Cult crusade anyone?

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Has anyone been attempting a cult crusade? What do your crusade forces look like? How has the crusade been going?

I'm interested in adding a pure bladed cog crusade force but usually struggle to figure out unit composition for crusade as GSC feels a bit overpriced with respect to power level.

[Hive Bahamut]

I think GSC is in a bad place for Crusade, unless you want all your units with flesh wounds after the first few battles while your opponent powers up.

Tyranids are similar but at least they have durable units that might level up.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Dec 7, 2020 19:06:09 GMT Hive Bahamut said:

I think GSC is in a bad place for Crusade, unless you want all your units with flesh wounds after the first few battles while your opponent powers up.

Tyranids are similar but at least they have durable units that might level up.

My nids haven't had major issues with flesh wounds. The odds of receiving one are low even with less durable troops. (With nids I also use endless swarm to bring back my hormogaunts so they don't count as having died per my friend's and my reading).

I'm more worried about making a list that's fun to play and not a too expensive one trick pony. My real motivation for playing a cult crusade is so I have a crusade force for all my armies (nids, cult, custodes). That way, I can just swap to whichever one I want to play if Im playing in a friend's crusade.

I was thinking about going with about 4 units of mining laser neophytes, a unit or two of acolytes, and some support characters. I'd love to bring abberants or a rock grinder but just can't justify the cost.

I'm definitely saddened that you haven't tried a cult crusade, bahamut. You're definitely one of our more passionate cult players here.

[Hive Bahamut]

I wanted to learn how to play 9th before I jumped into crusades. Making GSC work is "easy in 9th" claims the internet but it is actually very trivial to remove 20 T3 5+ bodies from an objective, and the trucks aren't much harder.

Another reason is I don't play as much as I would like, but we plan on doing crusades later. I feel having actual crusade rules from Codex will influence that more too.

Finally, as you mentioned cost. Glass hammer in narrative is a disaster when not pointed/PL appropriately. (Looking at ABERRANT/GENESTEALER keywords specifically)

[zigzagzen]

I have been running a crusade with some close friends, it's a small group. We are starting out at Combat patrol size, three games versus each opponent (each of the CP missions per opponent). Winner of the three takes the round for pair off on next set vesus new opponents.

We have Death Guard, CSM, Necron, and myself with the Cult.

So far I have lost all but one game (5 games thus far), but mostly due to playing an aggressive opening and then flubbing not one but a series of 'average' rolls in succession and then being too exposed.

My current Order of Battle is this: (after RP spent on upgrades, force increases and swapping some non-performers)

Jackal Alpha - WL trait: Bladed Cog (forgot name), Relic: Mark of the Ommisiah
Magus - Unit Upgrade:Cult Psyche, Battle Honor:+1 psy power
Patriarch - Relic: The Crouchling
Sanctus - Relic: Gift from Beyond
Kelermorph - Relic:Oppressors Bane
Goliath Trunk - all the unit upgrades, Battle Honor:Repairs
Goliath Rockgrinder - all the unit upgrades/Incinerator
Cult LR - Plasma Sponsons, HF, BattleCannon, all the unit upgrades
10 man Neophytes - 2 Lasers, 2 launchers, icon
10 man acolytes - 4 saws, 10 flamers, icon, bonesword, Battle Honor:Fleet of Foot
1 Ridge Runner - Laser, Smoke Launchers

+2 supply towards increase
+1 for summoning 5 PL (we adjudicated all summoning was restricted to purchase through RP, 1 RP gets you 5 PL summoning with a limit on 1 RP per 25 PL of the match, and only once per game. All other restrictions apply, such as strat use, chaos character, rolling dice, etc)


The biggest issue so far is that in Crusade you cannot add AM units as they need to all use the same main keyword on the Order of Battle (which is sorted into detachments but is not actually your Army and therefore doesn't ignore the restriction), at least how I read it. Which doesn't matter for now as we are currently still on Combat Patrol anyway and therefore limited to a single patrol detachment.
Prior to the actual Crusade starting up we played a handful of games with the same units and the GSC win ratio was much better (winning over half). I have just had bad luck when implementing my plans (I mean the Sanctus missing a clear shot at the Sorcerer twice, Magus failing all psychic powers, acolytes failing to charge 5", AND forgetting to put the truck closer to the enemy than my characters, all in one turn...you can't fail harder if you tried. Had any of those results been different it would have been a win...and that was just one game).

[hivefleetkerrigan]

zigzagzen thanks for the list. It's similar to what I'd been thinking. I might give it a go. Worst comes to worst, I just delete that crusade.

[No One]

@hivfleetkerrigan said:

Has anyone been attempting a cult crusade? What do your crusade forces look like? How has the crusade been going?

Just started one, but really looking forward to my +3" (fleet of foot) acolytes. Just a casual min 16" threat range, and can quite plausibly charge 24" across no mans (with average 4 on all advance/charge dice). The problem I'm thinking about is that you don't scale as hard past that: no real weapons to buff, and the other battle traits are way less impactful. But that's only a problem if I play enough Crusade games to level up lots, which is...unlikely.

List is basically 4 acos, a meta squad, and the Characters I like (bar nexos, because less useful at lower PL and the 6 Char battle trait does that anyway for when, say, my Clamavus lvls). Because I know what I like .

Hive Bahamut said:

I think GSC is in a bad place for Crusade, unless you want all your units with flesh wounds after the first few battles while your opponent powers up.

Tyranids are similar but at least they have durable units that might level up.

It's only 1/6, and you can just take a scar and RP it away if you got the experience to justify/don't have much else to do with the RP.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Dec 8, 2020 12:40:57 GMT No One said:

started one, but really looking forward to my +3" (fleet of foot) acolytes. Just a casual min 16" threat range, and can quite plausibly charge 24" across no mans (with average 4 on all advance/charge dice). The problem I'm thinking about is that you don't scale as hard past that: no real weapons to buff, and the other battle traits are way less impactful. But that's only a problem if I play enough Crusade games to level up lots, which is...unlikely.

List is basically 4 acos, a meta squad, and the Characters I like (bar nexos, because less useful at lower PL and the 6 Char battle trait does that anyway for when, say, my Clamavus lvls). Because I know what I like .

The +1 movement +1 to advance/charge is amazing on my hormogaunts for my nids crusade. If you have the pariah nexus book, you can also take crusaders to reroll advance/charges of 1/2s. I've found other upgrades are situational. The 6+ FNP is always a good call, especially for hordes. I've found that I shy away from upgrading weapons ony squads as they have to be on the sergeant which makes no sense for nids and not much tactical sense for GSC.

As for your list, it'll probably do really well. I'd run something like that if I had a ton more acolytes. I think I have about 20? I did do some kitbashing of acolytes + genestealers that I could proxy. I should probably do some greenstuff work to make them look a bit more like acolytes.

[purestrain]

Pretty sure everyone here knows about my (controversial) Monster haruspex, who easily kills 12-20 models a combat phase and needs to be flat killed to be stopped.

I want to make a cult crusade with a bunch of flamers and tanks, can't think of a good system to support them with though

[wound]

Dec 11, 2020 13:42:17 GMT purestrain said:

Pretty sure everyone here knows about my (controversial) Monster haruspex, who easily kills 12-20 models a combat phase and needs to be flat killed to be stopped.

I want to make a cult crusade with a bunch of flamers and tanks, can't think of a good system to support them with though

If thats your goal I think you would be better with catachans with especial weapon squads.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Dec 11, 2020 13:42:17 GMT purestrain said:

Pretty sure everyone here knows about my (controversial) Monster haruspex, who easily kills 12-20 models a combat phase and needs to be flat killed to be stopped.

I want to make a cult crusade with a bunch of flamers and tanks, can't think of a good system to support them with though

Maybe roll hand flamer acolytes in goliath trucks or rock grinders with clearance incinerators? That 12" range would be great and with the movement boosts of an upgrade you might be able to tag your enemy turn 1.