From the depths of the Howling Vortex comes the Black Crusade to crush or reshape the fools who binds themselves to the Corpse God of Terra.
And those Crusaders are you.
Welcome to the Black Crusade. The fourth line of the Warhammer 40K roleplaying line, this one takes you across the line between good and evil and takes you into the darkness. Playing those fallen to Chaos, rather than the slaves of the emperor, the players are now tasked with freeing minds following the dark paths of Glory to the Dark Gods themselves.
The original plan for Warhammer 40K was the trilogy: Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch. While Fantasy Flight has been running the show from the third supplement of the Dark Heresy line forward, the master plan was outlined by Black Industries before they turned the property over. This game marks the first steps beyond the original scope into something entirely new. The system has been refined, and while the book can be used to present either an alternate playing point for fans or as an antagonists book for the other three lines it’s nice to see Fantasy Flight taking the chance to keep the line moving into the future with new vantage points.
But enough of this! Blood for the Blood God!
Physically it’s the quality we have come to expect from a Fantasy Flight book. Solid construction, meaty appearance, gorgeous artwork. The tome, and these books always count as tomes, clocks in at close to 400 pages of full color amazingness. As usual, a variety of artists were used to for different pieces, but they all drip in the gothic mood of the setting. Just flipping through the pages evokes the sometimes disturbing horror show that Chaos is. Once we breach the tome itself we enter the dark embrace of the Chaos Gods themselves and begin to delve into the forbidden lore within.
The first major section is the Introduction, which is a primer for those who are not aware of this drastically different viewpoint on the 40K universe. This section introduces the four major forces in Chaos: Khorne the Blood God of slaughter and murder, Slannesh the Dark Prince of desire and pleasures, Nurgle the Grandfather of pestilence and rot, and Tzeentch the lord of change and sorcery. Each has their own agenda and is more of a force than an actual entity, more Lovecraftian monsters or the embodiment of darker desires than intelligent plotters. We also get to see how those outside the Imperium see said Imperium. This first chapter then closes with a review of history from the Chaos view, specifically the Horus Heresy and the events of the Long War (or what we would call the time since the Horus Heresy).
This brings us to the first chapter, and the game mechanics. The core of the system is presented, and for those who don’t know the Warhammer 40K system runs almost exclusively on 10 sided dice. Percentile, and rolling low, is used for stat and skill tests with each multiple of 10 you beat your target by counting as a “Degree of Success.” Each degree may improve the impact of your action, for example if your target is 55 and you roll a 35 you have 3 degrees of success. This may give you additional information that would not have been available if you only achieved 1 degree of success. An important note for you veterans: Degrees of success now start at one and go up, as opposed to before when they started at zero. If you miss the target number and roll too high, you gain degrees of failure instead of success. The more degrees the worse it can be for you. Skills tests, if untrained, roll half of its linked characteristic (if you can try at all, that is) but if its Trained you can roll with a target of the whole trait. Further advancements let you count the characteristic as higher than it would otherwise be, making it easier to achieve your goal.
As the chapter continues it presents various environmental challenges and how they function in the system, such as swimming and running around in zero gravity. The capper on the is chapter is the destiny section, basically your Heretic can end in only one of three ways: Death, devolving into a useless and disgusting Warp Spawn, or Apotheosis and ascension as they become a Daemon Prince. The goal is set high, and it becomes a race between Infamy and Corruption. When you hit 100 corruption you check your Infamy, if your above 100 (or whatever the GM sets the goal at) you become a Daemon Prince and if not you get to be a jelly fish. We will revisit this at length later in the book, there is a whole chapter on the effects of Corruption and Infamy. It’s enough to know what’s at stake at this point, providing you live long enough to get there.
Chapter two is all about making those dastardly heretics. You can make both Chaos Space Marines and normal Humans, and there are advantages to both. Chaos Space Marines are relentless and devastating warriors, they start with a +30 to all their stats (except infamy) and start with both a bolter and Power Armor. The downside is they don’t get many skills, focused as they are on combat they dominate in fights but their huge 8 foot monstrous visages don’t blend to well for more subtle work. Humans get a respectable +25 to their stats, putting them on par with Rogue Trader characters, and get a respectable pile of skills to work with. Not so awesome in the starting gear, but they tend to be much more diverse. Chaos Space Marines also get fewer XP to modify their characters with, further balancing the two out. While a Space Marine tends to come out a bit ahead in the numbers the Humans advantages of being able to blend (at start anyways) tends to even them out.
As a part of the process you select an Archetype for your character, and four are presented for each race. To be honest, I wish there were some more choices in the book because four for each feels a bit thin but I am hard pressed to tell you what could have been added aside from a Techmarine. Each archetype grants a few skills, determines you’re starting Wounds, starting Talents, and few bits of gear. It also gives you a special ability that only your archetype gets which could be something special they can do or gives you a trait to make other things possible. Space Marines can choose from the Champion, the Chosen, the Forsaken, and the Chaos Sorcerer. The Champion is a natural leader; his special ability allows him to bend others to his leadership. The Chosen is a master killer; their special ability allows them to reroll Crit effects making it more likely to kill their targets outright. Forsaken are crafty scavengers, they get bonuses to gathering gear for themselves or others. Chaos Sorcerers are Psykers, they get the Psykers trait and start with powers. Humans can be Apostates, Renegades, Hereteks, or Chaos Psykers. Apostates can make friends wherever they go, creating allies around them that can be exploited. Renegades pick a characteristic and always count success with that characteristic as if it were one degree of success higher than they rolled. Hereteks are fallen Tech Priests, they get the Mechanicus Implants trait required for certain talents and they get a bunch of free Cybernetics to start with. The Chaos Psyker gets the Psyker trait and starts with powers. Each of the Human archetypes also get a bonus to the key Characteristic for the character, which tends to put them close to their Marine allies in a particular stat.
The prior roles for starting worlds or backgrounds are now replaced with Passions, as the Heretics are forged rather than born. Prides are what drove them into rising above the masses, Disgraces are flaws they try to hide or turn from but still mark their path, and Motivations are what drives them into the future. Each of these grant a few modifications to the characters, allowing you to further modify the characters background as you tweak a few of the stats around. The background is largely up to the player, as each heretic is highly individualistic, and this shows throughout the process. The archetypes, also, act only as guidelines as a character can truly go anywhere in the game after character creation.
Character creation concludes with some charts on how to advance your character. Since there is no “template” to chart your characters advancement the way you calculate costs to raise Characteristics, buy skills, and acquire Talents is a matter of which God you serve and who these traits are aspected to. Each Chaos god gets a characteristic: Khorne claims Strength, Slaanesh claims Fellowship, Nurgle gets Toughness, and Tzeentch owns Willpower. Raising these stats will put you one step into these gods power. The other stats are un-aspected or considered Unaligned. These include Agility, Ballistics, Weapon skill, Infamy, Intelligence, and Perception. Each god also claims a few skills and talents, but again the bulk of both fall in the unaligned category. Each time an advance is chosen from a Chaos God’s bailiwick you move further toward this god. When your corruption hits a level where you would test for a Gift from the gods you look at your overall Chaos balance, if your balance tips to one of the Gods you get discounts for their stuff, but the costs for their opponents stuff goes up. The farther into a God’s service you go the more their personality shapes you and your destiny.
The third chapter covers skills and the fourth covers talents. As previously mentioned Skills (when trained) allow you to either use your full Characteristic on a test or treat it as higher than your base Characteristic if trained high enough. Talents add abilities to your character; giving you edges in a fight or modifying your character is some way such as making you ambidextrous or the ability to use two weapons effectively at the same time. I won’t bore you with too many details, but many of the skills were merged making the game (in my opinion) flow a little smoother such as combining Concealment and Move Silent into Stealth. Talents have had a few names tweaked for the setting, but have emerged more or less intact. There are several little, but important, changes but they are detailed in the GM section of the book implicitly with a sidebar, so there is really no need to analyze these chapters for the changes when the game straight up tells you about them.
One of the things of particular note is the section on Minions. This game presents the players with the opportunity to acquire flunkies! These poor sods are built buy buying the Lesser Minion, Minion, or Greater Minion talents and allows the player to make just about anything they could want in a mook for them to use from servo-skulls to Chaos Marine bodyguards. Each talent has a pool of “traits” that allows you to tailor your flunky to your desires, and if they die during an operation you can find another if given a reasonable amount of time. This lets people have a Psyker Summoner and his pack of demonic foils, a Tech Priest and a group of Servitors, and an Apostate and their motley of dupes. Each with varying power levels, and each with different interpretations, it’s a nice addition in a villain game like this.
Chapter five covers the Armory, the equipment selections available to the players. Aside from what you would expect in this section, bolters and las guns, some of the weirder Chaos toys make their appearance. Noise Marine weapons are presented for those interested in playing a Noise Marine for example. Power Armor also is treated differently, in Deathwatch the power armor subsystems are all functional but in Black Crusade your armor is a little touchier due to its scavenged nature. The Cybernetics section allows you to pick up some implants that give you access to some of the previously Tech Priest only talents like Ferric Lure. But the real gem is the Daemon Weapons section; with lets you craft some seriously foul toys! Now you too can dominate a daemonic weapon and kill in the service of Khorne!
Chapter six is the Psychic Powers section and details the major differences between the slaves… I mean the servants of the Emperor and the ways of Chaos. We start the chapter off with a breakdown of the various types of Psykers in the world. You have your Witches and Wyrds, natural talents living in the wilds of the universe. You have the Sorcerers, Space Marines who have given themselves over to channeling the Dark Powers of the warp. You have the Daemons, the children of the Warp. You have Imperial Psykers, binding themselves to the Corpse Emperor to soften the lure of the dark powers. Finally you have the Xeno Psykers, following their own strange paths of power. Of particular note are the so called “Anti-psykers,” the Anathema. Immune to the touch of the Warp they can even hamper the powers of Psykers just by being around.
Psy rating is rated from 1 to 10, and it cannot be raised above the combo of your Willpower bonus (the tens digit of the characteristic) and the tens digit of your Corruption points total. Psy rating is not aspected to any of the Chaos Gods, so followers of Nurgle and Slaanesh don’t have to worry about falling to Tzeentch to increase their raw power, but many of the best Psyker talents are as is Willpower.
When manifesting a power the character can choose to go Fettered (using half their psy rating) and play it safe guaranteeing not to trigger Psychic Phenomenon, Unfettered (normal psy rating) where Psychic Phenomenon is triggered when they roll Doubles on the manifestation test, or they can Push it and add from 1 to 3 to their Psy Rating for the power. This guarantees a Phenomenon result or more depending on how much they push, and if they roll doubles the character suffers additional fatuge as well. Psy Rating provides a bonus of 5 times the rating to manifesting the power, in addition to modifying things like range and damage for the actual power. There are a few other ways to increase your chances of success, such as incantations and sacrifice, which are also discussed. Another notable element is powers that are fueled not by willpower but by Corruption instead. These powers are fantastically powerful, but they trigger additional Phenomenon (beyond what the power would trigger anyways) and can not be used Fettered.
Then we get to the good stuff: the powers themselves. We have Unaligned powers that cover the iconic powers from the tabletop game, but not aspected to any god. We get powers like Doombolt, Hatestorm, and Winds of Change (which is a corruption power). Unaligned powers are available to all, but the Chaos Gods all have unique abilities that are only available to those in their grip, many of these require the Mark of the God in question to use. Since you can change the god your aligned to from time to time, there is a sidebar on what happens when you change gods. The long and the short is the power is still yours, but you cannot use it when you’re in the service of a different god, but they come back as soon as your alignment shifts back. Each of the gods powers are very thematic: Nurgle powers invite disease, Slaanesh powers evoke that terrible line where sensation goes too far, and Tzeentch gives us wild changes for changes sake. Nurgle gives us powers like Choir of Poxes, Lepars Curse and Nurgle’s Rot (Corruption based). Slannesh followers can look forward to Ecstatic Oblivion, Lash of Submission, and Hellshriek (Corruption). The god of Sorcery, Tzeentch, favors the infamous Bolts of Change, Mantle of Lies, and Protean Form (Corruption). Of particular note, there are NO psychic powers aspected to Khorne. While there are Psykers who are allied to him, he will not support or bargain with them and thus grants no powers to his Psykers. Any Psyker foolish enough to openly declare for him is destroyed, as he hates all Psykers, but he is willing to put up with a few for the ability they have to summon his daemons to the battlefield.
We then move on to the Exalted powers, which could also be called the powers aspected to Chaos Undivided. These powers are unavailable to those who have sided with any of the Chaos gods and look to be very enticing and powerful, perhaps better than those available to folks who side with the other powers. There are more powers fueled by Corruption here than the other gods, perhaps due to the difficulty of keeping the balance required to use these powers. Examples include Hellish Blast, Maelstrom of Rage, and Primordial Annihilation (Corruption).
The Chaos powers are followed by the more common disciplines presented previously in other books: Telepathy, Telekinesis, and Divination. I would like to see Biokinesis and Pyrokinesis make a comeback someday, but for now if you have seen Deathwatch’s powers you know what you’re going to see here (more or less). The chapter rounds out with rules for summoning Daemons. Daemons summoning can be done by anyone with a Daemonology skill rating, so if you’re not into the Psyker thing you can still call up your God’s minions with enough time and sacrifice. Psykers get bonus, however, to binding the daemon to their will.
Chapter Seven covers the Combat rules. If you have played any of the Warhammer 40K games you will find a great many similarities to the older games here. Combat remains fairly quick and brutal, but there are some notable changes. Full auto is no longer a bonus to hit as it has been but is instead a -10 to your ballistics skill, but it retains the additional damage benefits of multiple hits for each degree of success on the attack roll. Semi-auto attacks have no bonus or penalty, but otherwise remains the same. Rolling a 10 on a damage die triggers Zealous Hatred, which can either do Critical Damage even if the hit does not reduce them to Zero wounds or (if they take no damage due to toughness and armor) they deal one point of un-resistible damage regardless. Range rules remain unchanged, so point blank still gives a shooter +30 to the roll. I like many of these changes, running Deathwatch campaigns have given me a touch of fatigue when it comes to Space Marines with heavy bolters.
Chapter Eight is the Game Masters chapter and it covers the in and outs of running this beast. Any Game Master who has ever run a villains campaign can tell you how it usually goes: The players turn on themselves and spend the bulk of the game screwing each other over. The Black Crusade largely embraces this vision, and introduces a new campaign feature called Compacts that helps to keep them somewhat on track. Compacts are a mix of the Endeavor system from Rogue Trader and the Mission system from Deathwatch, they are player driven like Endeavors but have objectives like Missions do. The players get together and discuss their plans. Let’s say they want to bring a rebellion about on a world in the Kronos Expanse. Our players decide that to do this they will need to find allies on the world who are disenfranchised with the current government, recruit them to their cause, arm them, and then send them about their business. They may or may not care if the rebellion is successful. In our example the Rebellion is the primary objective, the elements they think they will need become Secondary objectives. Each player then decides on a personal or tertiary objective, the personal ones are private and not shared and tertiary objectives directly and openly support the primary objective. In our example one of the players privately decides that he will sway our rebels to Khorne worship, another decides to sell the rebels out to the Nobles to further the inscrutable plots of Tzeentch, and a third player decides that he will openly arm the rebels with Plagued weapons from his master. The first two are private objectives that will not be shared, the last is a tertiary since it directly supports the primary objective and no one cares where the weapons come from as long as rebellion occurs. The Game Master then decides how big this compact is, looking over the three options they decide it’s a middle of the road Operation and decides how much Infamy it will bring. The players then choose a leader, called the Anointed, who will make sure the signers of the compact fulfill their ends of the bargain. The compact can be further dedicated to a God, if they choose, for additional bonuses during the compact. The Game Master then looks over the Complications and applies one to further muddy the waters and the game is afoot. Successes increases Infamy and (usually) corruption, failure only increases corruption.
While we’re on the topic, let’s talk a little about Corruption and Infamy. These get their own chapter, chapter Nine, but we can cover the good stuff here. The game really boils down to a race, to be above the threshold for Infamy before you hit 100 corruption. If you hit the goal (as set by the GM, but usually 100 infamy) or exceed it by the time you hit 100 corruption you get to become a Daemon Prince and rule a planet (or whatever you want, you’re freaking Daemon!). If you do not, you get to be warp spawn. If, somehow, you can hit 150 Infamy during play you can muster the forces of Chaos under your banner and lead a true Black Crusade into Imperial space to punish the fools of the False Emperor. Because the game is constantly clocked by corruption, which only goes up even when your fail, the Game Master controls the pace of the game by how much, or how little, corruption he hands out.
Insanity is also different from previous games. Failing fear tests can now just give you disorders, there is one for each chaos god and if you’re not following a god the GM picks whichever chart he feels is most appropriate to the moment.
The chapter wraps up with some conversion rules from the other three game lines. For the most part your character starts over at 0 corruption, any Malignancies they had are removed and they can test to gain some Gifts of the Gods instead, they pick an Archetype to gain its special rewards, and they gain the Infamy trait. Since several skills were merged into others and few of the talents have been altered, some things may be cashed in for Experience and used to buy new skills or talents. Some of the characters skills and talents will also be lost. For those interested in this conversion take a good look at this section. It also details how you can use Black Crusade to make antagonists for the other games and how to bring those games into Black Crusade.
This brings us to Chapter Nine, the chapter on Corruption and Infamy as previously stated. Corruption is gained during the game by success and failure in the tasks of the Dark Gods, and when you hit 10, 20, 40, 60, and 80 points you make checks for Gifts of the Gods (mutations). Chaos Marines make these checks at 10, 30, 60, and 90 instead. In addition to general increases due to service to Chaos in general, you gain additional corruption when you have embraced a Chaos god by acting in accordance to their wishes. This includes killing champions of their opposed gods. The gifts are always random, but a player can modify their roll up or down by their Infamy modifier as they see fit. If you’re dedicated to a particular god you can get one of that gods gifts instead by making a infamy test (and passing). These gifts are better mechanically, but usually much more spectacularly chaotic in nature.
Infamy rules are like a blend of Profit Factor in Rogue Trader and Fate points. Infamy mesures the characters legend, and they can use it to force goods out of others by sheer reputation or by favors the character can call in. The infamy bonus is used like fate points: it can be used to heal wounds or critical wound effects, it can be used to re-roll failed characteristic tests, it can be used to add a degree of success to a successful roll, it can be used to add a +10 to a roll before rolling, or it can be used to remove all fatigue on the character. Once a character has more than 60 infamy they can also use the points for more effective healing, a +10 on initiative, and to recover from being stunned instantly. Those dedicated to particular god get some additional benefits, but lose some of the general options. For example, followers of Khorne may spend infamy to instantly succeed at Weapon Skill or Balistics skill tests before or after rolling with one degree of success but they heal less wounds when they spend infamy points for healing. If a Heretic is killed they may reduce their Infamy score by 10+1d10 to survive but be incapacitated for the session. They can, alternatively, reduce their Infamy by 8+1d10 and go to one hit point, but they can be attacked in the future and suffer more infamy losses during the session due to death. Either way they gain 1d10 corruption. If this reduction brings a character to 0 infamy they die anyways and cannot be saved by any means.
Chapter Ten goes over the previous settings (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch) and how the Black Crusade can be used to interface with those places, as well as the new sector presented: The Screaming Vortex. The previous settings information is fairly brief, if your fan of Dark Heresy you are already aware of some of the elements of the setting and some of the pervasive mysteries such as the Tyrant Star. There are some interesting details there though, if you’re a fan of these settings there are some good nuggets there both for the lore hounds and for giving ideas on stories. The Fall of the Eldar is also covered, since their fall is intimately tied to the Dark Gods. The Screaming Vortex is a small bleed of the Warp that creates a tiny tear, nowhere near as large as the Eye of Terror, but large enough to allow space and time to be somewhat flexible. The Vortex has exits that lead into all settings (or conceivably anywhere the Game Master chooses) but is somewhere near the Kronos terminus of the Jericho Gate. As one travels closer to the heart of the vortex the more Chaos warps and twists space to the point that describing the worlds becomes all but impossible. There are a few brief sections on Dark Eldar and Necrons, describing the legends of both from the Chaos side.
Chapter eleven is the Adversaries chapter, giving you some foes to toss at your Heretics. We start off with Horde rules, which seem very similar to the horde rules in Deathwatch with a few refinements. We then move on to Daemons and Warp creatures, since there is a lot of infighting even among servants of the same god this should be no surprise. We have stats for Nether swarms, Bloodletters, Brazen Myrmidions, Cackling Abominations, Daemonettes, Horrors, Juggernauts, Plaguebearers, Screamers of Tzeentch, Great Unclean Ones, and Lords of Change. A sample Daemon Prince is presented as well, and we are given a handful of common Heretics that can be found wandering around. The Imperium follows with their example foes including the rank and file of the Administratum to the Grey Knights and Inquisitors. In the Xenos section the Necrons are represented by the Scarab, the Flayed One, the Immortal, the Warrior, and the Tomb Stalker. Gauss weapons are also described, they deal Zealous Hatred on a 9 or a 10 and if no damage would be dealt due to toughness and armor Gauss weapons deal 1d5 wounds anyways. The Eldar follow with the rules for Harlequins, chaos hating super assassins, and Shadowseers, Harlequin Psykers. Dark Elder foes include Kabalite Warrors, Mandrakes, and Incubus.
The final chapter, as usual, includes a sample adventure. I have not run it yet, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness but looks ok from what I saw.
Overall I am pretty excited for this game. I do think that Dark Heresy really needs an overhaul at this point, however, but I sort of want to see what Fantasy Flight has in store next. Black Crusade seems like a good distraction, but I wonder how this game will hold up long term as the characters fight amongst themselves on the path to glory. I still like the system, its easy to use and flows effectively and I have yet to see the problems folks sited with Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition with a bunch of guys running around with 100+ in characteristics. The changes made to Unnatural Trait (it now grants a flat bonus rather than doubling your bonus) helps to keep the scale better than the old version of Unnatural trait did. With each edition they keep refining the core system in new ways, streamlining the rules while keeping the dark gothic glory in balance.
All in all I feel this is another great Warhammer 40K product. If you’re looking for something different in Warhammer 40K, pick this up. If you’re looking for a great resource for making new Chaos foes, pick this up.
Good hunting, and remember: Blood for the Blood God and Skulls for the Skull Throne.
Review Summary