As many of you saw, yesterday the chapter tactics for all of the space marine chapters in the new codex were released. And let me tell you, the outcry to the Emperor was overwhelming. Sickening really...but that's neither here nor there. Let's take a look at them.
Well, what do we get? Quite simply, re-rolls on failed charges into combat (we're going to assume it means both dice). Honestly, is it super duper great? No. But it fits the fluff for our army and more importantly, its not super unbalanced. With the random nature of charging, its important to make sure that you get into the fight. Before, we had to use up our precious command points to ensure we got there. Now we can save those points for the important strategems, including the yet-to-be-announced Black Templar-only ones. I feel this is going to be incredibly powerful, basically giving us a couple of "extra" command points for free.
I know that I was concerned with the success rate of my Alpha Strike close combat units (e.g. Vanguard Veterans). Getting that critical first turn charge is huge and most armies only have a 28% chance of pulling it off. With the BT CT? 48%. These are much better odds to turn the tide of the game right off the bat. If you throw in several units in your opponents face right away, with these re-rolls, they will be very likely to deploy defensively which is a huge advantage. So am I disappointed in our CT? No. You better believe that I'm going to use and abuse it.
We also now have the strategem for the Black Templars: For 1CP, we can attempt to negate one psychic power within 24" of any BT unit with a 4+ roll on a D6. ANY power, not just one that is targeting us. That is ridiculously good. I cannot even begin to tell you how good that is. There are some restrictions, however, in that we are limited by the amount of CP that we have in our lists. Second, we can only use a single strategem per phase. Nevertheless, this strategem gives us the best anti-psyker defense of any army out there. The combination of not having to use CP to reroll dice for failed charges and our new strategems, I am happy with our new rules.
The warlord trait is that we have a 6" Heroic Intervention for your warlord, instead of 3". And finally, the relic states that you extend the range of any auras that model has by 3". Very useful for generic characters, but they are purchased with precious CP.
Overall, when you take our special characters, Crusader squad, and special rules...I think we're going to be extremely competitive in the new edition. I am very excited!