Summer’s in full swing, the sun is shining (mostly, it’s the UK after all) and it’s the time of year you want to go out, bundle into a backroom, and hunch over a table for several hours to play Warhammer, sip pop, and eat snacks.
We’ve got an exciting start to a series of articles today, and they’re all about Crusade! My local shop here in Blackpool has started its first ever Crusade league, and we’ve gotten over 20 crusaders across three teams ducking it out for the fate of the Faz Pax system.
Dan, the game master for this Crusade, and I are going to be discussing all the ins and outs of Crusade across these articles – the story, the logistics, the successes and struggles, and those juicy battle reports.
For this first article, I’ve taken the time to interview Dan to let him introduce himself, the Crusade, and its major players.
Boyes: Tell us a little bit about your background, Dan! Why Crusade, and why now?
I think it was about a year into managing Fazpack, my FLGS in Blackpool, when I realised I should probably use all the miniatures I’d painted during workshops on a Sunday – looking back it probably would’ve been easier to use the 40 or so Ultramarines that had been done, but no, like Duran Duran I was hungry like the wolf. A year and a half later and my Space Wolves vastly outnumber the many, MANY Infernus Marines you get for free from Games Workshop I had lying around.
People have generally been asking for a Crusade since November/December of last year, and I was pretty excited to do one all the way back then but seriously lacked the infrastructure, deep understanding, and pretty selfishly held out hope for the impending but unconfirmed Space Wolves update (thanks GW for not proving me wrong and making me look lazy).
Without any viable excuses I really needed to stop dragging my feet and set it up, and with the help of resident Goonhammer contributor Josh Boyes, got put onto using Administratum to start the campaign up.
Boyes: What made you settle on the Nachmund Gauntlet for this Crusade?Â
With the campaign being in the works for so long, the rough story was already there – an unstable rift through the Cicatrix Maledictum, and a planetary system smack dab in the center – with the forces seeking to control the passageway fighting for control of the Faz Pax system (I was pretty proud of that one).
Lo and behold, either I am a genius or the writers over at GW are equally narratively bankrupt. I personally believe it’s the former, but Nachmund Gauntlet is essentially exactly that. A couple of name changes and reskins and everything was integrated seamlessly.
Nachmund itself actually seemed like a major improvement over at least Pariah Nexus, with some real interesting mechanics with the surgical deep strike and tactical reserves being a huge draw. The flexibility of your Order of Battle being able to change up a whole game through picking the right reinforcement waves has been a massive source of excitement for everyone involved and really makes the games feel more strategic, as well as the high-risk, high-reward ability to deep strike anywhere 3 inches away from other models (as long as you succeed that pesky Deep Strike test!)
Boyes: What’s your experience with Administratum so far?Â
Administratum has been a genuine godsend when it comes to setting up the Crusade. One of the big mental hurdles was just quite how to actually manage a Crusade, the thought of a sprawling spreadsheet trying to track a million things, and none of them well. Luckily by this point Josh had insinuated himself into not only my work but my life as well and suggested Administratum to save the hassle. I was a little sceptical at first that one website could possibly manage the scope of campaigns in general, as well as all the minutiae for each player but I couldn’t be happier to be more wrong.
Not only from a crusade perspective, on the narrative, personal, and crusaders side, the whole thing just works. The Nachmund add-on for Administratum is spot on, and covers every imaginable scenario. Being an up-to-date Space Wolves player without any digital representation for our units except a limited Codex included in our new battle box, the ability to scratch-build your units is great, and intuitive, and the further customisations following the games has been so well-received by our first playtesters.
As for the players, we’re currently sitting at 22 full-time Crusaders preparing for 9 months of narrative gameplay.
Chief among the players are the Warmasters for each faction, the Guardians, the Despoilers, and the Marauders. The Guardians are currently being led by Jakob and his Custodes, the Marauders being led by Nathan and his renegade Ad Mech, and the Despoilers with their joint leaders Jamie and Josh, with their Death Guard and heretic (Boyes: I prefer the term delightfully misled) Black Templars. I’ve asked them to provide a brief overview of their armies and what they want to achieve:
Boyes: My Black Templars have been a project since lockdown, and were my first real attempt at getting serious at painting. I haven’t got much to show for them despite how long I’ve been ‘working’ on them, and I’ve basically completely reset since coming back onto my sponge-led scheme.
I spent so long struggling with commitment to painting projects due to a bunch of issues (mental health, work, and having no one to engage in the hobby while living abroad.) I came home to England at Christmas fresh and excited to dive into my local community, something I hadn’t actually done before (mainly due to those aforementioned mental health issues. Pesky things those are.)
This crusade campaign is a way to focus myself further on getting a crisp 2000 point army finished that I can be proud of, but maybe more importantly this is a way to make up for lost time and interact with more people in the local scene that aren’t just the three bozos I’ve become very fond of in the short time I’ve known them.
It’s great I can do it as a 2nd Warmaster too, because that means I can contribute to tactical decisions but act like it wasn’t my fault if they don’t work out, and act like I did it all when they do. Life is all about win-wins.
Jamie: The overall name for my Death Guard-focused Crusade Force is The Final Toll. A combined arms force that currently ranges from Plague Marines and Rhinos to Predator Destructors and Foetid Bloat Drones. I am also hoping to branch out as the Crusade continues to include some Daemons as well as Chaos Knight allies.
As a player, my primary goal is to explore the new options, detachments and rules found in the 10th edition Death Guard codex. Beyond just playing the game, I aim to enrich the experience for myself and my fellow players by creating lore and a sense of narrative within the campaign that feels authentic to the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
In a more holistic sense, I am using this Crusade as a way to become more involved with the community at Fazpack and to motivate myself to complete more hobby projects—especially painting.
Jakob: I am hoping to get back into playing warhammer with new edition, learning the game again with this crusade and allows me to slowly build up a force that have been sat in a box for ages. With having picked the Custodes they’ve always appealed to me being space marines but souped up massively, having a smaller force, forces me to think more strategically and consider moves carefully while being able to crush things in melee, what im wanting in this crusade is hoping to achieve a win for the Guardians and use the experience to meet new people to play more games with in the future. Hopefully my decisions and suggestions will lead them to victory.
Boyes:Â Any last thoughts to sign us off with, Dan?
Games are already firing, and bolter fire litters the streets of Sangua Terra, as the Guardians, Despoilers, and Marauders vie for supremacy. I look forward to being able to keep you up to date on the fate of the Faz Pax system! See you then!
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