Fin- Beanith
Rob: I don’t suppose you care to elaborate a little bit?
Beanith: Fine. The Warhammer 40k Narrative play format is known more commonly as Crusade. This format, in my mind, is quite possibly the best way to slam hams with friends.
This year when I wasn’t playing Crusade, I was painting or building stuff for it. When I wasn’t painting or building stuff for Crusade, I was writing about it. When I wasn’t writing about it, I was thinking about the Crusade. There was also a bunch of Real Life stuff but for the sake of the joke, I’ll gloss over that.
Goonhammer Articles
I am a member of the secret shadowy cabal CRUSADE + NARRATIVE Working Group, who in a very non-secret fashion, have published many articles all about Narrative Play and Crusade content throughout the year under our own names.
Working with the team is fantastic and I love bouncing ideas around with them and watching Rob wince I keep switching between UK and US English spelling to subconsciously fuck with him and the other editors (Rob: This bothers Liam and Bernhardt the most, I think). Plus I get to crowbar in bad jokes and puns which is a nice bonus.
With so many articles that I either played a small part in, or wrote most of – to then later be fixed by a team of editors working in shifts (swearing is punctuation in Australia) – there are too many for me to list all of them. But I will settle for my three favorites this year, which are:
- Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus Crusade Review
- Codex Thousand Sons: The Crusade Rules Review
- Shadow Throne: The Crusade Content
There was also an attempt for me to also join the Age of Sigmar team in reviewing all of the cool Path to Glory content but since Path to Glory doesn’t actually have any cool content that fell by the wayside. My complaints there are mostly that Path to Glory is a beige, low-fat no-taste cut-down version of the Necromunda Dominion Campaign with most of the fun stuff removed, bugger-all variety in advancements for units, and Crusade is literally right there. Crib from their notes?
I will say that PtG is beginning to show some promise in recent Battletomes but it still isn’t quite there yet for me. Hopefully future General’s Handbooks or Campaign books will expand the rules. I will however quite happily eat my words and jump back on that bandwagon with my Orruks – who are currently masquerading as Ork Nobs – when it does get better.
Games Played
I was (and still am) fortunate enough to be able to play 40k almost every weekend this year and most of those games were of course Crusade games. Aside from my current Beast Snagga Crusade Force who are at 5 Wins, 7 Losses & 1 Tie, I didn’t keep track of all my games played mostly because I’m too lazy. Shout out to Charlie B’s and his amazing Automated 40K Crusade Roster, which is a godsend to keeping track of everything in a Crusade Roster.
The Crux Stars Campaign
The Crux Stars Campaign started off as the Nameless Crusade Campaign in December 2020 with the aim to essentially just play Crusade games with friends throughout the year. It was incredibly barebones until Coda took over the Lore aspect of the campaign and thus The Crux Stars Campaign was born. Coda’s work added a whole new depth to the game for us and spurred us to flesh out our own forces a little bit more beyond “Hero and their nameless mooks.”
We have modified it somewhat with our own house rules, adding in things like Underdog status rewarding extra XP when newer armies fight the older bigger boys; or all Battle Honors (upgrades) being rolled for where possible. The Underdog rule means that those that couldn’t play as often as the rest of us in the group as well as any new players (or new armies in my case) wouldn’t get left behind in the dust. It’s worked well for us so far.
As for my Crusade Forces?
The Necron Menace of the Shinichirō Dynasty
Vale locus bospuer – Plunderer of the Solar Catacomb, Embodiment of Metalloglory, Subjugator of the Phloxos Hordes, He Who Spits Upon the Ancient Codes, Prince-Thrall Of The Silent King, Overlord of the Shinichiro Dynasty, Gosunkugi.
Or Necron Beep Boop for short. I started out the year, and the campaign, with my New Year New army of Necrons using a lot of Necron starter sets and a Battleforce box and from that grew the Necron forces led by 5p1k3 the Overlord, v1c10u5 the Skorpekh Lord, and their advisors f4y3, 3dw4rd, j37 & 51771n6 Bull.
I grew this Crusade Force to 88PL/1,800pts with everything fully painted for a change. Here I moved away from just using Contrast paints and started playing with Vallejo metallics. I also played with black undercoats on the mooks and white undercoats on the characters mostly so the characters would look brighter and more cared for than your average Necron Warrior.
The Reasonable Ones
The Reasonable Ones was my Dark Angel Successor Crusade Force that was created for my local Warhammer store’s Crusade campaign early on in the year which fizzled out very quickly due to Covid restriction at the time. Consisting of two Patrol detachments, it was very much an excuse to use my large collection of Space Marine Heroes series 2 Terminators and Attack Bikes. With 3 wins from 4 games, they were very successful but I suspect that was more to do with it being pre-codex so you could still use a strat to deposit termies very close to the enemy using the Ravenwing bikes rather than any skill on my part. This force hasn’t expanded beyond the starting 50PL/1130pts.
Stinky Steeve’s Fun Time Crusade
My Death Guard Crusade roster came about from wanting to change things up slightly and to try out the new Crusade rules using my Death Guard army from the Beanith’s Road to… NoVA? Articles. My Lord of Contagion’s, Stinky Steeve, goal was to become a Daemon Prince. He was an absolute terror on the table and quickly racked up a bodycount and after the third battle was ready to gain his second Boon… and then promptly became a Spawn. Swings and Roundabouts.
The plan for the next stage was to open up the cloning vat and pop out a fresh Stinky Steeve to take up the mantle of spreading Nurgle’s blessed Haemorrhaging Diseased Lesions. Sadly though, there was a fungal outbreak and I found myself in possession of a shiny box of the Beast Snagga Army Set.
Thus Stinky Steeve’s Fun Time Crusade remains at 60PL/1,173pts.
Snarlteef’s Boyz
My beloved Angry Mushrooms are always ready for a scrap and a good laugh. I always had a vague idea in the back of my mind to start an Ork army using the Orruk models from Age of Wossname and way back in April I decided to make a start on that by picking up a couple of the Ironjawz: Start Collecting sets with an idea to use the Orruk ‘Ardboyz as Nobs, the Orruk Warchanter would be a Weirdboy and the Orruk Gore-gruntas would count as Nob Bikers once I found my collection of Storm Bolter pintles hidden deep with the bits pile.
The original idea for my ork army was old school orks who’d rather get stuck in and do some proper krumping instead of wasting time with Dakka. As all new armies, it very quickly spiraled out of control. I had grots armed with bows and vague ideas of tracking down old Fantasy Goblin artillery. On the pile of shame are the Savage Boarboys who were going to be Ork Bikers, along with the Savage Orruk Arrowboys who should know better but can’t help themselves. There were even vague plans to grab a bunch of Trolls to use as Killa Kans or Deffdreads.
The Megaboss is an amazing model and like every other Ork player out there, became a fantastic looking Warboss
The centerpiece is going to be the Battle Cabbage which would be perfect as a Squiggoth in 40k. I’m still chipping away at George but I keep getting distracted by other projects.
Later in the year Dominion was announced and early teases of the Path to Glory system seemed exciting (It wasn’t) to our group so I was pleased to have an Orruk army ready to go for that. I’ve played a few games with them and I’ve done very well with them
And then the Beast Snaggas were announced, my wallet cried and I was very excited to see what I could do with my current collection and start my Ork Crusade force – Snarlteef’s Boyz.
Snarltoof is very clearly a Beastboss and more than keen to get close and wreck face with his Beastchoppa. He started off on foot but took an arrow to the knee (Lost Leg Battlescar & Deep Scars Battlescar) which slowed him right down.
Oddly enough around the time they released the Beastboss on Squigosaur model, he saw a paindoc and had the faulty Super Cybork Body fixed (removed Lost Leg Battlescar and exchanged relic for the Beasthide Mantle Relic) and then went out and wrangled a Yoshi-saur to be his main method of transport. The Yoshi-saur is named Tearer.
Chaz’rk Owie is my Weirdboy who up until recently was just some vague generic HQ tax whose sole purpose was just to exist to fling boyz all over the board with Da Jump. That has ended because in the last two games, he has started handing out Super Smites (d6 mortal wounds) like candy.
In the first of these games he cast smite three times, each one came up box cars, each did 6 damage. The Mofo then exploded in a glorious explosion doing max damage to everyone within range. These rolls almost balance out the fact that my entire army failed almost every other single roll for the first two turns. The last game, Chaz’rk dialed it back a notch and managed two Super Smites on 11s before a souped up Lieutenant jumped in and cut him into tiny tiny pieces.
Dav’rk Owie is my Wurrboy riding around his Killrig pulled by the squigosaur Ripper. He is the more unhinged of the Owie brothers, haunted by the constant sounds of Gork/Morks beating things with clubs which when in battle manifests itself as a thrumming baseline.
Accompanied into battle with his krew wielding their axes and adding to the din are
the Red Spider Krew Mick, Mick, Dusty & Sun.
And the last pun crowbarred in is that the Driver is prone to be distracted by all the noise and rarely moves the rig in a straight line hence the nickname Ziggy Zagger
The Pinkteef are some of the biggest and meanest orks in Snarltoof’s retinue who’d
rather get stuck in with their collection of Choppas and Big Choppas.
I have a bunch more lore written up for the rest of the orks but I really want to paint them first so maybe keep an eye out on Instagram for updates there or a future article.
Currently this Roster clocks in at 100PL/1,848pts
Future Crusade Forces
I keep getting the urge to build a Crusade Force using The Torchbearers rules we reviewed back in July. My take on it would be the Primaris marines are on their way to find and reinforce a Black Templar Crusade fleet. I’d find an excuse to shoehorn in the Sisters somehow and then because I love my Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex model I’d take any excuse to throw him in too with any other Imperial weirdos and…. Boom, a Crusade roster that pulls from 5-6 books… I have enough trouble with just one. Will still probably do it though.
However what is far more likely to happen is a Sisters of Battle Crusade Roster. My Sisters of Battle have finally returned home after almost a decade apart.
I can’t believe how much I have missed these. A very long time ago I made the heartbreaking decision to sell my collection. These were sold separately to a good friend who has held onto them for them to enjoy and love.
Recently I had an idle thought about these and decided to follow it up and lo and behold, I had to make space in my Display case for these beautifully painted models… which I need to learn to somehow match when adding to this… Challenge accepted.
The Smooshing Hobby Section
Excuses go here? In 2020 I managed to smoosh 160 models or 6,025 points, which I carefully kept track of in a spreadsheet throughout the year. This year… welllll that kinda fell by the wayside as more and more Crusade content was released and I was spending most evenings trying to find a Legendary Relic that was better than a Vortex Grenade (Hint: There isn’t one).
I did fully paint the Necron Crusade Force, there have been numerous HTPE articles like the Cursed City ones which I honestly love to take part in as a chance to paint something different from whatever is in my current queue.
Hobby Streaking ongoing
Hobby Streaking and You was written back in April 2020 and I’m still going strong over on Instagram posting as beanithpie posting daily about anything vaguely hobby adjacent I did that day.
Lately I will admit this image gets a lot of screen time as it’s my go-to for when I’m doing the 4 R’s for Goonhammer (Researching, Reading, Riting, and Roofing off) deep within the Content Mines.
Plans for 2022
Finish painting the orks? And then the Sisters Crusade Force! Ooooh but there’s also the Custodes? Maybe this is the year I finally hit the buy button on the Eldar jetbike list? Spikey Chaos lads? KNIGHTS?!?!
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at content@goonhammer.com.
