Something was coming, driving through the inky blackness of the interplanetary void with predatory determination. A Shadow. A tendril of alien intelligence striking towards the worlds of the Imperium. In the Tyrannic War Crusade supplement (also included as part of the limited edition core book from Leviathan) players get to learn about this new story thread before striking out on Crusades of their own, and assembling Crusade forces who will evolve from game to game and grow along the course of the edition with their own heroic deeds and scars to tell the tale!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy of Warhammer 40,000 Leviathan to review! In this post we’ll be checking out the new Crusade rules for 10th edition along with just what is included within the Tyrannic War supplement. We’ll investigate what has changed since the last edition and take a look at what fun things we have to look forward to in games of Crusade!

If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We have multiple 40k 10th edition posts up on the site already, and more going up over the next few weeks – in particular make sure to check out our full Deep Dive into the rules or our full Unboxing and Review – you can also check them out in the video below!

We have also put together a full video deep dive into the Crusade section of the new 40k rulebook – so make sure to watch that one below too!

So gather your Crusade force as we take a look into just how Crusade works in the 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000

Tyrannic War Crusade Review

So regular readers will know that Crusade was our favourite element of the previous edition of Warhammer 40k, and when we learned that a new edition of the game was coming alongside the Leviathan box we were very excited to see what had changed and what was on the cards for our favourite game system.

It’s safe to say that anyone picking up the Leviathan box won’t be disappointed, as the rulebook inside is the very first place to get access to not only the new Crusade rules, but the entire new Crusade supplement “Tyrannic War”.

This supplement tells the tale of the latest Tyranid invasion, and the effects that are felt across the galaxy as they pour across the stars!

I don’t want to dig too much into the lore here, as people will want to enjoy this for themselves, but this book is packed full of new narrative that brings us up to speed on what is happening. I find it interesting that the bulk of this story is told within this Crusade supplement and not the core rulebook itself, but I support it does make sense – In the past, the major narrative beats have had to wait for events such as the Arks of Omen or Broken Realms. These tend to be collections of books at the end of an edition that move things forwards towards the next narrative arc. However, if Games Workshop can now use these Crusade supplements as the main way of driving forward the continuing story of Warhammer 40k, then it means we can see some shifts from a story point of view. For example we could spend a couple of books discussing the Tyranid invasion before moving the focus back to whatever Abaddon and Vashtor are up for. Or perhaps, alternate between the macro war against the ‘nids and checking out a smaller slice of the universe for something else – either way this is very exciting and opens up the possibility of lots of new lore this time around.

The story of the Tyrannic War takes up the first 40 pages of the supplement, giving fans of the narrative lots to get their teeth into!

But what of the Crusade rules themselves? The book also contains the full Crusade ruleset allowing you to craft your own stories through narrative driven battles, and a focus on a long term campaign as you see you army and units develop over time, gaining power and experience, or perhaps falling to deadly injuries.

Now this is nothing new, we’ve all seen Crusade content in the past. However, while Crusade was loads of fun, for us there were a couple of things that made it feel like it could be tweaked a little to encourage narrative play and not simply try and optimise your units to be as strong as possible. Another thing that hurt Crusade sometimes was the disconnect between Power Level and Points – too often units would get updated and the Power Level would stay at the same value, leaving some units feeling too expensive or two cheap compared to other options.

I’m happy to share that the new 10th edition Crusade ruleset fixes a lot of these problems.

Firstly, Power is gone. All Crusade armies are simply built using points. This is a great change and brings the way both Matched Play and Narrative Play armies are built closer together. As units are updated for Matched Play then those points will also be reflected in Crusade, making sure that everyone is playing a game that is as balanced as possible.

Next, the way Requisition points work has changed a little. You still earn these for playing games, but the things that are used on are more important now and they feel more of a finite resource. The cap has changed from 5 to 10 giving you more of a tank of them between things you want to buy, and the costs of a lot of the good options have increased considerably to make it tougher to max out your units as soon as possible, and encouraging a more gentle and relaxed path to leveling them up.

Crusade Campaigns start with you having 1000 points in order to draft your initial pool of units, and then you can buy additional 200 point increments of supply limit using a requisition point for each 200 points. Due to the fact that you start a Crusade force with 5 RP means you could simply spend them all day 1 in order to simply transition your entire 40k matched play force to Crusade and start from there. When playing a game, both players agree on a points cap for the game and then draw an army from their force. So if Andy had 3000 points and Dave 2000 points then they could agree to play either a 1000 or 2000 point game and draw their forces from their lists.

Adding Enhancements is a lot more expensive now – the first time you add one to your Order of Battle it costs 1RP, but this increases each time you do so with the second costing 2 and the third costing 3 – meaning it will cost a total of 6 requisition to add all 3 enhancements to your list. It’s worth noting that each hero can only have a single Enhancement too!

Another thing that is new is that non-character units have an initial experience cap of 30 – essentially this means that the maximum rank they can reach is Battle Hardened. In order for non Character units to advance further, you must spend 3 RP to “limit break” them and allow them to gain further experience and ranks. This is another good change that requires you to decide who to prioritise your precious RP on when leveling up your units.

Rearm and Resupply works much the way it always did, basically you spend 1 RP to change the loadout of your unit.

What has changed a lot however is Repair and Recuperate. While we house ruled it that battle scars stick around, a lot of people at Crusade events would spend any spare RP to patch up their units so they suffered non of the adverse effects. This changes in 10th edition as the cost of removing a battle scar increases by 1 for each battle honour they have. So for example a unit with 4 battle honours would cost an eye watering 5 RP to remove a single battle scar. I love this change as it makes it far more likely that you will simply roll with the punches and play out the downsides to your scars. Equally, if you suffer a battle scar in the post game sequence you are still able to opt out of taking the scar, however if you do so you have to remove one of your honours! Again, putting a larger cost on stopping scars should mean that people are more likely to keep these on their sheet and play through the narrative of them suffering that fate.

In a similar way, adding more models to a unit also has a cost that increases based on the number of battle honours they have – meaning it will cost you 3 RP to increase the unit size of a squad with four honours compared to just 1 RP for a fresh rookie unit, again representing how difficult it would be to find suitable troops to join the squad.

Speaking of Battle Honours and scars, these still work much the same way with players being able to roll 2 D6 and pick the one they want, or discussing it with their opponent and selecting the one that fits the narrative of the battle. I really like talking this through with my opponent, as it sets up some cool future arcs to play out as the character seeks out the person who caused the scar in order to get their revenge. I find this always makes for more memorable games and makes the narrative match the gaming experience.

The Tyrannic War books includes a host of charts for your honours, but also introduces something new and cool in the form of Tyrannic War Veterans. This is a special upgrade that costs 1 RP for units that are Blooded or higher, and essentially sets them on one of two upgrade trees that unlock new abilities (think video game branching upgrade trees and you are halfway there!) When a unit becomes a Tyrannic War Veteran they get to choose one of two trees – Monster Hunters (which is for Infantry and Mounted units) or Striding Behemoths (Which is for Monsters and Walkers)

Levels in this tree are gained by killing units and add some nice thematic flavour to your units. What’s really cool is the potential that this opens up further in future supplements. So perhaps, during this campaign a couple of your units become Tyrannic Vets, but in future campaigns you can a unit that is particularly good against killing heroes, or maybe take part during a siege and gain bonuses for siege warfare – over the source of the life of 10th edition your armies will become distinctly yours, and you’ll be able to cast your eyes across all the various badges and rewards you have earned for their deeds.

In the previous edition, if a side with a high Crusade score fought one with a low Crusade score then the underdog would get some command points – and I always found this was a little disappointing in balancing the odds. This has now been reworked with Crusade Blessings – a number of different buffs that are granted based on the difference in Crusade points. So for example if one side has 10 Crusade Points and the other had 30, then the weaker side would get to pick 4 Blessings to have in effect that game – and they are really good! So for example they can give their entire army cover turn 1, or perhaps once per game add 1 to all charge rolls. Or how about giving every unit that survives the battle extra XP to help them level up faster? I feel this is a much slicker solution and should make things a little more fun for the player with the lower Crusade points.

We also get a big chunk of gaming content with a full campaign system that allows players to link their battles together along with 15 missions to fight over (including 3 designed for 3000 points armies on larger tables.) These are really fun and are themed around the narrative of the book. I hope that these supplements come out regularly this edition increasing the pool of Crusade content that players have access to.

Summary

The Tyrannic War Crusade Supplement is a great introduction to how Crusade works in the 10th edition of Warhammer 40k. We were a little worried that things may have changed quite a lot in Crusade, but thankfully the core of the game mode is the same, with some of the things that didnt work quite as well in 9th updated for 10th!

With Power Level now gone, I feel that more people will be open to trying out Crusade as they can essentially use their “normal” army in the game, and be able to experience all the fun of leveling up and telling stories with their units and heroes. Existing Crusade players too will feel at home here with minimal updating of their old armies needed.

Crusade is one of the best things to happen to Warhammer 40k, and I can’t wait to see how it develops further this edition!

Warhammer 40,000 Leviathan (Containing the Tyrannic War Supplement) is up for pre order Saturday 10th June and is released Saturday 24th June. The stand alone Tyrannic War book containing the same contents will be released separately at a later date for those who opt out of Leviathan.

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes