Hi All
Welcome to the FLG review of the narrative portions of the World Eater (WE) codex! As a fellow reviewer has pointed out, this book feels radically different and geared towards a new edition. Let’s see if that can reveal anything about the fate of the Crusade Rules system!
Army Specific Rules:
The custom rules for the WE revolve around the collection of skulls (very on-brand). You get one skull point for each squad you kill in melee and 2 for characters (In truth, the value indicates the worth of the skulls, not the number of them). At the end of each battle, the unit with the highest leadership that is still on the board gets to claim those skulls. You can earn rewards by turning these skulls over to Khorne to get:
- 1-10: Lesser reward
- 11-20: One lesser or one greater reward
- 21+ One lesser, one greater Or an exalted reward. If you take a lesser or greater reward at this level you get to pick it!
The lesser and greater rewards buff the individual unit with a wide array of options, including the ability to reduce Blood Tithe costs, auto-passing out of action tests, gaining a boon, etc. The Exalted rewards give you new choices to buy with your Blood Tithe points, and are pretty decent as they affect your whole army. The WE boons are identical to all other boon tables.
Agendas and Relics:
The WE get four agendas to choose from:
- Prove Your Worth: Requires you to pick a certain requisition before use. In order to successfully complete it, you need to kill 8 enemy units getting +1 for each character and +2 for each warlord.
- Anoint the Field: At the end of the battle each WE unit on the board gets exp for each table quarter that you killed an enemy unit in. It requires a minimum of two and, at max, grants you 3 exp to each surviving squad and 2 Requisition points (RPs).
- A Brutal Harvest: This is an odd one that is a semi-action. After you kill an enemy unit within range of an objective, if you end the turn not in engagement range you can pile the enemy’s skulls. At the end of the battle, each unit gets exp according to the number of times they did this. For each batch of five you also get +1 Worthy Skull point.
- Lastly, Raise Icons is an action-based agenda. It’s similar to the Raise the Banners objective. Basically, perform an action by a un-bannered objective. At the end of the game, you get +2 experience points for each squad that raised at least one banner.
The WE get a ton of relics. Seven to be precise. I can’t cover them all, so I will hit the highlights. The Artificer relics are quite useful including one that is a pistol that ignores invulns and another provides an aura of -2 to any psychic tests within 12”. The Antiquity relics include the ability to ignore all psychic powers, the ability to get +1 strength for each time you kill enemy models in combat and the ability to give CORE units re-rolls on 1’s if they are within 6”. If you kill a character the bubble expands to 9”. Lastly, the legendary relic is okay. It’s Gorefather which is neat but it is only AP-3 D3 although you do 3 mortal wounds on a unmodified wound roll of a “6”. It’s not terrible if you can spam attacks, but it is very swingy for a legendary relic.
Army Traits and Requisitions:
There are only four mini tables in the book:
- Berserker Table: Has three options, including a buff to the champion, +1 WS on the squad or everyone getting a 5++ (so good!)
- Eightbound: You can get +1 S (meh they have a decent amount already but if you want to thrash knights…) you can troll characters by making them more likely to fail out of action tests, or you can get more experience when marked for greatness.
- Jakhals: Two options to pick from. +1 Blood Tithe when they are killed (low-key really good) and a buff to stimms.
- Daemon Engine Table: identical to all other chaos books.
While I am a little bummed at the lack of variety here, if there was an area that needed cutting in crusade it was the battle traits. Finally, the WE get four different requisitions to use.
- Hideous Scars: As long as a character has a battle scar, they also allow friendly core units to auto-pass morale. Amazing and I love it!
- Iron Rule: If two units are tied for the highest leadership you get to pick which one claims the battle’s skulls. Quite useful
- Brutal Acquisition: An odd choice. If you want to transition your skulls from one unit to another you can have them fight a duel. The loser gains a battle scar, but if the challenger wins, they get up to 8 of the other squad’s skulls. You probably want this to take skulls from your Jakhals.
- Ascension in Blood: This is tied to the aforementioned agenda. If you are worthy you get to replace a Lord of Master of Executions wit ha Daemon Prince with +1 S and +1 A. If you fail nothing happens, if you don’t kill any units then the model becomes a spawn. This can be very high-risk high-reward but its nice to see daemon hood being tied to an agenda.
Conclusion:
All-in-all I think this is a very tidy book. I think these rules are fun and fair, and won’t create an abomination like some other ones. I don’t see a lot that tips GW’s hand for the future of crusade. Maybe a slight reduction in battle traits? I am pleased that they appear to have learned how to strike a balance and WE players have many exciting ways to tell the story of their armies.
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