Black Templar FAQ

As per the title, there has been an update of the Black Templars, bringing their equipment more in line with Codex marine armies. I'm highly tempted to dust of my Templars and try them with the new rules.

(Not, image sourced from Warhammer 40K wikia, by Kingmonk I believe, used without permission. But it does look awesome)

The Full FAQ is available here: Black Templar FAQ

I'll go over the highlights quickly.

Page 23 – Kill Them All, Ignore “and follow the normal rules for target priority in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook.” in the last sentence.
Edit- Just realised that this means you do have to take target priority tests. as previously. Bit strange though.


Page 27 – Cyclone Missile Launcher Change “as a missile launcher” to “as a heavy 2, missile launcher
With the ability to still take 2 heavy weapons in a 5 man squad, combined with the tank hunters veteran skill, This is going to be quite a nasty squad for about 260 points. Able to fire 4 strength 9 (effectively against vehicles) AP 3 missiles on the move, I may have to start replace my twin assault cannon squad.

Page 28 – Holy Orbs of Antioch Change “, rolling to hit as normal. If the Holy Orb hits, place the small Blast Template over a model in the target unit.” to “. The Holy Orb of Antioch is a blast weapon.
Not really a good or bad change, more chance of scattering but less likely to miss entirely.

Page 28 – Narthecium Change the second paragraph to “As long as the Apothecary is alive, all models in his squad have the Feel No Pain special rule.
Makes command squads a bit more worthwhile, especially if your putting lots of points into one.

Page 28 – Storm shield Change to “A storm shield is a solid shield that has an energy field generator built into it. The energy field is capable of deflecting almost any attack, even blows from lascannons and power weapons. A model with a storm shield has a 3+ invulnerable save. A model equipped with a storm shield can never claim the +1 Attack bonus for being armed with two close combat weapons in an assault.
About time, Combined with Accept any challenge, and furious charge, this is also going to be nasty. Unfortunately increased to 15 points for wargear But I'm not complaining.

Page 29 – Power of the Machine Spirit Change to “The vehicle can fire one more weapon than would normally be permitted. In addition, this weapon can be fired at a different target unit to any other weapons,
subject to the normal rules for shooting. Therefore, a vehicle that has moved at combat speed can fire two
weapons, and a vehicle that has either moved at cruising speed, or has suffered a ʻCrew Stunnedʼ or ʻCrew Shakenʼ result can fire a single weapon
That's more like it, none of this BS 2 nonsense either. This means a land raider crusader can now fire to full effect when moving 6" or less. Including firing the multi melta at another target at full BS. Also, vindicators can now fire their main weapon when moving up to 12" if equipped with the power of the machine spirit upgrade.

Page 29 – Smoke Launchers Change to “SMOKE LAUNCHERS Smoke Launchers are used to temporarily obscure the vehicle behind concealing clouds of smoke, allowing it to cross open areas in greater safety. See the Vehicles section of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook for details.
Ah well, all good things must come to an end.

Page 38 – Transport Vehicles Ignore the third sentence starting “The vehicles described here...” and ignore the last two sentence
Meaning dedicated transports can now carry other units like most other armies transports. How many landraiders can you squeeze into a 2000 point list now. :)

Page 39 – Land Speeder Typhoon Change all 3 occurences of “Typhoon multiple missile
launcher” to “typhoon missile launcher” and change “Range 48"; S 5; AP 5; Heavy 1, Blast, Twin-linked” to
“Frag: Range 48"; S 4; AP 6; Heavy 2, Blast Krak: Range 48"; S 8; AP 3; Heavy 2
That's better. Gives us more flexibility in choice of speeder units.

Page 48 – Shotgun, Strength Change “3” to “4
Making the combat shotgun a worthwhile weapon for neophytes now, Losing a strength 4 attack in combat. But gaining a strength 4 shot up to 12"

There are a few other changes, but these are the ones that I feel are going to have the biggest influence on game-play. Especially your terminators and land raiders (now assault vehicles for sure now by the way).

Titans!

Decided to post something a little different to my tau today. So I thought I'd put up some pictures of  my Warhound Titan for your viewing pleasure. There are a few chips and scratches in the painting that will need to be re-painted This will have to wait till some point after ToFG though.

The Titan is painted in Legio Ignatum colours, although due to my main army being Black Templars the Warhound is on active deployment with them. To mark this one of the shin guards is painted in Black Templars insignia

There are two individually switched LEDs on the top to act as shield counters. There is a further red one in the cockpit.

Apocalypse

Last saturday I had a 5000 point apocalypse game against Ginge. Black Templars and titans vs Imperial guard.

I had written my army list based around an anti tank force. Knowing Ginge owns quite a few baneblades and variants (about 6). I decided the heavy hitters have to come out:

My Army:

Reaver titan (bols variant rules)
Warhound titan

Helbretch
Terminator chaplain
2 x Landraider crusaders
2 x Rhinos
2 x Multimelta dreads in pods
Dreadnought
Terminator assault squad
Emperors champion
Terminator Squad with assault cannons/tankhunters

3 x 10 man crusader squads
predator annaliator.
damocles rhino
6 man crusader squad

Rules:

• Troops can only claim objectives
• Anything can contest
• Troops have to be above 50% to claim
• Can attempt to seize the initiative

Deployment:
After sorting out the deployment lines, the black templars won the roll for table edge and also bidded the lowest for deployment time.

We played on a 6'x6' table

After deploying most of my army, with the exception of the two drop podding dreads. Ginge announced that he would be playing a guard infantry horde list. Darn.

We used paint pots as objective markers. Lacking anything to use as an objective at this point

Ginge had 5 callidus assassins which he used to move my transports into difficult terrain. Knowing my luck with difficult terrain tests (I tend to roll a lot of ones when making them).

Ginges army was literally a forest of men.

Turn 1:

As expected the rearmost landraider immobilised itself on the first difficult terrain tests, effectively crippling its effectiveness for the rest of the game. The rest of the difficult terrain tests were made with no problems. The rest of my army advanced relatively slowly pouring fire into the guard defence lines (3+ cover save is annoying). the titans turbo lasers wiping a couple of squads from existence (I'm not sure about this but I think the turbo lasers remove the barricades but we forgot if that is the case).

The heavy firepower took a heavy toll on the guardsmen. it was like a drop in the ocean though

The guardsmens return fire wasn't as effective as ginge would like. The most effective shots immobilised 1 rhino and destroyed the second one. Of great amusement was the two primaris pyschers (spelling?) both rolling double 6 for their perils of the warp test, leading to them both promptly being shot by commissars. It's for their own good though :-P

Turn 2:

The templars steadily move forward hosing down waves of guardsmen

On my second turn my army moved forward hosing down swathes of guardsmen. The titans continued to pour fire into the massed ranks causing horrific casualties.

High note: Yarrick was cut down due to fearless wounds when his squad was massacred.

On the guard second turn numerous callidus assassins and psyker battle squads turn up. Ginges (admittedly brilliant) idea of using the PBS to reduce my leadership to 2 then hit me with the flamer template gun of the callidus (meaning 2s to kill). Combined with the callidus subsequent charge more or less wiped out one squad of templars and the terminators, the third smaller squad of templars luckily weren't effected by the PBS but were still charged by a callidus, the lone surviving marine and callidus spent the next three combat phases trading blows in an epic show of ineptitude on both parts. Yarrick stood up again and charged my 6 remaining marines from the other squad. Killing 3 of them.

Over the following turns the templars continued to waste guardsmen by the bucket load, while ginge was more surgically taking out anything I had left to claim objectives. The straken bomb was dropped off of the green valkyrie wiping out the remaining squad of black templars with the help of marbos demo charge. They were subsequently taken out by the reavers turbo laser.

On the final turn the heavy weapons squad near the dead valkyrie (green) claimed one objective, while the other valkyrie positioned itself to drop off the embarked convict squad in the event of another turn.

Looking at the remains of ginges' army; I valkyrie with penal troopers, 1 lascannon and a lone assassin. In comparison to my 2 dreads, drop pods, four terminators, (immobilised) landraider, predator annaliator, (immobilised) damocles rhino, and two titans. i was clearly in the stronger position.

Despite this ginge still lived to claim the objective.

All in all a good, and different, game. Congratulations to ginge for the win.