Mr. Welch's Mad Musings: Black Crusade

[@jiriz0r]

After first playing and then GM-ing a dozen DH, RT and DW campaigns I loved running Black Crusade. The campaign fell apart due to irl reasons but while it lasted the blatant evil was so much fun. I'll admit the inherent backstabbing and, well, chaos is a bit tricky as GM. So I had my players, a mix of heretics and Chaos Marines, start as the spec-ops/diplomatic team (depending on circumstances) of a more powerful Chaos Lord. His goal was to gather enough forces to launch a Black Crusade and they were his envoys where the battering ram of the whole warband wasn't suitable. This focussed their efforts, gave them concrete goals and limited the internal party backstabbing as they immediately started to scheme to overthrow him instead. Great fun, especially when the mortal sorcerer got too overconfident and tried an assassination attempt without informing the others first. That's when everyone learned just how much firepower a squad of five Terminator bodyguards can bring to bear in a single round of shooting. Their next attempt was far better planned and thought out.

[@OvaltinePatrol]

I suppose it all really depends on the group of players. I've only played one campaign of Black Crusade but it was very different than you describe, including mixing cultists with marines.

[@gigatwin5298]

Finally after ten thousand ye...... Which number of crusade are we on now?

[@Winterydee]

Mad musings equals an instant click from me, if I'm at home. Thank you Mr. Welch for yet another addition to this series.

[@nickh3205]

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!! SKULLS FOR THD SKULL THRONE!!!!! I really like the Fantasy flight Games 40k RPG’s

[@bobbymorris2979]

I do too. I feel like they could have used some updating and play testing but I really enjoyed it.

[@crackedhammer4612]

The most unfortunate part is that there was supposed to be a final book, The Tome of Undivided, which was supposed to be about undivided stuff as well as fleshing out more nurgle stuff but GW discontinued the FFG rpgs before it was finished

[@randelshurker8133]

Probably the only thing wrong with the game is that IIRC, the Tome of Decay straight up says that becoming a daemon prince of Chaos undivided is a complete no go. Even though in lore, at least 2 Primarchs ascended this way. Thankfully, my DM pretty much set up some rules himself for it, making it essentially require a final trial that pleases all the gods for you to ascend. Still, probably my favorite part was playing around with the end goal of launching our own Black Crusade. Had to house rule a bunch of things, and the DM tied it to a Warhammer Tabletop group he was running at the time to simulate battle outcomes, but it was a blast.

[@TheHarkonnenScum]

There's a lot more wrong with the game. Like the way allegiance is linked to advancement purchases, which makes it harder for classes to become aligned with the most appropriate chaos god for them since they already start with a whole bunch of advancements that don't count towards their allegiance. Not to mention the countless errors, like referring to the wrong page because they just copy/pasted a lot from the other games.

[@themaluscodicium9049]

That's because of GW forcing the retcon that there never was really Undivided daemons or an Undivided Mark even post 4th edition. They foisted the Be'lakor rewrite into 40k from Fantasy at that point and have gone out and tried to bullshit that Daemon Primarchs are somehow wholly different from Princes now. Obviously, there is a lot more wrong with the system then that but I think people get their panties in a bunch about BC's flaws because most people who play 40k stuff think it's good guys and bad guys and the bad guys should get less slack or something. Dark Heresy 1 by far had many, many more issues that people just ignore, and I would argue that Black Crusade had objectively the best system of advancement and XP expenditure of all the systems FFG made.

[@TheHarkonnenScum]

@@themaluscodicium9049 I think BC should get less slack because it's basically the 5th version of the system and yet it's also the most sloppy. And it's pretty silly to say it's advancement system is - objectively - the best one. I'd like to hear your reasoning for why you think that, since I think it's actually the worst. It has the same problem as the aptitude system how they let you cherry pick the most powerful talents and it disincentivizes you from buying skills beyond the first rank (outside of skill requirements), because there will always be a more powerful choice. And there's of course the issue I mentioned before, with the chaos god allegiance working against you, if you pick the most fitting role for that god.

[@ahappypie9]

Always nice seeing a new Mad Musings. Teaches me about different games I didn't know were a thing. Keep up the good work

[@LezCharming]

I come off as a Slanesh cultist. I wish,but really I'm most tempted by Korn.

[@jupiterrising887]

"This causes a bit of a power imbalance that can't be rectified, as there's no way a cultist is ever going to rise to the power of a starting space marine." Astartes begin with a numerical advantage, but it's not huge. It's also far from insurmountable. Additionally, they have to deal with the fact that they stick out like a sore thumb, have the social skills of a screaming baboon with a swollen butthole, and have limited capability outside their all-important focus of combat. As characters advance through the game and become more powerful, a regular mortal cultist (especially augmented by the Dark Gods) can rise to the point where they can not only kill regular space marines, but *casually* do so.

[@Ravenclaw74]

So glad I bought those books when they first came out. I'd hate to be looking for those books now.

[@TechnoCheezit]

I don't mind mixing astartes and humans if you have a good enough GM. Humans should be players that want to focus on intrigue, and they're direly important for operating on worlds and building cults before the big stuff happens. They may never be as strong in combat as the space marines, but the space marines will never be as strong at being spies and agents/building cults.

[@thatguynameddan2136]

Out of all of the FFG 40k titles, Rogue Trader was my favorite with the rest somewhere farther down the list with this one fairly solidly at the bottom but still own a copy. Cant speak for Dark heresy 2e though, havent played that one. They got sloppy with this one and it didnt grab me like even Deathwatch did. Thanks for the video. You've shown the wife and i some pretty cool systems through all this.

[@NefariousKoel]

I think the general consensus on Dark Heresy 2e was that it received much needed cleanup of the rules, but the different default setting was a bit of a step back from the 1e setting. I owned both 1e and 2e. Sold my 1e stuff, along with the splatbooks, years ago but kept 2e (and a splat for it). Never played either, however, and likely won't anytime soon now that Wrath & Glory hardback is out. The horde of die roll modifiers in the older d100 FFG system always gave me pause, especially in Deathwatch (also sold years ago). I kept 2e because it looks amazing and is an interesting read but W&G is probably my go-to now for possible play.

[@rhyzvanic3660]

I wanna run Black Crusade so badly, but I think it'd be the worst book to introduce my friends to the 40k universe. I think rogue trader may be the best because one friend really likes Orks and they'd have the most fun interacting with them, what do you recommend?

[@Mr_Welch]

Rogue Trader is by far the most difficult to run. I don't know how experienced Your Friends Are, but Rogue Trader is the sandiest of sandboxes they don't know what they want to do before the game starts the campaign will go nowhere. If they can agree on a plan though you'll have one of the best campaigns you've ever had

[@rhyzvanic3660]

@@Mr_Welch That makes sense, I had seen your Mad Musings on it and It sounded so fun. I think the best introduction would be to play Only War, and have session 1 be a boot camp session before they're sent into in all consideration, light combat conditions focused on imperial civilization rather then being sent into the eye of terror, or other fun places. Some of my friends know the setting, while others know next to nothing. I have a good idea of what I like (which is Thousand Sons, Orks and Imperial Guard in that order). I had played around with introducing them to deathwatch where session 1 was about getting their very own inquisitor out of a planet that was currently being eaten alive by Tyranids but I felt like playing space marines is putting the horse before the carriage in terms of introducing people to 40k. Either Only war, or Dark Heresy. Thanks for the advice Mr.Welch

[@cthulhupthagn5771]

i habe a complete FF set, mainly because they were all heavy on lore and art.

[@clippyclip2229]

Will you review wrath and glory?

[@SwordlordRoy]

Yeah, not much crossover here, not unless you want to use the one suggestion they make in the book, where you take your characters from the other RPGs that have been removed due to corruption, drop them down to Zero corruption, then put them in this game as corrupted versions of themselves. That assumes you play high-corruption games of course... I kinda liked this with the mixed party I was in, Two Marines and three Cultists (I was the ex-Guardsman Nurgle Sniper/Medic). That said, I see fully the complaint here and admit the campaign was likely a mix of a Great DM and Good Players...Starting out on a Primitive world (so No Power Armor) probably also helped...

[@BigsZone]

Ah Black Crusade. Get yee some rocket tag combat.

[@crackedhammer4612]

I had no idea the books were canon by GW

[@bryanohara5872]

GW’s black library has a rather interesting take on canonicity of published works, in that everything is, especially the contradictory things. I do take umbrage with the removal of drop troop regiments from the guard though, considering how the wargame uses extremely tiny quantities of units on a battlefield compared to what the lore says the scale should be. Remember that we are talking about planetary-scale conflicts between galactic-scale empires outside of the Tau, banana boys, codex-compliant astartes chapters, eldar (of all flavors), and most chaos warbands, so there should be a boatload more bodies on the field.

[@NewEdensFinest]

can certainly say that the argument of power disparity between cultists and marines exists insofar as how the game is going to be played - even, objectively, pound-for-pound, a cultist (especially the advanced archetypes found elsewhere for human cultists against advanced marine archetypes) will put the hurt on marines. It's a statement that does more harm to the universe's asymmetry while not understanding the situational facets involved in a campaign where the sheer utility of a cultist worth of their XP, wargear and archetype talent selections and what's left to actually spend after the actual cost of a human cultist at c-gen is worth its weight that it's hard to see the "marine problem" existing if one isn't watering down for the sake of power parity, meaning, nothing gets to shine - why should I fear a marine player when I could make a heretek with piles of bionics, practical skills and power weapons or a fellowship adroit renegade who can command anything near-flawlessly I keep seeing this brought up here and there and in the true example of gameplay, the issue is null - GMs would certainly send marines against a party whose actions strong or focused enough to meet that consequence but a cultist renegade archetype, with a plasma gun (offered in their package), can have a field day on a whole fireteam of marines and even contrary to that should the argument be how proficient in battle marines actually are, then the game is working as intended. Many GMs and players alike rely too much on mythologising the bolted-on advantages of marines that lead them to make bottlenecks through "balance" on the universe they apparently feel so strongly about; the whole theme of BC as written won't hold up and you wouldn't put stipulations on rock, paper, scissors either because of the properties of each object being "overpowered" without using an open mind don't be afraid or fooled of/by the 40k games telling you at face value about anything on offer because the games weren't well assessed for design gaps anywhere across all the titles. On that, here's a doc of the archetypes of marines vs cultists supplied gracefully by the sheer, heroic, hard "au" autism of my fellow friends and players who feel the same way; we never had an issue with power because we never treated the universe like it was a video game: drive.google.com/file/d/1P2vveemHvBrWS7_P4-9dBy9fmvjGJerX/view?usp=sharing

[@DarkKnightCuron]

Awesome episode!

[@redeye3869]

Any Dark Mechanicum in this game? Even just as NPCs or enemies?

[@Usernamesdontmatter1]

I sorta disagree. You can have human characters in a space marine party. My group has run this. Hell one of the khonate human cultists actually kept embarrassing our space marine leader in battle. She even solo killed some Space Marines in single melee combat. The only reason why she wasn't executed out of jealousy was because my world eater said "No she's funny" and made it clear that if she died out of jealous retribution or scheming then he'd tear off the conspirator's arm and beat them with it. They were also instrumental in the planning stages and information gathering of a planet invasion. The only reason why the space Marines found out about the late stage genestealer cult was because they went looking while we were busy smuggling ourselves on the planet. Even when combat rose up the human characters kept up with the space Marines. Yeah the space Marines typically were at the front and kicking ass but that back line of humans was basically within arms reach of us at all times. It's a special feeling when you as a khonate berserker run in and suddenly the guy to your right that you didn't see gets point blank metla'd by a heretech who's been charging alongside you. If the human players are people who know the system and built their characters right then it's fine. The GM was not pulling his punches with the enemies either since most of our non genestealer cult enemies were typically space wolves and black templars. Boss space Marines normally came in pairs and were powergamed from deathwatch. Through some very lucky rolls and genius tactics the human cultists generally kept up and I was looking for excuses to execute the psychers. The GM was not playing favorites and they still were just as hard to kill as any of the space Marines. We had two Marines fall before even one of them got into crit and again the GM was gunning for them. If you have a bloodthirsty group that's smart and not afraid to die horribly then they can absolutely compliment space Marines on the battle and go solo. It's hard for them yes but it's possible.

[@Jo-Heike]

Ever going to muse about Wrath and Glory?

[@misomiso8228]

3:27 amazing Art! Where is it from?

[@Mr_Welch]

I believe that is from the Tome of Decay, the Nurgle sourcebook.

[@cuizos704]

Great episode as always! Are you thinking on covering Eclipse Phase? the first edition its free to download hehehe

[@Mr_Welch]

I can put it on the list, I do have a fair bit on there right now.

[@springheeledjackofthegurdi2117]

@@Mr_Welch will you consider publishing the list?

[@Whipster-Old]

Haha, Chet.

[@CaptainRufus]

I'm actually rolling up an Alpha Legion guy who is in a Deathwatch game. He is a totally normal marine yep. Totally normal. (He has almost no idea what the hell he is doing. Or if he is pro or anti Imperium. He has a sweet pistol or a flamer though.

[@SerpenThrope]

How hard would it be to make Lil Nas X in this game?

[@TheHarkonnenScum]

It's fairly hard to make a character that useless since all careers start out pretty competent.

[@SerpenThrope]

@@TheHarkonnenScum How the fuck is someone who can take over Hell "useless?"

[@TheHarkonnenScum]

@@SerpenThrope Rapping doesn't get you very far in the 40k universe.

[@SerpenThrope]

@@TheHarkonnenScum Dude, I'm talking about the version of him from the music video.

[@TheHarkonnenScum]

@@SerpenThrope Sorry, I was just teasing you for asking a dumb question.

[@AkiKii519]

LoL

[@willnorman-bargo]

This would be fun to play as a joke or really fun and silly game.

[@danmorgan3685]

Let's see what we've got: Fantasy Flight so high production values and wildly overpriced. Limited print run for key books. Not many books. All the problems of an evil campaign. Wildly unbalanced characters. Little cross compatibility with other games in the line. Very narrow play focus. Competing with 40k fan boys who have been conditioned to empty their bank accounts on command. Yup, glad I missed this one.

[@Mr_Welch]

Yep, that kinda sums it up.

[@TheHarkonnenScum]

Not so sure about the production value. Yes, they look nice, but a lot of the art is licensed from pre-existing 40k media, while the rules are largely copy pasted from Dark Heresy. The books also become progressively more sloppy with each iteration. Lack of proof-reading and playtesting is quite obvious, half of the series' got abandoned half-way in with certain sourcebooks missing and the erratas are incomplete and contradict each other between editions.

[@ChibiKami]

it's not impossible to play chaos for the side of good. For example Khorne embodies honor and despises a mere curbstomp, and his marines will defend a weak planet from the likes of an ork waaagh or tyranid invasion

[@cthulhupthagn5771]

and then slaughter the natives for being weak, using their souls to pull the planet into the warp