Shrike? Templars? Ideas?

[Grenadier]

Unless he bails out I'll be having a battle this weekend. As usual it'll be massive points. And as usual to match my opponent I shall have to use nearly every model I own. Imperial Guard and Black Templars.

But as I was getting ready to work up a Black Templars list I discovered virtually all my troops were missing their arms. It seems long ago after my last battle I tore them off to redo a lot of things and forgot to finish the project.

And so now I'm considering something and I'd like some input and ideas.

I have a lot of models to make a huge Space Marine Chapter. And a great many of these models I cannot use in the Black Templars. For example, my Devastator Squads and four squads of Scouts armed with sniper rifles, missiles, and heavy bolters, as well as sergeants with equipment that Neophytes don't get. In addition there's some "extra tanks" and two Vanguards, two Sternguards, one honor guard, and some extra characters.

Now, virtually everything I have has the Black Templar look. So I could just toss out the units I cannot use as Black Templars. Which means a whole lot of models would gather dust. Or I could painstakingly strip them down and re-equip them to become rules legal Templars. If only the Black Templars could use these units which are found in the vanilla codex.

OR, and this seems my better option:

Take the various models that don't fit into a Templar army and make an entirely separate Space Marine chapter out of them. And while at it reorganize my Templars. The end result would be two unique Marine armies, instead of one large army of Black Templars.

And so I was thinking:

My new army's commander will use Shrike's profile. (Actually will use the BT Sword Brethern with twin lightning claws and give him a jump pack.)

And then I will attach him to one of my two Vanguard squads. One of them is fully tricked out with power swords all around. Adding Shrike would make them very nasty in hand to hand I think.

The rest of this separate force will consist of the four squads of Scouts. Add Shrike's ability to confer infiltrate to who he is attached to and I'll have 5 infiltrating units. Also there will be the other Vanguard, both Sternguards, two Devastators, one alternate commander with an Honor Guard, a Master of the Forge, which lets me take Dreadnoughts as heavy support. There will also be one Landraider and Predator.

It's not much of an army but I think it'll be interesting to have so much firepower, infiltration, sniping, and mobility via jump packs all in one army.

As for my Templars they'll consist of mostly Initiates, Terminators, two bike squads, one Assault squad, a Crusader, and a couple of Dreadnoughts.

I've been wracking my brain how best to make use of all my Marine models and I feel this is the best idea I can come up with.

[Shadoq]

I assume we're talking about an Apoc game yes?

If it was me, I would break up in to 2 separate Marine forces as you mentioned. Gives you more directions to go if you decide to keep collecting them as 2 separate forces.

Only concern I'd have with running Shrike with Vanguard is that unless they have SSs, Vanguard tend to eat it quickly, especially if your opponent has something like, a Baneblade for instance. That base 3+ save isn't that great. I'd attach Shrike to a SS/TH Termie squad to have some real fun.

[Ulthwé Guardian]

Well it's one thing to have Shrike in lets say an Ultramarines or Salamander army but in a Black Templars, is that not pushing it? I might be wrong here but I thought Templars were all about an open fight and not about sneaking around, that's why I their equivalent to scouts join their cores marines.

[Grenadier]

No, he wouldn't really be in my Templar army. I have enough models I can either make one big massive Templar army, but excluding certain units they have no access to. Or A smaller Templar army and anotherone. So if I do this Shrike would be in the other army. This army would look like Templars but would not at all use their rules or anything "Templary."

Essentially I have lots of models right now that I can't use as Templars. Like the sniper scouts. Unless I broke off the arms and gave them stuff that would let me add them into my Templar squads I just can't use them. All these non-Templar models could, with some work and redoing them join my Templars. But I'd rather not.

So I'll just build this second army out of these unusable models. To be honest I'm losing my love for my Black Templars due to their codex being outdated. The vanilla codex has better stats for leaders and lots of great units the Templars don't get like honor guard, vanguard, and sternguard. Hell, I may just abandon the Templars altogether!