Crusade, Part the first

 Hi gang,
First off, apologies if this one is a little rough.  I'm not super-impressed with Blogger's new interface, and am still trying to figure out how to get stuff to work.  The changes seem to have mainly made basic tasks harder to accomplish.
Been steadily painting and playing, mostly 40k, for the last several weeks.  The Cub and I have been playing the "Crusade" narrative campaign from the 9th edition core book, and in addition to several games against each other, even managed a multiplayer game with a buddy from the shop.








One of the things I've appreciated about the Crusade system is the flexibility.  Games scale easily, there's different scenarios for different game sizes, and the system is deliberately designed to allow for play against a range of opponents, without a lot of heavy campaign admin.  The closest equivalent I can think of is Blood Bowl, where any team can play any team, because they're all using the same advancement system, and there's at least a functional (if imperfect) balancing system to deal with differences in team experience.










We've been playing maybe twice a week, mostly smaller games.  The new edition isn't the revolution that 8th was, but there's a fair number of smaller changes.  Taken together, they make for a subtle, but not insignificant change in the dynamics of play.  One critical element has been a change to scaled table sizes; the larger the game, the larger the table.  It changes the relative value of mobility, shooting and close combat, and keeps armies like mine (which is primarily oriented to cc) in the game, at least for casual play.









The flexibility also lends itself to playing against people on an irregular basis.  When my buddy came over to play with us, there was no issue working him in, despite Cub and I having played several Crusade games, and it being his first.  He brought his Custodes (vs. Cub's space marines, and my chaos space marines).  Custodes are pretty much the most "elite" army in the game - every model is more or less equivalent to a character in most other armies.  It made for an interesting game.







The early stages saw the custodes and space marines ganging up on poor little me, but my inherent craftiness soon put paid to that, and what was left of my chaos horde got front row seats to the kind of imperial infighting that warms my cold, evil heart ;)







The Custodes are pretty hard.  They bounced a charge from my Khorne Berzerkers, which generally wipe units off the table, and Cub ended up shooting them with his lascannon Predator (i.e., he was killing infantry with a dedicated anti-tank unit).







That said, the forces of evil took the day, because while the Custodes are pretty hard, they're not super mobile.  Also, I am sneaky ;)





Turns out, Crusade, and 9th edition in general, are pretty fun.  The games with Cub have meant I've been motivated to get a fair bit of painting done, and my force is approaching fully painted.  We're heading back into the busy season at work, so things may slow down a bit, but I'm hoping to get the last of this stuff done before Cub goes back to his mom's for the Fall.

The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed the title of this post includes a "Part 1".  There's another Crusade post coming, one that might be of more interest to those of you with historical inclinations.

FMB