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I'd REALLY like to get into this army but I can't seem to find a justifiable way financially. A Tactical marine box here in Canada is $44, then I have to buy the chapter upgrade sprue for another $36, and the chapter upgrade sprue doesn't even come with enough bolt pistol and chainsword combos for me to use, and the tactical marine box does not make up the difference either.

I placed several bids on eBay for BT bits, but auctions quickly hit $10 each for 10 BT torsoes, or 10 BT heads, or the arms bits, and this frankly is still prohibitively expensive despite being an improvement over getting the marine box and the chapter upgrade sprue.

Should I just wait for the update? I know GW used to make BT kits and even a BT battleforce, so it's reasonable to assume they will re-release these when the army gets updated. Unless I can find a way to build these squads for a decent price, my hands are tied.

Nothing cheap about specialist armies. Ebay is your best bet. I run dark angels successor AoA but cant afford to have everyone running around in robes. I use the upgrade sprues for Sgt.s and special Characters. I use the upgrades for nice "front of the army" pieces. Like "heres my really cool sgt, and captain......and the rest of the marines." This way you can create your army. buy one upgrade and then over time update your army as you get more money. Paint em black put crosses on em. Bam! BT.

I'm just starting a little army for them and its looking like scouts are going to be the bulk of the troupes (neophytes).

Then have special guys to bulk up your normal plain marines, look on bit sites for your specialist men just give 1 man = 1 BT bit rather than 2-3 then paint it to stand out.

I would just use regular marines with the templar color scheme, use the upgrade bitz for veterans, seargants and characters. I always liked the black with white shoulder pads, never could get into the chained weapons.

Try ordering your marines online from other stores, tends to be cheaper. As A new BT player myself I found several helpful articles on The Bolter and Chainsword, they have an dedicated BT section http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showforum=7

So surgestions for more bolt pistols and close combat weapons is to trade with other players for parts, apparently chaos space marine kits come with extra close combat weapons, just remove the chaos symbols. Try using holsters for bolt pistols on some models. Some people have surgested using the assault marines kit because it comes with enough bp/ccw for all and you get a cool looking marine postion but this is expensive because its 5 for $50 Aussie byt then again this hobby is expensive

In the end its your money, your hobby, your choice. I myself have no job atm so it takes me a while to buy anything for my templars.

Don't forget that although we suffer from "kill them all" dosn't mean that why still can't have guys running arround with bolters, cheack out some tacticas. And not every single templar has to wearing the parts from the BT chapter upgrade kit. If you do want to have some more cool looking marines cheack out the DA upgrade kit, they have robes, and the DA icons are easy to remove apparently, I have seen plenty of BT using the BA kit and they look good plus the DA kit is like half the price of the BT kit.

Yeah, save the BT bling for the unit leaders etc, the rest can be just ordinary marines painted in BT colours

Black templars don't have squad leaders.

I concur with everyone above. If Ive learned anything from my custodes army is that "not everything needs a cape" and I have decent greenstuff skills.

Theres an article under the modeling section on From the Warp blog and sculpting tabards. Cheap way to get a nice army wide effect.