Elves. We love an Elf here at Goonhammer. Whether it’s a bunch of uptight dorks hanging out in a crystal palace, a Gathering of Juggalos, an extremely sick death cult, or just some of the least-cool space pirates ever envisioned, any and all of your favorite high-tech high-fantasy coneheads can come together for a bit of ultra-violence.
Welcome to one of the more complicated Crusade rule sets we’ve had to review in a long time. With three separate factions crammed together (four if you count the small cutout regarding using Drukhari in the Ynnari force) into the Crusade Section of Codex Aeldari, read on as we work out if we’re dealing with a smorgasbord of choice or a crockpot soup of despair.
The Aeldari Crusade rules clock in at an unsurprisingly hefty 14 pages. Considering how much ground there is to cover here, it could easily have been twice that.
Crusade Roster Guidelines
When creating your Order of Battle for the first time, you will have four separate guidelines to keep in mind. Starting out the gate we have Avatars of the Gods which roughly says you can’t start off with the Avatar of Khaine or The Yncarne in your roster without jumping through a few hoops first. The Avatar requires use of a Requisition and the Yncarne requires you to spend Soul Points (which will be covered later). In typical Named Character fashion, neither of them can gain experience and they never take Battle Scars. That said, they do still take Out of Action tests. If they fail, you roll a D6 again and if it’s a second one, they are completely removed from your Order of Battle, forcing you to start over again. If your Avatar is getting bodied often enough that this presents an issue, you have bigger problems.
Wandering Legends makes Phoenix Lords included in your Crusade Army count as named characters, so they also can’t gain experience, Battle Honours or Battle Scars.
Walking the Path Alone is largely redundant. You can’t use the Fresh Recruits requisition from the Big Rule Book to increase the size of a Warlocks Character unit. I say “redundant” because a Warlock unit of a single model gains the Character keyword, and you already can’t use Fresh Recruits on anything with the Character keyword.
Beanith: I feel this was included for That One Guy.
Finally, The Dark Kin explains what Crusade content you can use from Codex Drukhari for the Ynnari Drukhari units in your Order of Battle. You can have all of the Battle Traits, Weapon Enhancements, Relics and Battle Scars you like, but no Ascendant Lords: the cool Monopoly/SimCity stuff is verboten. Finally, if all of your Drukari in an army are Ynnari, the Drukhari Agendas are off the table. The corollary there is that if you do soup in a regular Drukhari detachment instead, then you can use their Agendas. Without access to Ascendant Lords, this isn’t a huge bonus, but it’s not nothing, either.
Paths of the Aeldari (the Craftworld bit)
With the collapse of the Eldar civilization and destruction of their Empire to which the Aeldari refer to as the Fall and sadly not the Great Whoopsie, the survivors established a series of social reforms to ensure their focus and discipline and avoid lives spent to the pursuit of personal glory or selfish desires or accidently boning another Chaos god into existence. They became Nerds.
Beanith: Sorry not sorry.
This is represented with three Paths. We have the Path of the Warrior, the Path of the Seer, and the Path of the Outcast. Getting on to a path uses one of a special set of four Requisitions. There’s all kinds of rules about who can use what, so we’ll cover those first, before we get to the fun part and tell you what the paths are for.
First is the Path of the Warrior, which involves either selecting a unit of Aspect Warriors and putting them on the path, or removing a unit of Guardians, Warlocks, or Outcasts of 5-10 models and replacing them with a unit of non-jet Aspect Warriors (they keep their XP, honours, etc).
Next is the Path of the Seer, which is kind of the same – either select an existing Warlock unit, or delete a Path Of The Warrior unit and replace it with Warlocks. They are now seers. Yes, if you want to waste a bunch of RP as a flex, you can flip a Warlock unit back and forth between Paths as they don and doff their big helmet and rapidly pick up and put down a Shukiren Catapault. Neat.
Path of the Outcast is for cool guys and losers, which are the two main types of loner. It starts with Aspect Warriors, Guardians, or Warlocks, and they get replaced with either Outcasts or Anhrathes. If you’re the “you can’t fire me, I quit” type, feel free to just start with a unit of Outcasts or Anhrathes to begin with.
The final requisition in this section is An Exceptional Talent. It’s like the Custodes one – a unit of three or more Warlocks walks into a bar, and one of their stupid gem helmets bounces off of it, and that Eldar becomes a Farseer instead. They have to have maxed out their Path of the Seer first, and the Farseer keeps their XP and Honours, loses their scars, and counts as having completed the Path of the Seer. The Warlocks unit also loses a model. This is extremely cool and makes for a great long-term narrative payoff.
You could start out in your Order of Battle with a squad of Guardians and after a few battles, use The Path of the Warrior requisition to exchange the squad for a 10-model unit of Howling Banshees. After that battle, you could then use Path of the Outcast to run them as Space Elf Pirates.
Whilst that squad is on the Path of whatever, they will earn and lose Path points, which they will need to spend to take the next step on the Path. But walking too far on that Path – reaching the final step – will mean that unit is now locked into their final role. No more changing paths.
So what do these paths actually give you, and how do you progress?
Warhammer Community already showed us the first Path, of the Warrior, but what else is there? The Path of the Seer powers up by casting 4 powers in a battle (easy) or destroying an enemy unit (less easy) and powers down by not doing either of those things (that is, -1 point for casting 0-3 powers and killing 0 enemy units) or failing an Out Of Action test (owned). The rewards are substantial, though: first a +1 to Smite tests, then a +1 to all Blessing tests, and finally they both learn an extra power and can’t be Denied Like A Witch on a 10+ to cast (so, 9+ on their boosted powers).
The Path of the Outcast is probably the coolest one here, despite only being available to the dumbest units. The power up/down mechanics are halfway the same – +1 for killing something, -1 for failing OoA tests – but the other up is for just being 12” out of your deployment zone, with the final negative being for neither killing nor moving. Considering that “being alive” isn’t a requisite there, you can just be dead and since you aren’t technically within or without 12” of your DZ, it still counts. If you’re feeling lucky on possible OoA tests, it takes like one battle round to cover that kind of distance and then die, and you’re locked into some nice path gains. As for the rewards, it’s “ignore Light Cover”, +2” on moves, and “extra hits on 6s” for rangers and shuriken weapons. Pretty good, but my favorite part of this is the names. The final step is called ELITE ASSASSINS and I’m sorry but that rules.
Something kind of annoying about how these are presented, that I expect every single Aeldari player to screw up at some point, is that the points are shown as 5, 8, and 12, but reset between steps. So it’s not 12 total to advance to the end, it’s 25 (five to hit the second step, then eight more, then another twelve).
Walking a bunch of paths is an Extremely Eldar thing to do, and it’s very nice to see it implemented here, where you can watch your units progress. It makes it feel a little more personal than just buying an Exarch would be. I absolutely love that if they mess around and max out a Path, they get stuck on it, that is also an Extremely Eldar thing to do.
Beanith: I quite like this system aside from one tiny flaw, constantly having to update the Crusader Roster each time your units decide to switch paths and change loadouts. I almost feel sorry for the Administratum team trying to code that one in. Pendulin’s tears aside, I think with a little bit of planning and a few games you could end up with a Farseer that has completed the first three steps on the Path of the Warrior and then finished the Path of the Seer to become a very powerful Psyker that can also briefly slap in the Fight Phase before getting murked. Not to mention the rest of the old Warlock squad still kicking butt and taking names as well.
Souls for Ynnead (the Ynnari snippet)
Before the Hot Topic Space Mall Goth Elves get too snippy about their single page of Crusade content, do keep in mind you still get all the cool Crusade content from all the other flavours of Space Elfs too? Eh, I tried. Simply put, the Ynnari will collect Soul Points during a battle by killing the Warlords and powerful enemy units, holding objectives and casting Revenant psychic powers.
These Soul Points can then be spent on various Soul Bonds to gain some fairly decent bonuses such as giving your Psykers a Psychic Fortitude, removing Battle Scars, purchasing Soul-bonded Relics or Wraith Constructs, or straight up exchange for experience. And best of all, for 10 Soul Points you can Summon the Yncarne to add the Yncarne to your Order of Battle.
Beanith: Simple and effective but dull. Unlike Orks and their mountains of pointless Scrap, Ynnari have a handy sink to dump excess Soul Points into for experience or Wraith units with a free upgrade.
Greg: These are kind of cool. The bonuses are basically just stuff you could get elsewhere – half of them are for funnelling experience points onto units, but it’s also relics and Fortitudes, but I do think it’s fun to have a parallel system for getting them, if you lean hard into Ynnari. It’s also the only way to get your grubby mitts on a The Yncarne, which is fair. No The Yncarnes are going to show up until or unless there’s some real Ynnaring going on.
Condit: The only thing I’m not a fan of here is one of the triggers for gaining a Soul Point: destroying the unit with the most XP in your opponent’s roster. This is just annoying and requires me to actually pay attention to and parse my opponent’s Crusade nonsense, a task for which I have less and less patience as more and more supplements get unique rules that make very little sense. Other than that, though, they’re pretty rad, providing a flavorful way to generate a resource you can use to get access to some cool stuff, which is really what we’re all here for.
Grand Performances (Harlequins)
The Harlequins in Match Play have access to some very powerful character upgrades called Pivotal Roles which are covered more in depth in our Competitive review. For the Crusade side of things, these upgrades can only be made available to your Crusade army by putting on a stage show and performing one out of three Tales.
You will start out in the Rehearsal Phase where you will select one of the Tales to perform and during this phase you will have two objectives you must achieve over the course of several games. Finishing these objectives gives you access to adding a Pivotal Role upgrade to one of your characters and then you now have the option to move onto the next phase.
The option to begin the Grand Performance phase can be declared before any battle you wish, during the Resolve Pre-battle Abilities (typically is the step after deciding who gets first turn). In this battle you will have the opportunity to gain Accolade points by completing various tasks with bonus points revolving around your Harlequin character freshly upgraded with a Pivotal Role murking some chumps. Much like Genestealer Cults and their Day of Ascension, you get one and only one shot at this. If you biff the performance, it’s fine, there’s still a reward, but a standing ovation will net far flashier loot. Either way, pick a new one and start over. The rewards all give XP – 5 for everyone if you score 10 Accolade Points, 3 for 4-9, and a measly 1 for scoring 0-3 – but also each have their own custom rewards for the second and third tiers.
Cegorach’s Lament is the Lemonade of Eldar performances. Rehearsals consist of falling back and then murdering dudes 20 times, and manifesting psychic powers 10 times. This is like, three games, tops, for most Harlequins armies. During the performance, you’ll score high marks from the judges for killing the enemy warlord with a Solitaire (3 Accolade Points, or 4 if they had a Pivotal Role when they did the deed), pushing your luck with the Laughing God (1 point for rolling 4 or more dice), and controlling objectives with Harlequins Characters at the end of the battle (1 point per objective). Rewards for a middling performance include a free Repair and Recuperate for your Solitaires, and for a Masterpiece, a free R&R for everyone in the army roster.
There are two other performances in the Harlequin repertiore, themed around The Forging of Anaris (I do not know what Anaris is (Condit: According to the internet it is “A special Eldar sword,” so there you go)), and The Trials of Khaine. Khaine hands out RP for an especially good show, and you rehearse by killing 5 warlords with anything and 75 wounds of other stuff with Characters. Anaris, which makes sense on account of it’s apparently a type of sword, practices by smashing up other people’s relics, and rewards the players with Weapon Enhancements.
We love the last-minute nature of this. Getting to decide whether today is the day that the show must go on after the first turn roll-off is exactly the kind of infuriating mess that Harlequins are known for, and with literally no downside (worst-case you only get 1XP for every single unit, oh no) it’s not even that big of a gamble if you pick the wrong fight for once.
Path of Damnation
In addition to these Grand Performances, your Solitaires get some unique rules to represent their ongoing Jared Leto-style Jokerfication as the role of Slaanesh slowly gnaws away at their souls, further isolating them from their comrades and leaving them with the overwhelming compulsion to deliver one of those cakes that looks like a real power tool until you cut into it to each of the Harlequins in their Troupe at 3am.
First, Role of the Damned is a 1RP requisition that you can use after your Grand Performance battle. This one’s pretty simple: you get an extra Accolade point if your Solitaire managed to kill the enemy Warlord, and another if it survived the battle and is more than 6” from any friendly Harlequins. Simple, but useful, as accomplishing this will all but guarantee that you’re at least in the “Accomplished Performance” range, giving you some extra experience for your army, and conferring upon your Solitaire the right to claim that, actually, they’re a Cesar Romero-tier player or, failing that, at least Heath Ledger.
The other one, Path of Damnation, is for when things go wrong, and your Solitaire gives into their inner Leto and starts telling everyone how Dark and Twisted they are, only maybe they actually have something to back this up? When your Solitaire fails an Out of Action test, you roll 2d6. On a 2 or less, Slaanesh has finally caught up to them, their soul is devoured, and the local theater’s scenery is safe from further bite marks (until a replacement is found, at least). On a 3 or more, the other Players have to continue to put up with the Solitaire’s bullshit, only it’s worse now, because they pick up a Path of Damnation bonus. There are 6 of these, and they’re pretty damn good: one of them makes the Solitaire immune to all psychic powers not cast by a Slaanesh Psyker, another makes them untargetable unless the attacker is within 12”, and my personal favorite, Warpwalk, lets them just peace out to strategic reserves once per game at the beginning of your opponent’s Command phase. Just roll in, yank a couple dude’s spleens out, then vanish in a cloud of smoke accompanied by the groans of disappointed film reviewers.
Agendas
There are five: two for Asuryani, one each for Ynnari and Harlequins, and one that works for everyone but only against Chaos.
The Chaos one is actually kind of fun, and paired with one of the Requisitions below, can be a real XP farm. It’s called Fight for the Future, and we hope you like bookkeeping. Keep a tally for every single Eldar unit in the army, and increase it by 1 for killing a Chaos unit, or 2 for killing a Slaanesh Chaos unit. After the battle, it’s 1XP for anyone that has any points, and 3 if they have 3 or more. Extremely nice way to splash some experience gains around.
Ynnari get Souls for Strength: destroy 5 enemy units in melee with Ynnari units, and all Ynnari get 1XP each. Easy enough to pull off, and with high upside for a Ynnari-heavy army. Also, I’m already getting extremely tired of all these fake Eldar words (Condit: Like “Souls?”) and there’s still a lot of review left to write.
If you like objectives, why not create a bunch more, with Recover Spirit Stones? When an Asuryani infantry or biker unit dies, it turns into an objective, and that objective can have Activities performed on it. Spend your turn doing corny Alas Poor Yorrick moves on your dead friends, and get 1XP for every time you watch them get turfed and act sad about it. Seems like a bad agenda, to be honest: it relies on losing units, and taking a turn off from war (which is going to get another unit killed), and 1XP is honestly not that big of a draw. Pass.
Do you like rolling dice on stupid tables all the time, but your friends are no longer willing to play your custom mission with multiple d100 tables rolled at the beginning of every turn? Well, have we got the objective for you: Paths of Fate sees you rolling a d3 at the beginning of each Command phase to randomly choose whether you’re supposed to be gunning for Characters, Infantry, or Vehicles. Each time you whack that turn’s particular mole, the unit who did it gets 1XP. In conclusion, fuck this agenda. I hate it.
Greg: haha, this sucks, man.
Harlequins get even nerdier than the other elves here, and try to put on A Perfect Rehearsal. You pick the three models with the most wounds from your opponent’s army, then murder them. If you’re successful, any Harlequins unit that destroyed one of those three models gets 2XP, and you’ll also get to pick one of your current Tale’s Rehearsal-phase bullet points and treat it as though it was accomplished. This is probably one of the better ones in the book, not only giving you a decent amount of XP for a couple of Harlequins units, but letting you ignore one of the Rehearsal requirements, several of which are annoying to complete, and most of the remainder of which are just a pain to track.
Requisitions
There are four, not counting the other four that are for the Paths system. They’re fine.
Court of the Young King deletes the Exarch power from a unit of Aspect Warriors (and denies them XP for their next game), but also gives you an Avatar. Insanely good trade, smash this button as soon as you can and keep smashing it if your Avatar ever dies.
Condit: The only way this could be better would be if you could use it midgame to have your Exarch just explode from the inside into the Avatar like how you used to get Greater Daemons back in like 3rd or whatever.
The Ghost Warriors Walk works like the old Space Marine Dreadnought Machine: after “earning” their second battle scar, dumpster an infantry or biker unit and replace it with Wraithguard or Wraithblades. Characters get replaced with Wraithlords. Experience carries over, and new Battle Honours are selected, but the scars disappear, replaced with perfect gleaming wraithbone, ready to be scarred anew. Again, very cool.
Situational but hilarious, we have Renewed Determination. After winning a battle against an army containing any SLAANESH units, spend 1RP to put 5XP on your warlord. This is either never going to happen, or you’ll be able to relentlessly farm XP off of the Daemons player that used to be your friend.
Finally, Exemplar of the Shrines. Treat yourself to an Exarch power. You knew this was coming, and you’ll probably get a lot of use out of it.
Psychic Fortitudes
As befits their status as Weird Psychic Jerks, your Eldar have access to not one, but two Psychic Fortitudes tables. Asuryani Warlocks get their own table with three options: Collective Denial adds 1 to Deny the Witch tests, unless it’s a Warlock Conclave, in which case it adds more – a total of +2 for units with 3-6 Warlocks, and +3 for units with 7 or more. Rage of Khaine lets you punch back at any hedge sorcerer who would dare to try to interfere with your casting, dealing a mortal wound to any enemy psyker who tries to deny the Warlock’s cast but fails. Finally, Empowered by Battle gives you +2 to psychic tests if you’re within engagement range of enemy units, an interesting ability that could create some weird situations if your Warlock can get stuck in.
Other Psyker Character units get access to a d6 table. Channelled Wrath is your melee booster, giving the psyker +1 to the damage characteristic of each of their melee weapons in until the start of your next Psychic phase any time you successfully manifest a power. Mantra of Disruption is a nasty defensive trick, making any attempt to Deny the Witch an automatic success on a roll of 9+ – roughly a 28% chance before you add in any modifiers or re-rolls. Warding Meditations helps defend you against Daemons, imposing a -1 penalty to hit the psyker in melee on those jerks, and an additional -1 to wound if they’re a Slaanesh Daemon. Expansive Mind is a sleeper-pick for one of the best options here, letting you use the Psychic Meditations requisition to re-choose your psychic powers for free, letting you take maximum advantage of the incredible variety of psychic powers in this book without having to take like 6 different Farseers. Layered Consciousness would be at the top of the list if Secondary Objectives were a thing, but as it stands, being able to use a model to generate Agenda points with psychic actions without taking away the ability to throw out key powers in the same phase is mere “very good” rather than “absolutely mandatory.” Finally, Reader of Strategy gives you a WC4 psychic action to gain a command point. Neat.
You really can’t go wrong picking something from these tables, as with the exception of Warding Meditations, you’re probably going to be able to squeak at least some use out of any trait you generate from them. And if you’re able to choose the trait you want from the lot, there are some real bangers in here that you’d be foolish to pass up. All in all, an excellent addition that will help make Aeldari psykers walk the walk when they start talking shit about how other factions’ witches couldn’t cast their way out of a paper bag.
Battle Traits
Your pointy weirdos have four tables here, and they’re all locked to specific unit types. In total, these don’t come close to covering the entire range, so expect to be rolling on the core rulebook tables a fair bit.
Guardians have three traits to pick from: +1Ld and +1 to hit when under half strength, auto-pass Out of Action tests, or 0CP Martial Citizenry. Any of these are pretty solid choices – the boost to units under half strength will be useful on a fragile infantry squad to help them continue to be relevant even after they’ve taken a hit or two, and passing Out of Action tests will keep them from racking up Battle Scars every few games when they die. Finally, getting Autarch re-rolls without having to have the character standing nearby not really doing anything is a neat trick that will make them more reliable.
Wraithguard and Wraithblades get to choose between ignoring cover (all cover) from inside 12”, no-selling a single failed save Helix Gauntlet-style once a turn (this one does require a Spiritseer nearby, which puts a bit of a damper on it), and regaining one wound in the unit per turn. Given how hard it is to hurt these things in the first place, that free wound is sick as hell.
What about the pirates? Who cares for the humble Anhrathe? Maybe if they could choose between +1WS, +1BS, or being able to Heroically Intervene, you might respect them more. An entire unit of Corsairs heroically intervening sure is something, but to really get the most out of this trait you’ll want to keep a CP in your back pocket to re-equip them and really lean into whichever trait you’ve rolled for. Or just wait a little bit, and have them all, who cares. Sick of elves.
The biggest jerks in the entire galaxy, the Harlequins, can either ignore any or all hit, BS, and WS modifiers (holy shit), gain +1 if a Shadowseer did Psychic things near them, or force a -1 to Combat Attrition to anything with 3 inches. These are all good, Harlequins are the clear winner here, but that first one, my god. It does say “any or all” modifiers, so you’re free, as one might expect from Harlequins, to simply ignore the rules that are not to your advantage, and apply only the ones that work in your favor.
These are, basically without exception, Good Traits. The “worst” one is maybe the Out of Action thing for Guardians, but even that isn’t bad per se, just something that’s only useful when being owned.
Relics
Ynnari get their own insufferable relics (see below), and Corsairs can’t use these ones, so these are all Asuryani and Harlequins only.
Relic pistols are never good, but this one might get there. The Blazing Star of Vaul has a somewhat uninspiring 4/-1/1 statline, but I’m going to give it a pass because it gets eight shots. Go to hell, Hexmark Destroyers.
Harlequins can put on the Mask of Secrets, which is so stupid looking that it imposes a -1 Ld penalty that increases to -2 for units in engagement range with it, and it also turns off hit and wound re-rolls on attacks that (rightfully) target the bearer. I hate this, and I’m signing while I admit that it’s pretty good.
The Shimmerplume of Achillrial is a fancy hat with a fuckload of feathers for your Autarch, that makes them -1 to be hit (in both ranged and melee) and also knocks a dice off of anyone charging them. In theory this means you’ll be rolling 1d6. In practice it means you’ll just charge someone next to them, and consolidate in. Losing an entire dice on a charge roll is absurdly strong, but that -1 to be hit is the real juice here.
Finally, a model with a Harlequin’s Kiss can replace it with the Serpent’s Tail. This is an easy upgrade, at +2/-3/2, and it further pays off when using the Kiss of Death stratagem, where 6s to wound will deal d3 mortals instead of 1. Given that a third of the time it’ll be exactly the same as a normal Kiss, it’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s still very solid.
Beanith sneaking in here with the Legendary level Relics which were missed in the first pass. The sword is nice and the ratty ancient space lycra catsuit is passable but I’d still take the Vortex Grenade… but since Rob is here with the Stick I’ll go a little more in depth. Kaela Mensha Shelwe, Song of the Bloody-Handed is a Strength +7 banshee blade/witchblade with -4AP and 3 Damage so not only will you be dicing and slicing almost everything you run into, it will also cause a unit destroyed by this weapon to fail Out of Action tests on a 1-3.
Raiment of the Laughing God is the aforementioned ratty ancient space lycra catsuit which can be given to a Harlequin character that has made it all the way to Legendary status without taking a Pivotal Role upgrade. This sweet upgraded suit adds 1 to Strength, Toughness, Wounds and Attack characteristics. Once per game you can also reroll any or all of the dice when making a Luck of the Laughing God roll and use an Aeldari Epic Deed stratagem for 0CP.
Beanith: I’m already dreading my first time seeing an Autarch on a Jetbike or with wings heading towards me with that Kale Malt Shake sword. I’m going to be so disappointed in my friend when they take the cowardly sword instead of a proper Vortex Grenade.
Soul-bonded Relics
Oh look, it’s more dumb Ynnari Soulcrap. I thought I was done having to type “Ynnari” but here we are. These are explicitly treated as Crusade Relics, but can only be purchased with Soup Points. Let’s go, there’s only four, and they don’t have level restrictions, but are all Ynnari only.
Here, put the Baja Soulblast Blade on someone with a power sword or Banshee blade. +2/-3/3damage isn’t a bad statline, but also if the blade removes a unit, on a 4+ any enemy unit within 3” takes a single Mortal Wound. If it were per-model this would be insane, but per-unit (both in the sense that it has to finish off a unit and only does Mortals on a unit-by-unit bases) it’s just aggressively fine.
The Soulsight Crown is good though: learn an extra power from the Revenant discipline, and whether a Revenant power is manifested, the Elf in the Hat regains a lost wound. No one ever complained about knowing too many powers, and regenerating wounds is very good.
The auto-take here is probably the Soulguard Plate, which gives +1 to strength, +1” to moves, and a 3+ armor save. That last bonus is hard to come by in Asuryani, but the +1S puts most power swords at S5, which is a useful breakpoint (it wounds marines on a 3 and custodes on a 4).
Finally, the Soulsever Pistol, and you can add Soul to the list of words that I’ve seen so many times they’ve lost all meaning. Relic pistols are back to never being good, and a 5/-1/2damage Shuriken pistol still isn’t, even if it does get 3 shots.
Final Thoughts
Greg: Folks, it’s good. The Paths system by itself would have met my criteria for accepting the Arbitrary Points Tracking Element, and throwing everything else in was just a nice bonus. The traits are good, the Agendas are mostly OK, and most of the relics are even worth a look. There’s very little to complain about, it’s just kind of good everywhere.
What’s truly nuts about this is how much of it you can be using at the same time. Including any Harlequins or Ynnari unlocks Performances and Soul Shenanigans, and all of it can be happening while you’re shuffling Asuryani up and down their Paths around like a lunatic. There can be a lot going on, all the time, all at once. These might end up being my favorite Crusade rules, by sheer volume if nothing else.
Beanith: Seconded, speaking as someone planning on running an Army of Faith from the War Zone Nachmund: Vigilus Alone with Black Templar and Sisters, the number of books I’ll need laying around will be boggling but not nearly as bad as if I was running Torchbearers. Having everything you need in the one (two if you count Drukhari) book is great.
I was briefly annoyed by the lack of “Empire” or background building narrative for the Space Elfs in this book but then I remembered that, lore-wise, that would be difficult to pull off. All in all, a great set of Crusade rules and I dread to see what fresh horrors my mate Niezche will come up with in our ongoing campaign.
