If you read Andrew’s post last week about his new Rohan project, “The Home of the Horse Lords – Part I,” then this first part may sound familiar. I have been struggling to get my hobby mojo going during the long months of 2020, and despite it seeming like being stuck at home most of the time would be a great chance to knock out projects, without any upcoming tournaments to work towards (my usual motivation), I’ve stalled out on a few of them. However, with Games Workshop releasing the new edition of Warhammer 40,000, I decided to delve back in to my longest running hobby project, the eternal crusade that is my attempt to make myself a proper Black Templars force. This shall be my subject for News From The Front.

Project Overview

I’ve been a huge fan of the Templars since reading Helsreach ages ago. They were my second 40k army after an initial adventure with the Imperial Guard. I picked up the Primaris units from Dark Imperium when that released and tried to get back into it, and then got sidetracked by other projects. Now with the new edition plus the Indomitus Box, it seemed like a great time to hop back in and I am planning on participating in a Crusade with a few friends in the area at some point down the line.

I have come to destroy you.

The Goal

As this is an army that I’ve been collecting and building for years, I already have a ton of models that are built, on bases, and (for the most part) primed, along with a few painted test models. With the raw quantity of miniatures that I have available for this force, I have found myself getting overwhelmed thinking about completing all of it, so to avoid that I will be limiting my scope to focus on preparing a 25 Power Level force. The goal is to get that small Crusade-ready army completed before I move on to anything else. My starting point will be an initial Crusader Squad, the classic bread and butter of the Templars, which will serve as a guinea pig unit for painting. I haven’t fully decided on my 25PL force yet, but it will include either a Dreadnought or some Assault Terminators to support a couple squads and characters. 25PL isn’t a lot to work with, but it will help keep the hobby scope in check, and once it’s done I can move on to another portion of my collection.

With bolter and chainsword.

My intent is for this time next month to have at least the initial squad fully painted. It’s not a very difficult goal, but with painting the longest part for me has always been that initial batch, as I struggle to commit myself to a paint scheme and constantly go back and change things. Hopefully I can finally shake that habit and get some paint on these models that I have had for so long!

Hammertime.