Hi, sorry to take a bit to reply! I'm working as painter 45-55 hour weeks these days so am low on free time.
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What's the overall play style of BT?
More assault based than regular marines, as the list has a number of less shooting based units and a couple of better assault units (Assault Terminators and LR Crusaders). There are no titan allies but instead the list has some more air options (Thunderhawk Transporter, Stormtalons and the two air support non-transport Thunderhawk variants).
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I'm imagining Thunderhalks/Drop Pods (supported by Storm Talons), followed up by mass assaults from marines packed into Land Raider Crusaders.
People would probably run BTs more around assault with less shooting than a normal SM army. The list has no Devestators or Librarians and other restrictions on shooty units. Black Templars also unusually train their Scouts (or Neophytes) alongside regular marines rather than in a separate formation. This removes the option of boosting activation numbers with cheap Scout formations but allows for larger, tougher formations to be fielded (5 bikes plus 3 neophyte bikers is a better Thunderhawk load-out than 5 bikes with 3 left-over, unable to be used spaces). The options you suggest could be good, but the list is still flexible and could potentially run well as a pure drop army, an air based army or a ground based/tank army or some combination of the three. Sticking a character (probably a Chaplain) with the Assault Terminators would be a good choice to make best use of their 2+ CC. Stormtalons are slightly better than Thunderbolts at killing pure AP formations but worse against all other targets. Their main advantage is the extra reliability of the 1+ initiative. Thunderhawk Transporters allow for all drop armies with vehicle support unlike in the codex list, but I haven't tested this yet (I only relatively recently took over the list and need to get more games in with it).
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This brings me to my next question(s), how are Storm Talons and Crusaders modelled?
A couple of things for the latter were made but are long OOP. There's never been anything made for Storm Talons unfortunately. What size Thunderhawk models are you using? There have been 4 different ones done, increasing in size. If you're using the large Forge World Thunderhawks (lovely models) you could buy either of the small old ones and use these as Storm Talons maybe (just avoid the medium sized Epic40k Thunderhawk). Comparative pictures of the
first,
second and
fourth Thunderhawk (all on the same size flying stand). Given that the FW Thunderhawk is more than 3 times the length of the first two it would be easy for opponents to tell them apart. Or just use regular Thunderbolts and make sure you opponents are told at the start that they are counting as Stormtalons and assume they have veteran pilots or some such.
Do post up about your games if you try the list. It would be great to get more feedback and battle reports if you were able to take the time. Very nice work on painting the Templars too they look ace!
