u/theragingmeerket

Long story short basically my entire army just got shanked by two squads of Sanguinary Guard.

1. One squad charged my Helbrecht w/ 6 BGV and BGA (on an objective) and just wiped them, period. For the record, I charged this same squad with a full strength crusader squad w/ Chaplain the turn prior, popped the lethal hit strat, and managed to kill one (1) of them. Rolls were average in both combats.

2. Another squad absorbed a bike squad with chappy shooting (with their dev wounds) and a charge (chappy had imperium sword), that whole thing killed two guard and took some wounds off their jump captain. This sub strength squad then charged another full strength Crusader Squad w/ Judiciar, I heroic intervened with my EC w/ AIs, and across the next two combats two Sanguinary Guard flew off into the sunset and my crusder squad and EC and AI were all dead.

Minus one to wound and minus one to hit plus room for strats in combat - genuinely no clue how to work around it, happy for any advice… probably just a little weirded out right now like legitimately those two squads killed like 1300 points of my army, and I charged them! I’m distraught 😂.

I picked up my Armageddon box and played my first two games of 11th today. I walked in post the last few weeks of news and laments regarding the state of Black Templars. Will provide my thoughts on those games below, but will start here with my overall review; BT felt good, much better than I anticipated. I won’t go into both games in detail, but will offer some macro thoughts I gathered after the games.

The Context
I played two games, one against Aeldari and the other against Slaanesh. I won the first by round three, and was looking good going into round 5 of Slaanesh but we had to call it soon. I played both games with a Stormlance Task Force + The Living Miracle detachment with a Purge the Foe disposition. I forget the detachments either were running, but Aeldari was a Priority Assets and Slaanesh a Disruption dispositions.

Crusader Blobs: This accounts for a few things but I had few, if any, issues maneuvering and using terrain to protect my large blobs. One was a crusader blob with Grimaldus and a Crusade Ancient. No problems maintaining 9” coherency, and the increased 2” engagement really offset not being able to go wide. Aside from column shaped approaches, I was getting 70-80% of my dudes into combat first go.

Stormlance, re: Reactive Moves: I cried with you all when Bastion went 3DP (RIP). So I flexed to Stormlance, it has advance and charge baked it, and I was interested in the Windshift Evasion strategem. Boy howdy, reactive moves really changed the game given the more crowded terrain. It felt awesome baiting a reasonable charge only to backstep just behind 12” and leave that hitter out in the open to be smacked the following turn. Don’t sleep on this detachment.

The Living Miracle: Talk about a bomb. Devastating Wounds on a unit of Assault Intercessors, paired with the Hazardous on enemy melee attacks, just chefs kiss. The hazardous in particular definitely made both of my opponents blink. I took it because I wanted to see if it did anything, and the effect was as much cognitive as it was manifested on the table.

Terrain: Don’t sleep on plunging fire. I did, and it hurt. The maneuver lanes are tight, so tight that in one of the games I experimented with screening (re: drifting to completely body block two lanes) with my Repulsor and RepEx and that brake checked Slaanesh on their go turn. I also felt it was easy to gain firing lines and maintain cover. That said, I anticipate terrain to be an ongoing issue GW will need to refine. Toeing in and unlocking is not a reasonable interaction, and I am terrified of any game against either Knight army - you will lose, if not maybe possibly squeek a marginal win.

Group Saves: It didn’t bother me at all, it impacted both players in both games evenly and it sped things up. That said, the characters always lived through the fight anyways (except when my EC went full nuke).

Sword Brothers: I expect it was a fluke, but I barely tapped into either of my SB bricks either game. For their points, there may well be other options available.

Mission Play: Boy did this change how I approached the games. We’re Templars, full steam ahead, right? Wrong. I very uncomfortably slowed down and paced my engagement velocity. I felt ok eating a down turn to then ramp into score turns of 20+ points. Setting up the next turn felt really important and valuable, my opponents felt the same.

Play Time: Yes, its new rules, yes that added time. However, the games felt long - there are a lot more decisions to make, a lot more interactions to handle, and I can only imagine having to set up a new table every game at a tournament. We timed setting up terrain and it was 15 minutes. That probably goes down to 10 with exposure and standardized terrain (walls, not footprints). 4 hours felt aspirational at best.

In closing, it was a great day, a fun time, and I feel better than I did going in. The future is bright, brothers.

(P.S. - Unless Bastion gets a new disposition, wave it goodbye. And check out Stormlance, I really enjoyed it.)

Would be interested in the community’s thoughts on dispositions and their associated mission match ups are for us now that everything is out. More specifically; which dispositions do you think favor us? which dispositions do you think we should avoid? what detachments match or combo well (or don’t) with their assigned detachments?

To kick it off, I’ll offer that I think Purge the Foe is probably our best disposition. From what I consider our usable detachments, we gain access to this via The Living Miracle and Companions of Vehemence. While simple, it fits what I consider to be our favored approach which is essentially maneuvering and sequencing favorable trades. However, to be successful, we will need to invest in some more defensive units to ensure we can hold a position a little better than our Crusader Squads and Sword Brethren typically can.

Our other options from other detachments are Disruption (Stormlance), Priority Assets (Gladius, Marshall’s Household, and Vindication), and Take and Hold (Bastion and Wrathful Procession).

I favored Bastion in 10th, but I’m really struggling to understand how Take and Hold favors us at this point. The way the scoring works, I don’t think there is an optimal way to build a list for the offense, survivability, and more importantly, the maneuverability necessary to make the most of the Take and Hold matchups. If going this route, I think Bastion is still the way to go but need to find out a way to increase the survivability of the battleline units that benefit from the detachment rule.

Priority Assets is interesting, I’d probably put it at a close second to Purge. Gladius and Marshall’s are probably the best options to access this option.

Disruption is by far the worst option. We aren’t nearly fast or maneuverable enough, not to mention its probably one of the weakest overall dispositions in relation to its available matchups.

Emperor’s blessings brothers.

I spent today ruminating on how the BTs would integrate their forces into a collective defensive campaign alongside their other gene brothers. I assume others of you are as hopeful as I am that Perterabo’s offensive crashes against the Sons of Dorn narratively, so it’s as relevant a question as I can think of.

The challenge is considering how Imperial Fists, and the other Sons of Dorn that mirror the IF to a greater degree, and their gravis heavy shooty boys would stand next to some bowl cut neophyte revving his chainsword. And, it hit me; mobile defense. In the military, there are two forms of the defense (well, three, but retrogrades are for heretics; area defense and mobile defense. Area defense is what we see in movies most of the time; soldiers holding ground, last stands, etc. Mobile defense is something entirely different as it is actually characterized by counterattacks as opposed to static gun lines. Enter the BTs.

Spinning around in my office chair, fluorescent lights aglow, I imagined a line of IF, CF, and their like, heavy bolters and aggressors in line, laying waste to heretics. As they do, they invite Perterabo’s success along the line, tempting him to commit forces, at which point some jabroni throws down an aquila hand signal and BTs come just thrashing out of the line toward committed and overextended traitor lines, chainswords in hand. All a part of a symphony of defense, for pap Dorn.

So, that’s my fever dream. Enjoy!