The upcoming bundle of new releases for Warhammer 40k’s Black Templars Space Marines will include a new ‘Primaris Initiate’ marine model, and a brand new Pyreblaster flamer weapon, Games Workshop revealed in a Warhammer Community article on Monday. It comes after GW announced a new Black Templars codex supplement coming in November, and a Black Templars “launch box”, for which we don’t yet have a release date.
The new model closely resembles a Primaris Intercessor marine, but sports a collection of Black Templar-specific details, including a helmet and shoulder pads bearing the chapter symbol, the distinctive cloth tabard, and – of course – a metal chain shackling the marine’s weapon to his arm. It’s not yet known if these details are pieces from a new, separate Intercessor upgrade sprue, or whether this, and other potential new Black Templars units, could have dedicated kits.
The newly revealed weapon, called the Pyreblaster, is an elongated and Primaris-styled variant of the Space Marines’ classic flamer, with significantly buffed in-game stats. Like the flamer, its type is Assault D6, and it hits automatically – but, compared to its little sibling, the Pyreblaster gets an extra point of damage, an extra point of AP, and, significantly, an additional 3” of range. It reads like a very strong anti-horde infantry weapon indeed.
We don’t know yet if it’ll only be available to the Black Templars, or to other Space Marine chapters too.
The appearance of a Primaris version of the ‘Initiate’ – the Black Templar-specific term for a standard battleline Space Marine – is significant, as it suggests we may also see some form of Primaris ‘Neophytes’ – the chapter’s inexperienced ‘rookie’ marines (the two classes traditionally fought in pairs within frontline Crusader squads). We still don’t know what form they might take, though, if any.
However, since Monday’s article on the Primaris Initiate closes by promising more updates on “what may be accompanying it”, we reckon we should see at least a few more new models to be rolled into the promised Black Templars launch box.
The news all comes after GW unveiled a new, Primaris-sized sculpt for Black Templars-only Character model The Emperor’s Champion on August 9, and casually slipped in the all-but-announcement that a full-on Black Templars launch box was on the way – later confirming that a real, live Black Templars codex supplement was also coming.
The popular subfaction had, prior to this month’s revelations, not received any new model releases, or a codex rulebook of its own, since 2005 – although it did get more and more focus within the overall Space Marines codex and other rules publications since 8th Edition launched in 2017.