Black Templar Review: The FAQ

The Black Templars are near and dear to my heart.  I have said this about a thousand times, but I got into 40k because of the Emperor's Champion model.  I love the model.  To this day, he is and has been my favorite.  To that end, I am going to try my hand at an army review.  I will start, in this post, with the new FAQ and how I think it has changed the Templars.  Then I will move through HQs, Elites, Troops, Fast, and Heavy.  So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.  This should be fun.

Until recently, not all marine codexes were created equal.  The various chapters of the marines varied across a large space of time including a change in edition.  Thus rose the comments of, "Your codex is broken, my stuff doesn't get that rule." GW finally made the move early this year to bring all of the codexes in line in regards to a few areas of where rules were not equal. 

The Black Templars were recipients of such changes via FAQ and honestly, they got a mixed bag.  The chief changes that affected Templars are as follows:

1) Weapons/equipments changes. 
     - Cyclones are now heavy 2 instead of heavy 1 twin-linked.  This is huge for a few reasons.  First,   Black Templar typhoons are much cheaper than vanilla marine typhoons coming in at 20pts. cheaper. Second, our terminators can take two heavy weapons choices per 5 models, meaning that you can take small 5 man units of terminators with 2 cyclones each.  Combine this with their ability to gain the tank hunters rule and you have a 5 man terminator squad with 4 S9 missile shots when aimed at tanks. This is a very positive step forward.
     - Storm shields finally give an all around 3++.  This allows assault terminators to now be better than the other codexes' versions as we can give our terminators preferred enemy through the EC, meaning we have rerolling thunder hammers and now get an across the board 3++ as opposed to a 4++ in combat only. 
     - Narthecium not grants FNP.  This isn't huge, but it gives us a reason to consider command squads again. 
     - Machine spirit now allows you to fire at two targets.  Again nothing huge, but allowing a LRC to choose between two targets can be nice. 
     - A big one was the change of smoke rules.  Smoke rules now are applied from the BRB instead of in the codex.  This was a big hit.  Beforehand, Templar smoke made all pens glances.  This greatly improved our survivability as there is a plethora of terrain to get cover from, so we essentially could have a cover save and then take large quantities of shots and keep going.  No more.  Templar smoke has gone generic.

2) The "Kill 'Em All" debate is finally laid to rest.  Yes, we have to test to shoot at stuff.  Some of us did, some didn't.  Now we all should.

3) Speculation over righteous zeal.  A new debate has risen that asks if a unit can be righteous zealed out of pinned status and move, fire, and assault in its own turn.  There seems to be some credence to the fact that yes, it can. 

The rest is piddly stuff.  The big changes came in the form of equipment/weapons changes.  That doesn't affect us much, but it gives us some nicer combat and shooting options.  Missile spam is much easier to pull off with command squads, terminator squads, shooty crusader squads, and typhoons.  Otherwise, things seem to be same old, same old with the Templars, namely charge forward and beat until dead. 

In my next installment I will go over our two Special HQs and why you should (or shouldn't) take them.

Check out the next installment here:
Codex Review: Black Templar Named HQs

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