Black Templars - Shootiest Marines?

When people think of Black Templars they think of angry, religious madmen running across the field. However, contrary to the fluff, the one thing they do very well indeed is shoot from a long distance.

Now, this is generally counter-intuitive. 'BT have assault squads as troops, right?' That may be so, but the list is so much more than just 'run at the nearest enemy'.

For instance, crusader squads are 5-10 men, and still have the options for special and heavy weapons. This means you can take a five-man squad with a lascannon and a plasma gun, for just 101 points.

Now, if you spam this type of unit, you can have up to 11 of them in a 1250 point game (once you take into account the emperor's champion with vows). This means 11 lascannons, 11 plasma guns and 33 bolters. Not bad for a close-combat themed army.

What's even more filthy is that lascannons will probably get a super boost in 6th edition. This came up today from Faeit 212.

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2012/06/presence-of-faeit-vehicle-damage-in-6th.html

Vehicle Damage Table
1-2 Shaken
3 Stunned
4-5 Weapon Destroyed and Immobilized (I wonder if its both or 4 is Wpn Dstrd and 5 is Imm?)
6 Explodes

AP1 +2 to the damage table
AP2 +1 to the damage table

In addition, your opponent will not know where to devote his firepower. Eleven small squads will force him to split his shooting, and present more targets then he can properly manage.


Another unit which kicks arse is the humble terminator tactical squad. In a five-man unit, you can take two cyclone launchers, with the tank hunters veteran skill. I'm not sure how that will work out in the 6th edition, but in 5th it for sure kicks arse. What's great too is that you can take them as command squads for a terminator armoured character, effectively freeing up more elite slots for assault terminators or dreadnoughts. 

Landspeeder Typhoons are cheaper in the Templar book as well, being just 70 points versus 90 points in the vanilla codex.

Venerable dreds are great too with the tank hunter veteran skill, making the missile launcher/lascannon variant a great option in shooty lists.

In addition, Black Templar vindicators still come with the power of the machine spirit option, a significant advantage over vanilla marine vindis.

If you're thinking that you might be lacking a bit of combat punch, try assault terminators with lightning claws. Re-rolls to hit (under the accept any challenge vow), re-rolls to wound and no armour saves. A unit of five or six is pretty much overkill for any enemy unit in the game.

All in all, I reckon Black Templars are some of the best marines in the game, as long as you know some of the weird loopholes in the codex and how to use them to your advantage.

Let's just hope they aren't entirely nerfed by a White Dwarf codex. However, a 'rage' USR for crusaders (giving +2 attacks) might on the other hand provide sufficient recompense.

A week of painting

 So I took a week off work, and while I didn't get as much as I'd hoped done I'm quite pleased with what I did produce.

Here we have a terminator squad. The base of the squad are the AOBR terminators I purchased from ebay. I followed this excellent tutorial here:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?autocom=ineo&showarticle=496

To cut a long story short: it involved a lot of hacking. The right arms, carrying the storm bolters, were from the normal terminator kits, as I wanted to use embossed terminator pads from the upgrade kit (I have the Forge World pads too, but I'm saving them from my extra-special assault terminators).

The shoulder guards are also from the upgrade kit.

The Templar codex is unique in that it allows a five man squad to carry two heavy weapons. This squad are going to sit at the back of the field, hammering krak missiles into tanks and heavy armed targets, which offering a bit of counter-assault punch if the enemy breaks through my lines.

I couldn't find any decent-priced cyclones from ebay, so instead I plumped for the 'mini missile launcher' from Iron Dog studios: http://www.irondogstudios.com/store_kits.html

Sure, it's not the best sculpt in the world, but for $12 for a pair, it's a steal.

The bases are from scibor. I was tempted to put the cyclones on the extremely raised bases, in order to get a better line of sight, but thought it was a bit too beardy. They're on the 'ground level' variation of the base.

In other news, I also finished a rhino and a razorback. Thanks for reading!

Finished landspeeders

So here's my land speeders, finished after a significant amount of blood, sweat and tears. The level of detail on the model is impressive, although slightly frustrating for painters who take themselves too seriously - like me.

I got half way through painting the model and decided that I didn't like the aquilla on the 'hood' of the speeder. So I got out my hobby knife and cut the bastard off.

I've tried to keep the amount of eagle iconography to a minimum in my Templars, primarily because of a line from the excellent book 'Helsreach' by Aaron Dembski-Bowden:

'We don't wear the Emperor's symbol; we are the Emperor's symbol'.

Once again I made great use of decals. I think the white cross with the red border is going to be the marshall's insignia. I've used it on the one rhino I've painted so far and plan to use it on the other two. The only trouble is, the Forge World transfer sheet only comes with enough for two large crosses of this type (the remainder being either totally red, or totally white). I feel another Forge World order coming on.

The other bits I used, were a small black cross on the 'bridge' over the cockpit, and the feudal shield on either side of the typhoon launchers.

I have left blank the script on the tail fin , as I'm going to be purchasing a sakura micron pen at a later date. Now, I just have to resist the urge to write an extremely childish word like 'tits' t...