Detachment Focus: Companions of Vehemence

Codex Supplement: Black Templars is here, and it brings with it a slew of new ways to play everyone’s favorite transhuman zealots. 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 first of the three new Detachments on offer for Black Templars, Companions of Vehemence is a generalist Detachment with a focus on making sure your melee units are in exactly the right position to purge your foe from your objectives, then move aggressively to take control of them.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Note: Where this article references points costs, these are provisional costs provided to us by Games Workshop to support our review, and may be subject to change until they are published on Warhammer Community.

Detachment Overview

With the changes to the Black Templars’ army rule, Companions of Vehemence is more or less your replacement for the Index Detachment, giving you a generalist option for your Black Templars that doesn’t necessarily push you into any one build. Being able to re-roll your Advance and Charge rolls is just a great boost in terms of reliability, and having those re-rolls opens you up to take other vows to support your forces. That said, it will push you toward using more Chaplains and Judiciars to make sure you’re getting the most out of it, and as a result, more into melee builds. But that’s the standard flavor for the Black Templars, anyways.

Detachment Rule: Righteous Ferovur

This one’s simple: ADEPTUS ASTARTES units from your army can re-roll Advance and Charge rolls. The Templars datasheets in this book already have some nifty movement tricks, and combining this rule in particular with the new Execrator’s ability to grant his unit the ability to Advance and Charge will help you get that unit of Sword Brethren exactly where you want them.

One thing to keep in mind here is that this detachment has some overlap with the Abhor the Witch, Destroy the Witch Templar Vow: you don’t need to be able to re-roll charges into Psykers when your entire army can just re-roll them anyway. And, as we’ll see, if you really need the [Precision] half of that Vow, you can get it from one of the detachment’s stratagems. What this means in practice is that in most situations where you’d consider pairing one of the other detachments with Abhor, Companions gives you some leeway to go with one of the other Vows if you’re concerned about your damage output or objective play.

As with the other detachments in this book, it does come with a restriction preventing you from taking units with a Chapter keyword other than Black Templars, but that’s to be expected.

Enhancements

The four enhancements here seem geared more toward flexibility, with a good mix of offensive output and movement utility. All four are very good.

• Incendiary Animus (25 pts): An upgrade for a model with the CHAPLAIN or JUDICIAR keywords, this hot little number boosts the AP of all melee weapons in the bearer’s unit by 1. That lets you push a Crusader Squad’s chainswords to AP-2, or the power weapons and thunder hammers in a pile of Sword Brethren up to AP-3. Nasty. And as a bonus, the new Execrator has the CHAPLAIN keyword, so you can pick and choose whether you’d prefer the Codex Chaplain’s +1 to wound or his Templar-specific cousin’s boost to the squad’s mobility–an option which only gets more interesting when you factor in the Accept any Challenge Vow.
• Oathbound Exemplar (15 pts): Infantry model only. Add 1 to Advance rolls made for the bearer’s unit, and the bearer’s unit can perform Actions after advancing. This is a great utility piece to have, and something I really like on a Phobos lieutenant, who can range out doing actions and using his reactive move to stay away from threats.
• Merciless Denunciation (25 pts): This goes on a CHAPLAIN or JUDICIAR model and give their unit full re-rolls to hit in melee. This is very good, but dampened a bit by the fact that your Bladeguard Veterans already re-roll hit rolls of 1 with Swords of the Chapter. That said, this frees you up to use Shields instead, and is great on a unit of Sword Brethren, who otherwise don’t have any re-rolls to hit natively.
• Zealous Vanguard (20 pts): Models in the bearer’s unit have Scouts 6”. This is insanely good value, and it notably lets you put the unit into a dedicated transport and scout forward with that before the battle starts.

Stratagems

There are some powerful effects here, but making the most of them will mean really brushing up on your Consolidate move rules.

• Devout Push (1 CP): Use this before you activate an Infantry unit in the Fight phase to give it 6” Pile-in and Consolidate moves. This is a great trick for making sure your unit winds up precisely where you want it to be after a fight, and is great if you think you can wipe a unit, but will be just outside 3” of the nearest objective. There’s one restriction here: you can’t use both this and Hearts Hardened to Duty on the same unit unless they have the CHAPLAIN or JUDICIAR keywords. In most situations, that likely won’t be an issue, but just make sure to keep it in mind when you want to get truly wild in the Consolidate step.
• Hearts Hardened to Duty (1 CP): Used in the Fight phase before you Consolidate with an INFANTRY unit. For the rest of the phase, when you make a Consolidation move, it doesn’t have to end closer to the closest enemy model (or unit if Suffer Not the Unclean is active for it). This is powerful, but in a very specific way – it won’t let you move a model that is already within base-to-base contact with an enemy unit, but it will let you move toward other enemy models – note that you still have to move into base-to-base contact with enemy models if you can, but now you can be a bit choosier about which direction you’re going. This can get really crazy if you combine it with Devout Push, as you can suddenly throw a unit at every single enemy unit within 6” when doing your Consolidate – something that’s otherwise very difficult to do, especially if you want to fight with everyone.
• For the Emperor’s Honour! (1 CP): Gives an Infantry unit’s melee weapons the [PRECISION] ability. If you find yourself wanting the other half of Abhor the Witch, here it is.
• Pious Enmity (1 CP): This is your damage boost stratagem: it gives a unit with the CHAPLAIN or JUDICIAR keywords (so this will include Grimaldus and Execrators) the ability to re-roll 1s to hit in the Fight phase. As a kicker, if you’re attacking a Monster or Vehicle, you can also re-roll 1s to wound. This is a nice buff, especially when you’re trying to punch up into heavier targets that crucially doesn’t overlap with the +1 to wound bonus from a Chaplain or Accept any Challenge.
• Heresy Begets Retribution (1 CP): Allow a CHAPLAIN or JUDICIAR unit (again, including Grimaldus or an Execrator) to make a d6” reactive move when an enemy ends a move within 9”. And while the rule requires you to end as close as possible to the nearest enemy unit, it also allows you to end the move in Engagement Range, something many similar abilities won’t do. In the right situation, the consequences of letting you use this stratagem could completely change your opponent’s game plan.
• Dread Crusaders (1 CP): When your opponent declares a charge against one of your Infantry units, you can pop this stratagem to force it to take a Battle-shock test at -1. This might seem a bit on the weak side, but the timing on this one is interesting: if it’s successful, not only will it stop the unit from using any stratagems in the upcoming Fight phase, it will also stop them from using Command Re-roll to even make the charge if it’s a long one. And since it takes effect during your opponent’s turn, the Battle-shock effect won’t clear until their next Command phase, meaning that it has a chance of setting an incoming unit to OC 0, potentially letting you hold onto an objective with as little as a single model.

Playing This Detachment

While this Detachment doesn’t push you into running specific units per se, you may have noticed that it really wants you to run Chaplains and Judiciars. The good news is that you have a lot of options there between the existing Chaplains and the new Execrator, while Grimaldus himself will also key off these abilities. And he’s good enough that you pretty much want him in any Companions list you end up making. Likewise, the Execrator’s ability to let his unit Advance and Charge pairs extremely well with the ability to re-roll those advance and charge rolls, and that’s going to make him your clear second option for anything that isn’t Bladeguard Veterans.

Space Marine 3W horde armies have become more prominent of late, taking advantage of the relatively cheap durability you can get running large numbers of Bladeguard Veterans with the speciality units for a given chapter, and in Black Templars that means Sword Brethren. In these lists knights are going to be among your toughest threats, but you can mitigate some of your challenges there with the Accept Any Challenge, No Matter the Odds Vow to improve your ability to punch up into T11 bodies.

As we mentioned, playing this detachment well means brushing up on the rules for Pile-in and Consolidate moves. At its best, you’re using the Stratagems in this Detachment to make insane combat moves with 20-man Crusader Squads, locking up multiple enemy units at once after making long charges across the board assisted by an Execrator. But knowing how to do that is key – positioning with this army is very important and you need to make sure you’re doing it correctly.

Strengths

• Combat Movement. You can do some gnarly things with combat movement with this Detachment, even more so than what you’d get from just taking the Suffer Not the Unclean to Live vow, and getting re-rolls on your Advance and Charge rolls helps ensure you’ll get there.
• Melee buffs. Between re-rolls on Pious Enmity and Merciless Denunciation and Incendiary Animus, you’ll have more than enough reasons to take chaplains on your units to buff their damage output.
• Non-Combat Movement. Re-rolls on advances, Scouts 6” on a unit, and the reactive move from Heresy Begets Retribution give you a lot of ways to get around the table.

Weaknesses

• Defensive buffs. There’s a lot of movement help here, but nothing to make your guys more durable.
• Character-dependent. A lot of these buffs are locked to Chaplains and Judiciars. And while they’re good units, you’ll still want Captains and Marshals with your units from time to time.
• Melee-focused. What’s here is primarily focused on helping your units get into and stay in melee.

A Sample List

Are you ready for horde mode marines? I know I am. The concept here is a deluge of fast, hard-hitting power armored-bodies amped up on Advance and Charge and +1 to wound into tougher targets.

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Terrifying, right? This is not the best list you can make here. I’m going waaay to hard on melee, and not putting enough value on scoring. If you wanted to make a more serious version of this you’d cut a character and a unit of Sword Brethren and focus instead on adding in a Scout Squad, Intercessors to sticky your home objective, and a phobos or combi-weapon Lieutenant to get out there and support your units while doing actions and being annoying. You also probably want transports to protect a unit or two, but my head here was going more toward “hey just run forward and smash things.” You can also look at swapping out the Crusaders for another two units of Bladeguard Veterans, and I have to admit that the prospect of 48 3-wound bodies to handle is pretty rough. That said, I like the Crusader Squads here for the Hearts Hardened to Duty Stratagem.

Final Thoughts

This is a very interesting detachment, but one that is likely to be difficult to play well. Making good use of the combat movement rules is tricky, and many players often struggle with the basic rules when it comes to knowing when and how to move in combat. That said, those are powerful abilities, and in the right hands you can pull of some devious post-combat moves with this army, capturing objectives and tagging enemies from far away.

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