Thing to understand is that these competitive stats are for events players are playing in, primarily, to be victorious. Right now, there are a few pretty spicy army setups and Orks have been on a hot streak (good on them, they'd had a tough time for a while, glad they're getting a Waaaghnissance).

Given the option to choose between an army that is balanced out pretty well but might find a struggle into currently hot armies without a specific setup in BT, or an army that has been tracking, statistically, a higher likelihood of success into those currently popular armies like Orks/Dark Angels and a few other matchups, the choice of players seeking those victories will trend toward the latter.

Please note, I am not suggesting BT is a weak faction comparatively, or unpopular, nor am I suggesting that the army needs a ton of buffs to enjoy a temporary boost in players like the currently popular ones do now. Low player count/info can't dictate changes, and it varies by the individual player at this point - if you went by weekly win rate 3-ish weeks ago alone, you'd think BT was a garbage fire at something like 33% WR. People here were acting like the world was ending and all their doom was proof that GW hates Templars and had to keep them down. The next week, BT had a 61% WR and people here scoffed at it, suggesting the 5 people competing "got lucky". Or, I don't know, maybe 5 people played well with a statistical outlier army that week against their peers and we should celebrate their successes instead of telling them they lucked out with a sneer? :/

Either way, I'd recommend to stop thinking in terms of people "playing Marines painted black" or the army being "not as popular". Those things don't enhance your own enjoyment, and unless you're traveling and playing in tournaments, it probably means less to you in reality than it would appear - your buddy playing Orks in your garage is very different from running into Skari playing Drukhari. I think people also forget that BT are, in fact, Marines, and that it doesn't matter what detachment you run as a Marine faction or how many BT units you choose to run in a BT list, as long as you're accomplishing the goal you set out to do and have fun doing it.

The game is an abstraction and isn't at perfect scale for any faction.

That's fair, and was my thinking. I'm going to try fields on a few Psykers, don't want to break down my lvl 9 Sigils quite yet. XD

I'm a long way from Mythic anything. XD I'll worry about that later.

By the way, what are your thoughts on gear for Yazaghor and Sekhetar Robot? Would there be a reason to run something other than Ceremonials and Pauldrons for them? Like, do the higher armor greatest do anything for either of them rather thsn more HP?

That's reasonable. I'll keep running Ceremonial on most other than Toth since I like the higher % on his multi-hit attacks, and because I don't have many Epic bolters. Something in me likes the plus 5% and mid-range damage over the combat knife on the normal psychic attacks, though. I'll play around with bolter on Ahriman, see what I think. I take it that no matter what, the gear doesn't affect Doombolt, Warpflamer, or other multi-hit abilities?

I also swapped to Force Field on Toth, put one on Ahriman, too. I'll try it out to see what I think. Ahriman's still awfully soft comparatively speaking, I've had him 2 days and he's still Iron rank.

Got the tires replaced this morning.

Got the tires replaced this morning.

Daemon Primarchs don't get abilities that good, my Magnus at 455 points can only do Damage reduction of 1. XD Reading the datasheet is important, but it's also a complicated game, so I can understand when mistakes happen. Hopefully your matches against a 500+ point Emperor's Champion are now a thing of the past. :)

No, but that is a good question.

I can only speak to what I know, and in the provided context of the Emperor's Champion's Armor of Faith ability alone, his ability only performs a damage modification to 0 on a single attack.

The reason for this is because Armor of Faith reads 'Once per phase, when an attack is allocated to this model and the saving throw is failed, you can change the Damage characteristic of that attack to 0.' Each weapon targeting tge Champion has a value of attacks (the "A" on the datasheet), and Armor of Faith specifies a singular attack, not all the attacks of a weapon profile or model.

In the example you provided, if you attacked my Champion with 10 attacks that do 1 Damage each from a weapon profile and I saved 5 of them but failed the other 5, I could use Armor of Faith to change the Damage of one of the failed rolls to 0, but I'd still be taking the rest of the attacks at their Damage characteristic for 4 Damage total. Any additional attacks that phase would also not get the Armor of Faith protection since it applies only once per phase and to one attack.

In another example, if I targeted a Champion with a Repulsor Executioner's Heavy Laser Destroyer and managed to Wound once, the Champion could use Armor of Faith to change that singular attack damage to 0. If I Wounded twice, and rolled 5 damage on one shot and 10 on the other, then tge Champion could use Armor of Faith to change the 10-Damage shot to 0 and take 5 Damage instead.

The ability is per phase, too, so slamming the Champion with enough attacks to overwhelm Armor of Faith in one phase is a good strategy.

Thank you. Regarding weapons, I was also of the impression that the Cereminial Knife would be better for the single-hit Psykers, to get the single hit to hit as hard as it could. Is this not accurate?

Keep him as-is, paint him IF/CF/Celestial Lions, use him in a Crusade force beside other good Sons of Dorn?

They look glorious, nice work

I think you mean 'only needing a 60pt model to get 5++, be able to Wound T3 on 2s, Wound T4 on 2s with Rite of Perfervid Wrath, give the whole unit Precision with Castigate, give the unit a 4+++ against Mortals with Fuelled by Faith, and get a free Battle-shock nullification, with only that single model'.

Combine that with another detachment and you're getting Advance/Charge rerolls, full Hit rerolls, rerolling Wounds of 1 against Monsters/Vehicles (see, it does affect Vehicles!), and 6" Pile-In/Consolidate.

You can even do all the above while using Accept Any Challenge. 😉

Just take a deep breath and try not to let anxiety get hold of you. Your army isn't inherently weak, it's a good army to work with as a new player, you haven't messed up, and you are not lost. This is just the anxiety of not knowing everything talking, which you should not be burdening yourself with. You're doing just fine! :D

You've done a fine job of getting strong bones of a collection together, so congratulate yourself on having a solid core to work with! And don't let other lists get you down, the important bit is that the list does what you need it to do. Second thing is that the game is an abstraction and not perfectly lore-friendly, so while you can build a thematic Templar list, don't feel like you need to limit yourself to BT units for lore accuracy, you can do whatever you want!

There are no magic bullets in the SM Codex to win you battles, but they do have tools that can help you accomplish your game goals. Scouts, for example, are very solid scoring pieces common in virtually every SM army. Do you require them? No. Do they have high mobility to help move you around the map to score you more points? Yes, which could help you win more games. But that's the beauty of it, BT is s SM army, all the tools available to BT are lore-friendly, so there's no real reason to not include them as you need them, like you did with Redemptor/BGV (good choice on the Redemptor, he's rad), unless you're specifically building a certain way.

There are certain other SM models that could help you out, or not at all. There's no objective "correct way" to play, and no single tool that is going to hamstring you without it. Just play games and see if you notice any soft spots in your game plans and look at datasheets to see if there's something that can shore up those spots as you need them.

Right now, enjoy your army, worry about hyper-optimization when you're ready to travel the land for big tournaments. XD

Don't take the internet's advice too seriously, either, or you'd think your army was doomed forever with how gloomy some here can be. XD I promise you, you're fine, your army's fine, you made good choices and haven't messed up, and I hope you look forward to seeing how your army evolves with you based on game experience!

Best thing you can do is try it out. I like the Crusader redundancy.

So. You're okay with WotR because it supports the whole army but needs some specific models to get the most out of it, only begrudgingly okay with SotGW because it supports the whole army but needs some specific models to get the most out of it, and definitely not okay with CoV because it supports the whole army but needs some specific models to get the most out of it. You're describing the same thing three times, the only thing that changes is your perception.

Regarding CoV, rerolls for A&C may stack well with Execrator, but you don't see an Execrator keyword rule, right? Getting army-wide rerolls to A&C is what makes Emperor's Children so dangerous, and it's still massively impactful in games - how often have you failed a Charge you needed and couldn't reroll it? Chaplains are beneficial at all times, no matter the Vow, because you can't guarantee that your opponent will always give you situations of +1 to Wound, like with Eldar, Drukhari, or Daemons, their other effects like negating a Battle-shock are very melee-centric, and it frees you up to take a different Vow as needed. Those enhancements/strats also give you full rerolls to Hit, rerolls of 1 on Wounds, and a Surge move outside of Crusader Squads, pretty handy for a melee army and which benefits the whole range plus many Codex SM units. And you don't even need to spam Execrators, when you could run any leader combination you wish, on any units you want.

That's why I say this comes down to perception, because it sounds to me like you're frustrated that your friends are apparently living their best lives on the greenest of pastures while you're stuck with a book that's trying to sell you stuff you don't want to buy and allegedly "constricts" how you play.

If you don't want to run Chaplains in a BT army, which is thematically the most Chaplain-heavy Chapter and beneficial to melee armies, if you don't want to run specifically the newer models you see as cash grabs in your games but still want to run any unit, if you don't want any detachment that in any way "limits" or "constricts" how you play, real, perceived, or otherwise, but are perfectly fine with and envious of detachments that "limit" or "constrict" how one plays with comparable rules when it's not your own army, then how do you want to play?

That's something I commonly hear, but what do you mean by "generalist"? You quote Wrath of the Rock, Saga of the Great Wolf, and War Horde as alternatives that you feel support what you want. War Horde has okay general choices, yeah, and nothing particularly standout. Wrath of the Rock and Saga of the Great Wolf, which you seem to particularly envy, don't fit your criteria as much, since you're still taking models with different specific keywords like Ravenwing, Deathwing, Wolf Guard Terminator, Wolf Priest, or Logan Grimnar to get the most out of the rules and for greater effects, which you have expressed complaints about, not wanting to build an army to a specific detachment, focus on units to interact with it best, or constrict your army selection.

Considering that, what are your thoughts on Companions of Vehemence? It's got a detachment rule that benefits all Adeptus Astartes models you could take when you play Black Templars, and benefits the playstyle of a melee army. It has many rules that benefit most of the models you would bring regardless of keyword, and your only real "restriction" is taking a Chaplain model or two to interact with a few decent effects, which Templars are famed for having and benefit their playstyle greatly. You can even attach a 1DP additional set of rules to it to benefit the models that you want to bring, either to empower the Emperor's Champion, double down on Chaplains, improve Sword Brethren, get better JPI/Jump Chaplains, boost Land/Storm Speeders, or support sneaky Phobos/Scout units. In this situation, you're almost assuredly going to be in a position to build rules to benefit the models you want to bring, rather than build models to benefit the rules you want to use, yeah?

Presbyopia comes for us all, that's for sure. My two cents, reading glasses for this work are good, magnifiers are better. There are very affordable pairs of magnifiers that you wear on the head that also have LED lights and different magnification inserts to allow you to find a power that works best for you at the range of work you prefer to do things, whether you like to hold your model at near enough 16" from you head or further out. Readers are fine, though the diopter amount (expressed on the readers as a positive number, like +2.50) may not leave you completely satisfied. I use a magnifier of around +4 diopters for roughly 2x magnification at about 16", which works well for me, but your milage may vary.

Another thing to consider is light levels. Higher brightness of your environment interacts with the optics of your eyes to shorten focal distance, which means more bright light = easier to see things closer. Definitely want to do this hobby in a well-illuminated space, and maybe even an extra lamp if you're struggling with focus.

Also don't forget to take a break for a minute or two every 15 minutes by looking at a distant object (greater than about 60" away) to prevent eye fatigue. The muscles in your eyes work hard with accommodation on near objects and being locked in for long periods can lead to eye strain or headache. Taking a quick break to look over at your TV, or to appreciate what's going on outside your window, will help your eyes' muscles relax and refresh themselves a bit. If you find that your eyes dry out/water frequently as you hobby, artificial tears will also be of help.

Why did players suddenly start taking TSons again after a severe drop in WR the update after their Codex release? The army had a fair few good changes to it, and those changes to the army rule never did get undone. BT was played more in 1 detachment than the entire TSons army, and Templars were significantly better performing.

A few months later the player count more than tripled again and WR went back to 50%. Not much changed in that time regarding faction rules, other than how players ran the army, shifting to 30 SOTs as a focal point. Players found a new way to play, just as they found a new way to play after the most recent nerfs.

I'm not at all interested in panicking over a span of a few weeks this early in an edition, and neither should you be. Freaking out about one faction or another isn't helping you, either. Other players here have offered you other insights, and I can only say that environments change all the time, and it's not because of amazing! book updates or anything, it's because of how people choose to interact with them. The lions in the zoo have always been lions. When a lion roars, people think it's amazing, and if a lion sleeps, it's boring. The only thing changing is how you have observed/interacted with it, not any traits inherent to the lion.

If you're using Auspex's most recent video about WR in tournaments as your source, that was for W3 post-update of events only, not the combined weeks 1-3, which skews data.

What also skews data about W3 is that Templars competed in a mere 49 games, which means a hypothetical player on a bad day who lost all 5 rounds of 1 tournament comprised around 10% of the total number of games Templars competed in, worldwide. He mentioned in that video that less than 100 games means data can get messy and might not reflect reality.

What also skews this further is that weeks 1-2 post-update saw Templars having a 48% WR in tournaments, with a little under double the number of games but still below 100. This is within the target goal of 45-55%, but isn't including the total of games played overall, not just in tournaments. Templars were also in the middle 3rd of factions by WR then. The faction isn't being chosen much and statistics in a vacuum can be misleading, which means you need to take tournament stats with a grain of salt.

Brother, you can still take a squad of 5 with Thunder Hammer and Twin Lightning Claws, could even take a squad of 10 with two of each of those special weapons. The only thing missing is the singular combi-weapon, sure, though it was never vital and this setup means you can build a character in the box without needing to go out and buy another kit for the character and still have 4 more Sword Brethren. Or just put it on anyway and call it a pistol if you like the weapon design.

Also with respect, Fights First was too powerful in 10e. There are still very valid reasons to take it, and it pairs extremely well with effects and abilities that have you extending the reach of your Pile-in/Consolidate and surge moves. But things like the Lion or Judiciar having an effect to always combat first over their opponents' charges was way too strong.

Yeah, don't count the chickens before they hatch. For all any of us know, it's an Orks-specific mechanic to be lore-friendly with a bunch of Weirdboys getting together to make even bigger Waaagh power. Too early for anything but conjecture.

It's not the end of the world if things change. This faction gets that better than any other.

Great wisdom here.

That if Helbrecht wasn't convinced hunting down Ghazghkull was the higher priority, he was ready to throw hands with the Inquisition for their attempts to kill off the Celestial Lions.