Anyone have thoughts on the Crusade of Fire campaign book yet?

[JMichael]

Has anyone received their Crusade of Fire yet, and if so what are our thoughts?
GW says my copies have shipped (to my work), so I should hopefully have it within a couple of days.

[Wildcard]

Not yet. Mine got shipped as well, but still waiting :)


GW says my copies have shipped (to my work), --

Man, and i thought my wife was strict about 40k, but at least i can still bring that stuff home :D

[DrLove42]

Picked mine up on Saturday.

The campaign stuff seems fun, and am organising a campaign based on it at my club now

The extra dogfighting stuff could be fun, but seems a bit wierd.

The Dark Eldar arena, again could be interesting but seems a bit wierd.

[eldargal]

I've only had a quick look-through, seems decent enough though 6 of the 8 armies were marine flavoured, or something close to that.

[ElectricPaladin]

The Independent Characters (http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/?p=2315) did a comprehensive review of Crusade of Fire. To summarize:

Negatives
• Focuses on Imperial and Chaos armies. Some armies (Tyranids) aren't represented at all.
• Furthermore, the storyline for non-Imperial/Chaos factions is weak and tacked-on.
• Requires Planetary Empires tiles.
• Basic campaign system is only a variant of the Planetary Empires system.

Positives
• Cool arena battle system.
•*Interesting dogfight system allows fighters to battle in the air.
• Cool rules for fighting on daemon worlds.

I know I won't be buying it, but I can see the appeal. I hope someone I know buys it, but I'm not interested myself.

[PaD]

• Requires Planetary Empires tiles.
Or.... A pen and some paper. :eek: ;)

[eldargal]

I don't really understand why people are getting worked up over the Planetary Empires thing, it said so in the book description and it follows the format of Blood in the Badlands which used the Mighty Empire tiles/rules.

[Mr Mystery]

And as PaD said, you can just draw up your own

As for Imperial V Chaos, not such a big deal really. They are the major players in the game. Any alien stuff is of course going to feel tacked on, largely because it is. Except Orks. The little green blighters are everywhere!

[energongoodie]

I don't really understand why people are getting worked up over the Planetary Empires thing, it said so in the book description and it follows the format of Blood in the Badlands which used the Mighty Empire tiles/rules.

Sorry to disagree but I'm pretty sure the book description said nothing about Planetary Empires at all.

I'm hoping mine turns up today.

[DrLove42]

Its a version of it, but all the rules and stuff are explained.

You don't need the PLan empire set, i'm running it without it, using a computer drawn up one so we can share it easier on our club forum.

As for the marines vs chaos thing....yes and no. Its described as "forces of Good vs Forces of Evil vs people just dicking on you"

Forces of good could easily include Eldar or Tau. Evil is primarly chaos, but could include traitor guard or deamons. And then the pirates could include Dark Eldar and necrons(as it does in the book) but could also include Nids. It just happens those are the armies that the dev team played

Also the book is a bit of a guideline. You don't have to stick to it

[eldargal]

Sorry to disagree but I'm pretty sure the book description said nothing about Planetary Empires at all.

I'm hoping mine turns up today.

You're right, I'm sure it said it used Planetary Empires somewhere though, bah, Still it isn't a big deal, as people have said, you can use your own templates easily.

[DrLove42]

I'm planning this campaign for the club in the new year.

I'm currently at 15 players. Its going to be fun. Already got plans for special games and events planned.

[Frankio9]

Can anyone tell me where the dark eldar fighter ace chart is?

[DrLove42]

They don't get one.

Apparantly DE don't live long enough to be Aces.

[Krayd]

Can anyone tell me where the dark eldar fighter ace chart is?

I strongly suspect that Dark Eldar are just supposed to use the Eldar chart.

Either that, or they mispelled Dark Eldar as 'Black Templars', because it doesn't make much sense that they would have their own ace chart. :P

[Learn2Eel]

I'll ask my LGS owner tomorrow to see how he feels about it, or if anyone else has read it.

[Kirsten]

You're right, I'm sure it said it used Planetary Empires somewhere though, bah, Still it isn't a big deal, as people have said, you can use your own templates easily.

I read it somewhere too I am sure. not picked it up yet, I was planning on at some point, but from what people are saying here I don't know if I will bother. I snapped up Blood in the Badlands and that turned out to be a total waste of money.

[energongoodie]

Mine has arrived...I have read it...and it is BOBBINS! :(

I am not negative by nature and usually love a new release what ever it is. But....
Guys just don't bother. At the risk of starting another 'everything was better in my day' thread, this book is the sort of thing you would have seen spread over two or three White Dwarfs a few years ago. I can't believe there is so little in there for £25.

This is Games Workshop lite.

[Maelstorm]

Mine has arrived...I have read it...and it is BOBBINS! :(

I am not negative by nature and usually love a new release what ever it is. But....
Guys just don't bother. At the risk of starting another 'everything was better in my day' thread, this book is the sort of thing you would have seen spread over two or three White Dwarfs a few years ago. I can't believe there is so little in there for £25.

This is Games Workshop lite.

I picked it up on Monday - you've summed it up quite well. Part of this should have been included in the Planetary Empires very thin guide and the rest should have been spread over a couple of white dwarf magazine issues.

[Flying Tigress]

Mine has arrived...I have read it...and it is BOBBINS! :(

I am not negative by nature and usually love a new release what ever it is. But....
Guys just don't bother. At the risk of starting another 'everything was better in my day' thread, this book is the sort of thing you would have seen spread over two or three White Dwarfs a few years ago. I can't believe there is so little in there for £25.

This is Games Workshop lite.

Very much agree with energongoodie.

The book is... merely OK. It really does read like an in-house GW campaign the staff came up with, then decided to publish after the fact. Five pages of fluff, some campaign rules, then 30-40 pages of the staff giving battle reports.

The Daemon world rules, fighter ace rules, and Arenas of Death rules are all great, but they're all situational. For example, my local game group is thinking of integrating the arenas of death rules into the regular games existing Challenge mechanic. Issue a challenge, accept, and play the Arenas mini-game with some tweaks. Or, as a separate night of gaming entirely, it is a unique and fun little thing.

BUT. Again, concurring, the Daemon World, Fighter Ace, and Arenas of Death are ALL White Dwarf articles. 5-6 pages of situational mechanics that people may or may not enjoy.

Eliminating the battle report type breakdown of the campaign, you have basically half the book left over. Any of which could have been spread over a few issues of a magazine.

Have to say, a little disappointed. The fact it was so stupidly flogged after every copy online and in stores sold out, and it's still being pushed on the website doesn't add anything to my respect for the end product.

It's mediocre at best. I'd say 6/10, if that.

[White Tiger88]

well this explains why there are suddenly in house GW campaigns using the book popping up in GW's (I would play but im not buying the dang book!)

[jgebi]

I was going to buy it just cause I like the tasty fluff but only 5 pages for 78 ****en dollars (I live in aus so it's expensive) well **** it altho the rules make it what 15 pages

[Deadlift]

I like it, I enjoy looking at pictures of other peoples armies :)

I will be using this book to run our next clubs campaign.

[Flying Tigress]

Yes, I don't want to discourage anyone from the campaign. The actual campaign, especially the missions and objectives, are very quite strong. For that matter, being as they use the Planetary Empires expansion, it could quite feasibly be adapted into a resource/map-based campaign with some tweaks.

Although the armies used in the book are very Space Marine/Chaos focused, there are three factions, and any could readily be used for Xenos races.

The campaign was strong. I just found the fluff lackluster, and the prevalence of so much designer/developer commentary superflous. In fact, it could be the extraneous commentary jaded my review, and it's more deserving of praise. The campaign layout itself is quite strong. I just felt a bit let down buying a book and reading about everyone else's armies and how they fared in a campaign. It seemed... pandering, somehow. Adding the fact that it was so limited in production it sold out in two days online and most GW stores only received one or two extra copies, and most independent retailers didn't receive any, and I can still visit the GW site and see them hitting me over the head with how awesome it is, it's a little underwhelming.

Again strong campaign, strong rules, but at the end of the day, it reads like "hey guys, let's make an awesome campaign in-house." Cut to two months later. "Hey that was a great campaign. Let's make it a book, and make a buck."

Mediocre? Good? I don't know. Could have been much better.

[eldargal]

Sadly I'm going to have to agree, 6/10 or so. It's ok, it is more dissapointing than bad. The campaign coverage seemed much shorter than in BitB (which I did enjoy) and the attention given to each army seemed to be less as well. Also having nearly every army being some flavour of Marine was tedious.

The new rules are good, but wondering why Dark Eldar don't get fighter aces. Ridiculous when their entire culture revolves around trying to be the best at inflicting pain not to have a mechanism to reflect that.

[Gir]

I was going to buy it just cause I like the tasty fluff but only 5 pages for 78 ****en dollars (I live in aus so it's expensive) well **** it altho the rules make it what 15 pages

It was $70 in Aus.

Not the best book, but it looks good on my shelf. Will probably get more use then the ~$500 worth of Rogue Trader and Black Crusade books I have, so I'm not complaining.

[Krayd]

I finally got my copy in the mail yesterday.

I think that it was a major oversight on GWs part, leaving out chaos and dark eldar aces (if *necrons* can have aces, then there is no reason why there can't be ace heldrakes). I wonder if it was a mistake that could be remedied via FAQ later - after all, with all of the various editing errors, it wouldn't surprise me if they just forgot to put it in). It's especially odd for them to have left out DE, as razorwings seemed to play a pretty big role in the campaign.

On the other hand, despite lack of aces, DE get a pretty good deal on the maneuver chart. Both of their maneuvers get pulled off on an initiative check (5), while almost all over races have greater difficulty in succeeding on their maneuver charts.

The arena game looks like fun, but I've only glanced at the rules.

[JMichael]

Just received my copy, haven't had a chance to read through it yet.

The box was barley big enough for the book and since there was no padding around the edges, the upper right of the cover and binding are pretty badly smashed (even the top of the pages suffered damage).
I contacted GW, and although I will have to ship it back to them, they will replace it.