Creating Campaign Army Lists

That was a Bumpy Ride!

You drag yourself out of the smouldering remains of your spaceship after the barrage of impacts caused traversing the systems asteroid belt. A number of your crew also emerge from the ship – but not as many as you would like, your force has obviously suffered serious casualties in the crash but getting a field hospital up and running will likely be your priority. 

It begins to dawn on you that you have not actually surveyed your surroundings. The concussion must be worse than you thought. As you turn to scan the nearby terrain you are aware a number of different vessels also came down in your vicinity. They too seem to be getting themselves together – you see some other survivors emerge, also looking quite dazed and blinking in the bright light. Your forces are in no shape to defend themselves, let alone assault an enemy position.

Telling your second in command to prepare the defences, you stride out towards the closest enemy vessel seeking to protect your forces through negotiation at the first instance, at least until you can get your Armory unlocked. Other individuals also begin walking towards you. As you approach and start to hear conversation your universal translator kicks in. Standing in front of the other leaders there are some tense moments, close to open hostility at times, but self preservation kicks in. 

Creating Your Army List/Roster

By now we hope you have read our Welcome to the Balecaster System introduction for our upcoming Warhammer 40k Crusade Campaign. 

We’re looking forward to seeing your bruised and battered forces having, recently dragged themselves from their crashed ships. Start to carve out some territory for themselves and to see what they can do! 

To take part, you will need to submit your application (see below) by midnight on the 17th of August along with your roster of battle. We would strongly advise the use of Goonhammer’s Administratum Application, where you can upload rosters from Battlescribe and the Warhammer 40k app to then keep track of individual units.

In terms of the rules for your forces, we will be using some House Rules in order to reign in some armies at present, which may be pertinent to your army choices.

House Rules

• Devastating Wounds Don’t Stack with other Rules – Devastating wounds requires a natural roll of a 6 to apply. It CANNOT be used with any other rules – it will NOT stack with the “anti-” keyword and you WILL NOT be able to change the dice to a 6 through anything other than a dice reroll.
• Thousand Sons Twist of Fate – The “Twist of Fate” Cabal Ritual is modified to “any armour saving throws of the unit are modified by -2” instead
• Overwatch Range – The range of the “Fire Overwatch” stratagem is reduced to 12” and only visible units can be shot
• Models on objectives – Models can move over and stay on objectives without limitations (as per 9th edition Warhammer 40k)

Otherwise all normal crusade rules apply. As this will be a crusade you will be locked into your army for the full term of the campaign, unless you want to scrap your whole army and start again from scratch. 

Army Construction Rules

In a crusade, you will have a roster, effectively a pool of units that you can choose from between games. Each of these will gain experience, skills and battle scars over the course of the crusade, you will also be able to expand your roster.

• Starting roster 1000 points
• Normal army construction rules apply

When picking your Crusade army you can select any units in your index with a couple of caveats:

• No Named Characters – epic heroes are still acceptable as long as they are generic – we want to see your characters develop over time
• No Allied Units – Your whole army must come from within your index, you cannot use allies in your lists including imperial agents – this is a rag tag force of survivors from their crashed vessel
  • Imperial Armour Units are allowed – So long as they can be taken by your army/fit the narrative
• No Starting Enhancements – You do not pick any enhancements for your starting crusade force. To unlock them you must spend additional points and RP once the campaign begins.

Unit Progression

After playing your crusade missions:

• You will be expected to roll all of your out of action tests in front of your opponent
• Please do roll for any battle scars on your units after you have rolled for the out of action tests
• When choosing your upgrades please choose the most narratively appropriate upgrades for all your units

Battle Ready

To be able to claim points for being Battle Ready within a game the following rules will apply:

• Month 1 – Every model on the battlefield must be at least undercoated
• Month 2 – Every model on the battlefield must have at least one additional colour
• Month 3 & Beyond – Every model on the battlefield must have at least 3 colours & be based

Updates and Awards!

There will be prizes on the conclusion on the campaign based on the following: 

• Best overall Alliance
• Best overall Player
• Character with the best kill tally
• Best narrative army story across the length of the campaign (popular vote)
• Wooden spoons for the worst alliance

Army stats and world map will be updated regularly and will be visible online and in person. The aim will be to have two missions per month that can be played at your leisure throughout the month and all the details of what is required for each of the missions will be available upfront. 

Signing Up

If you are looking to sign up for the Crusade please copy the undernoted, complete it and post it in the “Crusade Entry” section below, along with your roster and post them on Discord by midnight on the 17th of August. We will then draw up the alliances and post details about the initial missions.

Crusade Entry

• Full Name
• Crusade Army
• How many games of 10th edition have you played? (roughly) 
• How would you rate your 40k ability out of 10?

For Ratings

• 1-2 would be a beginner,
• 3-4 is competent at rules but not strategy,
• 5-6 would be player who knows the game reasonably well but is still learning,
• 7-8 would be a good player who knows their army and wins more than they lose,
• 9-10 would be someone confident enough to play at tournaments and hold their own

Your first name and possibly surname initial will be used as identifiers and may be posted along with the weekly results online. 

The best resource we’ve found to keep track of your crusade force is Goonhammer’s Administratum Application – takes a little getting used to but will be REALLY helpful to keep track of everything over the course of the crusade and massively reduces the “bookkeeping” part of it. It has been updated for Warhammer 40k 10th edition.

We’ll also have a Discord channel around this to help people out and make sure it’s working for everyone!