Grab your three wolf moon shirt and hop in Stormrider, losers because we’re going on a Crusade. Codex: Space Wolves is coming soon and if you missed our review of the Codex’s matched play rules, you can find that review here. In this article we’re going to be talking about the new Crusade rules from the upcoming book – what they are, how they play, and how to use them.

Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of the book and army box for review purposes.

Oathsworn Campaigns

For a Chapter that considers the Codex Astartes to be more of a suggestion, the Space Wolves are also keen on the idea of swearing Oaths before departing on campaigns to to seek glory, slay terrible foe and hope a Wolf Priest was watching so yet another Saga can be woven and sung about on Fenris.

As with the other Codex releases, the Space Wolves also have the option of going of three unique Oathsworn Campaigns with a Requisition and three bonus Agendas on offer so they can gain honour over the course of 3-4 battles to spend on Deeds of Making found in this book or the Chapter Command and Assignment Promotions found in Codex Space Marines.

For those keen to learn more about the generic Space Marine Oathsworn Campaign, you can read our review of that here.

Worthy of a Saga

The Wolves of Fenris love spinning a good yarn and apparently the best way of creating more Sagas is to find some suitable foes and then proceed to stomp them into the ground for Honour points and maybe some XP if you’re lucky.

• Heroic Challenge hands out Honour points for killing enemy Characters in melee.
• Mighty Trophies asks your opponent to nominate five of their units and your goal is to make sure at least three of those units have met their makers.
• Oathkeeper rewards you for finishing off an Oath of the Moment target with XP. If you manage to pull that at least 3 times, then you get the sweet sweet Honour points.

For Requisition we have Prospective Wolf Guard which allows you to select an additional unit to be Marked for Greatness. Not terribly useful as it’s a once per Oathsworn Campaign dealie and how badly did you want that bonus XP?

Glory Seekers

Do your Space Wolf Characters talk a big game? Are they prone to swearing reckless oaths and perhaps also boast about their planned goals for the next few games? This is the Oathsworn Campaign for you. The Deeds Beyond Counting Requisition lets you take another Agenda just for your Warlord to fulfil. Doing so grants you three Honour points on top of the Agena rewards whereas failure means you lose D3 Honour points.

As for the Bonus Agenda, we have only the one and it is a doozie. Basically before the battle, one of your characters spent their time making a series of Audacious Boasts and now they have to put their money where their mouth is. There are ten different Boasts and while you can take as many of them as you wish, you need to be careful as you need to pull every single one of them off during this battle. Succeed and you gain 1XP for each Boast, fail even one and you get nothing.

• Go for the Throat boils down to ‘Always Be Charging’ whenever possible.
• Never Back Down states Falling Back is for cowards and tricksy elves.
• Break Through Their Lines wants you in the opponent’s deployment zone at the end of the game and Claim the Prize would like you within range of an objective.
• Of course there are five Boasts themed around killing characters, vehicles, monsters and any mook that looks at you funny.
• Lastly if you could do that Without a Scratch then that would be pretty cool.

Beanith: Note In our review copy, Audacious Boast is missing the final line where they explain what happens if you complete four or more of the Boasts. I imagine it rewards you 3 or 4 Honour points.

Hunters Unleashed

Rounding out the Oathsworn Campaigns is Hunters Unleashed which aims to reward the other members of the pack that may not stand out as much as the powerful characters that they support on the battlefield.

The Pack Rivalry Req is quite cool where you nominate two units from your army before the battle to compete, the winner will be showered with praise; the loser will be taunted and booed until the Wolfpriest’s throat is sore (Shameless stolen from Mike Scully a Simpsons Writer 1994. Beanith: cite not the deep magic etc etc). At the end of the battle, if one unit has earned more XP than the other, that unit gains an extra 3XP and the other loses 3XP. Sounds a bit naff at first but should you manage a tie you gain 3 Honour points instead.

Bonus Agenda-wise, there’s a interesting selection that may change how you approach a mission unless you were already planning on running at the enemy headfirst.

• Since Triangling Wolves doesn’t sound right, they’ve called this one Circling Wolves instead. At the end of the battle you’ll need three surviving units on the table to draw imaginary lines between and should you manage to line up an enemy unit within, each unit gains 2XP and you also get 4 Honour points.
• Warriors Pride wants you to select three of your characters at the end of a battle and reward them with bonus XP for killing monster and character models. And should they survive the battle, they’ll get an extra XP if they’re within range of an objective.
• First into the Fray gives first unit to charge each turn 1XP and there’s a bonus 3 honour points available if you manage to do charge in four of the five rounds.

Deeds of Making

Codex: Space Wolves gives you some all new promotion Battle Honours for your characters to spend your Honour Points on. These are all character-specific, and they come with various price tags, ranging from 5 (Red Axe doubles the XP you get from killing units) to 20 (Storm Speaker gives a PSYKER [Sustained Hits 2] on their Psychic weapons). These can be used to build some pretty fun unique characters – Cunning Trickster acts as a 12” aura that increases the costs of your opponents’ Stratagems by 1, while Savage Orator gives a Wolf Priest’s unit +1 to their Hit Rolls.

Lone Wolves

Long-time Space Wolves players will be familiar with the concept of Lone Wolves, warriors who survive the deaths of their squads and go on to fight solo, hoping for a glorious death in battle to avenge their brothers and join them in Space Valhalla, or wherever Space Wolves believe they’ll go when they die instead of the maddening gyre of space hell that all human souls end up in.

Here’s how it works: When one of your INFANTRY or MOUNTED units with the Blooded rank or higher suffers a Devastating Blow, instead of applying that result you can scratch them from your Order of Battle and add a Wolf Guard Battle Leader with the LONE WOLF keyword to your army instead. This unit has the same XP as the unit it replaced, picks new Battle Honours, gains Lone Operative, and replaces its Tempered Ferocity ability with the Oath of Vengeance ability, which gives it re-rolls to hit and if the target is a monster or vehicle, re-rolls to wound as well.

Lone Wolves gain their own battle scars and take one for each one in the unit they replaced. Each time they take an out of action test, you subtract 1 from the result – they can’t take a Devastating Blow instead. When a Lone Wolf gets a fourth Battle Scar, they die, having achieved glorious death in battle.

The scars here are pretty cool – there are three options and they come with both a benefit and a tradeoff. Pack of One drops you to OC 0 but gives you Infiltrators and Scouts 6”. Vengeance Before Death prevents you from falling back but gives you a 5+ Feel No Pain. And An Honourable End lets you Advance and shoot/charge but you take an additional -1 to your out of action tests.

Battle Traits

Space Wolves have access to three tables for battle traits – one for Characters, one for Wulfen, Beasts, and Thunderwolf Cavalry, and one for Adeptus Astartes Infantry and Thunderwolf Cavalry units. Yes, your Thunderwolves can roll/pick from two different tables. There are three on each of these, and if you like, your Headtakers and Wolf Guard Terminators can also take traits from Codex: Space Marines. The Wulfen/Beasts/TWC table here is particularly good, giving you the option of +2 strength on your melee weapons, re-rolling charges when you come in from reserves, or getting +1 to your advance and charge rolls.

Agendas

Space Wolves armies have access to four Agendas:

• Show Them How We Fight lets your Blood Claws units score XP when you kill enemy units with nearby Wolf Guard. Earn 2 or more XP and you’ll also score 2 Honour Points.
• Howls of Vengeance gives you bonus XP for killing enemy units that killed your Space Wolves units. Kill three or more and score 4 Honour Points.
• Savage Fury is the easiest one here, giving you extra XP for killing enemy units in melee, to a maximum of 3 XP per game.
• Lead by Example lets you pick up to three Astartes units that ended up in your opponent’s Deployment Zone, netting you 1 XP and 1 Honour point for each, with one bonus point of each if one of those was your Warlord.

These are fine. The flavor on them is solid.

Requisitions

The angriest corgis you’ve ever met have four absolutely fantastic Requisitions to choose from and you will want to give some Req handy at various times during your Oathsworn Campaigns.

Warriors of Legend can be purchased at the end of a Oathsworn Campaign for 1 Req to give one of your Legendary characters an additional Deed of Making that doesn’t count towards their Battle Honour limit.

A Glorious Death sends your Lone Wolf off in style when they finally gain that third Battle Scar by throwing a feast and singalong to celebrate their deeds. Each Space Wolf unit gains 2XP and you earn 5 Honour points all for 1 Req.

A word of advice from a Wolf Priest or Long Fang may help guide a Blood Claws or Grey Hunters pack into making better choices. Those Tempered by the Grey Beards can swap out a Battle Honour with another from this book.

Pack Bonded is the narrative saga that Space Wolves follow as they journey together as a pack within the ranks of a Great Company. For 1 Req and 5 Honour points you can replace a squad of Blood Claw with a squad of Grey Hunters; or a squad of Grey Hunters with a squad of Wolf Guard Headtakers or Terminators.

Crusade Relics

You’d think the equivalent of futuristic space vikings would have a lot of plunder lying around ready to be snatched up and to brain some poor unsuspecting space elf. Turns out you would be wrong, with the exception of two weapons on offer, the Wolves of Fenris prefer shiny trinkets.

In the Artificer pile we have the incredibly rare and certainly one off Wolf-tail Talisman which protects the wearer by reducing the damage of attacks by 1. Wyrdmaker’s Helm, which wasn’t pinched from someone with pointy ears, lets you, once per battle round, use this relic to autopass a Hit, Wound or Saving roll with an unmodified 6. Lastly they’ve found the old Frost Weapons which adds Lethal Hits to all of the model’s melee weapons along with extra Strength and Armour Penetration.

Moving up into the Antiquity Relics, you will see that the Wolf Priest have found yet another Belt of Russ kicking around the Fang (Beanith: In Leman Russ’s defense, he was a big Scissorhands fan) which gives the bearer a 4+ invulnerable save which can be supercharged to a 2+ once per game for an entire phase. In the fancy italicised lore for the Wyrmsplitter, it is a brutal blade that can split any skull no matter how large. This is not represented with a great big sword for your character to wallop things which would make sense, instead any attacks against a Vehicle or Monster lets you add 1 to the Wound roll and Damage meaning your Wolf Priest is firing his Wyrmsplitter pistol before swinging his Wyrmsplitter Crozius.

Bringing up the rear is the Legendary Wulfen Stone, an incredible fancy diamond that when carried into battle adds 2 to the Attack and Strength characteristics of the model’s melee weapons. Even better, if the bearer is leading a unit, that unit gains Sustained Hits 1 on their melee weapons. But wait, there’s even more! You’ll want to stick this bad boy on a Wolf Battle Leader because his meatshields gain Sustained Hits 2. Beanith: I’m going to struggle with this one, its almost 2nd Edition Vortex Grenade levels of awesomeness.

Final Thoughts

TheChirurgeon: My favorite thing here is the Lone Wolves rule set, and I think that putting those rules in Crusade is exactly the right place for them. I’d have mostly preferred having rules specifically for the “one guy survives” situation, but using it when you’d get a Devastating Blow works pretty well and I like the flavor behind it. I’m not sure the rules are good enough to necessarily incentivize creating Lone Wolves from units, but they’re good enough to justify them, at least.

The rest of the rules are fine. I’m not a huge fan of Oathsworn Campaigns, but I don’t mind the framework they’re building on with the Codex Supplements, and it works better than giving each chapter an entire new set of rules to add on with – an issue already present in Codex: Space Marines.

Beanith: I too am here for what will be far too many Lone Wolves running around in my Crusade force. I also love the lore behind the Pack Bonded req as you take a squad of 20 Bloodclaw and watch as they lose brothers and yet become stronger because of as they graduate into a pack of 10 Grey Hunters… and then they find some chocolate left lying around and then BOOM, there’s 5 Wolf Guard Headtakers on the lookout for a Mr Wonka.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.