The New Templar's First Outing: or How High Marshal Helbrecht Outsources

To begin, this post will be more of a redux on today's tactics and units, rather than a full set of battle reports.  For some reason, I failed to take a single photo all day.  It's probably for the best since I was unable to have an entirely painted force (I hate bringing unpainted models to the table).  Between work and school, getting both Helbrecht and the Centurions finished was not possible.  I've nearly finished Helbrecht and I'll hopefully have him ready to show off next week with he Centurions hard on his heels.

The Scenario and Organized Play
For today's scenario, the store manager picked the game where a single objective is placed in the center of the board and the defender (it's the Space Marines in the mission book) deploys within 12 inches of the objective. The Attacker deployed outside of 18 inches.  The caveat was that the attacker had to place their warlord and heavy support into reserves, and the defender could only put deep striking units into reserve.  Based on the number of players, it was decided we would each play two rounds and see where the standings were at that point.

How the Templar preformed:

HQ
Helbrecht unfortunately didn't do much of anything for me.  The first game saw him and the honor guard face down a demon prince.  Between them and another squad, they were able to keep the demon prince tar pitted for the entire game, leaving all my other units to do their jobs.  Crusade of wrath seems pretty awesome, but I haven't seen the upside yet.  The first game saw me setting up my troops across the board to land one ultimate turn of assault.  Each unit was about 4 to 5 inches away from the enemy units and I failed all but one charge.  Fleet means nothing if you roll bad on everything.  The second game I called the crusade just to feel like I was using it.  Nothing would have changed the result.

Troops
The options available to our Crusader Squads aren't fully reflected in a lot of the discussions I've both seen and been a part of.  Most of our talks seem to have centered around point comparisons from before.  With such an extreme update, the options available to us are huge.  The Plasma Cannon squad did it's duty dealing out pain until either the plasma cannon was sniped or a unit was sent way out of the way to deal with them.  The two rhino squads saw a lot more attention than I thought they would.  In both games, my opponents went after a rhino immediately and with great malice.  Since I had brought them with the intention of tar pitting, this worked to my advantage.  This really showed itself in keeping the Demon Prince away from the main battle.  The Land Raider Crusader squad blacked more than one eye today. In my first game, I was the attacker and, even though their Land Raider became immobilized right out of the gate, this unit hacked their way into the center destroying one unit entirely and capturing the objective for the win.  The second game, with me as the defender, they surged forward taking the fight to the Blood Angels.

Fast Attack
Against all odds, my Stormtalon didn't suffer a single loss to its hull points.  It was largely ignored, which allowed me to fly around the board picking my targets.  While it wasn't a bad showing, the Stormtalon was overshadowed by many other units.

Heavy Support
The Centurions came to party today.  Right away, they finished off one unit and severely crippled another.  And in the second game, focusing their fire meant a squad of Blood Angels were wiped to a man.  A large part of their success came to dividing up their gear.  The grav-cannon is great, but very situational.  Having the lascannons helped to offer some extra punch, especially when you give the Sergeant the grav-cannon with an omniscope.  Being able to throw five shots at a squad of 2+ armor models with AP2 and still fire the Lascannons at a vehicle is nothing short of Emperor like. I brought missile launchers as well, expecting some mass troop infantry lists, but I didn't face any.  Instead, I settled for firing krak missiles alongside the other shots.  As expected, cover is a Centurion's best friend.  I worked hard to block line of sight from things I wasn't targeting, and the things I did target wasn't able to handle the Centurions' attentions.  I think picking our targets is important in this and if we play smart this unit will become a significant part of our list building.  They did run afoul of a bunch of AP2 close combat attacks in the first game and no amount of planning could have avoided that.  When you're charged from the warp, there's little you can do, overwatch or no overwatch.

I thought the list served me well.  At the end of two games, I finished undefeated and won the event.  This was a first for me, and even on my better days had only ever finished about mid-pack.  I won the new Space Marine Captain model and plan to convert him into a Sword Brethren (I have more Marshals than I could hope to field).  Sadly, my last opponent had to leave early for a family emergency and I hope that the emergency didn't end up being too severe.

Some changes I'd like to experiment with would be switching out the combi-meltas for a couple combi-gravs.  While the melta was nice, I think taking a Melta gun in the squad will do the same thing with more consistency, while the combi-grav will open up a whole new host of options.  In theory, I'd then have the ability to soften up some heavy armored units before meeting them in close combat.  I'm also still experimenting with different types of power weapons.  Hiding a power axe in the unit still seems like the best option, but I'm still giving it some thought.  I'd also like to pick up some options in scouts.  I've really been thinking about how a small squad with sniper rifles could serve me well in disrupting the plans of my opponent and opening up room for my assault oriented troops.  I've also thought about trying out a Land Speeder storm for late game objective grabs and assaulting weak units like pathfinders.  And boosting the numbers of my squad with Neophytes is a time honored tradition for Templar players.  One I haven't utilized to a degree that I'd like to in the future.

I don't think I've ever had a bad time playing at the local store's events and today was no exception.  It was exciting to see a couple new faces and meet a couple people who did not play, but are getting started in the hobby.  These events have been running consistently since the start of the year and the 40k community in the store has seemed to really flourish with interesting and fun players (at least to my perspective, perhaps they've always been around and we hadn't had the opportunity to interact).

What have you experienced with the new codex?  Leave a comment below and thanks for reading!!!