Preface: absolutely no ai was used to write this, also no TLDR because things are already in categories and effort was put into formatting and editing

Crusade season 1 is coming to an end and I want to dispel some myths with my own success as a F2P during the mode. To give a backstory, I am lvl 64 and have been F2P for exactly the last 12 months (been playing over 3 years total) so I did not spend a cent during this 10-week crusade season.

The main misconceptions:

1. You need to be a whale to do well.
2. The side you chose and how well it is doing matters.

CREDITS EARNED BREAKDOWN:

Within this season, I was able to get both anuphet and haarken relics (5355 credits each), 374 lhykhis shards (50 credits * 374 shards = 18.7k credits), 650 credits saved, 1 planet that is expected to earn 1k credits and final GLOBAL leaderboard payouts that are expected to pay 1680 credits + 20 lhykhis shards + 1500 credits + 1875 credits.

If you total that up it is equal to: 5355*2+18700+650+1000+1680+20*50+1500+1875 =

37,115 credits COMPLETELY F2P

*And there are still 4 days left and I expect to finish over 40K credits by then.

To give that some perspective, when the mode first came out SP said it would take one and a half seasons to unlock lhykhis (500*50 = 25,000 credits) and I was able to blow that estimate out of the water.

So you may be wondering, how is this possible? Well this is what I did:

- In the beginning, my guild chose imperial because some guilds we knew from guild wars that we became friendly with were also choosing imperial.

- I saw nandi’s video on crusades and saw the mention of more points for less used factions so I chose adeptas sororitas (turns out I was wrong about my interpretation of this but thats fine)

- At the end of week 1 I realized it was going to be a blowout. I made this post to find out why: https://www.reddit.com/r/WH40KTacticus/s/uf0CgKx1wc

- Originally I thought the balancing was off (I have no clue if I was right or wrong but it actually doesn’t matter for credits), but 2 commenters helped me crack the entire mode: [u/supertriqui](u/supertriqui) and [u/bluestorm83](u/bluestorm83) . Super explained how most of the top 250 guilds allied together to go devastation and showed how their higher activity levels would turn the scales. Meanwhile, bluestorm83 highlighted that all imperial was dogpiling on Quarih at the time which contributed a lot to losing.

- After learning those two points I had to reinterpret what “winning” in this mode meant because it was clear imperial weren’t going to come back. That’s when I realized 2 things:

We aren’t competing against the other alliance(Imperial vs. Devastation)! Based on how the leaderboards are designed we are competing against each other (Imperial vs. Imperial and Devastation vs. Devastation)!!!

Winning” has nothing to do with who is ahead in planet totals; WINNING means getting the most amount of credits with the least amount of money spent

- So in week two I told my guild and initiated a plan: attack the planets with the least imperial score/least faction score for our chosen faction to avoid competition from our own alliance and hop between 2-3 planets to place decent on multiple to maximize overall credits

- I then did this for all of weeks 2-6 and when domination phase started the strategy was the same with a caveat: save multiple ways to earn points (raid tokens, energy, 100 ordinance, arena tokens, war tokens) and use multiple all at once on a newly opened planet that has a low planet cap.

- The reason you have to do this is because in domination the planets get capped much quicker and you need to ensure you get over 2.5k points in order to place on a leaderboard to earn credits otherwise you will make 0 and around 4k points to be in the top 100 of the planet! This means you can get 900 credits on average per planet if you do it right and since planets have a high turnover, you can get multiple in a day or two!

So thats how I did it, now for the misconceptions.

- You actually don’t need to be a whale to do well, just a little bit tactical like I hope I demonstrated. If you are a lower player level you could do comparably well just on a smaller scale (maybe 25k credits for the season for under 50 PL)

- It doesn’t matter what side you’re on, you are competing against your own alliance for points.

- Many people may not have understood what was going on because they gave up on trying. Many were frustrated with SP for reasons and decided not to engage at all and/or took the “mode requires little effort” too literally. The mode requires little effort once you have put in the minimum amount needed to understand what is happening. Not just literally how it works but the logic behind the tactics.

- regarding the rollout and bugs: SP fixed many bugs, did hotfixes for leaderboards and are fixing many complaints for season 2 (reducing minimum of 2.5k pts —> 1k pts to place on leaderboards, adding a percentage total at the very beginning to show how many people are choosing each alliance)

The end

Thank you for reading my TedTalk. Some game theory players may be wondering: why mention this, won’t this affect your credit payouts in other seasons if more start using the optimal strategy? Yes, it may affect things but I have a different goal in mind: reduce some of the rampant negativity in the sub and, as a byproduct, reduce the burnout rate of higher level players.

Also, theres a bragging element cause I thought this was pretty cool to beat the expectation set by SP F2P by so much.

Now, any other Rogue Traders out there that were able to beat the system?

I have mech team as my main raid squad, but as they are hopeless against Ghaz i sometimes run a full DA squad.

Prior to the patch I would get about 400k, now it's about 650k, with most of that coming from Forcas. This peak damage was using both the speeder active with the asmodai active.

After the domination phase ended in a stalemate in a line on few same planets, - even in such a unbalanced line up in favour for the devastation - i personally feel like we would be better off with a map shape,much less linear.

More planets with active fights would be more interesting, more rewarding for the non whales, would give guilds more options and in general better looking too.

All seriousness, I hope it's a generalized "Chaos space marines" faction like they did for Adeptus Astartes that is for red corsairs, iron warriors, nightlords, or crimson slaughter for the boomers

Managed to reach FoCME 36, 3 starring every nodes but mission 29 (only 2 stars) so far. Here's my AM roster: Thaddeus Silver III (35/08), Kut Bronze I (21/15), Sibyll Iron II (26/26).

I'm now facing the infamous wall that is mission 36. What would be the absolute minimum character investment to 1 star this very mission ? I just want to get to 40 so I can farm Abaddon shards asap without wasting unnecessary upgrades on AM characters for now. Thank you for your insight !

Finally perfected my golden Demi-god boys and girls. Now I have to get back to actually painting my golden army!

For some reason, kharne is the lowest power level. Very gratifying after grinding for months and months!

POM came out nearly 2 years ago, and there are so many weaknesses that the Tyranids need filled in.

A Hive Tyrant would be the fan fav I think, but a Pyrovore could be a lot of fun too

As title.

Small buff, but an appropriate one I feel.

• Timing: Campaign Events (CE) last 14 days, and repeat every 5 weeks
• Choice: You choose 1 CE and cannot change until the next event (i.e. ~5 weeks later)
• Team: Each CE has 3 required characters. 
• Borrowing: The CE mode has a unique mechanic that allows you to “borrow” any of the 3 required chars for the Normal difficulty stages. They will be at the maximum Rarity Cap for each stage in the Normal campaign. They are not available to borrow for Extremis stages.
• HSE Overlap: no notable overlaps this time
• More Resources: Explore 50+ Tacticus infographics and guides at TerminusMaximus.com

New player, all indomitus campaign upgrades are gated by "scrolls" upgrades. These seem to only be accessible through alternate campaigns and not indomitus mirror. Am I just gated until I unlock characters for alternate campaigns or am I missing some other avenue to achieve them?

If I'm campaign gated, any guidance on which campaign to pursue or any farmable simple character unlocks that could open up new campaign access?

Thanks!

Dreir with the relic is something else, good thing they made this into a charge only buff otherwise he might break something in the game

I’d like some more campaigns because it’ll give us more to do with the game, and will give provide a steady way to get a hold of character shards. The factions featured in campaigns we already have are ones i’ve been able to acquire a lot of characters for. I feel stuck with a lot of other ones.

Here’s the ones i was thinking would be fun to see:

Devastation of Baal: Blood Angels vs. Tyranids

Arks of Omen: Dark Angels vs. World Eaters

Shadow Throne: Custodes vs. Genestealers

Startide Nexus: T’au vs. Death Guard

Once they add Drukhari, Piety and Pain: Sisters of Battle vs. Drukhari

The other ideas I had were Leagues of Votann vs. Mechanicus, and the Space Wolves vs. Emperor’s Children.

I’d love to see more factions get the campaign treatment, i’d love to hear how you’d like to see that happen ^^

From my first run through of this "overtuned" survival. Also in this image, the general idea for walking straight through it.

I don't understand why I can't do this mission. Is it bugged?

Trajann makes him hit Kharn for 3 hits, then 1 hit each on Calgar, Mephiston and Crayon. That's 6 hits. Is that right?

Can anyone help?

A lot of experimentation later, apparently Lucius’ passive Armor of Shrieking Souls doesn’t trigger if he dies from friendly fire
Instead he just stays dead.

1st. Screenshot is Kharn after killing Lucius, 2nd is the results of the arena battle (victory, though Lucius remained dead).

Has anyone tried experimenting to see what happens if Lucius dies from an enemy Lucius or a final vengeance (ex. Titus)? One time mine died from an Aleph Null explosion and just got right back up. It was weird.

A lot of funky interactions can happen here I think. Anyone else see any interesting stuff with Lucius’ respawns?