With a couple Octarius books released swift on the heels of one another, the gaze of GW has moved to a new battlefield – and by that I mean an old one: Vigilus. I’m glad they’re doing this – I rather like the Nachmund Gauntlet as an idea, they can revisit some plot elements they’ve built up, and it’s another decent warzone (like Octarius) for a lot of different factions to be getting involved one way or the other.

So how does it hold up?

The Narrative

The book is a useful update to how Vigilus is doing – in short, not well.

Much of the planet is lost to the Imperium – either occupied by one enemy force or another, or in several cases reduced to a heap of molten slag/a festering pool of disease, etc. While Abaddon has withdrawn lest he lose the Vengeful Spirit, there are a number of Chaos forces still on the ground. The Orks are digging in, and are likely to remain a problem for the Imperium well into the future despite being effectively cut off from orbit (those of you following The COVID Discourse, this is an appropriate use of the term “endemic”, but that is a rant for another day). The Genestealer Cults take a little bit of a back seat, though there is an amusing bit about them dealing with “You told us the Four-armed Empress was coming, so where the hell is she!?” related strife, which is funny, and some interesting interactions with other forces – like what do you do when a bunch of Nurgle-infested cultists return to the fold?

There’s also a really interesting sort of thread about what to do after Calgar gets carted off by the Ultramarines and is believed to be dead. Apparently the Ultramarines stole a page from the Dark Angels playbook and decided to not use their grownup words, so everyone on the planet is convinced he’s dead and a whole martyr-cult thing rises up around that. Because if there’s one thing Calgar would want, it’s a bunch of religious fanatics doing stuff in his name.

There’s also some nice little bits – a gas leak on one of the planets in the system creates a sort of golden comet that makes everyone feel better and lessens the effect of the whole “Giant gaping hole in reality in the night sky” and also kills pilgrims. Some Sisters of Battle show up to get things done and they don’t all get martyred, which is a plus. And the Inquisition does Inquisition things, and provides some really cool fodder for what is likely a comically ineffective army on the tabletop.

Perhaps the most ironic thing is for a book called “Vigilus Alone”, there’s an extended section on keeping the entire Gauntlet secure, and a number of forces arriving on Vigilus after being lost in the warp, retreating, etc.

Overall, it’s a pretty solidly written narrative section – most of the more modern campaign books have been solid. I’ve seen people suggest they’re successors to the Imperial Armour books of old, and while that’s a bit of a stretch, they’re a far cry from some of the books that are, honestly, still in the recent past.

The Campaign System

The campaign system is…alright. It’s a straightforward set of rules for a “Two teams contesting a couple different zones” style campaigns. Per usual, I will put in my bid to replace additive campaign points systems with multiplicative ones, which keep campaigns close and contested far more reliably. This is especially important for situations where armies don’t have an equal chance of winning. Which lets be honest – between differing Crusade levels, 9th edition generally, and a group having one or two particularly good players is almost guaranteed.

I think the campaign system in the first Octarius book was better, but that definitely had a good degree more crunch to it. This system? Less so. And I think that’s probably a good thing for players – complex campaign systems can be intimidating, and a lot of rules are left by the wayside. My larger complaint is that it is very much a two team, “Imperium vs. Chaos, the rest of you need to pick a side”, which always feels awkward to me, especially for armies like the Necrons,

One genuinely innovative thing it does do is say it’s compatible with all three ways to play. The optimist in me wants to say that a quality Matched Play campaign is probably a good onramp for narrative gaming skeptical groups or those who still really want to use points.

It also comes with a really nice map suitable for hanging up somewhere.

Legendary Missions

The Legendary Missions are decent – they add yet more options for folks who are playing with the Crusade mission packs, and for Matched Play folks, they’re likely a worthwhile addition to transition away from just the current GT pack and add a little variety. The Purging of Dontoria sees the Imperium trying to light things on fire (as they do), and is a pretty symmetrical mission. The Crowning of Storvhal uses an asymmetrical deployment and the Imperium assaulting three secondary and one primary objective markers, with the secondary objectives being progressive and the primary objective scored at the end. The Corruption of Hearthlack is a “meet in the middle and do actions to claim an objective” mission, and is again, very symmetrical.

One interesting distinction here is that these will play very differently if you choose the Matched Play route, as Secondaries for those missions will change the total available points. Overall, I’d say these missions are alright – nothing particularly revolutionary, but helpfully designed to be expressly Matched Play friendly, and I suspect being less asymmetrical and wacky than some previous versions to avoid alienating people crossing over from more casually competitive mindsets. Which isn’t a bad thing. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.

New Army Rules

We get some cool general purpose army rules!

The Gravis Captain is cool. He’s slower, and tougher, and he actually has a lot of interesting build options based on what weapon you give him in addition to the Boltstorm Gauntlet. A powerfist, if you want fewer attacks that will really hurt, all the way up to an Astartes Chainsword if you want to just also have a whole mess of attacks. He’s neat. My Templars need one.

The Primaris Ancient is…a Primaris Ancient. Hopefully we’ll see them in the wild a bit with the new Crusade rules, but I don’t think he’s much to write home about. Slight change to wargear options for a new model.

Vanguard Spearhead

We also get a Space Marine Army of Renown: The Vanguard Spearhead. Basically, this is an army of maximum Phobos-armored Space Marine Spec Ops Bullshit.

I sort of love it, conceptually.

And, based on the work Colin Ward has done with his forward deployment Blood Angels force based on some old desert camo schemes from very, very early Warhammer 40K, these armies can look really good.

There’s some pretty heavy restrictions here – only Phobos, Suppressor Squad, Invictor Tactical Warsuit and Impulsor units can be taken. There’s a few ommissions there I’d like to have seen put in – notably Invader ATVs and the newer Land Speeders, which feels appropriate for a forward strike force. I get why these aren’t there – the Marines involved aren’t wearing Phobos armor, and part of this is personal bias – I love the image of my Impulsor + 2 Invader ATV patrol force.

In exchange for those restrictions, your Phobos-armored infantry squads get Objective Secured, loses Chapter Tactics, but gains Light Cover if more than 18″ away, gets a bonus to shooting if they’ve moved at least 4″, and a speedy 6″ consolidation move. You know, commando shit.

There’s a couple neat relics – one that lets them do some mortal wounds, one that gives your relic carrier advance and charge as well as causing to wound rolls of 1-3 to fail, which is handy given you can’t take some of the more durable character types, and a buffed combat knife if you want to keep trying to make that happen. Finally there’s a beefed up Force Sword, which is probably not going to make your Phobos Librarian a combat monster, but is decent for letting them function more in that role if they find themselves being pushed toward it due to the limited character options available to the force.

There’s also some new Strategems. Goonhammer wrote rather breathlessly about the 2 CP Pivotal Moment, which lets a Vanguard Spearhead Core model making a ranged attack vs. an enemy warlord do mortal wounds equal to the damage characteristic of their weapon on a successful wound roll. Unfortunately, that says model not unit, which given the rather lackluster guns the Core units carry in terms of damage makes this a pretty bad deal. As written, this is pretty much an Eliminator-only bit of utility.

You can combine this with the 2 CP Marksman Target Tracker to ignore Look Out, Sir on on the unit carrying a Marksman Target Tracker, which is an Incursor Squad on any model not also carrying a haywire mine. That’s decent for fairly fragile characters (*side eyes my Eldar*), and if Pivotal Moment worked on a unit as Goonhammer seemed to think it did would be expensive but comedy gold.

There’s a 1 CP stratagem that lets Reivers do mortals on a 6 to wound, which makes them…better-ish, and a 2 CP one that lets a unit fall back at the end of the fight phase, which is actively pretty good.

Honestly, this Army of Renown feels…fine. It’s not going to take the tournament scene by storm. It’s not going to fix the somewhat laggard performance of Space Marines at the moment. But if you really like Phobos armored units (and it is definitely an aesthetic that I can understand someone liking) and that sort of special operations feeling, from a narrative perspective this lets you do that without going “These Blood Angels are actually Raven Guard” that tends to generate a little friction in more narrative circles.

Order of the Bloody Rose

There’s also new rules for everyone’s favorite, Blood for the Blood God-Emperor of Mankind! fanatics.

This was one I was interested in. Bloody Rose is one of the stronger orders, and is especially good for armies looking for melee power from Sisters units (in contrast to primarily Pain Engine based builds). And with multi-order armies going the way of the dodo, there’s some important context here for Bloody Rose standing on it’s own sans an assist from some sisters from the Argent Shroud who just happened to be in the neighborhood and brought enough multi-meltas to share.

First, there’s some problems. Unlike in the main rulebook, the supplement defines an Order of the Bloody Rose detachment as one with all Bloody Rose units. Importantly, it does not say (except Sanctified), which is the keyword that applies to Order-agnostic units in the codex.

Like Morvenn Vahl, Saint Celestine, the Triumph of Saint Katherine, Aestred Thurga, a Dialogus, and a Hospitaller.

That’s a huge oversight if you’re going Rules as Written, and is pretty sloppy. We’re going to get to more issues with “A detachment is made up of all X units” more in a bit, but this book is the one that’s convinced me that GW is perhaps struggling a bit with the Keyword-based army composition system. I suspect this will get fixed.

There’s also a Warlord trait table that’s only accessible if your Warlord is Order of the Bloody Rose. In my mind, this is less of a problem – if you’re a competitive player, you’re likely taking Morvenn Vahl (if this gets fixed), at which point this table doesn’t matter. If your a Crusade player, the HQ and army composition for a Sisters army changes wildly from a situation where the High Lady is conveniently showing up everywhere, and you’re using likely a humble Canoness, at which point, this table’s for you.

Warlord Traits

There are three new Warlord Traits.

• Firey Example: You get +1 to wound against enemy characters in melee, and you get 2 miracle dice if you kill them. A Sisters of Battle canoness can be a remarkably dangerous foe to begin with, so this is genuinely pretty nice.
• Incandescent Reprisal: 5+ Feel No Pain, and if they were wounded by an enemy that shoots or fought them, they can be immediately be selected to shoot/fight. It’s a neat little interrupt ability, and could pair nicely with some activation shenanigans, but is a little bit harder than “Point toward Enemy, Stab”.
• Red-handed Castigator: If you kill an enemy unit with your Warlord, the Miracle dice you generate is automatically a six – and you get re-rolls to hit in the first round of combat. It’s okay. Could be useful as a secondary Warlord trait for a Crusade character like a Palatine or Dogmata.

Relics

There’s also three new Relics.

• Mina’s Wrath. This replaces a Power Sword, and is S+2, AP -3, D2, and on 6’s to wound does two mortals. It’s nice, and paired with Firey Example is a character not to be idly fought. I especially like this for Crusade, again, on a secondary character like a Palatine, where they’ve got relatively limited weapon upgrade options, and this one is genuinely pretty dangerous.
• Armor of True Sacrifice. A 2+ Armor Save, which is relatively rare, and a Miracle dice if the bearer suffers any wounds. Miracle dice generation is always nice, and Bloody Rose is a little short handed in that department.
• Icon of the Crimson Martyr. If you find yourself taking an Imagifer, this gives her +1 wound (always nice) and a new Tale of the Martyr, which gives you a miracle dice if a Bloody Rose core unit within 6″ of the Imagifer was destroyed. I’m not a particular fan of Imagifers, but this is a decent option. The Sisters have lots of Core units, and to be frank, they die easy. Positioning her in a back-field firebase will probably yield a couple miracle dice over the course of a game. I think the utility here is way higher in Crusade than in Matched Play, as there’s less opportunity cost in terms of buffing characters with relics.

Stratagems

The Bloody Rose gets eight new Stratagems, which is, to be honest, a touch overwhelming in my opinion, but here we are.

• Scourge of the Penitent (1 CP/2 CP): At one CP for a 5-woman squad, and 2 for 6+, if a designated Repentia squad is within 6″ of a designated Repentia Superior, that Repentia squad gets +1 to their charge distance. This is potentially useful if a Repentia squad has strayed out of the 3″ standard movement buff bubble, or lost that because they were in a Rhino during the command phase, or if you’re trying to use a Repentia Superior to cover two different Repentia units. Situational, but handy.
• Wade into the Foe (1 CP): Paragon Warsuits do an extra hit on a roll of 4+ if they’re mixing it up with a unit of 6+ models. Again, situational, and not really what Paragon Warsuits need to be successful, but no one ever said no to more hits.
• Clear the Flanks (1 CP): This is an odd one. Pick an enemy unit within 6″ of a board edge that isn’t one of the player’s battlefield edges, and you get to re-roll 1s to wound against it with Heavy weapons. This is, again, a bigger deal because your Retributors are now Bloody Rose, but this is fairly situational. For narrative players, especially in the Planetstrike missions, what constitutes a non-player board edge can be a little ambiguous, so it’s worth making sure you talk this out with your opponents.
• Carry Forth the Faithful (1CP/2CP): 2 CP for Repentia or Retributors, 1 CP for all others. A transport (aka Rhino or Immolator) gets a free transport move. Dominions need not apply. This is spendy as all get out, but can absolutely hurtle a unit of Repentia or a Heavy Flamer Retributor squad up the board to do some real damage. This feels like the sort of thing that you either know you’re taking when you build your list, or don’t. Rocketing a 10-woman unit of Sacresants up the board for 1 CP is wildly tempting.
• Outrage of the Matriarch (1 CP): Add +1 to an attacks wound roll, and improve AP by 2 on a 6 to wound if you’re attacking an enemy model with a wounds characteristic higher than your characters. Not bad.
• Catechism of Wrathful Defiance (1 CP/2 CP): 1 CP for a unit below 11 models, 2 CP if you’re still fielding Battle Sister bombs. While an enemy unit is within 6″ of a infantry unit, the enemy is at -1 to hit. This is nice, but must be triggered in the Command Phase, so needs to either be so obvious that your opponent will suck up the debuff, or used aggressively when you’re expecting to take damage before you swing (i.e. fighting Fights First units, knowing an interrupt is coming, etc.).
• Savage Twist (1 CP): Triggered in the Fight phase on an Infantry unit. Until the end of the phase, each time a model attacks with a melee weapon, an unmodified wound roll of 6 increases the damage characteristic by 1. Honestly, that’s pretty solid, and can turn high quality attacks from Sacresants, Zephrim, etc. that do a lot of volume but not a lot of singular damage into something genuinely scary.
• Fueled by Rage (1 CP/2 CP): 2 CP if Retributors, 1 CP if anyone else. Triggered in your opponent’s shooting phase, this lets a model shoot on death on a 4+. This takes a little bit of the sting out of losing double ammo-infants in the latest FAQ, because unless your opponent is losing very, very badly or very bad at target priority, a Retributor squad that pokes its head out is going to die the next turn. It’s useful, but again, expensive.

Overall, these are fine. Mostly situational, rather than “This is how I build my army” with the exception of Carry Forth the Faithful. I think these are pretty natural buffs – basically “So, your Red Sisters have to take Retributors now, eh?” plus some neat little buffs here and there.

I had been intending to convert my “Store Brand Bloody Rose” Sisters over to just counts-as Bloody Rose, and this does a good job in making that feel like the right call.

The Crusade Rules

This is what we’re all here for. Well…what I’m here for. First up…more Space Marine stuff!

Banners of Renown

Banners are cool, and extremely 40K. These are just facts.

The Banners of Renown system gives the Space Marine codex a progression mechanic in the form of the storied history of their banners. This is genuinely something I think they need – a local player of ours continually forgets he has a 9th Edition codex because he’s missing that progression element that really defined later books.

In essence, you pay 1 RP to give an Ancient character the Banner of Renown keyword. You now have a fancy banner, and can start earning frequent flier miles Renown. You get one point of Renown for a number of different actions at the end of each battle round.

• Within range of an objective marker
• Within 6″ of enemy units
• If the Ancient destroyed any enemy Character units
• Being wholly within your opponents deployment zone
• Performing the Plant the Standard action from Honour the Standard agenda

You also get a point of Renown at the end of the battle if you took wounds but didn’t die, and you won. And what does one do with these Renown points?

You spend them to buy neat upgrades, ranging between 10 and 30 renown.

The cheapest at 10 points just removes damage, which we’ll talk about in a bit. But there are some genuinely cool ones – Glorious Finial (25 Renown) gives core and character units within 6″ a 5+ invulnerable save. Roll of Honor (15 Renown) buffs the Ancient themselves, giving them a once-per-phase ability to turn a hit or wound roll into a 6. The very spendy Icon of Crusade (30 Renown) gives the Ancient Objective Secured and a 6″ Objective Secured bubble for core units, counting them as double if they already have ObSec.

There’s just a lot of flexibility there, and some encouragement to consider different “builds” for your banner-bearing Ancients, which is neat. Each of these adds +1 to the Crusade Points of the unit.

They can also get damaged. Essentially, when your Ancient is destroyed, you take an Out of Action test for the Ancient and one for the Banner. If you fail the banner roll, you take one of three types of damage, either rolling or choosing what’s narratively appropriate. Each of these subtracts 1 from the Crusade Points of the unit.

You can have Scorched Form, if you’ve been fighting Sisters or got mixed up with an Eldar Avatar, which is a 6″ -1 Leadership debuff bubble. Diminished Majesty reduces the aura range of the model by 3″, and Ragged Tapestry, where you subtract 1 from the roll for the default Astartes Banner ability. If you pick up all three, you remove the model from your order of battle.

It’s a cool mechanic, and while yes, it adds some accountancy, it’s not that difficult to track, and brings some life to a narratively cool, hobby-friendly model that doesn’t see a lot of use.

Armies of Faith

Soup is back baby! Drawing from very similar lines to the Torchbearers army that was in White Dwarf, an Army of Faith is a conglomeration of Space Marines, Adepta Sororitas and Astra Militarum units united by their religious fervour, rather than a clear and definite command structure.

As a Sisters and Black Templars player this should be my jam.

Sadly, it’s not. We’re going to talk about why toward the end.

To make an Army of Faith, you need a Priest of some sort (gotta have someone getting the fanatics riled up), and you have to include at least one Troop unit of each faction you include – so you can’t, for example, just have one very fanatical Leman Russ. Some ordinary troopers have to show up as well. This is not unreasonable – between Chaplains, Dogmata, Priests, Dialogi, etc. there are plenty of Priest units to pick from, and these are not exactly tax units.

The troops aren’t bad either – it’s not a 1:1 ratio or anything, it’s just the one per faction.

You give up Regimental Doctrines, Chapter Tactics and Order Convictions, and in exchange get two phases your army can hop between – Fervour and Retribution, which build up points and then spends them respectively, representing stirring up your little bundle of fanatics into a frothing rage, and then pointing them at some heretics.

Fervour

During the Fervour phase, all of your units have +1 Ld (meh) and get a single re-roll to hit whenever they shoot or fight. Their primary purpose, after that, is to gain (or lose) fervour points.

They gain points by winning or drawing battles, losing battles (you get less), destroying enemy warlords, and killing Chaos units. They lose them by losing or drawing battles, having their own warlord slain, or being destroyed by Chaos units. You’ll note several occur in both categories – for example, if you lose a battle you gain D3 fervour points, but lose D6.

There’s also an agenda for this phase, Reclaim the Relic, that is a little bit more complicated than your usual “Put down an extra objective and then control it.”

Per usual, your opponent sets up one Relic of the Faithful objective not within 9″ of a battlefield edge. In an Infantry unit gets within 1″ of the Relic, they can perform the Carry the Relic of the Faithful action, which starts at the end of the Movement phase and completes at the end of your turn as long as there’s no enemy units in engagement range. One model from that unit is now carrying the relic.

At the end of the battle, if you control the objective marker or one of your units is carrying it, you gain 3 Fervour points. If a unit was carrying it, they get 4 XP. Note that they can move too – nothing is stopping you from hoofing it back to safety, save your own desire to seek out the death of your foes. And if you don’t use this as a modeling opportunity…

There’s also a fun requisition – Martyrs to the Cause. For 1 RP, if a unit fails an Out of Action test, you can remove the unit from your Order of Battle, and their Crusade points convert to Fervour Points.

One you get to 20, you can (but do not have to) switch to Retribution, and if you reach 5 or less while in Retribution, you head back to Furvour.

Characterful as hell.

Retribution

During this phase, you get +1″ to your Movement, and your units can re-roll one wound roll when shooting or fighting. And you get to start spending Fervour Points on extra abilities. For example:

• Divine Rage (1 Point): Use this ability before an Army of Faith model makes a melee attack – you get to boost the damage by one to a maximum of 3.
• Divine Fury (1+ Points): After making a charge roll, add the number of points you spend on this to the result to a max of 3.
• Divine Intimidation (2 Points): Select an enemy character with 6″ and halve their aura ability range.

There’s also a phase-specific Agenda, Bringing Light to the Darkness. You keep a tally each time a unit destroys an enemy unit within 12″ of it, 2 if you were in their deployment zone when you did it. Each point gets turned into 1 XP to a maximum of 3, and for every 5 points across all your units, you get a Fervour point, helping to keep the party going.

Relics

Finally, there’s some multi-phase Relics that are great.

• Blood of Saint Calgar: The bearer gets +1 Attacks, they add +1 Fervour Point if they’re on the battlefield at the end of the battle during the Fervour stage, and in the Retribution stage, they can cash in D3 points to add that result to their strength.
• Penitent’s Band: Each time the bearer makes a melee attack, re-roll hits and wounds of 1, and if you’re at 20+ Fervour Points, they give the same benefit out as a 6″ aura.
• The Blade of Retribution: Hilariously, there are several stories about which blade this is. It replaces a Blessed Blade, Power Sword or Master Crafted Power Sword, and is S+2, AP -4, D3, +1 Attacks in Fervour and S+4 (instead of +2) in the Retribution phase.

All of this seems great so far. Melee focused, some obvious utility, pure, undiluted “Oops! All Fanatics!” hijinks. So what’s the problem?

Remember how I alluded to it feeling like the Keyword-Detachment system had gotten the best of GW previously?

Here’s where it strikes.

In the rules for Army of Faith, it states “An Army of Faith detachment counts as an Adepta Sororitas, Adeptus Astartes and Astra Militarum Detachment for the purpose of any Detachment abilities your army gains (i.e. Stratagems you can use).”

We’re good so far.

But here’s the problem. If you look at the wording for Acts of Faith, it says “If every unit from your army has the Adepta Sororitas keyword…”

and for the Black Templar Vows, it says “If every unit in your army has the Black Templars keyword, then every unit has the Combat Doctrines Ability (note, we give that up in Army of Faith) and is in a Black Templars Detachment gains the Templar Vows ability…”

Every unit.

There’s a reading here – one I’ve passed by several people – that means Templar Vows and Acts of Faith both shut off in an Army of Faith. The “check” if you will, is against each unit – it doesn’t care what the Detachment is. And that is, to be frank, a disaster for those two armies, and while the Army of Faith rules are fun and all, that’s nowhere near an even trade. And while Crusade players can by and large be expected to bear a little bit of sub-optimal army design, but this is bad if true.

Now, we are not without hope here. The narrative reviewers over at Goonhammer seem to think that Acts do work, and I spent some time trying to articulate how I could be wrong about this. This is what I came up with:

Drawing from the Black Templars book, because it’s the clearest version of this as compared to the main rulebook which just sort of implies this:

“A Black Templars Detachment is one that only includes models with the Black Templars keyword (excluding models with the Agent of the Imperium or Unaligned keywords).”

The argument becomes this – by definition if you are a Black Templars Detachment, you only have models with the Black Templars keyword. If an Army of Faith counts as a Black Templars Detachment, that means it counts as a Detachment with only models with the Black Templars keyword. As long as all of your detachments either are or count-as a Black Templar Detachment, you’re good.

Apply that same logic to the Sisters and Guard.

Essentially, the argument here is that the conditions of the Detachments “flow down” to the models in them. The Detachment says you’re all Adepta Sororitas units, so you are, whether your unit entry says you are or not. This is in contrast the the usual “flow up” model for Detachments – each unit says its Adepta Sororitas (or flashes an Inquisitorial Rosette) and therefore the detachment as a whole is.

I think there’s a genuine argument that that’s correct, but it’s a stretch, and that always makes me wary.

Why On Earth Do We Care?

I recently wrote a post arguing that Crusade rules are still rules, and deserve to be thought of as such. But realistically, they aren’t. This is a Crusade-only construct, that appeals to a small shred of players. None of the large, rules review centric podcasts are going to cover this much. There’s not going to be an FAQ rushed out before AdeptaCon to make sure this doesn’t take the tournament by storm. But it is ambiguous. And Crusade players deserve rules that don’t need an immediate “Well, I guess just house rule it?”

I cannot imagine that GW intended to hamstring Army of Faith for the two clearest armies to take in it, but they’ve also been extremely anti-soup in most of 9th Edition. I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made both ways – and that’s sort of a problem.

There. I’ve said it. Moving on and finishing this up.

Sector Fronteris

There’s also some Crusade rules for their Sector Fronteris terrain, which is genuinely pretty cool. There’s two new Agendas – which is genuinely pretty welcome. Transmit Signal is a Character action that uses the Vox-antenna terrain – you can spam it for points, and hope that eventually someone acknowledges you (so basically Twitter), and you get 1 and 2 XP respectively for that, with the odds someone acknowledges the signal growing more likely the more you do it. Might be decent for one of the aura characters more likely to park themselves somewhere. Download Orders is another Character action using the Auspex Shrine terrain. If you complete this action, you can swap out an agenda. That’s…genuinely pretty handy if say, you’re playing Sisters, getting creamed, and you picked a relic objective, and you want to swap it out for Seed of the Imperium or the like. You also gain 2 XP for doing so. There’s an opportunity cost there though – one of your agendas is “Replace another agenda” and a measly 2 XP.

There’s also some atmospheric effects. They make Transmit Signal harder, and do everything from corrode unit’s armor to decreasing auras to dealing mortal wounds. But realtalk – almost everyone I know doesn’t bother with environmental effects that aren’t expressly built into the mission. That always seems to be a bridge too far for bookkeeping.

The terrain itself is also pretty neat – there’s landing pads that boost ranged attacks as you find ammo dumps, bunkers where you can hide from environmental effects, the auspex thing that lets you download either orders or propaganda, and the vox-antenna which lets you transmit signals or get really loud when shouting orders.

Again, I think these are neat, and maybe one will make it to the average scenario if players feel like it?

Overall Impressions

There’s some good stuff in this book. The narrative sections are well written and provide plenty of material to work with. The campaign system is a straightforward no-muss, no-fuss campaign system. The Bloody Rose supplement is genuinely good without going over to “Must Have”, assuming it gets FAQ’d.

The Army of Faith would be great if the aforementioned problem with whether or not really important core abilities to some of the most logical armies to be in it turned off.

The Banner of Renown is I think a much needed addition to the Space Marines on Crusade.

I would say I am “whelmed”.

 

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