The wait is over and Codex: World Eaters is coming up, giving us new rules for Khorne’s favorite murderkillers. If you missed our review of the new rules and Detachments this past weekend, you can find them here. In this review, we’ll be talking about the Crusade rules in the new book and how you can build your own throne of skulls as as devotee of the Blood God.

Before we dive in we’d like to thank Games Workshop for sending us a preview copy of this book for review purposes.

The Skull Harvest

Apparently, the Realm of Blood is undergoing remodeling again, and Khorne’s looking to update the Skull Throne’s accent work. To do so, you’ve been tasked with collecting and offering your enemies’ skulls. Find good ones, and you’ll be rewarded. Try to pass off a cool-looking rock as a worthy skull, and, well, maybe don’t do that. You’ll regret it.

What this means for you is that each of your units will be searching for skulls and keeping track of the ones they find. Then, after each battle, they can throw themselves upon the Judgement of the Blood God and hope that they’re rewarded. Making an offering is not without risk, but the rewards are often worth it, so you’ll want to make sure you’re keeping track of how many skulls each of your units have collected.

Khorne may care not from whence the blood flows, but he’s a little more discerning when it comes to skulls. First, skulls are worthless if you don’t take them in melee. Can’t let them just sit on the ground, after all; you’ve got to collect them quickly to ensure freshness. Once you’ve sifted through the pile of corpses you’ve just created in search of only the finest skull, the Blood God’s actuarial department will assign a number of Skull Points to your harvest based on the unit it came from. Most units will only offer 1-point skulls, but a skull’s rating will increase by one point if it’s a CHARACTER, MONSTER, or WALKER; if it’s your enemy’s WARLORD; or if it’s TITANIC. These three categories can stack, so if you destroy a Knight Castellan that happens to be your enemy’s Warlord, the pilot’s skull will be worth a cool 4 skull points.

There’s an exception here: Epic Heroes and units that have reached Legendary rank on your opponent’s Crusade roster do not yield normal Skull Points, but that’s because they don’t have normal skulls. No, these hand-harvested and artisanally-polished skulls are a cut above the mass-produced rocks that pass for “skulls” amongst Primaris Intercessors and the like, and it would honestly be insulting to them–and to Khorne–to rate them on the same scale. So if you manage to take down an Epic Hero or other Legendary unit in melee, your unit will get Legendary Skull Points in lieu of the normal ones.

A Note on Daemons

Just as with the Death Guard and Emperor’s Children, World Eaters players can also scream into the void about how Daemons are treated in Crusade: Specifically, your BLOOD LEGIONS units won’t gain XP or Battle Honours, nor will they accrue scars. This seems intended to imply that your daemons are summoned for battle and drop back into the warp after, and if you want a more persistent daemons force in Crusade you’ll have to use the Index army.

Judgement of the Blood God

Once you’ve finished a game, each unit has an opportunity to make an offering to Khorne. They’ll dump all their skulls in a big pile on the floor, and then you roll a die, adding 1 to the roll for each Skull Point the unit has, and 3 for each Legendary Skull Point. Manage to roll at least a 4 and your unit walks out unscathed, and gets Marked for Greatness in the bargain. 6 or more points gives you one of three Lesser Rewards of Khorne, while a result of 8 or more results in one of 6 Greater Rewards of Khorne. Make sure you come with enough offerings, though; if the result on your d6 is 1-3, you’ve made an Unworthy Offering and have to pass a Leadership test or suffer your choice of a Devastating Blow or a Battle Scar.

The Lesser Rewards of Khorne are all fairly mild. The first, Lessons of Slaughter, hands out 5XP to whatever unit got it, while Favoured Champions gives your unit a Battle Honour of your choice (pretty sick, honestly). Where this table shines, though, is when you use it on a Character and get the Boon of Khorne result, which lets you select a Boon from the table instead of rolling. This will be helpful if you’re trying to slip past the possibility of turning your very angry man into a very angry squid-spawn thing.

The Greater Rewards of Khorne on the other hand are far more powerful, but not game-breakingly so: they offer unique Blessings of Khorne that you can choose from when you make your Blood Yahtzee roll as long as the unit with that upgrade is on the table. This means that you’re beholden to the Dice Gods at least as much as the Blood God, but some of the effects in here are very cool, so they’re worth it. 

Keep in mind that these Blessings work just like the ones in your army rule: you spend the dice from your Blessings roll, and the associated effect activates for all the units in your army with the Blessings of Khorne ability, not just whoever’s got the upgrade. Let it never be said that true Disciple of Khorne didn’t bring enough carnage for everyone.

• Death to Cowards (Double 3+) forces enemy units who try to fall back from your units to take a Desperate Escape test. As a bonus, if the unit is already Battle-shocked, they do so at -1 to the test.
• Blistering Fury (Double 4+) is another dressed-up version of “Junior Tank Shock,” allowing you to dish out a handful of mortal wounds after each of your units completes a Charge. You’ll roll 1d6 for each model in your unit that’s within engagement range, and deal mortals on 5+ to a max of 6 for the unit.
• Blood-soaked Nightmares (Double 4+) is a slightly more interesting version of a rule we’ve seen elsewhere: it forces each enemy unit that’s within engagement range of one of your units to take a Battle-shock test at the start of each Command phase. 
• Savage Guidance (Double 5+) improves the Weapon Skill characteristic on all melee weapons by 1, pushing many of your units up to 2+ WS. Cute.
• Bloodthirst (Double 5+) makes the angry boys even faster adding 2” to their Move characteristic. This will push your Berzerkers up to 10”, or 12” if they’re led by a Lord on Juggernaut.
• Cleaving Blows (Double 6+) adds a bit more “oomph” to your swings and improves the AP of all melee weapons by 1. This one is one of the best of the lot, and a unit that manages to roll this reward is going to be a staple in your lists.

The biggest downside of these upgrades is that they compete with the options on the standard Blessings table. None of them (with the possible exception of Cleaving Blows) are quite as good as the other choice at the same level: [Lethal Hits] is typically going to be more useful on many of your units than improving their WS or Move characteristics, and you’ll be hard pressed to opt for Blistering Fury or Blood-soaked Nightmares when they compete with army-wide [Sustained Hits 1].

That said, on 8d6, you’ve got pretty good chances of rolling at least 4 dice showing a 4+, and most games will give you at least 2 rounds with 4 or more showing 5+. So while many of these might not be your first choice, having the extra options is certainly useful and might let you get more mileage out of a particularly stacked Blessings roll.

TheChirurgeon: The big difference between this and Ninth edition’s rules is that now any unit killed in melee will get you a skull, not just worthy ones. You score extra skull points for killing those bigger units. This speeds things up and makes your ascension to red glory feel much less like a slog.

Agendas

If you were hoping for just the one Agenda that was simply “go over there and axe them some questions,” then you may be slightly disappointed at the missed opportunity for an awesome dad joke.

Luckily the four Agendas on offer are nice and straightforward, and you may find yourself achieving them by accident as your angry lads were planning on running hell-for-leather straight into the enemy’s gunlines regardless.

Blood for the Blood God! gives your units 1XP every time they destroy an enemy unit in melee to a maximum of 3XP.  Only tiny thing to note is if any of your units Fell Back at any point during the game, they must take an Out of Action test. Not that should be a problem as no World Eater has even heard of the Fall Back rule. That sounds like some sort of underhanded thing a Thousand Sons or Emperor’s Children player might indulge in.

Skulls for the Skull Throne! is another solid choice to take alongside Blood for the Blood God! as your cross chaps will gain 2XP for every enemy character they manage to dome in melee to a maximum of 5XP. The enemy’s Warlord skull is particularly precious, earning the unit 4XP. For the extra cherry on top, each unit that gained 4XP or more gets a bonus Skull point for their troubles.

Anoint the Field requires a lot more trickery to pull off, but if you manage it then the rewards are…not exactly great considering all the effort required. Every time an enemy unit minding their own business in a table quarter is destroyed, that quarter is considered Anointed. Do so a second time and that quarter is now Drowned in Blood. Now repeat all of that in every other quarter. Completing three of the four quarters earns all surviving World Eaters 2XP or, for the overachievers that managed all four, a total of 3XP to the survivors and a +1 to the result of each Judgment roll those units make after the game.

A Tribute to Murder is a poorly-named agenda that deals with all of the objectives becoming unexalted Veneration Sites. You are then tasked with getting a unit of your irascible lads onto these objectives to pay tribute to murder by standing around not murdering anything for that turn. That somehow makes it an exalted Veneration Site, rewards them 2XP, and then they can continue on their journey of self-discovery. At the end of the game, if you managed to exalt three Veneration sites, then you may use one of the World Eater Requisitions for free.

Beanith: Sure you could take Campaign Agendas that reward points to your team or gather Blackstone etc… But I can’t help but feel that World Eaters are going to struggle with the urge not to take Blood for the Blood God! and Skulls for the Skull Throne! every single game and just rack up XP for doing what Khorne intended.

Condit: And honestly, why wouldn’t they? They’re solid agendas that hand out a good chunk of XP just for doing what you already wanted to do, and Skulls hands out some free Skull Points besides. Anoint and Tribute remain as interesting choices for players who want to switch it up now and again, but honestly? “Full send” seems like a fun and flavorful choice for many of your games.

Requisitions

Is your Heroic Lord’s pile of skulls looking a little bit lean recently? Did your fresh squad of Jakhals find themselves too many skulls? If only there was some way of transferring skulls from one unit to another… ideally with some sort of fisty-cuffs taking place at the same time. Good news, Brutal Acquisition is here for you. Spend 1RP to take two units, roll a D6 and add their XP to their respective results. The winner walks away with the loser’s Skull Points and has to make an immediate offering to Khorne, the loser gets their face pushed in and gains a Battle Scar. 

Got a Battle Scar? How about you jazz that up and change it into a Hideous Scar instead for 1 RP. The Battle Scar becomes permanent and you roll a D6 to see if you gain 5XP, a Battle Trait or on Boon of Khorne.

Enjoy gambling? When your character makes an offering, use The Blood God’s Favour for 1 Req and roll the dice. On a one: Congratulations! Your unit is now a Chaos Spawn. Anything else and you’ll gain a Boon of Khorne… and our eternal mockery if you somehow end up with the same Boon again and turn into a spawn anyway.

Blood-soaked Ascension 2 RP blah blah heroic or legendary character blah blah 3 boons become a Daemon Prince etc etc. You know the drill by this point.

Enter the Cage lets you recycle your tired old boring Berzerkers, Terminators and characters and replace them with exciting new Eightbound and Slaughterbound models, keeping the same number of Battle Honours, XP, Skull Points, and Legendary Skull Points, all for 1 RP. As an added bonus, whenever these units are selected to be Marked for Greatness in the future, they gain 5XP instead of 3XP. Condit: One major downside: this requires you to get rid of a perfectly good Berzerker, Terminator, or non-Daemon Character unit and replace it with a somewhat-disappointing Eightbound unit or a fine but uninspiring Slaughterbound. 

Battle Traits

Four tables here, one each for Possessed, Vehicle, Infantry and Monsters, and Jakhals and Goremongers. Possessed units have three options. Gore Frenzy helps mitigate losses by giving every model in the unit an extra attack if they’re below Starting Strength. This is an interesting option on 6-model squads of either flavor of Eightbound, as the standard variety will keep the same output with a single dead model, while Exalted actually have one more attack than the full-strength squad. The other two options, Skull Tithe and Desperation to Slay, are a little less interesting. The former lets your unit collect up to 8 Skull Points per battle instead of the usual cap of 5 and Marks them for Greatness in any game in which they pick up at least 1 Legendary Skull Point, while the latter gives them another 2” Move and lets them ignore modifiers to Charge rolls. None of these are terrible, but they’re not awe-inspiring, either.

Vehicles make out a bit better here. Blazing Runes and Brazen Resistance are both solid upgrades to durability, with Runes allowing the unit to regain d3 wounds in each of your Command phases and re-roll failed Out of Action tests, while Resistance slaps on an extra 2 wounds. Either is great for a Helbrute looking to get in there and make the most of its datasheet ability. Untrammelled Rage is the star attraction here, though: it adds 1 to the hit roll whenever you shoot at the closest target within 12”, and adds 2 to the charge roll whenever you charge the closest target. World Eaters vehicles already have good shooting profiles in spite of their 4+ BS thanks to having a lot of extra [Rapid Fire] spread across the army, and pushing them up to 3+ is a solid boost that is going to make things like Land Raiders, Predators, and Defilers even scarier.

Jakhals and Goremongers are in kind of a weird spot in this book, and their Crusade upgrades are kind of a mixed bag. Iron Rule improves the Ld and OC of your unit as long as it’s within 12” of a friendly character or Lord of Skulls, but lack of durability of the units that can take it will make it somewhat difficult for them to make use of those upgrades. Scarified Dedications rewards the unit for dying with 1 Skull Point and 1XP, with an additional d3 Skull Points and d3 XP whenever it takes a Battle Scar. This is neat in theory, but unless you’re running a Cult of Blood list, the prospect of stacking upgrades on more disposable units probably isn’t appealing. Refined Stimms seems the best of the lot: you can choose to give every model in the unit +2 attacks on their melee weapons every time they fight, at the cost of giving them [Hazardous]. It’s not game-changing, but the extra attacks might be enough to push the unit over the top into certain targets.

Finally, Infantry and Monsters have a six-option table with some real bangers in it. We start off strong with Peerless Fighters, which lets the unit re-roll 1s to hit in melee, and also re-roll 1s to wound if it charged. If you want some more flexibility, look at Mindless Onslaught, which lets your unit shoot and charge after falling back, which can open up a slew of options on a key turn. And Red Haze offers a Feel No Pain 5+ against 1-damage melee attacks; not as good as it could be, but particularly useful if you want to clear out some chaff with less risk of walking away bloodied. Aspiring Champions and Bloody Destiny help develop your unit, with Champions doubling XP received from the core Dealers of Death XP reward, and Destiny letting your unit re-roll Judgment rolls to fish for those Greater Blessings. Finally, Slayers of Champions gives the entire unit [Precision] in melee. Ouch.

Crusade Relics

The World Eaters have dug deep into their spiky toy-box and have managed to unearth a range of cool relics that aren’t just a selection of axes and chains. That’s right, there are also tasteful (by certain definitions, anyway) accessories on offer so your axe-wielding maniacs can look extra dashing whilst doing their damnedest to detach people’s heads from their shoulders.

In the starting block with the Artificer Relics we have the Brass Collar of Bhorghaster, which punishes enemy psykers for daring to be visible and within 18” of the bearer (Condit: Truly, a crime worthy of punishment). For this outrage, they must take a Battle-shock test, subtracting 2 from the result, and should they fail they suffer three mortal wounds. Next is the Burning Plate, which makes the wearer hardier by increasing their Toughness by 1 and dishing out D3 mortal wounds to those in engagement range everytime they’re activated in the Fight phase. Bloodstep Blade, however, has to be one of the best Artificer Relics I’ve seen in a long time. This bad boy acts like a certain Necron party favour that lets you stick the bearer and the rest of their unit into Strategic Reserves whenever they destroy an enemy unit in the Fight phase. (Beanith: I can’t be the only one picturing a Lord on a Juggernaut and his merry band of idiots teleporting all over the board and giggling like a deranged loon?)

Next up are the Antiquity Relics, and the hits just keep on coming. The Talisman of Rage makes the first Blessing of Khorne used in your game last until the end of the battle for the bearer and his unit. Best of all, they can still be affected by other Blessings, though “doubling up” in future rounds won’t give them any additional benefit. If you’re not the Underdog in your battle, then the Skull of angry throat-clearer An’Gr’Antk gives you a Crusade Blessing on a 4+, because who wouldn’t want another Agenda rewarding you for killing units. And the Mighty Skull Rack isn’t just a fancy basket to keep your Skull Points in, it also doubles as a 6” aura that lets your units re-roll 1s to hit in melee so long as you have 3 Skull points, and the aura extends to 9” if you have a particularly Legendary skull on hand.

Lastly, we have the Legendary relics and they are horrifying weapons of death and destruction that will almost certainly be the first thing a World Eater will reach for when their characters make it to Legendary. The Gorefather adds the [Devastating Wounds] ability to all of the bearer’s melee weapons, which would almost be worthwhile on its own. But that’s not all: at the end of every Fight phase, you can select an enemy unit within engagement range and roll 8D6 and dish out 1 mortal wound for every 4+. (Beanith: Shame it’s not ranged thus making the Vortex Grenade the obvious better choice.) Next up is the strangled cough G’Rmakht the Destroyer. This bad boy increases the Attack, Strength, AP and Damage of the bearer’s melee weapons by 1. That alone is amazing and deserves its Legendary rank… and then bearer dies and shit gets real. You place a 100% free Bloodthirster model on the board, set up as close as possible to where the bearer died, and then for the rest of the game you get to run that bad boy around murking units left right and center. Admittedly, the Bloodthirster is dealt D6 mortal wounds at the end of each player’s turn and, no, you don’t get to keep it after the game as it returns to the warp, so you’ll need to make good use of it while you can. But this is one of the wildest–and coolest–Crusade relics we’ve seen so far. (Beanith: Either sales of Bloodthirsters are down or perhaps you wanted an excuse to use your Angron model?)

Boons of Khorne

I love the various Boon tables that the various flavours of Chaos Space Marines get access to and how the Boons of each Chaos God change to match to whom they are dedicated, and the Boons of Khorne table is no different. 

Each of the nine possible results are themed around getting close to the enemy that much faster and then ensuring they don’t like what comes next with Bestial Limbs or Steel Sinews. There’s even a couple to help them survive the vague possibility of a clap back from a survivor such as Muscular Bulk which adds 2 Wounds & Collar of Khorne giving the model a 4+ Feel No Pain against Psychic attacks along with the unit getting a 5+ FNP.

Usual rules apply: When a character gains a Battle Honour, they can take a boon by rolling on the table. Each character can have up to three Boons but if they end up with a duplicate result then it’s time to lay down the chains, axes and other sharp pointy things and start sprouting tentacles as they turn into a Spawn.   

Final Thoughts

Beanith: I think I’m in love with the Legendary surprise Bloodthirster relic but only because it’s bound to annoy the other three for also not having the same toy. And then my thoughts sprung to the meme of Creed emerging from small bushes with a Baneblades or three.

Overall I think it’s a great set of Crusade rules, they did lean heavily into the angry men with axes charging straight at you a little too much but then I really enjoy that and I’m very tempted to start up another collection of axe-wielding nutters. I think they’ll get along swimmingly with the Space Wolves…

TheChirurgeon: This system is better and more easy to use than the one World Eaters had in 9th edition, where Judgement Rolls are just much easier to pass this time around and require a bit less bookkeeping than they did before. Skull points are easier to come by – you no longer only have “worthy skulls” to build off of, and instead you’ll get bonus skull points if your enemy unit was a character, warlord, and/or titanic, and that makes it way easier to rack up points and get fun bonuses. Legendary Skull Points are a sweet way to sweeten the deal and punish players for being lame with Epic Heroes, and it’s great that they also work off units with the Legendary rank. 

Finally the unique blessing mechanic, while not new, is a great addition here as well, and some of these are bonkers good on big units of Berzerkers – Cleaving Blows in particular, though Bloodthirst giving a unit +2” move on top of the army’s already increased movement is crazy.

This is a great improvement from the initial rules, and I think they’ll be more fun to play with. 

Condit: This is a very slick set of Crusade rules that rewards your faction for doing exactly what you want to be doing with them: getting in close and chopping people up in melee. And while it’s certainly easier to interact with than the 9th edition version (not to mention several other armies’ Crusade rules), the rewards you get for playing strike a good balance between being meaningful and fun without running the risk of overwhelming your opponent.

That’s not to say these rules aren’t great–as Rob’s pointed out Cleaving Blows pushes the limits of what they should be able to do, and Bloodthirst on the right turn could be legitimately game-changing. But while these effects are powerful, they don’t feel like they’re so strong that they’re going to suck the fun out of the game.

The pacing is also very nice here: once a unit has scored 2 Skull Points, they’ve got a chance of getting one of the Greater Blessings, and it won’t be that hard to push to 4 Skull Points for a 50/50 chance of snagging one in a handful of games. In other words, while you won’t get your major rewards right out of the gate, you can probably expect to have 2-3 of them come online over the course of a weekend event, which means you’ll likely have enough progression to feel like you accomplished something, while not giving you so many rewards that your force will quickly become oppressive to deal with.

And if none of that is enough to hook you, slam as much XP on to a character as you can and hit your opponent with a surprise Bloodthirster. That relic is just so cool.

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