As with all of the Space Marine Codex Supplements, the new Codex Supplement: Black Templars adds a new Oathsworn Campaign specific to Black Templars, giving them a way to tailor their crusade to their faction’s lore. Structurally this is similar to other Oathsworn campaigns we’ve seen but it’s worth digging into the rules to look at how they work, what’s good, and what’s not worth your time.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of this book for review purposes.

Lastly before we dive deeply into the fascinating world of incredibly angry space monks and knights, there are two key things we need to watch out for when adding and upgrading units. 

First up is the Emperor’s Champion, this chap can be added as normal to your Crusade Roster and gain the usual battle Honours via XP but if you do, you are locked out of the fun rules located in the Anoint a Champion section below.

Lastly, since you lost the Oath of Moment ability in exchange for the far more impressive Templar Vows, you can’t upgrade your Marshall to have the Master of the Codex Chapter Command upgrade from the Codex Space Marines. 

Technically there is a third thing but it’s a gentle reminder that if you have Epic Heroes then you probably shouldn’t promote another character to the same position. No need to harp on this as you’re all good people who don’t take Epic Heroes in their Crusade Roster. 

Oathsworn Campaign – Honouring the Creed

For those wishing to Honour the Imperial Creed a little bit more than your typical Black Templar player with their usual play style of “run up the board towards the enemy whilst trying not to shout Waagh”, the old Oaths of Crusade system from the 9th Edition version of the Codex Black Templars has returned but instead of taking place over several games, it happens over the course of one game.

The Bonus Agenda Oaths of Crusade wants you to either select or roll for one Deed and one Foe from the appropriate category. You may then also optionally select or roll for Passions and Conditions to both increase the difficulty and rewards. Keep in mind it’s an All or Nothing mechanic with you needing to complete all parts of the Oath in that game. There’s a bonus Honour point for those that like to do things the proper way and generate their selections randomly.

This means you should end up with an example that should look like “In the name of the immortal God-Emperor, I hereby vow to reclaim our holy relics and slaughter the faithless as righteousness courses through us yet with never a backwards step.” This one translates into ending the game holding more objectives while killing a load of enemy units, ideally with your Chaplain and remembering that Falling Back is for cowards. Doing all of this will net you Relic Fragments and Honour Points.

Under the incredibly strict and in no way made up Goonhammer house rules, every incredibly cool Oath of Crusade must be recited in full out loud in character before each game. The Addendum that SRM has to wear all of his medals has been relaxed due to his thin and delicate giraffe-like neck no longer being able to bear the weight of all of them.

Rob: If you do this in a team game your teammates have to shout your oath with you, Helldivers 2-style.

Rounding out the section is the Devotional Codicil Requisition which lets you add an additional Passion and Condition to really help you hoover up those tasty Honour points. It can only be used once during an Oathsworn Campaign which is probably for the best given how easy the Passions and Conditions can be achieved.

Deeds

Deeds mostly reward Relic Fragments. Relic Fragments are used at the end of each Oathsworn Campaign to purchase neat little upgrades for the mooks that are your Black Templar Infantry units missing the Character keyword.

• Bring glory to His Name. Simply win the game.
• Shatter the holdings of the enemy. Control an objective in your opponent’s deployment zone.
• Reclaim our holy relics. End the game holding more objectives.

Foes

Each of the Foes results have two goals allowing you to decide on how difficult you want to make things for yourself. Those that take the high road are rewarded with extra Honour and a Relic Fragment.

• And lay low the mightiest tyrants. Slap a target on either any characters or go big and aim for the Warlord.
• And strike down the most dire foes. Beat up Monsters or Vehicles or yolo yourself at Titanic units.
• And slaughter the faithless. Murk 3+ units or 6+ if you’re an overachiever.

Passions 

Passions are goals that hand out Honour points. They either want your characters in spiritually important spots or your Chaplain wanting a word with an enemy unit that offended him by its mere existence.

• Whilst bearing our artifacts proudly. Park your Ancient or Relic Bearer in the centre of the battlefield and wave that flag.
• Ere our blades strike at their heart. Have your characters hanging out in the enemy deployment zone.
• As righteousness courses through us. The Chaplain would like to ‘debate’ with enemy units over the finer points of the Imperial Creed.

Conditions

Conditions are some nice simple ways to earn yourself an extra Honour point by either remembering running away is for chumps, making sure there’s no enemy hiding in your deployment zone and hopefully not dying.

• Yet with never a backwards step. Remember kids, Falling Back makes the Emperor cross. The less said about those that Fall Back and Charge the better.
• In order to keep His domain sanctified. If there are enemy survivors somehow  chilling in your deployment zone then you’ve messed up somehow.
• With the strength to crusade anew. Try not to die; there’s a good lad.

Relic Bearers

As mentioned earlier Relic Fragments are used at the end of each Oathsworn Campaign to purchase neat little upgrades for the rank and file that make up your Black Templar Infantry units. Each relic is unique and you may have only one instance of each one in your Crusade Roster. They also can’t be given to the same unit; you need to spread the joy around some more. Most important of all, characters need not apply as they have access to quite frankly much better toys. These upgrades also give the unit the Relic Bearer keyword which helps with the one of the Passions

• Penitent’s Roar is a fun bolt pistol that comes with the Precision and Ignores Cover abilities as well as improving the Damage and Armour Penetration by 1.
• Crux Obsidian lets you change the Damage characteristic of an attack to 0 when you have failed the first saving throw each turn.
• The Holy Orb doesn’t ask you to recite the entire quote of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Instead it rather boringly lets you dish out mortal wounds on 3+ instead of a 4+ when using the Grenade stratagem… It totally should though. See the incredibly strict and in no way made up Goonhammer house rules for further details.
• The Fist of Balthus replaces a powerfist and whenever the unit charges, you’ll dish our D3+1 mortals on a 2+.
• Sigismund dropped by for a quick squiz at the enemy, decided he didn’t like the way that particular enemy unit was looking at him, wrote a quick note and slapped a seal fixing it to the nearest squad of chumps telling them to go over there and sort them out while he buggered off back to the space cathedral. Sigismund’s Seal adds the Lethal Hits and Precision abilities to that unit’s melee units on the off chance they decide to go give that enemy unit an up close and personal lesson how limbs and heads are a privilege.
• The Sword of the Lost Crusader is practically begging you to green-stuff some sweet looking flames onto a powersword on the off chance you leave any survivors as they are now considered to be set ablaze and at the start of every Command phase they take D3 mortal wounds on a 4+.
• Someone borrowed an Omni-scrambler and stuck some soothing lights to it to create the Light of the Emperor’s Grace. Enemy reinforcements can’t be placed within 12” of this unit, and Battle-shock/Leadership tests can’t be modified.
• Did you accidentally build a Heavy Flamer for your Crusaders? Good news, Beastpyre slaps hard adding an additional 3 Attacks and the Devastating Wounds ability.
• Speaking of Crusaders, did someone blow out some candles and make a wish? Well you had better relight those Vortimarin Incensors as these special candles give the unit a 5+ invulnerable save.
• The Icon of Heinmann isn’t a tin of Heinz baked beans Man… it is instead a doohicky that lets the model fight to death on a 5+. (Editor: That was terrible. Beanith: I’ll have you know that no pun is… beanith me… hohohohoho)
• The Hands of the Pious are angry bones in a fancy box that somehow inspire your merry band of lunatics to run that little bit faster (+1 to Charge) and to use that added momentum to hit that little bit harder (+1 to Strength on charge).
• The Sceptre of Fallen Empires is the most expensive of the Relics, the most useful and yet at the same time, a disappointing upgrade for your mooks to be saddled with when compared to the rest of the toys here as it does bugger all on the tabletop. Good news is that simply put, you get to take an additional Black Templar Agenda and reroll your Oath of Crusade results.

Anoint a Champion

So hopefully you were paying attention at the start of our article and didn’t purchase the Emperor’s Champion using points from your Crusade Force’s Supply Limit. Instead, to represent one of your cross chads sustaining one too many head injuries and now claiming to have received a vision from the Big Golden Kahuna, you get to add one to your Roster for free. 

There are a few more downsides adding them this way.

• This special Emperor’s Champion still has a points cost to be paid in order to be fielded on the table.
• They don’t earn XP and Battle Honours like other units.
• If they bite the dust, you must immediately take the Out of Action test. If you fail, they are slain, removed from your Roster and their replacement must wait until you start a new Oathsworn Campaign.
• Worse still, should that happen, you’re now tasked with guarding their remains and making sure all of the fancy knick knacks are retrieved and returned to the toy box. This is represented by sticking a new Objective on the table where they fell over. Your opponent wants to seize this as at the end of the battle, whoever is holding it gains 3XP and more importantly, you risk losing 5 Honour points.

Why deal with all that nonsense? Because your Emperor’s Champion gains 1 Honour point whenever they murk a character in battle, that’s why. Plus they also gain a powerful Champion’s Virtue after every game, making them an even bigger threat on the battlefield.

Champion’s Virtues

• Epitome of Piety gives them a 6+ Feel No Pain unless it was a Psychic Attack, those get a 4+ Feel No Pain.
• The Instrument of the Emperor is a kazoo that gives you 1CP whenever you wallop an enemy character.
• Because they weren’t already enough of a menace, Adaptable Executioner lets them choose between adding Lethal Hits or Sustained Hits 1 to their melee attacks.
• Nothing inspires the rank and file quite like beating the tar out of enemy characters. Inspirational Fighters let friendlies within 6” add 1 to melee weapon attacks. 
• Front-line Crusaders have Scout 6” and can reroll Charge rolls for their unit too.
• If the Emperor’s Champion is the last man standing in their unit, Master of Arms grants the Fight First ability.

Agendas

Alongside the Bonus Agenda and “Whoops my Emperor’s Champion just kicked the bucket” Agenda, the Black Templar only have the three to choose from. First-hand Experience is nice and straight forward by just handing out XP to your Crusader squads for destroying enemy units. It’s also a good source of Honour as well if two of your Crusader squads go hog wild on the field.

Reconsecration lets your opponent choose an Objective for you to hopefully fling bodies at instead of his units. Holding the object lets you hand out 3XP to any of your cranky champs within range. Holding it at the end of the game nets you a Honour point and D3 Relic Fragments. Fail to hold it and you miss out on the 1 Req you would normally get for playing a game.

Rounding out this section is the short story Fulfill Your Vows Agenda which can reward a fair chunk of your roster with XP should you play your cards right. There are four ways to gain XP and depending on what Vow you are running with in the battle, it will let you select up to 3 units to receive XP as well as some additional Honour points.

• The Accept Any Challenge vow wants you to kill Characters, Vehicles and Monsters.
• Suffer Not the Unclean wants you pushing the enemy off Objectives and planting your own flag.
• Uphold the Honour wants your minions running around the enemy deployment zone.
• And Abhor the Witch is open season on Psyker units.

Requisitions

The Black Templar do not suffer the Unclean to live, but it seems like they don’t mind the slightly cowardly as God-Emperor’s Due and Dogmatic Edification will attest. God Emperor’s Due will set you back a piddly 2RP letting you still gain the Victor bonus from a battle you did not win so long as you were extra honourable and managed to gain 5 or more Honour points that game. Dogmatic Edification lets you swap out battle traits on your Crusaders for a measly 1RP.

At the other end of the scale are some proper Black Templar-ly hard as nails Reqs. Appointed to the Household costs 1 Req and lets you either replace your Crusader Squad with a unit of Sword Brethren for 5 Honour points; or for 10 Honour points, you can do the trade and also get a replacement Crusader squad. The Sword Brethren will have the same amount of XP, Battle Honours and Scars as the unit it replaces and as a treat, this new unit gains 2XP from Dealers of Death instead of the 1XP everyone has to deal with.

Rounding them out is the incredibly thematic Penitent Crusade which may actually want you trying to lose a game or two during your Oathsworn campaign. Basically for 1 Req, at the end of your Oathsworn campaign, if you have achieved one or more of the following conditions, your next Oathsworn Campaign will be a Penitent Crusade:

• Lost more games than you won.
• You have units with the nasty Battle Scars Battle-weary; Disgraced; or Mark of Shame.
• Your Emperor’s Champion died and you forgot to grab his stuff? Whoopsy.

Your goal during this is to gather at least 10 Honour points to wipe away the stench of failure. You will be rewarded with 1 XP for everyone on your roster. You may also select one of three bonuses which another 10 Honour, 5 extra Relic Fragments or the removal of all instances of the Battle Scars Battle-weary; Disgraced; or Mark of Shame.

However, should you still screw that up and end the campaign with 9 or fewer Honour points then for shame, you have brought much dishonour to this dojo and your Honour points are halved. Not the end of the world but man, you were so close to getting rid of all those battle scars right?

Battle Traits

We’ve got three very powerful tables chock full of powerful abilities to scatter across your Crusade roster and there is something here for any Black Templar… that is of course assuming you’re not a giant metal box, all the vehicles must look elsewhere for their upgrades as these are only available to the Crusaders, Chaplains and Infantry.

Crusader Squads are probably going to want at least two of these or possibly all three should you have Req to burn on Legendary Veterans.

• Exceptional Mentors will give the unit D3XP at the end of a battle assuming they survive and there is at least 1 Neophyte in the squad to flex in front of.
• And you’ll want the Neophyte meatshields around as these nerds will carry senpai’s gear so they might add 1 to Advance and Charge rolls just by being Faithful Squires.
• Unbreakable Faith reduces the damage of incoming attacks by 1 if the unit is Below Half-strength.

The Chaplains know all of the words to the best songs and are awfully keen to show you a right good seeing too just as soon as they find the karaoke mic.

• Litany of Divine Protection lets them and the unit they are leading benefit from cover at all times from ranged attacks.
• Psalm of Remorseless Persecution teaches the unit they are leading hit better by letting you reroll hit rolls in the fight phase on a turn they themselves have charged.
• Canticle of Rejection gets the incredibly helpful 5+ Feel No Pain against Psychic Attacks and mortal wounds.
• Fires of Devotion adds Sustained Hits 1 to that unit’s melee weapons
• Fervent Acclamation teaches your unit the secret of performing a different Templar Vow to use for one command phase.
• Oath of Glory is the winner for us adding 2 attacks and 1 strength to the unit whenever they have charged.

For all of the other Infantry that are either too important or not important enough to be a Chaplain or Crusader unit, they have managed to end up with some amazing new toys to play with.

• Strength through conviction adds +1 Strength to all of the unit’s melee weapons.
• Vengeful Retribution makes the unit hit hard if they’re no longer at their full starting strength.
• Blades of the Emperor adds Lethal hits to the unit’s melee weapons.
• Zealous Intervention is a free Heroic Intervention for the unit and can be used even if it has already been used once that turn.
• Relentless Crusaders get to reroll Wound rolls when they’re kicking the snot out of units that are below half strength.

Crusade Relics

Big Daddy Helbrecht has thrown open the doors to the Reliquary and has told us to go hog wild in picking out all the fun toys for you to use on Campaign to spread the Imperial Creed. Fun fact, it’s not all different flavours of sword, there’s a fancy hat and cloak too!

Starting with the basic Artificer relics, we’ve got the Reliquary Weapon which looks just like the weapon your disgruntled dude was holding before but is now sporting a tag labelled Crusade Relic which promises Lethal Hits and rerolls to Hit. You could also pair that with this particularly shiny cloak, the Aurillian Shroud, which will wreath your bearer and the unit with it with sparkling lights… granting them the Stealth ability? If anyone asks, don’t say a wizard did it as that may upset a Templar or two.

Stepping it up a notch in the Antiquity section is a  humble little prayer book that belonged to the first High Chaplain of the Black Templar called the Ancient Breviary. Chaplains armed with this book will recite passages from the book  such as “He told us very clearly several times he wasn’t a god and not to worship him but it’s far too late as we’re committed to the bit now so lets just carry on” which will inspire his unit to re-roll Battle-shock tests. Plus you can also take a bonus Crusade Blessing on a 6+ or 4+ if you are the underdog. The Crusader’s Helm is a fancy helmet and excellent excuse to skip painting a face on your character and go with a helmeted option instead, this gives the bearer the Scout 6” ability and if the unit they are leading also has Scout, that unit can now Advance and Charge. And what better way to celebrate a victory is there than handing out reliquaries to the survivors of a Crusade containing bits of your dead boss’s hands? These next level friendship bracelets, the Tannhauser’s Bones, reduce the damage characteristic of all incoming attacks to 1.

Beanith: Games Masters may want to keep an eye on Tannhauser’s Bones as it does look like it should have a once per turn/phase/battle restriction added to it.

Much like mittens tied to their jumpers, Sigismund had a habit of misplacing weapons so the Armourer somehow convinced him that it was a holy act to chain them to his gauntlet. That in turn became a tradition and now your Characters can use the special Legendary Bonds of Duty which grants one of their weapons Devastating Wounds and improves the Strength, armour Pen and Damage by 1. It even has one of the fun tags making it a Crusade Relic which is nice. Lastly you can once per battle give everyone in your unit the Fight First ability.

Final Thoughts

Beanith: It’s an amazing set of rules and I love the Oathsworn Campaign. It takes a lot from 9th edition but improves on it immensely, speeding things up so you can get your hands on all the fun stuff sooner but yet making sure it’s not too easy and including setbacks should you have a losing streak in your campaign.

TheChirurgeon: The Oathsworn campaign framework is a really solid way to handle marine rules and I like how they’ve adapted it to Black Templars here. I want to reiterate that I think it’s important that you stand up, put a fist over your chest, and recite your oath before every game and if you don’t, you are a coward.

That does it for this review, but now’s a good time to remind you that if you’re looking to play Crusade, there’s no better tool for doing so than Administratum, our own Crusade campaign management tool – and you can believe we’ll be putting these rules in there before too long.

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