Goonhammer's Unofficial FAQ/Errata for Crucible of Champions

With the release of the new Maelstrom supplement for Warhammer 40k this past weekend, players finally have access to the new rules for Crucible of Champions, a system for making custom characters for Warhammer 40k. It's a nice addition for any narrative campaign or group, and while it works just fine for Crusade, we also think it works particularly well for narrative campaigns and groups where you aren't using those rules, leaving you free to make custom characters without fully diving in on the XP and tracking mechanics.

That said, there are some clear issues with it, and given their track record when it comes to narrative play supplements and rulesets, it's not clear that Games Workshop will ever fix those. So we've taken it upon ourselves to go through the book and write our own unofficial FAQ/Errata for the book, which you can find below. Note that this errata are completely unofficial and not at all from Games Workshop, just the staff here at Goonhammer.

You can Download a PDF of the Document here

ERRATA

These are corrections to what seem like obvious errors, intended to fix broken interactions and rules in the Crucible rules.

ABILITIES WHICH REDUCE THE COST OF STRATAGEMS

Change these to reflect the current wording in the Balance Dataslate under the section Modifying a Stratagem’s CP Cost, i.e. these abilities reduce the cost of the Stratagem by 1 CP instead unless they specify the name of the Stratagem.

This is a change which generally applies to everything in competitive play and it’s worth making the appropriate changes to Crucible rules to reflect that.

ASTRA MILITARUM

Augmented Bone’Ead: Change the Toughness characteristic of this unit to 6.

This appears to just be a typo, where an Ogryn character mistakenly has the toughness of a guardsman.

CHAOS DAEMONS

Add the following to each of the Chaos Daemons Datasheets: This model has a 5+ Invulnerable save.

Another likely typo, as Daemons only seem to get an invulnerable save when given the Tzeentch upgrade (which gives them a 4+ invulnerable save, in line with the faction rules).

AELDARI

Skyrunner: If you take the Star lance as a Ranged Weapon, you also have to take it as a Melee weapon, and vice versa. You may take a second Skyrunner-only Ranged weapon from the list.

Singing Spear: If you take the Singing Spear as a Ranged Weapon, you also have to take it as a Melee weapon, and vice versa.

These were trickier – there’s nothing connecting these weapons in the Crucible rules but then that leads to weird situations where a character on a Skyrunner has a star lance they can shoot with but not use in melee combat, and vice versa. This corrects that. Note that for the Singing Spear, this will lock your character out of taking another ranged psychic attack. You can decide separately if you want to allow them to take a second ranged psychic attack if they take the Singing Spear.

T’AU EMPIRE

Broadside Battlesuit: The model loses the FLY keyword.

This one seems like an oversight - Broadsides don’t FLY normally and shouldn’t retain the ability when you purchase this upgrade.

TYRANIDS

Bio-Plasmic Cannon: Change Strength to “9”

Rupture Cannon: Change Damage to “D6+6”

These changes reflect changes made to Tyranid weapons in the Balance Dataslate and the Warhammer 40,000 app and are important for making those weapons relevant as choices.

Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor. Credit: Swiftblade

BALANCE FIXES

These aren’t errors necessarily, but they are pretty glaring issues when it comes to game balance that we felt needed to be addressed.

DEATH GUARD

Tri-Lobe Vectors: Change the Points cost of Terminator Armour for this unit to +40 points.

The Tri-Lobe Vectors are a great idea, but being able to add 15 wounds of Terminator characters to a unit for roughly the same cost as a single Lord of Contagion is going to create some incredibly strong units. This increase makes the unit much more fair without making them overcosted as not that you’ll still need to pay points for weapons on all three models, meaning that if each model has a ranged weapon and a melee weapon, you’ll be adding an extra +20 points to the unit cost. This puts a unit of three with Terminator Armour, two weapons each, and abilities at around 200 points, which is much more reasonable for a unit that can join Blightlords or Deathshroud Terminators.

T’AU EMPIRE

Wargear: Change the cost of the Heavy Rail Rifle to (+5 points).

The Rail Rifle is a bit too cheap given that you can take three on your broadside specialist.

TYRANIDS

Burrowing Claws: In addition to the existing rules text, the model also gains the BURROWER keyword.

We just felt like Tyranids could use some extra love, and giving a Burrowing unit Burrowing so they can do a bit more in Subterranean Assault seemed like something that should happen.

What's Next: Homebrew Stuff and Other Updates

That wraps up our first pass at a balance and errata fix on this one but we'll be back to update it. if you have any questions you feel are still lingering with the new rules, let us know on our discord or in the comments below and we'll address them in a future update of the doc. We'll also be doing a few homebrew rules down the line as well, in case Crucible gave you the itch to build outside these lines with things like custom Helbrutes or Troupe Masters, so look forward to those happening soon. As as we mentioned in our February App updates post, we'll have a datasheet builder in there at some point this month so keep an eye out for that as well.

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