BT vs Word Bearers (2 pics included)

[Prot]

So I'm dying to pull out my new Templar army. I've got a good chunk of it painted, and I've been playing a lot of Chaos myself. So tonight it turns out I'm playing against Word Bearers and thought this might be a good chance to give them a shot again.

 

Granted I haven't played them since my last army sold, but the basics haven't really changed that much. My issue with my list is I think a lot of units I like are perhaps not going to work. 

 

As it stands, here is the basic list:

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Black Templars) [103 PL, 11CP, 2,002pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points) 

Chapter Selection: Black Templars

Detachment Command Cost

+ HQ +

Chaplain Grimaldus [7 PL, 140pts]: 1. Litany of Divine Protection, 2. Psalm of the Remorseless Persecution, Litany of Hate

High Marshal Helbrecht [8 PL, 160pts]

The Emperor's Champion [5 PL, 100pts]

+ Troops +

Assault Intercessor Squad [5 PL, 105pts]
. 4x Assault Intercessor: 4x Astartes Chainsword, 4x Frag & Krak grenades, 4x Heavy Bolt Pistol
. Assault Intercessor Sgt: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Power fist

Infiltrator Squad [6 PL, 130pts]: Helix gauntlet
. 4x Infiltrator: 4x Bolt pistol, 4x Frag & Krak grenades, 4x Marksman bolt carbine
. Infiltrator Sergeant

Primaris Crusader Squad [21 PL, 376pts]: Bolt Carbine, Sigismund's Seal
. 7x Primaris Initiate w/Chainsword & Heavy Bolt Pistol: 7x Astartes Chainsword, 7x Frag & Krak grenades, 7x Heavy Bolt Pistol
. 4x Primaris Initiate w/Power Fist and Heavy bolt pistol: 4x Frag & Krak grenades, 4x Heavy Bolt Pistol, 4x Power fist
. 8x Primaris Neophytes: 8x Frag & Krak grenades
. Primaris Sword Brother: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Power sword

+ Elites +

Invictor Tactical Warsuit [8 PL, 160pts]: Incendium cannon

Judiciar [5 PL, 85pts]: The Crusader's Helm

Primaris Apothecary [5 PL, 115pts]: Chapter Command:  Chief Apothecary, Selfless Healer, The Aurillian Shroud, Warlord

Primaris Sword Brethren Squad [9 PL, -1CP, 146pts]: The Crux Obsidian
. Primaris Sword Brethren: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Lightning Claw (Pair)
. Primaris Sword Brethren: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Thunder hammer
. Primaris Sword Brethren: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Power sword, Stratagem: Champion of the Feast
. Primaris Sword Brethren: Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol
. Primaris Sword Brethren: Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

+ Heavy Support +

Eliminator Squad [4 PL, 75pts]: Las Fusil
. Eliminator Sergeant: Bolt sniper rifle
. 2x Eliminators: 2x Bolt pistol, 2x Camo cloak, 2x Frag & Krak grenades

Eradicator Squad [8 PL, 150pts]: Icon of Heinmann, Melta rifle
. 2x Eradicator: 2x Bolt pistol
. Eradicator Sgt

+ Dedicated Transport +

Impulsor [6 PL, 130pts]: 2x Storm Bolters, Multi-melta

Impulsor [6 PL, 130pts]: 2x Storm Bolters, Multi-melta

++ Total: [103 PL, 11CP, 2,002pts] ++

Created with BattleScribe

 

I know it's got issues, and I've really dedicated a mass chunk of points to the 20 man Crusader squad. I've only tried the 20 man squad 3 times before and only once was it with free upgrades. (I still am not sure about the free power swords on Sword Brethren).

 

The transports have been in and out of the lists over and over. I always bring melta with them and they have surprisingly good results if they get ignored. 

Edited December 6, 2022 by Prot

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I like your list… it can flex !!

 

Good luck Prot - let us know how it goes !!

 

I’ve been running a six man Eradicator squad with 4 heavy melta rifles and 2 multi-melta… they make everything go away.

Edited December 2, 2022 by BLACK BLΠFLY

[Prot]

I like the idea of a 6 man Eradicator squad. For right now I'm trying to play too many different units and I know my list shows it. I'll let you guys know how it goes though. :)

 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I’ll be interested to see how the blob squad performs !

[Emicus]

Go on?! How did it go?

 

I like 5 Eradicators myself. You usually don't need the second multi-melta and I despise getting Blasted(tm).

[Prot]

Well we had the game... I thought I had a picture of the mid table about mid game, but I guess not.

 

Anyway I do play chaos a lot myself so I'm very aware of what the units can do. I think he made a few decisions I probably wouldn't have, but I'll get into that.

 

I'll keep it super brief, and do this point form:

- I went first we had a dawn of war style deployment, 6 objectives. I wanted to be fluffy so I took Bathe the Blade and targeted his Deamon Prince with my Champion. I also took Banners, and the one where you need to knock him off an objective, and own it.

 

- My first turn I proceed to fail BOTH litanies on snake eyes. Ugh. Great start Grimaldus! 

 

- I move most of my power house units to mid field, or as close as I can. 20 Crusaders, the two Impulsors with their payloads (Sword Brethren/Helbrecht and the Assault Marines)

 

- My shooting was lethargic. I shot all my bolters, 3 Lasfusils, the Warsuit, 3 melta rifles, and the MM's off of the Impulsors and managed to kill 4 Cultists, and 2 Space Marine bikes all turn, even after assault. (My warsuit got an assault off). I knew I was in big trouble.

 

- His turn: The Predator, Terminators (advanced) with Rune of Damnation and Mark of Nurgle, 2 Oblits all shot at my Crusaders. The Pred almost killed my one Impulsor. Eventally in his first turn he charged me with 6 Possessed.

 

At the end of his turn 1, I had lost 16 of my 20 man crusader squad!!!! I thought it was over to be sure.

 

- I end up killing his posssessed after bringing one crusader back with Apothercary. I make a bone headed move and challenge his Warp Talons with my Judiciar and he dies...oooph.  I had to get my Assault Marines and Helbrecht into the fray or I was going to collapse at mid table.

 

- The only thing going my was was my right flank. My Warsuit/Infiltrators/Lasfusils/eradicators manage to wipe the bikes, a squad of Cultists, and most of a squad of Accursed Cultists. He deployed a little too aggressive on that side. But I would go on to lose the Warsuit/Infiltrators from his Predator and his Lord Discordant.

 

- His turn he gets his termies into me, and somehow I stand and take it. I have no idea how. Even though I can't kill any termies yet..... As with Mark of Nurgle, and the Black Rune, it means a chainsword wounds on a 6+. But at the beginning of the game I used the Seal of Sigismund on the Crusader Blob to target the Termies so it starts to net me a few kills. 

 

- Fast forward and he charges in the Daemon Prince to help out his Termies. My Emperor's champ finally kills the three Spawn he charged me with and at the same time with Helbrecht out of the Impulsor, my Crusaders are now S5, rendering the Mark of Nurgle obsolete. With my rerolls, and now the Assault marines (Fist of Balthus) this is huge.

 

- As the battle for mid table comes to a big turning point, my Crusaders (still 4 fists and the power sword) cut down his DP netting me 10 points for Bathe Your Blade...

 

- Helbrecht is good at taking Termies down with a 3 Damage sword. The big thing here to be honest is a shocker... the Sword Brethren follow up with Helbrecht and kill a lot of termies (the hammer at S9 is huge here to negate Mark of Nurgle AND auto kill a Termie on a failed save.)

 

At this point he calls the game. I have about a 20 point lead and to be honest I was surprised he called it. He still had Oblits, his marine troops squads, his Dark Apostle, 2 Termies, the Preadator, and I guess that's about it. I did not feel confident as I was now out of Assault Marines, and down to 3 Crusaders, and 4 Sword Brethren with my 2 Impulsors behind them.

 

I may have won that game, but it certainly didn't feel like it.

 

At the end of it I told him two major mistakes I felt he made. one was keeping the Disco lord back too long, and then when he did get aggressive with it, he had no ablative wounds to escort it, like a Defiler/dread/etc. So I shot it instantly. But the BIG one was the Dark Apostle. He had it giving cover to the Core units, but if he would have used Tran:cuss:man it would have been HUGE and he would have kept his termies alive way longer.

 

So I feel lucky to pull that one off. :)

 

 

But the points he felt were too much to come back from.

 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Congrats on the win… amazing the remnant Crusader squad still did some work, but you still had all the heavy hitters. I found it took about five games to learn how to properly position them to make the most out of the unit.

 

 "My first turn I proceed to fail BOTH litanies on snake eyes. Ugh. Great start Grimaldus!"

 

This happened to me twice and ended up costing me my blob squad versus kSons, the game ended in a draw - was very disappointing to say the least.

[Warden-Paints]

Enjoyed reading the write up, can we get some more pictures of the army? I saw the Crusader Squad and Emperor's Champion on your blog. 

[Prot]

11 hours ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

Congrats on the win… amazing the remnant Crusader squad still did some work, but you still had all the heavy hitters. I found it took about five games to learn how to properly position them to make the most out of the unit.

 

 "My first turn I proceed to fail BOTH litanies on snake eyes. Ugh. Great start Grimaldus!"

 

This happened to me twice and ended up costing me my blob squad versus kSons, the game ended in a draw - was very disappointing to say the least.

 

 

 

It's funny isn't it? You can be the best tactician on the planet, but a few subsequent rolls of a '1' at the worst possible time can make it really hard to come back from. At the end of the day I remind myself, it's still a dice game. lol

 

As far as the blob squad, I think you're right.... it will take a few games to get it 100% right. It's not quite as straightforward as it would seem. In my first go around with the Templars last year I tried the blob squad against Pre-nerf Admech and it was ugly for me. This is when they could really  lace into infantry. This is my second game with the blob squad in my current army. There's this fine line between 'hiding' too much, and exposing too much of the squad. Plus when you finally make it, or your opponent makes it to you I find the second tricky part is having the foresight to properly place the fists/power weapon to make sure they get to swing. With a big unwieldy squad it can be easy to forget to do these little things. 

 

I can't imagine rolling 4 ones in a row for litanies. BT just rely so heavily on these going off. (And in my current list I'm only using Grimaldus)

 

 

7 hours ago, Warden-Paints said:

Enjoyed reading the write up, can we get some more pictures of the army? I saw the Crusader Squad and Emperor's Champion on your blog. 

 

Thanks very much! Unfortunately I don't have much more to show right now aside from a few quick shots from the game. I usually do deeper batreps with more screenshots on my blog but time has been really short this year.

 

All I managed to grab from the game was this:

 

This is at the mid point of Turn 1. You can see the BT blob squad which is fully painted (I'll never do 20 detailed models as a project again!) and to their left is my Judiciar whom I promptly threw away vs some Warp Talons. :) Right beside the Judiciar is the new GW Celebration Emperor's Champion.

 

The placement of the Apothecary kept me able to have JUST enough of the Blob squad to stay in the game (usually maintaining 4 fist armed marines per assault phase, but it was definitely touch and go for a while. I definitely got lucky). 

 

You can see his stuff is fairly conservatively placed and he's about to come full bore towards me. On the left in ruins was his 3 man Spawn squad (the new rules for these is insane.... auto healing between unit attacks). They would tie up the Champion for a few phases. 

 

 

Above is close to when he decided to concede. (Which I still believe he should have kept at it.)  It looks like I'm back down to 4 of the Crusader blob and the Apothecary is working over time.  As mentioned when Helbrecht came into play out of the Impulsor his aura made a huge difference (negating the bonus he was getting until then with Mark of Nurgle stacked with Black Rune).

 

To the right, the work in progress Sword Brethren. They were a great follow up squad in this one. They feel SO close to being a 'good' unit.  

 

So my painting project which is taking me weeks right now is the Sword Brethren. I'm going with a Red motif instead of the light chest tabards. My goal is to keep them red/black and when I finally do Bladeguard, they will have the sandy light chest tabards. These guys I like in the brilliant red contrast. 

 

It's taking me a long time to do them because of all the power weapons and rendering of the armour, but I've made some good progress since this picture. I hope to have them done in a week or two of paint sessions.

 

Thanks again for reading the batrep.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Army looks great !

[Medjugorje]

srry - mistake

Edited December 6, 2022 by Medjugorje

[Urkh]

It is great getting to see all these beautiful minis getting to do the thing they are meant to do: play games and kill heretics!

Edited December 6, 2022 by Urkh

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Congratulations on your victory! May many more follow, in the Emperor's name!

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Nothing is more fun than killing hertiks !!!

[Prot]

Thanks a lot fir the motivation folks. It’s great to hear.  I put in another 4 hours on the Sword Brethren , really those capes are a pain. Hope to have some more pics soon. Also another game coming up Friday. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

What faction will you be facing off against Prot ?

[Prot]

Actually I don't know yet.... we always make random pairings when we meet up and that way it keeps everyone honest. :)

 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Smart thinking !!