Black Templars 11th Edition List: 4-1 at the London GT
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Best in Faction is our series of tournament reports and list reviews built around one idea: play the army you love. Every article shows how to grow your tactics and strategy with the models already on your shelf, so you can take your favourite faction to your local club, paint it up, and bring it to tournaments with confidence. No meta chasing, just a deeper understanding of your army and the game. Understand the game. Get better together.
The Event
The London Grand Tournament is the largest Warhammer 40,000 event in the world by participation. Walking into a hall that size never stops being something.
We had over 25 players representing Vanguard Tactics. That number does not include the students who have since flown the nest and built their own teams. Counting those, I reckon there were pushing 50 players in that room who have been through the Vanguard Tactics Academy or been part of the team at some point, now doing incredible things in their own local communities.
That genuinely touched me. So did the number of people who came over to talk about the channel and what the work has meant to them. I am grateful for every one of those conversations.
A few thank yous before anything else.
To Zach and the UKTC refereeing and event team: the event was fantastic. To Games Workshop for continuing to show their support as best they can. And to the sponsors, Baron of Dice, Wayland Games and Army Painter, because without them the whole thing simply does not happen.
I also want to call out my team, both the wider Vanguard Tactics crew and the staff team. You all did great.
Goals and Aspirations Going In
My number one goal had nothing to do with the standings.
I wanted five great opponents. You cannot fully control that, but you can control your half of it, so I wanted to do everything in my power to be a great opponent myself and hopefully inspire others to do the same.
I felt good about my performance at the table, about the challenge I set my opponents, and about the new friends I made. A few of those really stood out, and I know I will be catching up with those people at events for years to come. There were laughs in all five games. That was the biggest win of the weekend and how much I loved playing.
My competitive aspiration was modest: 2 and 3 with the Templars.
As you know I was taking Black Templars, a list I had not played a tremendous amount, but one I really wanted to play because I love the lore and I love the miniatures.
I couldn’t believe it that I finished 4 and 1, dropping seven points across the entire five rounds. So lets go through them...
Round One: Matt, Adeptus Custodes
Result: 100 to 34.
I was a little worried going in. Lions of the Emperor brings a lot of four wound Terminators, and chewing through those is genuinely difficult. It is a really strong list.
The swing moment came when Matt went for a charge to get his Terminators into combat with my Land Raider. I pulled off a very good heroic intervention that let me base a lot of his other models, which meant they physically could not pile into engagement range to the Land Raider Redeemer. That kept it safe for another turn, and it was a hugely valuable asset later in the game.
The other piece I was pleased with was pinning the Wardens on a bad decision. Their durability buff answers one threat, not both, so I presented a double threat and forced the question: do you want to get shot, or do you want to get hit in combat? That worked really well.
I also deliberately collapsed the flank, something we teach on the Academy, and that is what closed the game out.
What could have gone better: honestly, very little. The game went swimmingly. Once I had momentum there was not a decision I would take back.
Round Two: Joel, Imperial Agents
Result: 100 to 30.
This one was tricky for a different reason. I had limited understanding of what Disruption did, having not played it since release, and no clear idea what Imperial Agents do either. So many units, all doing small specific jobs and actions
That pushed me into playing more aggressively from the off. I needed to keep pressing him away from the centre of the board and delete his action units as quickly as I possibly could. Against a faction you do not know, taking away the units that generate their score is a safer plan than trying to solve every profile.
Top play of the weekend: using the mortal wound output from Helbrecht to clear certain units off, which opened up the ability to fight in multiple phases.
What could have gone better: in hindsight I could have played that sequence a little better. I put myself into base contact with another unit, which cost me the overrun move and slowed my progression by an extra turn. Small positioning detail but a real tempo cost.
Round Three: Marcus, Leagues of Votann
Result: 100 to 66.
The dilemma was how do I keep my Land Raider safe, so I could use it to stage.
The plan was a nice one. I wanted to kill one of the Votann epic heroes and, at the same time, pin the Land Fortress so it could not get a clear line through my models to shoot my Land Raider Redeemer. I cannot win the war in the shooting phase against Votann, it is simply too efficient, especially with the unit inside the Land Fort, so the Redeemer needed protecting.
I had the Land Fortress neatly wrapped with my Vanguard Vets. Then my opponent flipped a dice to a six on one save and used a command point re-roll on another, and the character lived. That character then killed four of my five Vanguard Veterans along with the captain, which broke the pin on the Land Fortress.
What could have gone better: I split the job. I should have put all of my models into the character, killed it outright, then done the best job I could of piling in around the Land Fortress. That line leaves more models alive and takes the dice out of it. It still worked out okay in the end, as I blocked one side, protecting my Land Raider but the lower variance option was there.
Round Four: Zoltan, Adeptus Custodes
Result: 100 to 51.
Lions again, but with fewer Terminators, which helped. Zoltan played the Wardens quite defensively, which handed me really good board presence.
I pulled off a very good rapid ingress that put me in position to tackle the guard unit with Draxus in it, using my flat 3 damage Captain with Vanguard Vets..
What could have gone better: my charges. I failed a 4 inch charge with a re-roll. Then a 7 inch. Then a 5 inch, which I re-rolled into double ones. A genuinely miserable run of dice.
Those failures did not determine the outcome of the game, but they did slow my momentum. It is easy to blame dice, but in all honesty they rarely have a game deciding impact.
Zoltan was an incredible opponent, and this was a real highlight of the weekend. He has been to VT tournaments before, and I cannot wait to play him again sometime.
Round Five: Dom, Imperial Knights
Result: 93 to 94.
Dom brought six huge Titanic Knights.
He went first, and his staging caused me an enormous problem. He could advance and shoot with all of his Knights, connect with each of my terrain features, and shoot all the way through them to kill everything behind. I was essentially given one turn to react.
So I moved my entire army out to move block and protect my most valuable units. Then I went for it: out of the Redeemer, advance with Helbrecht’s unit, and a 9 inch charge. It had to be nine, because on an eight he could reactive move and make the charge impossible.
I failed it with the re-roll.
Without killing that Knight, his turn two was brutal. I lost the Land Raider Redeemer, five Sword Brethren, Helbrecht, two units of Intercessors, a unit of Jump Pack Intercessors, and five of my six Bladeguard. I was left with a couple of characters from each squad and a couple of Sword Brethren.
And then the game turned.
I rapid ingressed my Vanguard Veterans onto his home field, which scored me more primary and set them up for a really good counter charge. The most memorable moment of the weekend followed: the Emperor’s Champion doing somewhere between 15 and 18 damage to a Knight Errant.
From there I played as hard and as well as I possibly could with what was left. I killed a big Knight in his turn two, another in my turn two, plus his Knight Tyrant. I brought both Dominus class walkers down to four wounds and two wounds. He lost another in his turn three, and I killed the other in my turn three. By his turn four he had one Knight left on the table.
The best moment from this game was my Emperors Champion dealing 18 wounds to a Knight. That was epic.
I played as best as I could but the damage I took in round two just put me too much on the back foot.
That is my one loss of the weekend, and Dom went onto win another game in the finals. Me and Dom became great friends during this game and look forward to a rematch.
Result: I ended up winning Best In Faction for Templars and also my personal best at LGT.
Lessons I Am Taking Away
A list does not have to be strong on paper for you to be strong with it.
This is the big one. Black Templars were an underperforming faction going into the event, with very low participation and a low win rate. It can be very difficult not to be influenced by what the meta says an army does.
But across five rounds I got increasingly better with the list. Every game deepened my understanding of what my army was actually capable of. My only regret is not committing to Black Templars sooner, because I think I could have been even more competent with it.
Repetition, really thorough list building, and a great team around you to bounce ideas off will take you further than chasing whatever is currently rated highly. And I came home from this tournament invigorated by 40K rather than drained and wishing for a different result. That is not a coincidence. It comes from having one single purpose for the weekend: enjoy all of my games and be a great opponent.
1. Commit to a faction faster.
2. Straightforward change to my own preparation.
3. Balance your list between damage and mission.
The most important technical lesson. You need the correct amount of units to deal damage, to hold mission play, and to score your secondary points. More on this in another blog. It is about understanding the tactics and strategies around how you are going to use your force, and how you will find the enemy’s weaknesses.
Because I know Adeptus Custodes extremely well, I could identify their problem units and how to deal with them almost immediately. That knowledge I was able to use.
For most of the weekend I fought with the majority of my army without really bringing out my big weapons, the two units of Sword Brethren with characters. Keeping those safe until the concluding stages meant I never lost a genuinely valuable piece early. I always felt in control, because while I was trading and doing well everywhere else, my most valuable pieces were still on the board waiting.
Good tempo means you choose when the trade happens.
When you have units designed to do one specific thing, waiting for the exact moment they are most effective is so much better than sending them out simply because you can. Synchronisation across the whole list is the real skill.
The weak link in my list.
The bikes performed below what I hoped. They were quite good for their Objective Control, but not being able to get hidden limited them slightly. The stratagem to auto advance them nine inches gives a good threat range, but in practice I used them mostly for screening and they did not see a huge amount of combat.
I am not sure what I would swap them for at 140 points. The Bladeguard did a great job, so another unit of those is the obvious candidate, though I am not certain exactly how I would have used them or how they would have benefited me. Everything else in the list I really, really enjoyed.
Where I Am Headed
I am sticking with Space Marines, Black Templars specifically, and I am really looking forward to playing the new Space Marine Codex. Alongside them I am focusing on Custodes. They are two of my favourite armies and I love the models.
For both, I want to bring the painting up to a standard where I can hopefully win some awards for best overall. That is the triad: be a great opponent, bring a beautifully painted army I have worked on personally, and perform on the tabletop. I have won Renaissance Man at LVO before, which is the equivalent of that, and it is something I will continue to aspire to at every event I go to moving forward.
Next up is the Games Workshop doubles event with Jordan. Hopefully we can do well.
Five great games, five great opponents, and a faction the meta had written off. That will do.
If you want to learn to play like the way I do then our Academy is open for enrolment.
If you want to take your game play, understanding and decision making to a whole new level, join the 11th Edition Academy. List building is where we start, and it's one of the modules our students praise most. You get the full curriculum, live lessons and our private Discord for the whole edition, all of the curriculum is delivered in the first 12 weeks. The next intake starts on 2 November.