No Pity! No Remorse! No Fear!

(Black Templar Assault Terminators By Dante77 - Go vote for them. Now!)

Another guest Author!

Hey! for those of you who don't 'know' me, I'm the new resident noob over on 3++ and general blog stalker. I can't be bothered with a proper introduction, so hey is just going to have to do for now. As was mentioned a little while back, TKE invited me to spew rubbish at his readers whilst he is away drinking himself into a stupor in Edinburgh. I offered him a Templar review and he kindly accepted - maybe he really is crazy? I'm honoured by the invite to post on MindWar. I'd love to say it's going on my CV, but I can't think my Consultants would really give a crap, so I'll just be happy on the inside for now! Why am I already swearing more here than on 3++? You're a bad influence Mr Elessar!

I've invited an e-friend from the Bolter and Chainsword along for the ride, the good ol' Messanger of Death. He's the guy that introduced me to the world of questioning forum advice a.k.a. the blog-o-sphere, so props to him! It took me a little while to 'get' Stelek's approach to teaching and the rest developed from there.

Templars are my first (and currently - but not for long - only) love in the world of gaming. I've used almost all of the units in some way or another, so do have a pretty good grasp of them, but I'll be wrong numerous times, so feel free to point out the stupid. For today we'll just start with what makes Templars what they are and then we'll get round to a unit-by-unit review and look at some potential builds. I don't want to always compare BT to SM, as it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but it's sometimes a comparison that just has to be made.

So, let's begin. What makes a Templar a Templar?

I'm sure the majority of you have played against Black Templars at some point, but I bet your opponent happened to 'forget' some of their deeper and darker secrets. As a 4th Ed. Codex, we still have some funny little rulings that still stand, that can really mess-up our day.

Righteous Zeal - If we take ANY wounds to a shooting attack we must take a morale check at the end of the shooting phase. I would argue this includes wounds lost to vehicles blowing up (it would really piss me off if someone blew up my car, why would it not a super-human?) as it says 'to enemy shooting' - it wouldn't have blown up had you not shot it - but I know others who play it differently. Pass and you can make a consolidation movement of D6". In 4th Edition, this was D6", but with the new consolidation rulings this can be UPTO D6". This movement HAS to be towards the nearest, visible enemy unit. Remember what I just said about it being like a consolidation movement? Yeah, in 4th we could charge you if you shot us! Although we can't do that... there are also no little tricks to get us off of objectives or bringing us into your assault range. Fail the test and you're running. That's right. Black tides of 20 marines will turn and run after losing a single n00b (neophyte/scout equivalent). Cool huh? Good thing mech is king! Well, there are other ways of getting round this, but again, you'll just have to wait.

Kill Them All!!!1! - Well thanks to GW's complete inability to use their common sense when taking codices from 4th to 5th Edition, Black Templars are left with this monstrosity. Remember priority tests for shooting? Stupid huh? Well, we still suffer. And even worse than that is that we suffer at a -1 Ld. Fortunately vehicles are not affected by this, but infantry can be really nerfed. What.. I have to shoot at that land raider with my bolt pistols and flamer unless I roll a 7 or under? Yeah! Thanks for that! So Stelek's gunline lists can have some problems with target priority, but Ld8/9 shouldn't cause too many problems.

Abhor the Witch - Whilst all of you filthy xenos scum are discussing your psychic powers, we're charging the batteries for our chainswords. We do use re-chargeables right? Disposables would be really bad for the environment. Anyway, if you didn't know, BT cannot be allied/fielded with any psychic abominations. EXCEPT a Grey Knight. Apparently that's fine! So we can have Inquisitors with hoods so long as they don't take a psychic power or we can just take a Brother Captain/Grand Master. We'll consider these as an option later on.

No Pity! No Remorse! No Fear! - Now this is the one you'll all be jealous of! We're fearless in close-combat! Yeah, take that! What! You're not jealous? But that's awesome right? No! Ld 9/10 and Stubborn is good. Combat tactics is good. Fearless means you die quickly if you're not as awesome as you think in CC. Fortunately we do hold our own in CC better than regular marines, but that isn't saying much. Make sure your opponent is always taking those saves, it's easy to 'forget'.

And They Shall Know No Fear! - Well... nothing new here, same old stuff.

So, there are a few extra rules like Vows and drop pod assaults, but I think these warrant a totally separate post.

Well thanks for getting this far. Once again my first outing was a pleasure! If there are any specific questions you want to ask/would like us to cover, please let us know!