Yes. You won't be able to break them in the way that some of the newer codexes can be broken, but they've got a lot of old rules and gear that no newer army has. If you leverage these, you can come out of it with a fairly playable army.
Design a list and PM it to me, I gave you some ideas of their strengths and weaknesses over VM, so just send me the list and ill let ya know what I think.
Edit: As an aside I would like to add that yes they are a decent codex many of the builds and tricks they bring to the table can be trumped by the basic sppace marine codex.
And to SirPrometheus close combat is the one place you do not want fearless, epecially over the vanilla alternative of combat tactics, so if you think that's such a bonus shove some neophytes in assault against a couple orks and see what happens with those no retreat rolls. Sorry if this comes off sounding snarky, that isn't intended, but I hope I can make my point.
9 times of out 10 you want to give the Emperor's Champion the vow "accept any challenge, not matter the odds" which gives your entire army preferred enemy, making them good enough in close combat that theortically a 1000 pt cc list should be able to beat a 2000 pt cc list of anything marine army (well maybe thats going a bit too far, but you get the idea)
a ven dread with a missile launcher and twin linked lascannon with tank hunters in a deadly anti tank weapon, even better would be giving him an assault cannon which isnt twin linked but he does have a bs of 5 I believe, however he has to be a bit closer if he has that, whereas with a lascannon can camp right at the back of the board.
a mix of mech (rhino spam) and footslogging works rather well, make sure you put some neophytes (scouts) in your crusader squads to allocate wounds to (and remember that if they shoot at you and you pass your leadership test, you get a free move there and then towards them, making your advance very quick)
if you have a bunch of dudes in rhinos and a land raider or 2, and you get first turn, charge forward and pop smoke (old smoke launchers give you what I like to call ninja smoke) and your pretty much garanteed a second turn charge (fun stuff)
cant really remember it well off the top of my head but my friend use's a list that goes something like...
land raider crusader with marshall (captain) with two lightning claws, in a termie command squad with furious charge.
rhino with a crusader squad and emperors champion
another crusader squad (sometimes with a rhino, sometimes not)
Generally, BT do best as a footy, Drop Pod, or LRC heavy army.
Foot armies are all about bringing lots of bodies, lots of guns to knock out enemy armor, and enough CC to do the job. You can bring Terminators with tank hunting assault cannons, 15 strong choppy squads, cheap laz/plaz, and the like. Accept Any Challenge is always a good vow, Abhor the Witch is handy too. Free movement is huge here.
Drop Pod BTs aren't forced to come in turn 1 like vanilla SM, so they are actually a lot better. Drop lots of melta, PF, and Dreads in somebody's face. Accept Any Challenge is huge.
LRC spam is just that, bringing lots of heavy armor. Crusader Squads are plenty killy by themselves so you don't have to spend much, but I'll make special mention of furious charging LC Terminators. You'll need long range armor busters, so Dreads, las/plas foot squads and Speeders all fit.
BTs don't do normal mech well because vanilla SM have pretty much everything better and cheaper in that regard.
Don't get yourself too stuck in this mindset, a couple small squads in razorbacks may be more expensive than in the vanilla 'dex, but can have both special and heavy weapons in 5 man units, good for snagging objectives and laying down covering fire without having to combat squad to fit in a razorback while having special weaponry. I find black templar armies actually work best mechanized, but that is based highly on the amount of guard and dark eldar I play against.
If everything wasn't overpriced I'd agree with you. 1 extra heavy weapon that you have to be outside of your ride to fire doesn't make up for the fact tha vanilla SM could just field more vehicles
That said, if you fill up your FOC you can double up the number of heavy weapons in your Troops slots, but it is only viable if you are filling up the FOC (big games).
I will agree the prices do kill it, but it can be useful to a certain extent. This is why I stopped playing my beloved Templars, the Vanilla 'dex does so many thingss better, and cheaper.
From what i have seen the Black Templars do best in either a LRC or a foot slogging list. However i do think a Razorback Heavy list would be quite effective especially with the old smoke rules. Have a whole bunch of razorbacks full of CC marines with a Melta and PF gunning forward in assault cannon/lascannon razorbacks and have a few LRC and termies for support sounds like a scary list to me.
I voted yes for reasons already better covered in previous posts than i could list. Go for what you fancy.
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