With the release of the Battle for Beta Garmon campaign supplement, we’ve gotten access to some updated rules for Blackshields; Astartes who swear off the colors of their founding Legion and take up arms in warbands bound by oaths of vengeance, conquest, and glory. We covered a lot of the basics in our initial impressions on the book, which you can find here if you want to dip your toes in. Today, we’re going to take a deeper dive on the different ways you can build out your own Blackshields force. Boasting more customization than any other legion with the combinations of Oaths available as well as a wealth of opportunities for kitbashing and unique paint schemes, Blackshields present a really great opportunity to make a unique divergent fighting force of Astartes that are different from the existing legions. This review will be broken down in two parts. First, we’ll take a look at each of the various Oaths individually, then we’ll look at some Oath combinations that we play or think could make some flavorful and potent pairings as well as some suggested units and synergies. It’s worth mentioning that we won’t be able to cover every combination and use case here; there will definitely be some sweet list ideas we won’t touch on, so feel free to really find an army theme that suits you!
One other quick comment before we begin: our goal here isn’t necessarily to rank any of these Oaths in terms of power or lore accuracy. Part of the appeal of The Horus Heresy is the opportunity to build narratively-driven lists that tell a unique story from an extremely interesting setting, and to us, Blackshields epitomize that perfectly. While we may make comments in regards to some rules being potentially more potent or more niche than others, all of the Oaths are perfectly viable options for any army and all have a place and opportunity to be used in fitting way.
With that out of the way, let’s check out the individual Oaths. When creating your army roster, you get to select two oaths to pair together to act as your army wide special rules. While there are a handful of restrictions on certain options not being able to be paired with others, this presents quite a few options to choose from right out of the gate. There are 12 different options for oaths to choose from when selecting. Many oaths also have additional choices to make as well when picking them, so in reality the actual amount of Oath “Choices” is closer to 40 due to legion-specific selections. Point being: you’re not short on options here.
An Eternity of War
Starting off we have a really cool one; when your units fail a morale check as a result of a shooting attack, they make a consolidation move instead of falling back. This is pretty bonkers, it gives you a lot more control over where your army moves if you’re up against heavy shooting lists and expect to take casualties moving up the board. It fits a cool flavor role of your troops that have less experience being more like a sort of “errant” ready to charge headstrong into the fight, or even your season troops knowing that retreat just isn’t an option under a hail of fire.
In addition to this, if your units take any casualties as a result of a reaction from a charge that unit makes, you can add those wounds to your combat resolution of the following combat if you successfully make said charge. Aside from how sick it is to add your own dead guys to your combat score from anything, as it can easily tip close combats in your favor or just prevent someone from using a reason in the first place, it can be devastating against Legions like the Iron Hands, who have very powerful charge phase reactions like Gorgon’s Spite.
These don’t come without a cost though: after the first Game Turn, any units with this oath that aren’t locked in combat or are in combat at the end of each of your turns take a wound that can only be saved by Invulnerable saves. Truthfully, this isn’t as huge of a tax as it sounds – one unsavable wound isn’t fun, but units like Cataphractii Terminators can just save it half the time, and multi-wound models won’t even always lose a full body from it. You chose how to allocate the wounds as normal, which also means you can sometimes offload it on either someone you don’t really care about or something that can soak the wound on an invulnerable.
As a whole package, this is a great Oath for those who love to play by their ABC’s: Always Be Charging. It highly supports giving some nice extra mobility to armies that want to rush up the board and get stuck in. It also allows for some really fun mind games and forces your opponent to make some tough decisions: “Is that reaction really worth taking?” “Do I want to risk shooting a unit with weak weapons if they have a chance to get even closer after?” It also means you’re getting a decent benefit for running units with lower leadership – you still want to try and leverage actually winning combat so you don’t risk fleeing in melee, but you’re basically always cool with morale checks from shooting. Just keep an eye out for pinning.
In Disgrace All Are Equal
One of the wackier options in terms of army construction: you lose access to HQ units and are not required to take one as a compulsory unit in the detachment. In exchange, all of your other characters get juiced up – getting a bonus to leadership, wounds, and a choice of an additional stat between WS, BS, Strength, or Initiative. Techmarines and Apothecaries don’t get this benefit, so they’re still going to eat sniper shots like the best of ’em. In exchange for this, your non-character models get -1 leadership. This penalty won’t apply to those Techmarines and Apothecaries.
This Oath is absolutely aces. You trade the option to take one powerful character to just have all of your units be led by mini-HQ’s that can seriously pull their weight. Of course, not getting an HQ has some pretty rough points – you’re going to have some trouble dealing with challenge characters, you lose access to support tools like Librarian and Chaplain Consuls, and you’ll end up quite reliant on your squad leaders staying alive for leadership. The benefits can really outweigh this though, as you’ll be effectively getting a bunch of free stats tacked on to any unit you buy, and it makes each upgrade on a sergeant model go much farther. It also means you can seriously slug it out with a lot of other units and come out on top if they don’t have extra support – even giving something like a Heavy Support Squad an extra point of BS can really help land some shots. This does encourage a sort of MSU playstyle to maximize the amount of characters you have, so keep that in mind when selecting other choices. Bonus points to this if you like running melee-kitted terminators as well, since a three wound WS5 terminator with a thunder hammer can just paste anything short of a praetor pretty easily.
Only in Death Does Duty End
This oath makes it so whenever your unit would take a morale check (notably not a leadership check- specifically a morale check) in any phase, they just pass it automatically. You have to take D3 wounds to the unit when this happens, and only Invulnerable saves can be taken from these wounds. Wound allocation works as normal, so you can pick who takes the hits. Additionally, when a unit with this oath bites the dust, they don’t count towards any VP scoring objectives.
This is one of the simpler oaths, but is great in how generically useful it is. Ignoring morale is absolutely worth losing a few bodies in the vast majority of cases, and this can help offset any leadership penalties imposed from other oaths. This can seriously help your army get stuck in and be really hard to shift, and if you have access to a lot of Invulnurable saves via wargear or just your general unit selection, the downside can be quite easy to mitigate. If you want to grind out some fights in melee, want some real staying power on objectives, or just aren’t sure what to take as a second oath, I think this is generally a solid choice.
Panoply of Old (X)
Remember how I mentioned having a lot of choices? Panoply allows you to select any of the main 18 Legions and gain access to their wargear. It’s worth noting that you only get their special wargear options: no Warlord Traits, Consuls, Praetor upgrades, or any legion specific units. You can take this multiple times as long as you select different legions for each selection. You’re slightly restricted in taking this multiple times in that there are some overlapping selections that you won’t be able to take (no stacking crazy invulnerable saves off multiple legions that can do that, tsk tsk) but this allows for some really cool choices in both flavor and function.
From a thematic point of view, this really lets you dig into where your Blackshields came from – as those who fought alongside a specific legion, stripped their banner from one and went rogue, or salvaged the planets left in the wake of the Heresy, there could be a multitude of reasons as to how you ended up with these armaments.
From a gameplay point of view, this gives you a great selection of additional tools to help support whatever strategy you want to approach. Keep an eye out for some legions where many of their selections are tied to independent characters since many of their wargear selections come attached to legion specific units, like Ultramarines. That isn’t to say not to use their legion as your selection, but make sure you’re planning on taking the correct unit types to get the most mileage out of this. Also keep in mind some other restrictions of wargear: Thousand Sons weapons with Achaen force require a psyker to make the check, so some of your random goons might not be able to wield them with as much potency.
- A few notable key things you can check out:
- Alchem Flamers or Dragon’s Breath Flamers from Death Guard and Salamanders, respectively.
- Warpfire Plasma from Word Bearers
- Frost weapons and Fenrisian Axes from Space Wolves
- Storm Shields from Imperial Fists
- Asphyx Bolter Shells from Thousand Sons
- Graviton Shredders from Iron Hands
- Infra-Sight from Raven Guard
- Inferno Pistols from Blood Angels
- The absolute list of glorious bullshit you can get from World Eaters
Most of the legions have some gems in their wargear selection, so feel free to poke around and see what’s the best fit for your goals.
Pride Is Our Armor
Where In Disgrace, All Are Equal is the “screw those HQs” oath, this is the “screw those Troops” oath. All of your veterans in the detachment can pay a 50 point tax to get Line, Heart of the Legion, and Fury of the Legion, effectively making them gain all the benefits of actually taking a tactical squad. In exchange? You lose all troop slots in your force organization chart, with one of your Elites choices becoming compulsory. You also get two more elites slots, which applies regardless of if this is a primary or allied detachment.
Have you ever looked at Pride of the Legion and scoffed? Do petty troops not suit your needs? Do you want to really run that seasoned army of badasses you always wanted your marines to feel like from the books and media of the setting? If you answered yes, you’re going to love this one.
Veterans become practically required here, as you’ll likely want a few alongside any command squads to cover some objective play, but you’ve got a whole bunch of extra elites slots to have a field day with. The veterans won’t be cheap off the cuff, so you’ll probably want to commit hard to them – upgrades, transports, and the whole shebang, but they’ll absolutely house most other core infantry units in the game, regardless of what loadout you select for them. Leverage your more powerful unit selection to bully the hell out of other units and try to step carefully, as you’ll likely be outnumbered. Don’t forget, Veterans have Relentless as well as Chosen Warriors, so shooting and charging can really serve you well when you need that extra mobility.
The Broken Helix
Marines are tough to come by for Blackshields, so you can bring some twisted gene-manipulated freaks into your roster instead of traditionally made marines when times are rough. Models with this oath lose the following rules, if they had any:
⦁ Heart of the Legion
⦁ Fury of the Legion
⦁ Spite of the Legion
⦁ Inexorable
They trade these rules for one of the following options; Clone or Aberrant. Regardless of which you select, a unit containing any models with these keywords won’t count as being killed when removed for mission objectives, which is always a nice touch. Both of the effects from these keywords only apply to non-characters; your leaders are all assumed to still be good ol’ pureblood astartes. All units in a single detachment have to select that same option.
Aberrants get -1 Ballistic Skill and Leadership, but get +1 Strength permanently and an additional +1 Strength on a successful charge. You additionally need to declare charges if your unit starts the Assault phase within 12″ of an enemy unit, although you can still declare the actual target for the charge however you want as normal. This makes a regular marine with a pair of fists hit another regular marine on 2’s when charging with his bare fists. That is absolutely terrifying.
Clones get -1 Initiative and Leadership, but gain a 5+ damage mitigation roll against anything that doesn’t inflict instant death. It’s basically Feel No Pain, but is different from Feel No Pain and doesn’t stack with any other mitigation rolls. Your units with this rule also cannot make reactions, but can’t be pinned either. Clones get one big bonus, and that’s durability. Your infantry always having a mitigation roll can be really helpful to keep them alive, and they don’t have any penalties to shooting outside of being unable to Return Fire.
Both of these options provide some significant changes to how you want your army to function. Aberrants are the shock assault oath selection, giving you unrivalled punching power and turning some weapon options like Power Mauls from solid options into multi-wound model meatgrinders. Even regular chainswords become an insane threat when they’re rolling wound rolls at 2+ with Shred. You’ll have to play around having some reduced ballistic skill and avoid getting kited when close to enemies, but when you actually land those charges you’ll make a World Eater blush.
Clones are a bit trickier, but nonetheless a really potent way to use this oath. -1 Initiative is usually not a huge deal for units that don’t want to be in combat, only trading some situational mobility for quite a bit of durability. Many dedicated melee units like to run with Unwieldy weapons anyway, so it can be a negligible downside outside of the occasional Sweeping Advance roll going shy. Avoiding pinning can be huge as well, making many armies that leverage Nemesis Bolters or Rotor Cannons (see: Night Lords) struggle to lock you down. Losing reactions can stink, but you can always take an additional detachment to try and handle Reactions properly.
The Eternal Vendetta (X)
Select one legion. You hate those shmucks.
It’s pretty simple: get +1 to hit in melee against any unit with that legion keyword, but you have to charge them if you’re within 12″ during the assault phase – same targeting rules as mentioned above. You also can’t have any units with that legion keyword in your army in any detachment, which makes sense. You can select this more than once if you pick different legions for each. You also can’t pick this if your army contains any units with that Legiones Astartes (X) rule, fittingly.
The really interesting part of this is the note that you can’t really use this to list tailor: this selection has to be made prior to the game starting when your army list is actually being made, so unless you explicitly know what you’re going up against, this choice is likely going to mostly see play in large narrative events or campaigns. It remains a great choice for those environments, but it can be a bit tricky to really use well in pickup games. It does fit a great narrative point of your army really just hating one legion’s guts though, and +1 to hit in melee is a straightforward yet very powerful bonus to get against what could be someone’s entire army.
The Flesh Is Weak
All of your infantry and cavalry get the “lobotomy special” and gain the Automata unit type, which confers a whole bunch of extra special rules by itself. On top of that, you gain Feel No Pain (5+) on those models, giving them a whole extra layer of defense without having to shell out for apothecaries. This has a couple drawbacks though: first and foremost, you have to attempt a shooting attack if there are any targets in range, and you have to declare that attack on the closest viable target to that unit. This applies to any model with this oath, not just your newly deputized robocops. You are allowed to ignore this if you’re incapable of inflicting damage on a target though, so your regular troops are saved from mindlessly firing bolters into the starboard side of a land raider. The second drawback is that your Psykers lose their Psychic sub-type and can’t use any Psychic powers or weapons they may have. This basically locks you out of taking Librarians, which isn’t the end of the world for a lot of army setups.
You get one extra change for your vehicles as well: all of your Transport-sub type units gain Augmetic Transport Bay, which allows them to exclusively transport units that were previously infantry but became Automatic through this oath. The plus side is that they all get three increased capacity, because leg room is for people with a real cortex.
All together, this is a really potent Oath but it definitely requires you to change your game-plan with list building. You’ll likely want to rely on things that can get close for dealing with heavy armor, so get ready for melta weapons to be your new best friend. Notably, it’s not the worst choice to have allies (even if they’re distrusted) to get some long range firepower if you feel like you need it for your army, as having limited target selection can be really brutal for things that want to hang back.
Where this really shines is up in close quarters, where you can use the Automata bonuses to leverage just being sticky as hell, both in melee and for close quarters shooting. The bonuses to transport capacity go hand-in-hand here, so leaning into a mechanized force is totally a viable option here to make up for the general lack of versitile mobility you’ll have in your force. Feel No Pain is pretty generically useful to help with small arms fire, so units that have access to invulnerable saves (see: cataphractii terminators) can get to be pretty scary when you’re packing a 2+ 4++ save package with feel no pain to back it up while not being shackled to having a Primus Medicae. You also can run slightly larger units in things like Land Raiders because of this, which is neat when it comes into play.
The Legacy of Nikea
The Thousand Sons solidarity club; for when you want to lean into psykers but are potentially alright with Prospero being extra crispy. All of your characters with this Oath can be given the Psyker sub-type as well as the warp torrent psychic weapon, which is effectively a juiced up brain flamer. Your Independent Characters can also pay +25 points to select a psychic discipline as well, letting you make all of your IC’s into mini-librarians. As a caveat to this, at least one Independent Character and two regular Characters have to be given the Psyker sub-type. Notably, the models that have this oath don’t get Aetheric Lightning in addition to their Warp Torrent unless something else gives it to them (i.e. being a Librarian), so no doubling down on mind bullets for free.
This is a really nice Oath because it realistically has very little drawback – the “downside” is pretty much that you have to pay a minimum of 25 points for an upgrade, but if you’re even considering taking this oath you probably are planning to do this for most of your units anyway. This does make your army more vulnerable to the typical anti-psyker things, but getting a free extra close-range blast on most of your infantry is pretty handy. This also makes it so you can make some terrifying deathstar units, as you can effectively take a two-in-one consul on top of a psychic slinging praetor. Obviously this doesn’t really fly with The Flesh Is Weak, so you’re not able to take both. Magic brains or metal brains, pick your poison.
The Spoils of Victory
This one is really straightforward: none of your units can make Sweeping Advances, but whenever they become able to do so, you instead roll a d6. On a 4+, you gain a victory point as you scavenge the corpses of the slain, Mad Max style. Note that if you wouldn’t normally be able to make a sweeping advance (due to Cataphractii armor, Slow and Purposeful, etc), you can’t take this roll either. If you crave the dopamine of a looter-shooter but you think power armor is just the coolest shit on the planet, this is the Oath for you.
On a more serious note, this is a really safe way to make it so your melee-focused army can leverage their aggression in scenarios where you don’t think you’ll be able to keep up with the main objective. It’s not uncommon at events to be in a scenario that might not favor a super aggressive strategy, so this allows you to build your list in a hyper-aggressive way without having to worry about sacrificing a ton of resources towards playing the objective. Trading your sweeping advances can be a bit awkward at times, but don’t sleep on how powerful VP generation is – being able to dedicate more of your army to busting heads means you can load up on all the fun and scary melee bombs you might not normally get to fit in a single list.
The Taint of the Xenos
Your models with this oath can exchange their plasma guns or nemesis bolters for a Xenos Deathlock for free, where combi-bolters can be swapped for them for a tax of +5 points for models. Plasma pistols can be swapped for a Xenos Doomlock, basically just a smaller version. These are functionally very similar to volkite weapons with a powerful deflagrate shot, but realistically tend to be pretty lackluster if you’re paying an extra tax to get them, although they can pack a stronger punch compared to a regular combi-bolter. They do cause your units to basically have Get’s Hot that’s likelihood of triggering scales against the number of models you have with these weapons in the unit, which can get pretty dicey with a large volume of fire. They’re very cool, but they have a very limited list of units that can take them, so make sure you’re utilizing them well if you’re shelling out to get your hands on some. They do provide some great kitbashing opportunities, so make sure you make your dudes look sweet if you’re packing these.
You do get another neat trick though: Power weapons can be swapped for a Xenos Halo Blade: a two-handed S+3 AP3 beatstick. If you have any way to get +1 strength, this gives you an AP3 way to cleave through instant death wounds into any T4 targets, which is nightmare fuel in itself. They also work great paired with Rad Grenades, which will let you naturally ID things without needing the strength bonus. These can be a really solid option for armies wanting to buff out their melee killing power for the cost of regular power weapons, and can be really scary when splashed around your force. Lack of AP2 does mean the best targets for ID hits will likely be taking normal saves, but instant death is still potent as a way to get through Feel No Pain. It’s also handy for dealing with stray sergeants that are willing to risk finding out how the Necrons played Monster Hunter with star gods ages ago.
The Weapons of Desperation
You lost your bolter stock years ago, so now you get to bring the reserve weapons to bear. All of your infantry with this oath must exchange their bolters and bolt pistols for some other, lower-tech alternatives. It’s worth noting that this is done on a per-weapon basis: if you have both a bolter and bolt pistol, you swap each one for a new weapon. You can mix-and-match as you please, both on individual models as well as in squads, so you have a lot of customization options. Your models that swap these weapons also gain the Desperate Measures rule, which lets you treat Assault (X) weapons from the list as if they were Pistol (X) weapons and Rapid Fire weapons as Pistol 2, since your big-marine hands can wield a human-sized assault rifle like Rambo. You also treat Heavy (X) weapons from the list as Assault (X), giving some nice mobility to your units that take the comparatively heavy options. It’s worth mentioning this swap happens after weapon upgrades have been selected when you add a unit to your roster, so things like Veterans have the chance to upgrade their bolters to something spicier before they’re forced to forgo them for these options. If you took a bayonet, you can’t swap your bolter for an autopistol or laspistol, because pistol bayonets are apparently where we draw the line in this setting.
A friendly reminder that a model with two pistol weapons can fire both in the same phase, as written in the Pistol weapon type. They don’t have to explicitly be the same pistol.
Your list is as follows – I’m going to adapt it to have the changes listed above for brevity’s sake, so the actual weapon listings will be different from the rulebook, but this is how you will practically use them.
⦁ Autorifles and Lasguns, at 24″ range, S3, and Pistol 2. Yes, this is a 24 inch range pistol. Yes, that rules.
⦁ Stubcarbines at 12″ range, S3, and Pistol 3.
⦁ Shotguns at 12″ range, S3, Assault 2, and Concussive 1.
⦁ Lascarbines at 18″ range, S3, AP6, and Pistol 2.
⦁ Laspistols at 12″ range, S3, and Pistol 1.
⦁ Autopistols at 9″ range, S3, and Pistol 2.
It’s worth mentioning you don’t have to swap your bolters for the rifles or your pistols for pistols – it’s any two weapons from the list. That means Autopistols and Laspistols are a bit more for show than anything, and that there’s nothing stopping you from dual-wielding Autorifles or stub-carbines if your heart desired it.
On top of those options, your independent characters can swap bolters for Heavy Stubbers, which will end up at 36″ range, S4, AP6, and Assault 3. Since the difference between AP5 and AP6 doesn’t mean much in the current iteration of Heresy, this is basically just always an upgrade over the regular bolter. Your units of more than one model can also swap to one of these at a rate of one per three models at no cost, which can provide a nice range increase over the other weapon choices for units that want to hang back.
Hobby-wise, this provides so many great modelling opportunities to make marines with some trashed and scavenged firearms, and I’ve already seen tons of great conversions digging into GW’s other lines for Stubcarbine stand-ins and shotgun kitbashes.
Tactics-wise these give some great options to make your units have stronger short-range firepower as well as providing a plentiful source for Concussive checks in the form of Shotguns. Shotguns are normally pretty solid, but getting to use shotguns as pistols just adds to their utility. A model with two pistols can shoot both in the same phase, so this gives you a heck of a lot of shots with most of the options you have, even if they are at a bit lower of a strength than a bolter. The sheer volume of fire alone will force more saving throws than bolters would though, and having access to effectively two melee weapons on all of your tactical marines can make them a touch stronger in punching range. You do trade a bit of range for these options, but they provide a flavorful and very fun way to give your basic infantry a bit more bite. Don’t sleep on shotguns – getting leveled by Concussion checks can be a brutal way to secure a combat in the following Assault Phase.
That’s it for the reviews of the individual Oaths. Overall, there are some fantastic choices here for a variety of themes and playstyles, although more of them definitely lean towards more aggressive, close-assault strategies. These can be super beneficial as a way to make your basic units punch up above their weight class since legion-specific units are out of the question. Tune in next time for when we discuss the options to kit out your own Blackshields force with some Oath pairings and other suggestions!
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