40k: Black Templar Rumors and Analysis

A fresh new batch of Black Templars rumors are circling the web, and they seem a bit more specific than the last round, so it’s worth going through them and analyzing, I think.  Let’s see what we got…

“Relic Dreadnoughts.”  “Chaplain Dreadnoughts.”

My guess would be that these things are one in the same.  Or maybe the relic dread is a Reclusiarch type upgrade to the basic Chaplain that creates some kind of Litanies of Hate Bubble for the army.  Would be a cool replacement for the Preferred Enemy we are sure to be losing, if not an overly competitive option.

“Land Raider spam army.”

The only way I can see this happening is if they get a deep discount on Land Raiders for Crusader Squads AND there is something like Blessed Hull/Ceramite Plating standard.  No one (in 5^th Edition) is going to spend 250 points on a Troop transport that gets blown up at the first sight of an IG trooper with a meltagun.

“Named Emperor’s Champion.”

Same rumor as last time.  Hopefully he has some useful army-wide special rule, because spending more points for a more killy CC character is more or less useless.

“11 point Initiates, 6 point Neophytes.”

Now this is exciting, and certainly supports the army concept they seem to want.  What would the drawback be to justify a deep points decrease?  My guess, and this is purely speculation, would be replacing And They Shall Know No Fear with Righteous Zeal/Rage, and base leadership 7 stat.  That would be interesting.

“Named character on bike with eternal warrior.”

The idea of a lance wielding grail knight type character is cool, and I already have the model built.  Though at this point the idea of super killy close combat characters that don’t have any army-wide buffs frankly bores me.

“Land Raiders that get another turn to live after they are blown up.”

This is a good idea to make them useful as assault terminator transports, but probably not going to be cut it to make them useful for Crusader transports.

“Helbrect makes Sword Brethren scoring/troops.”

This could be awesome or garbage.  The parry rule from the last rumors didn’t make me explode with excitement, though.

“Assault ramp Rhinos.”

This is the wish list of every Templar player, and if true means that you won’t be seeing Land Raiders being spammed unless 6^th Edition makes light mech crap.  If we could assault out of Rhinos now BT would be the best assaulty marine army in the game, so something makes me think either this isn’t true or 6^th edition will make Rhinos less desirable.

The rumors are starting to actually make me look forward to the new book moreso than fearing it and losing the good stuff we have currently.  The elephant in the room though, is 6^th Edition, which could change the game significantly enough to make a rumor that appears awesome in 5^th Edition to be a non-factor, or even a drawback.