The Tenth Edition version of Codex: Astra Militarum releases soon and we’re reviewing everything in the upcoming book. If you missed our review of the book’s army rules, datasheets, and detachments, you can find our review here.

At first glance we figured this would just be an update of the Crusade rules from the 9th edition Codex and while we’ve found that annoying in the past (it did cause Beanith to sulk a bit and grumble to himself for a few days in the corner of the Goonhammer offices over have to review the rules again), that’s much less of an issue here than with other books. The prior Codex released just before the end of ninth edition and likely left a lot of players with unused rules as they hit the hard reset button on the edition. At the very least, we assume a great number of guard players never had a chance to finish a Tour of Duty and play with some of the cooler relics and Commendations.

That said, there are some new rules here, expanding on what we had in ninth edition. In this review we’ll cover everything – old and new – and talk about how this all fits together.

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

Tours of Duty

Depending on the Lore or Black Library author, an individual Guardsman’s Tour of Duty might last an hour and end with them joining the ever-expanding Wall of Martyrs Defence Network or if they’re exceptionally devout (and lucky), they may last a century or two completing several Tours. Thankfully this Tour of Duty is more aimed at the Company level and is represented both by rolling to see just how many battles you will need to play (D6+4) as well as how many games you will need to win (D3+2) to complete a Tour. Tours are for the most part, the quest entity you’ll be playing with in this book, and how you’ll break up your personal campaigns for your Order of Battle.

As an interesting change of pace, you actually want to roll high on both of these because in doing so, you will have the opportunity to earn more Commendation Points, which are used for cool rewards. We’ll cover those in detail a little further down.

Before we leap into all the fun toys, we need to first get everything squared away with the Departmento Munitorum – we’ll need to ensure that all of your paperwork is filled in correctly with proper punctuation, that you have the correct number of wax seals, and that you’ve used the correct cover sheet, along with a tasteful amount of bri… er tithes.

Every time you start a Tour of Duty, you have 4 Logistic points to assign in 4 different Logistic categories: Lexmechanicus, Materials, Tithe Pool and Morale. You can be a big boring baby by playing it safe and assigning 1 point to each category and thus avoid your Crusade force having to deal with the penalties that come from having zero Logistic points in a category. Or you could live dangerously – having zero logistic points in a category means you’ll be affected with a Deficiency, and as a result suffer a penalty in each battle. On the other hand, having two Logistic points in a category will result in a Surplus, and give a powerful effect in each battle, which can outweigh those penalties. So depending on your play style, this may be exactly what you want, and can encourage some cool scenarios.

Let’s look at the four categories for Logistics:

Category: Lexmechanicus

Communications and planning infrastructure for your Crusade force. The Lexmechanicus Surplus grants you an additional Imperial Guard Agenda – an excellent source of Commendation points and some tasty XP. A Deficiency on the other hand adds a risk of failure to Officers: Every time you issue an order you’ll roll a D6 and fail on a 1.

Category: Materiel

Materiel is all about the size of your ammo dump and access to fuel and spare parts. A surplus will get you an amazing ability – each unit in your army gets one free hit re-roll every time it is selected to shoot. A Deficiency on the other hand will reduce the Movement characteristic of your vehicles by 2″.

Category: Tithe Pool

The Tithe Pool is not found in intertidal zone chock full of deadly wildlife as first thought but instead as a source of fresh recruits keen to give the Emperor’s foes a well deserved thumping. Having a Surplus steals the Necrons’ gimmick by allowing you to return a destroyed model to each of your Regiment Infantry units in your Command phase. Having a Deficiency means you won’t be able to generate Command Points in your Command Phase if your Warlord isn’t on the battlefield.

Category: Morale

Finally we have Morale. A surplus nets you +1 Leadership across your army. A Deficiency means you cannot use the Insane Bravery Stratagem. This is fine, and Insane Bravery is a very important tool to have… but you can make up for it in a lot of ways and this is the most likely category players are going to take a Deficiency in so they can get a Surplus elsewhere.

Commendations

Every time you finish a Tour of Duty with your Crusade Force, you can spend Commendation Points to buy special upgrades for your units called Commendations. Commendation Points are earned through battle – taking part in a battle gives you 1 point, though a win will earn you D3 instead. The Codex Agendas also give you a number of additional ways to earn Commendation points. This means that at a minimum you’ll earn five points from a Tour (played in five games, zero wins, zero agendas), and your ceiling is closer to 50, with an average tour likely to net you around 15-20.

Commendations come with a cost – these can range from 1 to 8 points, with more expensive Commendations having more power. When it comes to your roster, Personal Commendations are treated as new Battle Honours and there are some restrictions around how you add these – more on those below.

Regimental Commendations are a bit more serious – these affect your entire Order of Battle and each one you get increases your Crusade points value by 3. Your Order of Battle can have a maximum of two of these.

You can remove Commendations at any time, which can make it handy to replace them if you want to buy a better upgrade later.

Personal Commendations

There are eighteen different Personal Commendations to choose from and with any luck you’ll have a bunch of Commendation points to spend. Most of these are priced very cheaply with various restrictions limiting who they can be given to, on top of those, there are also few limits on how exactly you go about handing out shiny ribbons and bits of tin at the end of each Tour.

• Personal Commendations count towards a unit’s Battle Honour limitations.
• Officers can have a maximum of two different Personal Commendations.
• Everyone else can only have the one Personal Commendation.
• You can’t give out the same Personal Commendation more than once per Tour of Duty.

There are too many Personal Commendations for us to cover every one, but the list is pretty large and more than a few are limited to either a specific unit or unit type. Some noteworthy ones we spotted were the Diamantine Star, which for one Commendation point lets your Regiment unit be set up within your opponent’s deployment zone when arriving from Strategic Reserves, giving you some stealthy early-game plays. The Celeris Heart (2 points) goes on a Regiment unit and gives them a Reactive move of up to D6″ – always handy.

Honorifica Imperialis is a fantastic bargain at two Commendation points. This unit, when issued an order, instead of applying until the start of next Command phase, will last until the end of the battle, until they are issued a new order or the unit becomes Battle-shocked. It won’t let you bypass your maximum order effects, but it’s a good way to “set it and forget it” on something like your backfield mortars, and helpful for running fewer officers.

Pinning the Oculus Laureate on your Warlord sets you back four Commendation points but in return lets you use one Crusade Blessing even if you are not the Underdog. Free bonus Agenda every time? Yes please.

Rounding out our picks is the Medallion Resolute which gives its unit a 5+ invulnerable save while it’s within range of an Objective marker. Tanks with Invulnerable saves? Sounds like heresy. Or some pointy eared space elf bullshit.

Regimental Commendations

Beanith: Here’s where I’ll quite happily eat crow and accept that I was wrong, there is brand new content and it is awesome.

Regimental Commendations are brand new, powerful bonus abilities that buff one of the various Orders you can issue. These represent the various ways your specific regiment has become adept at warfare, reflecting their preferred fighting style.

There are eight on offer and you had better think long and hard about which ones you want because at a cost of 8 points each, securing these takes some work. As mentioned above, you can only have two of these.  And because we heard you like more shenanigans on top of all this cool nonsense, each of the Regimental Commendations is also affected by your Logistics Surpluses and Deficiencies. These affects don’t necessarily tie into your Orders, and may just be army-wide effects.

• Expert Bombardiers affects the Take Aim! Order. When the unit makes an attack with a Blast weapon you improve the Armour Penetration by 1 whenever you score a Critical Wound. In addition, if you have a Morale Surplus, Artillery units in your Crusade army gain 2XP from Dealers of Death. On the other hand, if you have a Deficiency in Lexmechanicus, you have to roll a D6 each time you gain a CP and on a 1 you lose that CP.
• Paragons of Drill Discipline gives your Rapid Fire weapons [SUSTAINED HITS 1] when they remain stationary while under the First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire! Order. A Materiel Surplus will give your ARTILLERY units the ability to re-roll 1s to hit, while a Tithe Pool Deficiency will up the RP cost of some of your Requisitions.
• Veteran Crew lets SQUADRON units under the Duty and Honour! Order ignore damage effects. While you have a Materiel Surplus, your SQUADRON vehicles get +3 OC, and if you have a Tithe Pool Deficiency, you get -1 to your Out of Action tests.
• Vanguard Honours changes up the effects of Move! Move! Move! Order by adding the [ASSAULT] ability to ranged weapons of SQUADRON units. A Lexmechanicus Surplus will net you one extra CP in your Command phase if you have a SQUADRON unit in your opponent’s Deployment zone, and a deficiency in Morale will cause you to lose Commendation points on a roll of a 1 each time you earn one.
• Preservation Commendation gives your Infantry units the benefit of Cover if they’re within 3″ of a friendly Transport model while under the effects of the Take Cover! Order – hand to have in a Recon Element. A Tithe Pool Surplus will up the wounds of your transports by 1, and a Lexmechanicus deficiency will see you getting 1 fewer Crusade Blessings as the Underdog – or one extra for your opponent if they are.
• Mechanised Assault Merit gives any unit disembarking from a Transport with FRFSRF that same order for the turn – handy if you’re carting around units other than Kasrkin. A Morale Surplus will let Regiment units in your army hop out of Transports even after Advancing, while a Materiel Deficiency will drop the movement on your transports by 4″ while they’re below half-strength.
• Cavalry Aquila gives your Regiment units +2 to Advances while under the Move! Move! Move! Order. While you have a Lexmechanicus surplus, you can pick 3 regiment units in your army to Infiltrate before the battle. A Morale Deficiency on the other hand will prevent you from marking anyone for Greatness or adding Crusade Relics to your army.
• With Veteran Guerrillas, Regiment units under the effect of Fix Bayonets! gain the [PRECISION] ability on their melee attacks. A Tithe Pool surplus will net you 2 XP per unit (instead of 1) for each
• Whilst enjoying splashing around in Tithe Pool Surplus, all of your Regiment in your Crusade army gain 2XP for just showing up (instead of the 1XP rewarded from Battle Experience). Conversely, those with a Morale Deficiency don’t gain the Requisition point for completing a battle unless they win the game.

TheChirurgeon: These are great – they’re absolutely the kind of things I want to see more of in Crusade, where you are customizing and tailoring your army and how they play rather than just tinkering with a bunch of units and creating lots of book keeping. These benefits/drawbacks for surpluses and deficiencies also feel very substantial, and create the kinds of interesting decisions I really like to see.

Agendas

So you’ve seen all of the cool Personal and Regimental Commendations on offer and now you’re itching to scrounge up as many Commendation points as possible. Luckily for you, the Imperial Guard Agendas all include a secondary bonus that if fulfilled awards you an additional Commendation point.

Advance, for the Emperor! rewards up to six of your Guard units 1XP for chilling in the enemy deployment zone at the end of the battle. This one should be right up the alley for Scions and Mechanised Assault forces as the bonus condition for the extra Commendation is if one of those units is your Warlord.

Propaganda Targets is your typical Agenda where the opponent nominates three of their units to be XP Pinatas/Extermination Targets and your goal is to destroy them. The unit that lands the killing blow gains 3 XP and should you pick up all three then you get a shiny Commendation point.

Running a Crusade force with lots of shouty people ordering your mooks around? Inspiring Command will be your Agenda of choice as each time an enemy unit is destroyed by one of your units that was affected by an Order, the Officer that issued that order gains 1XP. This is capped at 3 XP per Officer and if 5 or more Officers gain XP this way, you get the bonus Commendation point. Five officers is a big ask, but this is going to level up your tank commanders pretty fast.

Hold the Line is an interesting take on the usual Agenda asking you to keep the enemy out of your deployment zone as this one isn’t scored at the end of the battle. Instead, from the second battle round onwards, if there are no enemy units stinking up your deployment zone at the end of your turn, your Warlord will earn 1XP. Failure to keep your home base enemy free means the Agenda is finished for the rest of the battle. If your Warlord gains 4XP from this then you get the bonus Commendation.

Rounding out this section is the Arming the Assault Agenda and this one is a beast. All of the objectives are considered to be Unsecured Munitions and your goal is to capture every single one of them. This is done by having a unit within range of an objective give up their ability to shoot and charge for a turn in order to Strategically Take Equipment At Leisure and gain 2XP for their troubles. At the end of the battle, if you have secured and control all of the objective markers in No Man’s Land, you will earn yourself a bonus Requisition point. The bonus Commendation point is earned if you have managed to snaffle one of the objective markers in your opponent’s deployment zone.

This is a solid set of Agendas, and they make scoring extra Commendation points very tricky – it’s a good balance here that asks a lot if you’re going to get those extra upgrades.

Requisitions

For those keen to get a head start on turning your freshly minted butter bars into someone vaguely useful on the battlefield, for one RP Decorated Officer gives your newly added Officer 6 XP, fast-tracking them to Blooded status.

Uplifting Primers makes for an excellent option to burn a spare Requisition, it lets you use the Insane Bravery Stratagem for 0CP even if you are currently affected by the Morale Logistics Deficiency for one battle. Boring Matched Play Nonsense? Maybe, but if actions ever make it into Crusade it’ll be a lot more useful. This also gives 1XP to all of your Regiment units that did not suffer a Devastating Blow at the end of the battle.

Now it wouldn’t be Crusade without some sort of Crusade Shenanigans to finagle your Crusade mechanics and the Imperial Guard one is Commit Everything. At first glance might be seen as the typical Coward’s Path in granting you one additional Logistics point to spend at the start of your Tour. The kick in the pants with this is, for every battle you don’t win for the rest of the Tour, you will start losing Commendation points – one for every lost battle, until you hit 0.

Fire up the cloning vats and file off those pesky serial numbers as it’s the Last-minute Transfer requisition. For 1 RP, you can take an existing Regiment or Squadron unit from your Order of Battle and replace them with another Regiment or Squadron unit. They keep the same Personal Commendations (if any), the same amount of XP and immediately gain the appropriate number of Battle Honours for that rank. And somehow during all that paperwork shuffling, any Battle Scars are presumably misplaced as well.

Last we have Above and Beyond the Call of Duty which costs 2 RP and is used at the end of the Tour when handing out Personal Commendations. Your chosen unit’s newly minted medal does not count towards the maximum number of Battle Honours that unit can have.

Battle Traits

Infantry and Cavalry share a table of six battle traits because if you think about it, a horsey is just a slightly more intelligent Ogryn with better hygiene. Change my mind.

• Dead-eyed Killers lets you add 1 when rolling for Battle-shock, Leadership & Desperate Escape tests.
• Stealthy gives the unit Stealth, oddly enough. Truly an impressive achievement for the Officer that managed to get a large unit of Rough Riders or Ogryn to stay quiet enough for the enemy not to notice them.
• Sharpshooters gain the [Heavy] keyword on their ranged weapons.
• Grizzled is your typical 6+ Feel No Pain with a bonus re-roll on failed Out of Action tests.
• Guerrillas is straight up sneaky space elf bullshit letting the unit move D6” after shooting. Cavalry get a bonus of still being eligible to charge after using this ability.
• Rounding it out is Trench Fighters where the unit gains the [Lethal Hits] keyword on their melee weapons. If anyone asks why the horses are experts in trench warfare, they’re spouting heretical thoughts and should be referred to your closest Commissar.

Officers of course get their own table, I assume it goes in their own mess hall or probably in the Officer’s club where all Enlisted fear to tread. There are three up for grabs and they are rated Meh, Great and Broken.

• For Meh, we have Old Grudges where at the start of the battle, that Officer nominates an enemy unit and for the rest of the battle, that Officer’s unit gets to re-roll the hit rolls when targeting that enemy.
• For the extra shouty Officer, we have the Great Booming Voice extending their Order range from 6” to 12”.
• And the Broken trait is an Eye for Talent. If the Officer survives the battle, you may select an additional unit to be Marked for Greatness. It’s good when only one Officer is running around with this but you know you want this trait on more than one Officer.

Vehicle units get a couple of nice treats to tempt you away from the Weapon Modification table briefly.

• Urban Fighters ignore the penalties to Hit rolls when firing ranged weapons when Engaged.
• Big-Game Hunters is a tasty trait for those facing lots of Vehicles and Monsters allowing you to re-roll Hit and Wound rolls of 1.
• Well-Drilled Crew is an interesting trait adding the [Assault] keyword to the unit’s ranged weapons. Just picture the joy on your opponent’s face as your Rogal Dorn battle tanks are a bit more closer with better firing arcs than expected.

Crusade Relics

It turns out that they keep almost all of the fun toys in the Officer’s club as five of the six relics on offer are for Officers only. Furthermore, the fancier relics are strictly for the Infantry which is a shame because Games Workshop clearly missed a trick here. I mean who wouldn’t want a legendary tank gun named Creed’s Massive Shaft?

The three basic Relics are the Aquilan Eye which lets your Officer give up a chance to issue an Order to instead gain 1CP by passing a Leadership test. The Voice of Von Rhye throat lozenge lets the Officer issue an additional Order each Command phase and those Orders have the additional benefit of sticking around if that unit fails a Battle-shock test. Rounding out this section is the leftover Iconic Accoutrements which while could be made available to your other characters like the Priests and Psykers, it’s probably going to end up on one of your many Tank Officers because being able to change a Hit, Wound or saving throw to a 6 once per turn is just too good to waste on those chumps.

Moving up the ranks into Antiquity are the Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius and Magallian’s Mantle. These cool toys are for the Infantry Officer in your Crusade roster and are both excellent upgrades. The Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius is a floating skull that enables the Officer to issue two different Orders per turn. This is made all the much better as both Orders can be issued to the unit the Officer is currently leading. Magallian’s Mantle is a fun bundle of augmetic implants that improve the bearer’s Save, Wounds, Leadership and Objective Control characteristics by 1, improve the Weapon and Ballistic characteristics of the bearer’s weapons by 1, and then to top off that awesome sundae, improve their Invulnerable save by 1 as well.

Lastly is the Legendary Star of Terra, this fancy medal has a built in force field which atypically for the Imperium actually also protects the Infantry Officer’s unit with a 5+ Invulnerable save. Plus it also forces your opponent to subtract 1 from Wound rolls when targeting that unit. Lore wise I can see why this is the Legendary relic but man that Mantle is so much better. Beanith: I won’t compare this with the Vortex Grenade as I already gave that to the Rogal Dorn Commander instead. Drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword? Amateurs.

Name Generator

There are six different tables with thirty-six different possible first names on offer for whatever flavor of Imperial Guard you are currently running. They do not include six more tables to roll for last names however so you may be stuck calling them all Smith if you’re lazy like us.

Far more importantly there two tables for first and last names for all of your tanks. Beanith: I don’t drive about in a mere Toyota Corolla, instead I rumble about in the Brazen Beast.

Final Thoughts

Beanith: This is a great set of Crusade rules for the Imperial Guard and now that I’ve finally gone back and read my old review and previous codex, it’s crystal clear to me the level of polish, love and attention that went into updating these rules from 9th to 10th is brilliant.

It’s an amazing set of rules and I can’t wait to see what the local Guard players in my Crusade group will come up with on their various Tours of Duty.

TheChirurgeon: Yeah I’m really impressed with the work they did here – it’s a clear improvement over the rules in the 9th edition book, with more Personal Commendations and the addition of Regimental Commendations. They’ve also done more with the Logistics mechanics, and that’s a welcome addition here as well. These are just really solid and a good addition for Astra Militarum players that doesn’t mess with bigger campaign structures in the way that planetary conquest/devouring mechanics do with Tyranids/GSC/T’au.

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