Crusade Campaign Ideas: Eight Premises for Your Group

The Crusade rules handle how forces grow. They do not say why the forces are fighting, and that is the part that decides whether the third game matters as much as the first. A good premise gives every player a reason to turn up next week, including the one who lost last week.

Picking a premise

Match the premise to the group, not to the lore you like best:

• How many players? A rivalry needs two. An invasion or a siege needs sides, and works best with four or more.
• Sides, or every player for themselves? Some groups love teams. Others want everyone to have their own story.
• How long? Three or four chapters over two to three months finishes. The pacing guide covers why that matters.

Ideas for a group

1. The planetary invasion

One side lands on a hive world and the other holds it. The simplest premise there is, and the one that gives every game an obvious reason to happen.

• Chapters: the landing zones, the push through the outer districts, the assault on the spire.
• What players fight for: ground. After each chapter, note which districts each side holds. The side holding more starts the final chapter with the choice of battlefield.
• How it ends: a final battle for the spire, with as many players on each side as you can fit round the table.

2. The relic hunt

Every force is after the same artefact, buried somewhere on a shrine world. Nobody knows where. Every player is out for themselves.

• Chapters: rumours (each winner earns a clue), the location, the vault.
• What players fight for: clues. The player holding the most clues when the vault chapter opens chooses where the final battle is fought.
• How it ends: whoever wins in the vault takes the artefact, and their Warlord carries it as a Crusade Relic.

3. The escalation

No plot beyond the war getting bigger. Games start small and grow every chapter. It is the best first campaign for a new group, and the best way to build a new army a box at a time.

• Chapters: three or four, each a step up in points, from small skirmishes to full battles.
• What players fight for: a force worth fielding at the end. Every Battle Honour earned early is still on the table in the biggest games.
• How it ends: a final battle at full size, or no winner at all. Plenty of groups simply start the next campaign.

4. The siege

One fortress world, one side dug in behind its walls and the other trying to break them. Uneven on purpose: give the defenders fortifications and the attackers more points.

• Chapters: the outer lines, the breach, the inner keep. The attackers have to take each one in turn.
• What players fight for: time. Every chapter the defenders hold brings the relief force a chapter closer.
• How it ends: either the keep falls, or the defenders hold out until the relief force arrives for a last battle together.

Ideas for two players

5. The nemesis

Two players, two forces, one rivalry. The same two armies meet again and again, and the history between them is the whole point.

• Chapters: as many as you like, each ending in a deciding game. The loser of a chapter picks the next battlefield.
• What players fight for: the record between you, and the units on each side that keep surviving each other.
• How it ends: the first player to win an agreed number of chapters wins the war.

6. The long patrol

A small force is cut off behind enemy lines and has to get home. Every game is one leg of the journey. It works for two players, and just as well for one playing solo.

• Chapters: one leg per game, through whatever lies between the force and safety.
• What players fight for: survival. Agree that no new units join the patrol, so every loss stays a loss.
• How it ends: the patrol reaches extraction, or it does not. Either way, the survivors have stories nobody else does.

The long patrol is a good fit for a solo campaign too, with the enemy played by you.

Ideas with a twist

7. The broken alliance

Players start in two alliances. Halfway through, one of them breaks, and somebody gets rewarded for breaking it.

• Chapters: a war between the alliances, the betrayal, every player for themselves.
• What players fight for: secret objectives. Give one player an objective the rest of the table does not know about, with a reward kept hidden until it is earned.
• How it ends: the final chapter is open war, and the betrayer finds out whether it was worth it.

8. The living world

The planet is the enemy. A death world or a daemon world gets worse every chapter, and every army is fighting it as well as each other.

• Chapters: three or four, each adding one battlefield rule the host writes for the whole table, so the world gets more dangerous as the campaign goes on.
• What players fight for: getting off the planet. Every force needs a way out, and there are fewer ways out than forces.
• How it ends: the side holding the last extraction point when the world dies wins.

Running any of these in Echelon

• Each chapter is a stage, with a name, a planet type (hive, forge, shrine, death and daemon worlds among them), a tagline, a prologue, and a conclusion you write when it ends.
• Story Beats hold the turning points, and you mark each one off when it lands.
• Missions are the secret objectives. A Mission's reward can stay hidden until the player earns it, which is what the broken alliance runs on.
• For an escalation, the host can raise every force's Supply Limit at once when a chapter begins, and each battle carries its own points target.
• Alliances, a Supporter feature, keep the sides for an invasion or a siege and add standings by side. On the free plan, name the sides in the campaign description.

The free plan hosts 1 campaign for up to 4 players, and everything above except alliances is free.

Frequently Asked Questions

These campaign ideas are for Warhammer 40,000 Crusade play. Echelon is an independent campaign tracker and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Games Workshop.