The Black Templars are one of the final armies this edition to get their Codex, but they are finally here, up for pre order today alongside the Grey Knights!

In this full review, we’ll be checking out everything that has changed in the 10th Edition Codex, seeing what is new and taking a look at the two kits that are released alongside the book.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over an early review copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Black Templars goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the two new models, which you can see over on YouTube or down below!

So without further ado lets check out everything that has changed in the new Black Templars Codex!

Black Templars 10th Edition Codex Review (2025)

The 10th Edition of Warhammer 40k has been hurtling along at a pretty quick rate, and we’ve had some rapid fire Codex releases over the last few months. Today we have some of the last ones in the form of the Grey Knights and the Black Templars. Dave is checking out the Grey Knights codex today in his full review, while I’m digging into the Templars

As ever with all the 10th Edition books, we have a gorgeous codex here, filled with artwork, narrative and background about the faction. This has been quite a fun one for me to do, as I’ve not really dug too deep into the Black Templars myself in the past for previous projects. And as someone who has a lot of 40k armies, its always nice when I get to dive into a new book without too much prior knowledge.

One thing that I did really like here was a breakdown of the various Crusades that have been fought in the name of the God Emperor, and the heraldry and markings for each of them. From a hobby point of view, little things like making your force look accurate for a particular conflict or event is always a big plus point for me – particularly as someone who goes into making an army list first from a narrative and aesthetic point of view over picking units that have done well recently.

Being someone new to the Black Templars, the book gave me lots of fuel for crafting a nice thematic force, and it’s always nice to soak up the lore in order to get a feel for how the army would feel in the narrative bfore seeing how the game rules can be crafted to capture that.

Out of the two forces that are up for pre order today, the Black Templars are a little luckier in that they have a pretty up to date range, with their last update giving them some much needed primaris sized troops (which is expanded with the new characters released alongside the Codex) – compared to the poor Grey Knights who have some very old models now, the Templars have done alright, and we have a nice range here now.

Combat Patrol

On the subject of a nice range, the new Combat Patrol is looking pretty decent. Containing the Emperor’s Champion, a box of Crusaders, a unit of Sword Brethren and a trio of Bladeguard there’s about £145 of models here and with some vary usable contents. Deffo one that can be easily used to start a new army, or as part of expanding an existing army.

Like with the other 10th edition books, we also get a full painting guide for the Black Templars, which is nice for those new to the army – especially when painting black can be tricky. Some good pointers such as using a green or blue to highlight black are listed here, which is often something that people trying to paint black armour struggle with, and the final results look great for a battle-ready guide!

The Combat Patrol itself looks fun too – as ever it’s a simplified version of the core army rules, but you still get a choice of vows for example, and some fight on death mechanics for your Sword Bretheren and Bladeguard.

With the units in the box it certainly feels more like the foundations for a full 40k army, and plays like the “full” version feels on the battlefield too.

Black Templars Army Rules

So what about the core rules themselves? Has much changed for the army? Well we still get Templar Vows, which are selected at the start of the battle – but these all have changed compared to the Index rules.

Abhor the Witch, Destroy the Witch – This now allows you to reroll charges against Psyker units, and to represent the Black Templars being able to pick a Witch out from the mass of combat they get Precision Hits while targeting them. I feel this one is thematic and captures the Templars trying to target and slay the witch first above all else.

Accept the Challenge, No Matter the Odds – this one is pretty cool now, If you are making a melee attack against something with a higher Toughness than your Strength you get +1 to wound. This really helps when attacking tougher targets and means that even your basic units can pick fights they would normally struggle with, and makes units like Sword Brethren and Terminators particularly scary!

Suffer Not the Unclean to Live – this is now more movement based, allowing you to charge after falling back. There’s also potential for shenanigans in their ability to pile in or consolidate towards the closest unit rather than closest model – which is great for getting units with mixed weapons into better targets.

Uphold the Honour of the Emperor – Finally, this one is more objective based – giving all your units “sticky” objectives and also allowing you to do actions after advancing. I can see this being a go-to vow for matched play, as it makes it so much easier to score objectives with this.

It’s worth pointing out too that Templar Vows are not a Detachment Rule but instead a core rule that replaces Oath of Moment – so the Black Templars also have a whole range of new Detachments to play with!

Black Templar armies still can’t take psykers, and they have a longer list of units that are replaced by Black Templar specific ones, now including things like Terminators and Sternguard – who all get their own bespoke units in this book.

Detachments

So what are the new Detachments like? Three new ones are included in the book and they all lean into different play styles.

Companions of Vehemence – This is a fairly straight forward one revolving around allowing your units to run and charge – Enhancements lean into this too with one allowing a unit to Scout 6″ (Worth noting here that Crusaders no longer get Scout on their profile), and another adding 1 to advance rolls. On the Strategem side, there’s one that allows a unit to move D6 towards a unit that has got within 9″ too, along with the ability to make your units pile in and consolidate 6″. Your guys will be flying across the battlefield and to me this just feels really Black Templars, with mass infantry charging at the unclean.

Vindication Task Force – This one revolves around objective control, making it harder to wound your Ancient units if they are in range of an objective. On top of this, your Crusade Squads get to use their Righteous Zeal move to move towards objectives rather than units. There’s also some really nice enhancements here such as the ability to give a unit a 5+ invulnerable save, or reduce the range of incoming charges by 2″. You can even deep strike units with Orb of the Emperor’s Aegis too! Sticking with the theme of keeping units kicking on objectives, one Strat allows you to return an Ancient that has been killed to the battlefield with full wounds! We also get another strat that increases the AP of your units if you are fighting near to an objective. I really like this detachment too and feel this could be good for objective play, especially when combined with Uphold the Honour.

Godhammer Assault Force – The final of the three Detachments in the new book leans into charging out of vehicles. You get two bonuses for this – the first allows you to add 1 to hit rolls when charging from a vehicle, and secondly units that you charge also must make Battle-shock tests too! This is further boosted by one of the enhancements that has those units subtract 1 from their tests too! Paragon of Fury is a really nice enhancement for this detachement, the model gets +2 strength and also gets +1 damage when charging out of a vehicle. This works on all weapons, so something like a Execrator with twin melee weapons would be really nasty with this! There’s a really nice strat here that allows you to take a unit in a Land Raider and set them up within Engagement Range of a unit within 6″, essentially making them safe from Overwatch as technically they didn’t charge!

There’s a nice mix of different Detachments here, and I feel they offer a nice mix of playstyles for the Black Templars.

Datasheets

So what’s changed in the profiles in this book? Well, most units have had some alterations and changes – we’ll take a look at those now, along with some of the new profiles and kits added with this release. There might be the odd change to a profile, but I’ll call out the bigger changes here.

High Marshall Helbrecht – Helbrecht has had a bit of a glow up, now boasting 6 wounds and adding 1 to both strength and attacks of models in his unit, though he no longer hands on critical hits on a 5+. I do like the extra attacks he dishes out now, and still worth sticking in a nice big combat unit.

Chaplain Grimaldus – Grimaldus has had a bit of a tweak with his Relics abilities. He still has the ability to give his unit +1 AP, but the other two abilities have changed. The first now gives +1 to Advance and Charge rolls, and the second adds 1 to the Toughness of his unit, which can help in reducing incoming to wound rolls a little.

Emperor’s Champion – The Emperor’s Champion has a pretty big change – firstly, he is now Anti-character 5+ on his sword, and his Sigismund’s Hair ability now gives him +2 to charges with a once per battle ability of turning on Devastating Wounds when fighting a character. Some will be disappointed the +1 to wound characters has gone, I do think this new version is quite fun!

Marshal – The Marshal has had a pretty big re-write too. His old special rules are gone, with his power weapon now getting 7 attacks with lethal hits base, but he now gives his unit critical hits on a 5+ (which will work with his own lethal hits) and every time he fights he gets +1 attack for each unit within 6″ – Yeah it might not have devastating wounds like last time, but this guy can become an utter blender.

Castellan – Like with the Marshal, the Castellan has a new selection of special rules. He now has lethal hits on his power weapon, which is nice, but he now has a couple of new rules. Every time his unit fights you take a leadership test – if you fail then you reroll hits of 1, but if you pass you can reroll all hits! Really nice ability and even if you fail theres a benefit. He also gets a CP on a 4+ every time his unit destroys a unit! Really like this guy now.

Execrator

The first of the two new characters added in this release is the awkwardly named Execrator (let’s just say there was a few out-takes on the video for that one!). He’s pretty cool, with the ability to allow a unit to charge after advancing and when his unit kills a unit causing battleshock to all enemy units within 6″. Across his Crozius and his Power sword he has 8 attacks that can pump out up to 16 damage. Give him Paragon of Fury and these will be at S7 and 8 with damage 3 a piece, which is very tasty!

The model is nice and fun to paint up, and comes with quite a few different build options if you do want to have multiple within your army!

Crusade Ancient

The other new character added in this release is the Crusade Ancient. This guy allows slain models to fight on death on a roll of 4+, which is nice if a little swingy. His other ability is interesting though, as when his unit destroys another unit he gets +5 OC for the rest of the battle, which is really cool!

Like with the other character, this one does have a couple of different builds – and again this is probably another one you’d potentially want a couple of in your army. The model was really fun to build and paint up, and while I didn’t have long to get him done in time for the review, its deffo one that you could go to town on with the banner to make it something special!

Sword Brethren – These have been reworked a little and I feel have less damage output now. Their chainswords now have 6 attacks but the power weapons are down to 3 attacks each. They have also lost the ability to increase attacks or damage. Instead the chainswords now have sustained and the power weapons lethal hits, and if someone disengages from them they can now make a normal move.

Sternguard Veterans get a Black Templar specific profile that allows them to reroll wounds of 1 against the closest target

Terminators – surprisingly also get a Black Templar profile, and these seem a lot better than the Sternguard. Whenever a unit falls back from them they have to make desperate escape tests (at -1 if they are battleshocked). Think these could be pretty nasty.

Crusader Squad – These have had a big rework. As mentioned earlier, they no loner have scout, and their Rightous Zeal rule has changed. Now if they are shot at and lose any models they get to make a D6+2 inch move towards that unit, which helps them get across the battlefield. Really nice in Vindication Task Force as that allows them to make this move towards objectives. The chainswords have 1 less attack now, but do instead get Sustained Hits.

We also get all the Black Templar versions of vehicles return, including the Land Raider Crusader, which allows models to reroll hits and wounds of 1 when disembarking from it, which is pretty nice

There’s a lot that’s been reworked here, but I feel combined with the different detachments on top of the core army ability there’s a lot of fun stuff you can do here!

Crusade

One of our favourite things in Warhammer 40k is Crusade, and the Black Templars get some cool thematic rules to allow them to enact their Crusades! The main mechanic revolves around creating Oaths in other to gather fragments of relics. These Oaths are made up from a number of different conditions. So you’ll start with picking a Deed such as “Reclaim our Holy Relics” which requires you to hold more objectives than your opponent at the end of the game, a Foe (These involve you picking a unit type, such as Character or Monster for example), a passion (These give something for a specific unit type in your army to do, such as a Chaplain destroying enemy units) and a Condition (which gives you a condition you have to try and meet, such as making sure there are no enemy units in your deployment zone)

All of these different elements of the Oaths have different bonuses that are scored once completed, so even if you manage to get some of them but not all you’ll still be gaining XP for your units and precious relic fragments

These fragments can be collected to unlock new Battle Honours that can be given to your units. For example finding 4 relic fragments can earn you a Crux Obsidian which can be given to a unit to change the first unsaved wound each turn to 0 damage. These are pretty powerful, and the main drive of your Crusade Campaign will be collecting as many relic parts as you can in order to unlock them. It’s worth noting however that these are given to specific models in units, and not characters – so this opens up a lot of potential for some cool conversion and hobby work in order to represent these in your army.

Another cool thing here is the ability for a character from your army to become the Emperor’s Champion for the next battle! Essentially this allows you to add a free Emperor’s Champion to your order of battle. This champion doesn’t earn XP like normal, but can instead gain Virtue Battle Honours which give your Champion some cool and unique abilities. I really like this, as it makes your Emperor’s Champion very unique to your own Crusade, which is cool!

As usual the Crusade section contains all the usual upgrades and options, and also has a nice name generator to come up with some suitably thematic names for your characters.

Black Templars Codex – Summary

So what do I think of the new Black Templars codex? Well, I’m a newcomer to the Black Templars, having never played them before. But I feel there’s some really fun stuff here that captures the feel of the army, while also making them distinct from other Space Marines. In the past we’ve often had different Space Marine chapters feel a little too similar, but for the Black Templars we have the thematic feeling of a mass of angry zealots charging across the battlefield. Yes, Oath of Moment is now gone, but I like the that the Templar Vows have now replaced this rather than being just bound to a single Detachment. While the Grey Knights are sadly stuck with their old models, the Black Templars also now have a gorgeous range with some cracking new additions this time round! I’m looking forward to painting some more in the near future…

The Black Templars Codex and kits are up for pre order today and released Saturday 9th August.

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.