Merry Grotmas! Games Workshop is releasing a new series of detachments – one per army, every day until Christmas. In this series we’re looking at these new detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games.
The Black Templars have enjoyed being Righteous Crusaders during 10th edition, demonstrating neatly that all you need is faith in the Emperor to kill a Knight with a chainsword. Now they gain a second detachment (or tenth, since you can just run them in the vanilla Space Marines ones too) (if you’re a coward), and it’s all about walking. Hard. Let’s check out the Wrathful Procession.
We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.
Detachment Overview
The Wrathful Procession Detachment gives you a much more flexible alternative to the Templar Vows in the Righteous Crusaders Detachment; rather than picking one effect to be active for your entire army for the entire game, you have three different options to pick per round, which only apply to your infantry and mounted units. This naturally pushes you toward more of an infantry horde playstyle, though you’ll still want transports for both the movement and protection they provide. The litany effects themselves are pretty solid, giving you some good buffs and you have a Stratagem to activate one you haven’t picked in a pinch.
The Video Version
If you’d rather listen to us recite this Detachment’s rules than read about it, you can find our video version here:
Detachment Rule: Zealous Litanies
At the start of the battle round, you pick from one of the three Litanies which is then active until the end of the battle round and affects all ADEPTUS ASTARTES INFANTRY and MOUNTED units in your army. These appear to always be available – nothing stops you from repeatedly using the same Litany. The Litanies are:
- Chorus of Relentless Hate – +2” to the Move characteristic, +1 to Advance rolls
- Rite of Perfervid Wrath – +1 Strength for melee weapons. Everyone is going to call this “perverted wrath,” assuming they don’t just say “I’m picking +1 Strength.”
- Chant of Deathless Devotion – 5+ invulnerable save against ranged attacks
A solid set of choices here with clear use cases for all of them. There’s always one of these that you’re going to like picking in any round that matters. This is where the real power of the Detachment is, improving the baseline power of your Infantry and Bikes. They’re versatile power buffs that allow you to pick and choose when they’re active, and they’re the kinds of solid buffs you generally want on your units – Primaris Sword Brethren running around with S6, 2-damage power weapons is pretty nasty, and Thunder Hammers and Power Fists become a lot better against light vehicles when you push them to Strength 9.
Enhancements
A set of enhancements that are partially locked to Templar-specific characters, the slightly cheaper and slightly less versatile Marshal and Castellan.
- Pyrebrand (25 pts) – BLACK TEMPLARS model only (so no putting it on a regular Chaplain or anything). The bearer’s unit gains Stealth. It might help you close the distance, or stack with Armor of Contempt or cover for a hard to remove infantry block.
- Sacred Rage (30 pts) – Any ADEPTUS ASTARTES model. Once per battle at the start of the Fight phase, you get Fights First. It’s great in Blood Angels and it’s great here.
- Taramond’s Censer (15 pts) – BLACK TEMPLARS model only. At the start of the Fight phase, each enemy unit within Engagement Range of the bearer’s unit takes a Battle-shock test at -1. For 15pts you might just throw this on a guy to fill the points up, and being able to mess with the ability of opponents to Counter-offensive or use defensive Stratagems can be neat.
- Benediction of Fury (10 pts) – CHAPLAIN model only. The bearer’s melee weapons get DEVASTATING WOUNDS. Good clean fun for 10pts.
Stratagems
As ever, one of these is just Armour of Contempt. And as with the other implementations of Armour of Contempt, it’s not as good as it used to be. The other five are:
- Armour of Contempt (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Shooting or the Fight phase to worsen the AP of attacks against your unit for a single activation.
- Fuelled by Faith (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in any phase, after a mortal wound is allocated to an ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit from your army; you get a 5+ Feel No Pain against mortal wounds until the end of the phase. This is situational but fine, handy against something that wants to spit a lot of mortals at you like Thousand Sons.
- Castigate the Demagogues (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase on one of your ADEPTUS ASTARTES units before it fights; melee weapons in that unit gain PRECISION. Straightforwardly useful for clearing out a key character if needed.
- Brute Fervour (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase on one of your ADEPTUS ASTARTES units before it fights; until the end of the phase re-roll Hit rolls of 1 for that unit and ignore modifiers to Weapon Skill, Hit rolls, or Wound rolls. There’s relatively few things out there that will get the full benefit of this effect, but if you’re playing against someone doing the incredibly annoying thing of casting Fortune on an Avatar of Khaine, now you can laugh in their face. Otherwise, this is just re-rolling hit rolls of 1 against something that wasn’t your Oath of Moment target.
- Relentless Momentum (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase on one of your ADEPTUS ASTARTES units that is eligible to fight and within Engagement Range of an enemy; any models in that unit that are within 3” of an enemy model are eligible to fight, but the target must be within Engagement Range of their unit. So this basically lets you extend your fight range out to 3” instead of 1” or base-to-base of base-to-base. They were really scared of people popping this one to fight stuff that they weren’t in combat with. Templars can run some big combat units, so this can potentially help to make your weight of numbers count.
- Voice of Devotion (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase on one of your ADEPTUS ASTARTES INFANTRY or MOUNTED units. Pick a different Litany to be active for that unit instead of the one that is currently active for your army. You’ll almost certainly have times when you want one unit to hustle but the rest to fight better, or something like that, and this Stratagem helps you achieve that.
The Blood Angels Stratagem set sounded like a metalcore EP; the Templars are giving more death metal vibes. That said, this is not a particularly flashy set of Stratagems and they’re not particularly strong.
Playing This Detachment
This detachment wants you running dudes. A lot of dudes. Fortunately, Black Templars are rather good at doing just that, with access to huge units of Crusaders at a relatively low cost. Where Black Templars were previously experiencing a good amount of success piling out of Land Raiders, this detachment’s invulnerable saves and bonus movement should help your guys make it to combat in one piece. Spend your early turns staging, nabbing objectives with bonus movement on Outriders and Jump Intercessors, while your main force darts from cover to cover. Then, come crashing out with extra strength or extra movement if your opponent is playing cautiously. Once you’re in combat, snipe out their characters with precision attacks, and cut down the rest under a tide of chainswords.
Strengths
- Zealous Litanies provide on-demand army-wide buffs, allowing you to survive shooting, move faster, or hit key break points
- Unit-wide Precision and extended fight range Stratagems plus a Fights First enhancement allow you to get the most out of your large melee units
- Encourages taking Templar-specific infantry, which are already strong datasheets
Weaknesses
- Explicitly does nothing for vehicles
- No access to advance and charge
- Even with conditional +1 strength, will have trouble punching up into vehicles without character support
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for another take on Black Templars, this is a fun and fairly versatile take on the chapter. Being able to pick your Litany each turn gives this detachment plenty of flexibility, even if the goal remains the same: slam as many of your dudes into your opponent’s dudes as possible. Unfortunately the enhancements and stratagems leave something to be desired, and will have trouble comparing with the melee damage output of Righteous Crusaders, the firepower of Ironstorm, or speed of Stormlance.
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