s dive into the lower tiers.
- No Rules
- Nothing surprising here, both of these factions are desperately waiting for their own rules.
- D Tier
- Necrons: The Necrons suffer from being one of the first crusade rules released. Additionally, they aren’t popular enough to warrant a re-write until just now. GW was obviously very worried about internal balance for Crusade rules when they released 9th and the Necrons paid the price for it.
- Space Marines: While not as bad as Necrons (thanks to some updates in recent supplements) the Space Marines still suffer from some dull rules. I think GW really needs to give the vanilla Space Marines a set of rules that operate distinctly from their supplements. As it stands, if you play crusade, you may as well play using a supplement as you get all the benefits of the core book and those from your chosen supplement. GW also needs to clarify if you only get one agenda from any crusade supplements or if you can take one from a successor and one from the vanilla book.
- C Tier
- I have the Space Marine supplements here as they are decent but still weighed down by the lackluster vanilla codex.
- Blood Angels: Poor Blood Angels. Their rules are barely better than the vanilla book, while also adding a way to kill your own units. Yay?
- Deathwatch: Like the Blood Angels the DW don’t gain much from their rules, but do get a cool army mechanic making their units very flexible. I also can’t tell if their legendary relic is great or terrible haha
- Space Wolves: Now we are getting somewhere. The Space Wolves rules are all about impressing your drinking buddies! Their rules are a lot of fun, even if not amazing. They also suffer from one of the worst Legendary Relics but do have one of the easiest ways to soup up your units quickly.
- Dark Angels: The DA get the nod here as they not only have better relics, their crusade rules make them easily fit into any campaign’s narrative structure. Although, you might be hard-pressed to explain why the Tyranids are protecting the Fallen, their rules are fun and fluffy. Furthermore the fallen system allows you to buff Chaplains and Librarians which often feel left out in other Space Marine lists.
So that is my start to the list, we will dive into B-Tier next week. Any thoughts? Do you agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments!
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