[Crusade] A Better Way

I want you to indulge me in a little experiment here. Could you, dear Reader, turn your eyes on the following premise for a game of Warhammer 40,000 and tell me how Narrative it feels?

A matrix of potent energy runs beneath the battlefield. You must seize a series of critical power nodes to claim the untapped resource flowing below. The rank and file of your armies are determined to demonstrate their consummate skill, proceeding towards their objectives relentlessly and maintaining a punishing assault as they go about their duties. Taking advantage of the foe’s exposed position, your warriors launch a well-timed attack. 

 Would it surprise you to learn that those descriptions are taken from the Chapter Approved deck? You know, the tournament pack? The one that has Asymmetric primary objectives (Syphoned Power, first two sentences), Twists (Martial Pride, long middle sentence) and Challenger objectives/stratagems (Opportunistic Strike, the last sentence)? The stuff that you never see in tournament games, or on tournament blogs, or in tournament discourse...

That stuff's in there for us, dear Reader. I haven't even touched on the wild deployment options the deck has to offer. Hell, you don't even have to use Asymmetric missions: let me draw a cheeky Matched Play primary and see what happens.

The strategic prizes in this region must be guarded at all costs - a duty that falls upon a chosen few. Your soldiers excel at close-range combat, utilising the most unwieldy of ranged weapons with great precision, even as the enemy closes in around them. Shutting out the din of battle, these warriors focus only on their foes, unleashing an inescapable fusillade of death and destruction. 

That's Burden of Trust (primary), Point Blank (Twist) and Renewed Focus (Challenger). I cheated a tiny bit, picking one of the primary objectives that doesn't have a preferred, verified, certified, approved and recommended tournament map pairing to go with it. Burden is one of those Primaries that isn't on that list so you never see it in the wild, and that puts it firmly in the spirit of what we're about here: raiding Chapter Approved and using everything but the table of correspondences between Primary objective and map layout that dictates the placement of two large Ls and associated divots.

Shall we do one from our own Crusade's past, just to make the point concrete, and a bit less generic, and show how the last bit fits in?

Empyric energies continue to warp the battlefield. As the landscape shifts, key objectives are revealed. Prioritise their capture. 

Your armies hurl themselves recklessly into what is swiftly becoming a maelstrom of battle. With every passing moment, the flames of conflict rage higher. The soundest military minds find no shame in signalling a retreat. Strength preserved may prove pivotal at a later juncture. 

 That's the last gasp of the Necron forces on Mer'thyr'od, as the planet quivers and trembles with the awakening hunger of the Mourning Sun. Reserves from both sides are hastily mobilised, and the Necrons - as the party on the back foot at this stage in the story - are staging a fighting retreat. 

(The Challenger cards, for my money, should go to the player who's lagging behind in Crusade Points. More Scars, fewer Traits, an overall dearth of bennies from success after success: that's worth a free Stratagem every turn and a bonus objective worth a handful of VPs every time you can make it go off. It's a lot tidier than "choose one or more little farty rules from a two page spread" anyway.)

Add the participants' Agendas to the affair and I think you've got something promising.

Whether safeguarding an extraction or in a final push towards the foe’s last redoubt, the Space Marines have vowed to cleanse the enemy from their lines and allow none to slip past. Superhuman courage in the face of terrifying horrors and overwhelming odds are expected from each and every battle-brother. Fleeing from the conflict is as anathema to them as allowing the enemies of the Emperor to draw breath.

Overstretched and undersupplied, now is not the moment for reckless action. Instead, you must hold the line, eliminate your enemies, and minimise your own casualties so as to stabilise your situation. To master the fate of others is a heady tonic to those whose existences are forged to rule. There are few more potent expressions of control than the breaking of other beings. 

For Garbutt's Astartes, that was Drive Them Back and Know No Fear. For me? Hold Steady, from the Pariah Nexus set, and Subjugation Decree from my own Codex. I think it would be sensible to restrict Agendas to the contents of one book - the Codex - in future, to control the general bloat to which Crusade is prone. Nevertheless, this layer of additional texture for each participant fleshes out the whys and wherefores of their presence in the battlespace.

The key to making this work, as I've discovered in the course of assembling this entry, is to start with an idea of what 'splodes you intend to do, and who will be doing the 'splodes unto whom. With that established, you can focus on the little blurbs at the top of the cards and start looking for the ones that make some sort of grammatical and narratological sense. Agendas are selected on the basis of desired outcome for the 'splodes, that is to say why the 'splodes are being done. 

In the previous example, the Necrons are trying to get off their doomed planet and put Talassar Kaine back in his place, while the Space Marines are cleaning house, securing the doomed world so they can rescue their lost Inquisitor and turn off her mad experiment.

All of this is done to show that Crusade doesn't have to be as much as it often is. If you have a Chapter Approved deck and a Codex - the stuff used to play your standard Matched Play pick-up experience - you could be playing Crusade games right now. You only need to look at the rest of the cards - the ones that aren't on the recommended list - and you've already begun.

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace.