HQ

One of the great things about living in the area in which I live is the plethora of gaming hotspots.  The community here, extreme persons disregarded, is supportive and usual up for a game if you show yourself to be a fun opponent.  My favorite store to play at has begun to be especially intentional in its support of the 40k community over the course of this year and has held monthly events with interesting tables and rule sets.  Through these events I have met many great players and I always look forward to the next event.  This month's event is set for larger individual games at 2500 pts and is set to be built with double force organization in mind.  As I'm sure many of my opponents will do, I decided to take full advantage of the points and extra force slots.  I have a game scheduled for tomorrow to test my list and I'll be making final tweaks as the week goes on.  As I wrote this post, I realized just how long this post was shaping up to be.  To keep it manageable, I'll be breaking my army list up over several posts.

HQ

For this list I knew that I'd be taking a double force org list.  With this in mind I revisited some of my early lists for inspiration.  While I've only ever run a double force org in the one Apocalypse I've played, I did have a habit of doubling down on HQ choices for a period last fall.  I've never felt that the named characters in the codex to be a good representative of their points costs and even after a year of playing Templar, I still haven't purchased either of the characters.  And so I sat down to decide what roles I wanted my HQ's to fill.  It's no secret around my local game store that I love chaplains.  Both in the fluff and the benefits they offer squads in game, I always find myself dropping a chaplain into my lists.  Since I was planning on deep striking a unit of shooty Terminators with two assault cannons, I decided running them as a command squad with a Marshal would fit the role I had in mind for them.  The goal of this unit is to be a problem causing squad in the backfield targeting tanks and other priority targets.  I don't plan to spend much time charging this unit into close combat, but should they be charged I wanted to give a couple power swords to strike at initiative and free up the power fists to do their thing.  The Marshal is perfectly paired for this, while giving the entire board the ability to use his leadership.  The leadership bonus acts more as insurance to help against failing zeal tests, but his real purpose is to dice units that attempt to assault the squad.  As a command squad, I get a sergeant to accept challenges freeing the Marshal to inflict pain on the squad.

For my primary force I plan to run my usual Chaplain.  I always kit out my Chaplain and take full advantage of the old armory system.  Being able to give my Chaplain 2+ armor and Eternal Warrior is invaluable when high strength shots start flying around the board.  As I discovered last week, a Chaplain gets even better when you kit him out with a command squad and apothecary for Feel No Pain.  A 2+/4++ save can be intimidating enough and when combined with a squad for "Look Out Sir"s the risk of loosing your Warlord decreases immensely.  By adding Feel No Pain to the equation, the command squad becomes very difficult to roll over.  The biggest threat for the squad is travel.  I too bought into the internet hype that vehicles were dead in this edition.  What I have found in gameplay is very different.  The biggest risk I find in vehicles is giving away an early kill point for First Blood if a rhino finds itself in front of a battle cannon.  But the difference in losing a vehicle over troop models is a big difference maker.  In the time it takes my command squad to walk across the board, hugging terrain for protection and including zeal moves, I would probably lose two or three models if I'm lucky.  A squad of ten could handle the losses and keep the pressure on in assault, but anything smaller faces serious risk to necessary momentum.  While assault is still alive in 6th edition, I believe it is even more crucial than it was in fifth to maximize damage in first turn of the assault, since Templar will stay locked in combat until the opposing unit falls back or either squad is destroyed.  Placing the Chaplain and Command Squad in a Land Raider Crusader gets them across the table to where they need to go.  Like the Terminator Command Squad, the Reclusiarch squad will be hunting priority targets, usually scoring units.

For my required Emperor's Champion, I opted to take the anti-psyker vow.  I considered the vow giving my army Rage, but for the points the psyker vow was worth the risk.  If my opponent doesn't have any psykers, I'm only out twenty points.  With the amount of points available, it seems likely that armies who can take a psyker will.  To free up my Chaplain I will be running the Emperor's Champion with the Reclusiarch Command Squad.

As the week goes by, I will continue to go through my list.  Comment below with thoughts and opinions on this list and any improvements that could be made.  Thanks for reading!