More info on Certus Crusade

Setting Expectations

The upcoming Warhammer 40k crusade is run on a best endeavours basis. We haven’t tested all of the rules and as this is a focussed narrative campaign, where the aim is to tell the story of your force growing in greatness over time. Some of the rules will be unbalanced and although we will try to balance as much as possible. When making decisions about rules or interactions, we will aim to move in the most narrative-appropriate way. If in doubt, we are going to lean towards fun and friendly rather than out and out competitive. We have plenty of outlets for competitive play, this is as a storytelling canvas of your warlord’s rise to power.

What’s Covered

In the previous article, we gave you some background for the upcoming campaign, this week is more details focused on how the campaign is going to operate including:

• How the teams are going to be divided up
• How the buffs for control of each planet will work
• How territory will change hands
• Handicap system for games

The faction you select will be locked in for the duration of the campaign and that faction will also determine your allies and your starting resources. 

Crusade Teams

The alliances will be broken down as follows: 

Blue Team – Renegade Imperials

• Adeptus Sororitas
• Adeptus Custodes
• Adeptus Mechanicus
• Astra Militarum
• Imperial Knights

Red Team – Space Marine Liberators

• Space Marines of all factions

Green Team – Chaos Domination

• Chaos Space Marines
• Death Guard
• Thousand Sons
• World Eaters
• Chaos Demons
• Chaos Knights

Yellow Team – The New Dawn Awakens

• Drukhari
• Necrons
• Orks

Purple Team – Cosmic Balance

• Aeldari
• Tau
• Votann

Orange Team – The Hungry Void

• Tyranids
• Genestealer Cult

Campaign Control

Each Alliance will start with part of the Certus system under their control, namely:

	Certus Prime	Prime Moon	Certus Minor	Secoundus	Tertius
Renegade Imperials	5	20	20	15	20
Space Marine Liberators	60	5	5	5	10
Chaos Domination	10	5	10	60	0
The New Dawn Awakens	15	60	10	0	0
Cosmic Balance	0	10	55	20	0
The Hungry Void	10	0	0	0	70

Planetary Control

Being in control of a planet will grant you buffs for your army in combat. For each planet you hold 1st, 2nd or 3rd you will get the following buffs for your army in each game – these stack, so third place will just get the tertiary buff, second place with get the tertiary and the secondary buff and the first place will get the tertiary, secondary and primary buffs.

On the discord we will update the system control and the buffs weekly so you can see what buffs will be available to you whilst building your army lists. 

The buffs are as follows:

Certus Prime (control)

• Tertiary Buff – When rolling for who has the first turn, you may change the result of your dice roll by either +1 or -1
• Secondary Buff – Before the game begins, you may select 1 unit from your army, models in that unit improve their Objective Control score by 1
• Primary Buff – Select one infantry character unit, they gain the ‘Lord of Deceit (Aura): Each time your opponent targets a unit from their army with a Stratagem, if that unit is within 12″ of this model, increase the cost of that use of that Stratagem by 1CP.

Certus Moon (Damage)

• Tertiary Buff – Select one Battleline unit, that unit’s ranged weapons gain Rapid Fire 1. (damage)
• Secondary Buff – Select one Battleline unit, that unit can reroll one hit roll, one wound roll and one damage roll per phase.
• Primary Buff – Select one Battleline unit, that unit gets LETHAL HITS for the duration of the battle (both ranged and melee)

Certus Minor (Battleshock)

• Tertiary Buff – The first time one of your units fails a Battle Shock test in a game, you can choose to pass it instead.
• Secondary Buff – Units within 9″ of the Warlord add 1 to their Battle Shock checks whilst the Warlord is on the battlefield.
• Primary Buff – Select one Battleline unit, after that unit has shot you may select one of the targets of their attacks. That unit must make a Battle Shock check

Certus Secoundus (Reserves)

• Tertiary Buff – One per game you may bring back D3 models to a Battleline unit during your own command phase.
• Secondary Buff – After both sides have deployed, you may re-deploy up to D3 units.
• Primary Buff – During the game, the first friendly Battleline, Infantry unit to be destroyed can be returned to the player’s army and placed in reserve. (this unit will NOT gain any additional experience once it rejoins the battle)

Certus Tertio (Scout)

• Tertiary Buff – One unit from your army gains the Deep Strike Special Rule for this battle.
• Secondary Buff – Before the battle begins, select one unit. It gains the Scout special rule for the duration of this battle. The range of its scout ability is the same as the unit’s movement value.
• Primary Buff – During deployment, you may select one Battleline unit in your army to gain the Infiltrators Special Rule 

Taking Territory

After your battle you will be allowed to take territory from the losing player – select a planet (where the losing player has resources) and take some of their territory. The amount of territory you will take will be 10% of the difference in your final scores e.g. – if you win by 20 points you will take 2% of their territory on a given planet. If your victory would take more than they have territory remaining on the planet then you just receive all their remaining territory, it does not spill over and allow you to take territory from another planet. 

Handicap System

As this is a narrative campaign we are aiming to balance the games as much as possible – we will be including our own handicap system along with the crusade blessings with the aim of levelling the field of battle as much as possible. To that end, everyone will start on Tier 1 of the following system, those who do not win so many of their games will move up the tiering system which will provide them more points (for land battles only, NOT for boarding actions), more CP AND they will begin the game with a starting number of victory points. However, it still won’t be possible to exceed 100VPs in a game. 

Again the details of which Tier you are in will be available on the Discord.

• Tier 1 player – no benefits
• Tier 2 players – Gain 1 CP, 50 points, 5VP per game
• Tier 3 players – Gain 2 CP, 100 points, 10VP per game
• Tier 4 players – Gain 3 CP, 150 points, 15VP per game
• Tier 5 players – Gain 4 CP, 200 points, 20 VP per game

The move up and down the tiers will be based on the number of games you play, the number of games that you win/lose/draw and will be revised after each set of results. 

Scoring

Your individual scoring will be unaffected by the number of players in your team, but any team scores will depend on the number of players in your team and be modified accordingly. This will all be done automatically and the details updated weekly for everyone to see. 

There will be a league table for individual scores and for team scores. Ranking in both will be based on the following:

1. Wins
2. Points
3. Percentage Wins
4. Scoring Difference

Missions

The missions that you will play will be specific missions that we will create on a monthly basis. You have the chance to play 2 missions per month to score, improve your army etc. There are also going to be specialist narrative missions pitching 2 of the factions directly against one another. The proposed timetable is as follows:

• Month 1 – September: Will have the choice of 2 main missions and a boarding actions mission
• Month 2 – October: Will have the choice of 2 main missions, 1 specialist mission (for 2 specific teams), 1 boarding actions mission
• Month 3 – November: Will have the choice of 2 main missions, 1 specialist mission (for 2 specific teams), 1 boarding actions mission  
• Month 4 – December: Will have the choice of 2 main missions, 1 specialist mission (for 2 specific teams), 1 boarding actions mission  
• Month 5 – January: final mission(s) – prize giving etc.

Getting Involved

To join the crusade you just let us know on Discord through the appropriate channel (more on this later), with the army you plan to use. Remember you will be LOCKED IN to that force for the duration of the campaign. You will then need to create your force on Goonhammer (we will provide details of how to do this) and we will update this so you can add to your forces over time. 

You can log in and create an army at: https://administratum.goonhammer.com/