SoB WD codex 'leaked'

[eldargal]

Looks like someone got their WD a bit early:
http://i1232.photobucket.com/albums/ff379/Drachnon/sob0001.jpg
I'm not sure the BoLS rules allow me to post the rest. Its only the bestiary.

[isotope99]

Eldargal gets the scoop again.

Interesting that they've put pictures next to each entry. Might indicate whether any new models are coming?

Any news on the back page announcement?

[Kawauso]

The idea of a Sister Command Squad is kind of cool - and if they re-release that Hospitaler model I'd be alright with that. I don't play Sisters, but I've always really liked that model - wouldn't mind seeing my friend fielding a command squad with one of 'em in there. :)

It really is frustrating knowing that the actual rules for using all of these gals is another month off, though.

[eldargal]

No new models posted that I can see. I would execpt any models (new or Finecast) to be released in September when the actual army list is published.

[isotope99]

No new models posted that I can see. I would execpt any models (new or Finecast) to be released in September when the actual army list is published.

Agreed, I'm thinking are there any conspicuous absences, like missing sisters repentia for example. I doubt they'd put up a pic ogf the old model and then replace them next month with new ones.

If all entries are represented by existing models it strongly hints at a modelless or finecast only release.

[chicop76]

Cool. It looks like they stream lined acts of faith, just don't know how to us faith yet. Also the two units have unique faith. The abilty to rapid fire and assault at int 4 with re roll hits seem pretty cool.

What is also nice is the Cannoness is bs 5 and ws 5. I also noticed it seems like frag and krack might be standard. Can't say much without knowing weapon options, what abilities due, and point cost.

If the command squad can take plasma the rentless would be very nice and heavy bolters would be a good option as well.

What I don't like so far is they do sell the two new options seperate already, but they really cost. If they make a box set option it would be nice.

[Grailkeeper]

Is Laud hailer a simple typo or a clever play on words? Edit: likely to be a play on words http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laud

Also those models have the old style SOB power armour, my understanding was (I could be wrong) that it was going to be updated and slightly.

[eldargal]

All units have a picture with them. It does seem absurd that GW would rush out a WD SoB codex, release no models with it despite having already made the moulds for new plastics. I can't imagine they would go to the effort of making Finecast Sisters when they will be replaced (in six months or so if the rumours are true) by plastic.

So why go to all this effort? Hell they are supposed to have had a proper SoB codex almost ready to go anyway.

[chicop76]

Some belief it's to get rid of allies before another Ard Boys come around. Some people like me still use sister allies, so now I will have to finish my sister army.

[eldargal]

I've heard that theory, I find it bizarre that GW would go to all that effort to do something for a tournament scene they really don't care for that much. They could just make a tournament rule saying no allies.

[Gotthammer]

Trying to curry good will from the community after the FineCast/embargo/price rise fiasco by bringing it out early?

[isotope99]

I've heard that theory, I find it bizarre that GW would go to all that effort to do something for a tournament scene they really don't care for that much. They could just make a tournament rule saying no allies.

The only precedent I can think of os fantasy warriors of chaos where a new book (daemons) had new rules for models that already existed and GW didn't want two sets of rules for the same unit so the did a quick fix list and replaced it soon after.

The parallel here is grey knights and henchmen but this new faith system feels like a lot of effort just to replace the henchmen.

[eldargal]

Speaking of Faith, you get D6 faith points per turn, each unit has special Acts of Faith with ICs bringing theirs to squads. One SC lets you reroll the FP D6. Faith points work on a roll of 5+, with up to three extra points added to the roll for squad leader, IC presence or casualty taken. I'm hoping there is wargear that gives you extra faith points or something.

[chicop76]

In other words you get hosed on faith. A 5+ really, but I guess that stops the two cannoness squads that can auto pass on some faith and use lit of faith to use powers that don't auto pass. Although it seems like as long as you don't roll a 1 your HQ will be good. With martyrdoom and having faithful units I could have enough faith to spare. With d6 faith a turn that can hurt, also if it stacks towards next turn that would be great.

[Lancel]

Acts of Faith won't be nearly as good, no. Before, with a little care, it wasn't hard to control and rely on using them when you need them. With this, they become more unreliable, not to mention harder to stack, as even with the Command Squad only needing a 3+ or 2+ to succeed, there's still the issue of just how many points you rolled, and a couple bad rolls can leave you without any faith powers active at all during a crucial turn. Interesting note: Seraphim can reroll their Acts of Faith rolls I saw.

I won't go into too many details, but I'll note a few things that stood out to me. Some interesting stuff, no "new" special characters, but Kyrinov and Jacobus are back. One part that really stood out to me was the vehicle entries: ALL OF THEM have Shield of Faith listed. That's the rule that gives a 6++, so Immolators, Rhinos, and the Exorcist all have a 6++ (actually pretty much everything has a 6++).

Sisters Repentia also have NO ARMOR SAVE. Also, no Frateris Militia per se, but there is a Battle Conclave, which is a squad that may contain Archo-Flagellants, Crusaders, and/or Death Cult Assassins.

I dunno what to really say about it all. We're still missing stuff like Wargear, but some of this is interesting. It will help to see the points too, but aside from faith nothing seems terribly new. The faith will be the biggest issue, as it will require vast adaptation to adjust the armies and strategies to fit it.

[Melissia]

Suffice it to say, Every Single Bad Thing I've had to say about this codex was absolutely right. They aren't even releasing plastics-- the codex just re-used old miniatures, art, and photos of miniatures from previous codices. No new units, three units were merged into one unit (crusaders, arco-flagellants, death cult are now one squad type where you purchase X amount of each). A couple old characters from second edition brought back; Kyrinov looks incredibly generic and not actually all that helpful to the army, but Jacobus shows promise and looks to be powerful enough to justify taking. Seraphim and Celestians have been nerfed to I3. All units have precisely ONE Act of faith and pretty much all of them suck except for the Repentia power. Which is useless if they're killed in shooting (like they usually are) instead of in assault. Acts of Faith no longer scale with army size, you get D6 no matter how many units you have-- making Battle Sisters all the worse for it. Immolators lost their fire point and the ability to fire after moving full out with TLHFs, so now they really are just razorbacks. And useless.


Only a few good notes: Bolt pistols and frag/krak are standard. Shield of Faith applies to vehicles, and they get smoke for free (but no searchlights). Seraphim shoot with each pistol individually, but they lose their special hit and run rule and must now make initiative tests to use hit and run... at their new reduced initiative of I3. The Penitent Engine gets extra attacks for unsaved wounds it makes, so it hits harder, but it's still AV11 open topped so it'll again not actually make it into combat anyway, especially since it's now slower than in the previous codex (holy rage was superior to rage). Celestians gain an extra attack, but their act of faith sucks for assaulting (+1 strength is nice, but fearless ISN'T on I3 / T3 models). Canoness gains +1 WS, but with the loss of the armoury I doubt we'll be able to use it--a nd she's still merely I4. Living Saint Celestine gains in WS, BS, and Initiative, but she's still a T3 model without eternal warrior. Her sword' wounds easier against high T models... which to her is anything other than a guardsman, whom she wounds LESS often now than before. And it's no longer master-crafted.

So every single good thing I had to say about it was countered by a bad thing. Overall, I was right, it does blow JUST as much as I was expecting... but I'm still sorely disappointed about that fact. And the sad part, it's not over yet. Now we get to see what stupid points costs they're going to give and waht we lost from losing our armoury.

[lobster-overlord]

Is Laud hailer a simple typo or a clever play on words? Edit: likely to be a play on words http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laud

Also those models have the old style SOB power armour, my understanding was (I could be wrong) that it was going to be updated and slightly.

It's always been a laud hailer, nothing new there. A giant Speaker Spouting out praises to the Emperor, thus Laud Hailer is correct.

[Melissia]

As for the models? Duh, of course they have the old style models. They aren't releasing plastic with this ****ty codex.

[gwensdad]

So if one were interested in seeing the rest and judging for oneself where (in theory) would that person go to see the rest of this?

[Melissia]

Go buy this month's White Dwarf and then next month's too.

[gwensdad]

Go buy this month's White Dwarf and then next month's too.

I do plan on it, if they ever show up at the local store.
(but that's a MUCH longer story with no bearing on this) :(

[Melissia]

That's what they are, scans of the WD. Can't help ya if teh WD isn't carried....

[Necron_Lord]

I do plan on it, if they ever show up at the local store.
(but that's a MUCH longer story with no bearing on this) :(

If you can wait, they'll probably have a PDF to download a little after the WD comes out. At least they did for Blood Angels. I think they did as well for Warriors of Chaos, but I'm not too sure about that.

[Necron2.0]

So if one were interested in seeing the rest and judging for oneself where (in theory) would that person go to see the rest of this?

You can reverse engineer the image data to find what photo service provider and account the image was posted from and then do a look-up for that account on that photo service.

[Lancel]

I hate to say it, but I have to acknowledge that thus far Melissia's theory is pretty much spot on. I hadn't noticed the Initiative nerf, but that's a pretty big nerf for the Seraphim's Hit and Run and for Celestians to actually BE GOOD in melee, as they are unlikely to be able to hit first against much, and while they got A2, they also lost Holy Hatred. They'll be effective against shooty squads like Fire Warriors and Guardsmen, even Tactical Marines, but they'll be slaughtered by more dedicated close combat squads, like Assault Marines. Otherwise they are essentially just like Battle Sisters but not dependent on the Superior for Ld.

As for Repentia... I have a suspicion there will be something in the Army List that says "They cannot take a transport" but there is nothing listed in their rules saying that they cannot take or board a transport. I feel they are improved in melee, much like the Penitent Engine, but we still have the same problem with actually getting them there. Holy Rage was superior to Rage, and Fleet doesn't entirely make up for it. Then there's FNP, which is basically what they had before, and the apparently army wide 6++, which offers a slight improvement in survivability, but overall it looks about the same with actually getting them there. Transport might fix that IF they can take one.

The only unit that really stands out to me is the Sororitas Command Squad, which may have some potential, but at the same time I don't see it being anywhere near as effective as my 3rd Edition command squad. The melee power just isn't there that I can tell, and although a Hospitaller almost assuredly gives FNP, that's nothing compared to the old Spirit of the Martyr, and it's a little sad when the new Command Squad has to burn a faith point to get the SAME STATS THEY HAD IN 3RD EDITION (The Passion would return the Command Squad's Init to 4, which it was by default in 3rd, and Preferred Enemy is only slightly better than Holy Hatred). That irritates me some, but Endless Crusade is kinda neat, but all combined the package does not look nearly as scary as a squad slamming something with S5 Rending and S8 Power attacks from under a squad-wide 3++ and Holy Hatred with To Hit rerolls on charges.

Still, there is the points to consider, and if they resemble horde army cheap that could be worth some serious debate, because to me it seems like you need some serious numbers to make this work.

[Lockark]

I don't see anything GREAT in thows two pages, but don't see anything bad either. The points coasts are what will make or break this book.

[Brass Scorpion]

Looks like someone got their WD a bit early: Ha! GW pisses off their loyal customers by monkeying (again) with the White Dwarf mailing schedule trying to prevent early leaks and it still doesn't work, which is not a surprise. When you print thousands of copies of something "perfection" is impossible. They need a dose of realism and to stop irking their customers trying to control everything every moment, it's just not possible.

Sister Dialogus? Interesting, an amplified demagogue and fanatic whose job it is to stir up fervor with the SoB. I have several jokes to make about that, but they write themselves so I'll leave it to the imagination.

[Necron2.0]

Sister Dialogus? Interesting, an amplified demagogue and fanatic whose job it is to stir up fervor with the SoB. I have several jokes to make about that, but they write themselves so I'll leave it to the imagination.

What? You mean like, "the loss of allies revealed," or some such? ;)

[Melissia]

I don't see anything GREAT in thows two pages, but don't see anything bad either.

You mean aside from the overly complicated, limited, and linear (shoehorning each unit into a role) acts of faith, the complete lack of any leadership buff for the entire army, the nerf to the initiative of Sisters veterans, etc?

If Sisters are turned into cheap cannon fodder, what's the point? You might as well play guard if you want a horde of cheap cannon fodder-- at least then you'd have tanks and artillery to back them up. It goes completely and utterly against the feel and purpose of the Sisters of Battle.

[eldargal]

Even bearing in mind we don't have the full picture yet, there may be generic acts of faith and wargear options which let you tailor things a lot more etc. this is still looking like a fairly poor effort. I do hope the rumours about a proper codex coming in 6 months are accurate.

If SoB are cheaper, that means more squads, which makes the new Faith system even more useless. At 1500 points in C:WH you might have three squads of sisters plus a few others so a D6 of faith points could work, but if they get cheaper then it won't and it will fail to scale spectacularly.

[Melissia]

\there may be generic acts of faithWhy would they separate the generic Acts of Faith from the rules on Acts of Faith?

Far be it for I to suggest GW is anything other than mouth-breathing moronic simpletons when it comes to their handling of Sisters, but it still seems unlikely.

[eldargal]

Well it isn't likely but as we lack the army list section it is possible there will be options to buy extra powers or some such. Point is we don't have the full picture yet, we don't even know we have every page of the bestiary. Don't get me wrong it is still dissapointing and stupid, the whole thing, I'm just saying we don't know everything yet and there may be some mitigation once we do have the full picture.

Another thing that really annoys me, they bring back two 2nd ed codex priest characters, but not Saint Praxedes or Helena the Virtuous? Stupid.

[- 7eAL -]

You mean aside from the overly complicated, limited, and linear (shoehorning each unit into a role) acts of faith, the complete lack of any leadership buff for the entire army, the nerf to the initiative of Sisters veterans, etc?

If Sisters are turned into cheap cannon fodder, what's the point? You might as well play guard if you want a horde of cheap cannon fodder-- at least then you'd have tanks and artillery to back them up. It goes completely and utterly against the feel and purpose of the Sisters of Battle.
Entirely agreed. This is boring trash. There's no feeling of religious fervour in ordinary abilities, or any feeling of the Emperor's favour in Acts of Faith.

[Melissia]

Well it isn't likely but as we lack the army list section it is possible there will be options to buy extra powers or some such. Point is we don't have the full picture yet, we don't even know we have every page of the bestiary. Don't get me wrong it is still dissapointing and stupid, the whole thing, I'm just saying we don't know everything yet and there may be some mitigation once we do have the full picture.

Sure, and the US might end up having a Green Party as president :P

[eldargal]

Indeed, I'm just saying we don't have all the facts yet. I do like the changes to Saint Celestine though, maybe if the Sisters get some really impressive wargear options things won't be so bad?:rolleyes:

On the plus side, no mention of the Inquisition at all.

[thecactusman17]

Suffice it to say, Every Single Bad Thing I've had to say about this codex was absolutely right. They aren't even releasing plastics-- the codex just re-used old miniatures, art, and photos of miniatures from previous codices. No new units, three units were merged into one unit (crusaders, arco-flagellants, death cult are now one squad type where you purchase X amount of each). A couple old characters from second edition brought back; Kyrinov looks incredibly generic and not actually all that helpful to the army, but Jacobus shows promise and looks to be powerful enough to justify taking. Seraphim and Celestians have been nerfed to I3. All units have precisely ONE Act of faith and pretty much all of them suck except for the Repentia power. Which is useless if they're killed in shooting (like they usually are) instead of in assault. Acts of Faith no longer scale with army size, you get D6 no matter how many units you have-- making Battle Sisters all the worse for it. Immolators lost their fire point and the ability to fire after moving full out with TLHFs, so now they really are just razorbacks. And useless.


Only a few good notes: Bolt pistols and frag/krak are standard. Shield of Faith applies to vehicles, and they get smoke for free (but no searchlights). Seraphim shoot with each pistol individually, but they lose their special hit and run rule and must now make initiative tests to use hit and run... at their new reduced initiative of I3. The Penitent Engine gets extra attacks for unsaved wounds it makes, so it hits harder, but it's still AV11 open topped so it'll again not actually make it into combat anyway, especially since it's now slower than in the previous codex (holy rage was superior to rage). Celestians gain an extra attack, but their act of faith sucks for assaulting (+1 strength is nice, but fearless ISN'T on I3 / T3 models). Canoness gains +1 WS, but with the loss of the armoury I doubt we'll be able to use it--a nd she's still merely I4. Living Saint Celestine gains in WS, BS, and Initiative, but she's still a T3 model without eternal warrior. Her sword' wounds easier against high T models... which to her is anything other than a guardsman, whom she wounds LESS often now than before. And it's no longer master-crafted.

So every single good thing I had to say about it was countered by a bad thing. Overall, I was right, it does blow JUST as much as I was expecting... but I'm still sorely disappointed about that fact. And the sad part, it's not over yet. Now we get to see what stupid points costs they're going to give and waht we lost from losing our armoury.

It take a lot for me to agree with you on anything, but in this case i have to. Regardless of unit price, this "codex" isn't just rushed, it actively diminishes and devalues the units in question, the thematic strengths of the army, and frankly is a stain on White Dwarf itself which is a stunning achievement for something that is largely reviled now by many veteran gamers. I am going to properly read through the article asap, and unless there are unreported elements of this codex that can severely change my mind I will be writing to let GW know that they may have lost my interest and enthusiasm as a customer and player of the very army they are trying to sell me.

[relasine]

d6 Faith Points per-turn is pretty disappointing. Couldn't they have gone with something a bit less random, like 2d3 so there's some kind of bell curve? How about rolling 2d6 and taking whichever die has the higher value? And the fact that you have to roll a single d6 again to determine whether or not the Act of Faith even triggers is even more absurd. It's riverboat gambling.

[silashand]

I don't see anything GREAT in thows two pages, but don't see anything bad either. The points coasts are what will make or break this book.

In the age of wound allocation and massive amounts of AP3 or better firepower out there, Sisters just got shafted hard. This is the worst PDF "codex" I could possibly have envisioned and I don't care how low costed they are, unless they are 2pts per model and unlimited squad sizes it won't matter one whit what the rest of the rules say. Effing ridiculous if they think this will bring in even one new Sisters player. Frankly, it will probably drive the few of us who remain away :(...

[SMC]

Sisters are Guardsmen with a 3+ and magic praying powers. I don't know what you people were expecting considering your previous Codex.

[silashand]

Sisters are Guardsmen with a 3+ and magic praying powers. I don't know what you people were expecting considering your previous Codex.

Gee, not downgrading stats would be a start. Making sure the list was at least as good as the 11+ year old book we have now would be a good second.

[chicop76]

So at this point it's safe to say not +2/+3 Invulnerable saves or str 5 attacks. Passing faith isn't as bad as it was before, although my two cannoness squad could auto pass makes it worst.

The only good or beter squad I've seen so far is the dominaters with the scout ability.

Without looking at wargear I don't have a clue. Hopefully the wargear will be really good. If not the army is far worst then it was before. The 3+ invulnerable and ap 1 rending was what helped sisters stay somewhat competitive. I don't see anything that comes close to the old sisters.

The weapon options is going to make a huge differance. So far I don't see a reason to play them at all. If I can barely hold my own before. What makes them think without int 6 celestine or serepham that the sisters now won't get monkey stomped. The hit and run on the Serepham is a retarded joke.

For those who don't play sisters it's like turning a +3 storm shield into a +6 storm shield or making marines fall bac when they're below 50%, since I can't use faith to make them fearless, execpt troops to make them regroup.

[SMC]

Gee, not downgrading stats would be a start. Making sure the list was at least as good as the 11+ year old book we have now would be a good second.

So...how many games have you played with the new rules?

That's a rhetorical question.

They downgraded a few stats and increased a few others. That happens when you get a new book.

If you're still mad after both parts of the codex are out and you've played three games then I'll apologize for suggesting that the sky hasn't fallen.

[eldargal]

Thing is it is more than that. Imagine if SMs had ATSKNF changed to 5+ and to even use it you had to roll a dice and allocate a limited number of points on which all your squads special abilities relied on. You want your Death Company to move forward in a fast vehicle? Well you had better hope you get enough points or else you might have to pick one or the other, and then unless you have a squad leader and IC you only have a fifty percent chance of it working.

Or DE being allocated D6 pain tokens and having to spread them accross all squads to get the power from pain abilities, but even then only on another dice roll.

Not to mention some of the Acts of Faith are next to useless anyway. Why would you spend a valuable faith point on an ability which you will have a 50% chance of re-rolling a result you have a one in six chance of getting?:rolleyes:

So the main theme of the army now has a severely nerfed game mechanic, the statlines have been reduced and even if they are made cheaper that just makes the changes to Acts of Faith even more obscene. A tiered system could have been better, 1D6 faith points from 0-1000 points, 2 for 1001-2000 etc. But no we get an ability which means SoB get severely hampered the more points a game has and for Apocalypse you might as well just leave them at home.

[DrLove42]

Quote me from a few weeks ago;

"Don't complain about it till we know whats in it. It might surprise you!"

Quote me now

"Ok...I was wrong. Complain about it and rip it in half."

I am seriously sorry for all the Sisters players out there. I can imagine the old codex might still be in play in a lot of peoples homes.

The only gleaning hope left is maybe the points costs will be slashed...

[eldargal]

I think the idea behind this book is to see vast numbers of Sisters with faith points being used to buff a few at strategic points. Problem is in the process they have lost much of the flavour and unique aspects to the army, the SoB being slightly better guardsmen and their faith an IG command system. At this point I am more inspired to use SoB as counts as Guard than I am to use this WD codex.:rolleyes:

DrLove, I was the same. Very dissapointed when the WD codex was confirmed, but willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Now, however, barring some kind of wargear miracle then GW cocked it up monumentally.

[chicop76]

Quote me from a few weeks ago;

"Don't complain about it till we know whats in it. It might surprise you!"

Quote me now

"Ok...I was wrong. Complain about it and rip it in half."

I am seriously sorry for all the Sisters players out there. I can imagine the old codex might still be in play in a lot of peoples homes.

The only gleaning hope left is maybe the points costs will be slashed...


I'm hoping really good wargear options will make all the bad go away. So far I'm diapointed, but not surprised. You can't expect much from a White Dwarf codex. It's a shame too, because it's one of my favorite armies. As of now I can't really see how I'm going to win aganist non horde.

Hopefully my troop squads can keep heavy flamers, if they drop down to a regular flamer I'll puke.

I can understand the nerfing if they was wrecking shop in ard boys, but they needed a boost. This is like nids all over again with less bonuses.

Ignoring wargear if they reduce the points it's still not gonna really help the army out. Also I'm gussing the book is gone no leadership 9 stubborn anymore for 5 points.

For the DE example it's more like this.

1. Pain token gives yu move through cover
2. Two pain tolkens gives you relentless
3. Three pain tokens give you furious charge

Drugs
1-3 3d6 for movement
4-6 +1 int.

To get pain tokens or to use drugs you roll d6 for the turn to see if you can get a token or use a drug

+5 to use drugs or a pain token
+4 if you take sargent upgrade
+3 if you take sargent and lose on model
+2 if joined by an Archon, sargent upgrade, lose a model

Wytches are droped to int 5 and Incubi have str 3 on the charge and a 4+ save

All Dark Eldar have a +6 cover save

That would be pretty close to what they did to sisters

[Sister Rosette Soulknyt]

Just read all the pages, big thank you to Eldargal for that, and i have to say wow, if i pay all my units of SoB. Thats over 10k+ of SoB here, i get a crappy d6 FP per turn. And now for anyone out there who complained we were all whingers for complaining we only got a WD codex... all i have to say to you is "told you so".

GW is pathetically lazy, half-as#ed, morons for thinking this is a good codex, that all the SoB players will be happy with this 5th ed update until we all get a 6th ed codex one day.
I'm not going to rant on about how each squad is good/bad, but atleast give us something uselful other than two weak lined new characters when the BA, Gk and DE get uber-tough, unstoppable characters, and we get shafted with two priests with not even a Invun save.

Fair are you kidding me??

[deadshane]

Sisters are Guardsmen with a 3+ and magic praying powers. I don't know what you people were expecting considering your previous Codex.

Something interesting to play maybe?

A good army?

News as inspiring as what DE, BA,SW,and Grey Knights have gotten in the past few months?

[SMC]

Thing is it is more than that. Imagine if SMs had ATSKNF changed to 5+ and to even use it you had to roll a dice and allocate a limited number of points on which all your squads special abilities relied on. You want your Death Company to move forward in a fast vehicle? Well you had better hope you get enough points or else you might have to pick one or the other, and then unless you have a squad leader and IC you only have a fifty percent chance of it working.

Or DE being allocated D6 pain tokens and having to spread them accross all squads to get the power from pain abilities, but even then only on another dice roll.

Not to mention some of the Acts of Faith are next to useless anyway. Why would you spend a valuable faith point on an ability which you will have a 50% chance of re-rolling a result you have a one in six chance of getting?:rolleyes:

So the main theme of the army now has a severely nerfed game mechanic, the statlines have been reduced and even if they are made cheaper that just makes the changes to Acts of Faith even more obscene. A tiered system could have been better, 1D6 faith points from 0-1000 points, 2 for 1001-2000 etc. But no we get an ability which means SoB get severely hampered the more points a game has and for Apocalypse you might as well just leave them at home.

Be honest...you'll have squad leaders for the LD9...maybe even priests. You're just looking for something to be mad about there.

Also, Acts of Faith are situational. You won't need to pop them on every single unit in your army every turn.

The stat lines are mostly the same. Two units had initiative decreases from four to three. This brings them more to par with what they should be imo. They aren't Space Marines. They're normal humans in really nice armor. Celestine and the Canoness got buffed. Celestine is on par with a DE Archon...boohoo right?

Dominions can have twin linked special weapons now. Retributors get rending. Yeah those Acts of Faith are totally useless I don't know what I was thinking...in fact all the AoF are pretty useful for the units they're assigned too.

I agree with the complaint about being hindered at higher point games. That doesn't make much sense to me. 2D6 for 1000-2000 pts is pushing it though. You won't even need that many points in a turn unless you roll amazingly bad. Maybe 1D6+3 would make more sense, but thats a moot point.

Regardless, you have no idea what your wargear options are or what some of the special gear in the book is. Knee jerk reactions are usually superb right?

[Lockark]

You mean aside from the overly complicated, limited, and linear (shoehorning each unit into a role) acts of faith,

They seem powerful enough, and comparable to some of the old ones. I also don't see anything wrong with making the sisters a army of specialized units. Your the one who is always saying the sisters should not play like SM.
:rolleyes:


the complete lack of any leadership buff for the entire army, the nerf to the initiative of Sisters veterans, etc?



We have one page, and don't know what the war gear is yet..... I also don't see the issue with thier LD. CSM don't get "They Shall Know No Fear" or anything.
=P



In the age of wound allocation and massive amounts of AP3 or better firepower out there, Sisters just got shafted hard. This is the worst PDF "codex" I could possibly have envisioned and I don't care how low costed they are, unless they are 2pts per model and unlimited squad sizes it won't matter one whit what the rest of the rules say. Effing ridiculous if they think this will bring in even one new Sisters player. Frankly, it will probably drive the few of us who remain away :(...

I like how you are able to call this "duh worst book EVAH" from looking at two units in the book. Buy that logic I could say the Grey Knights book is worse then this one. If your only preview of the grey knight book was Crowe and Brotherhood champion, would you be thinking that was a bad book?


We need to know what the other units are, and how they work together.
=/

[MaltonNecromancer]

I've got only one real question. It's not a rules one; it's the absolutely most important question.

If there are no new models, what on Earth is the point of this whole exercise?

Seriously, turd-level codex is fine as long as I get shiny new plastics. But turd codex and same old malformed sculpts?

What are they even bothering? The need to fill White Dwarf with padding must be high indeed...

[eldargal]

I already factored in the squad leader, hence the 50% chance to get a useless AoF instead of 2/6. It is still a 50% chance to get a useless act, sure it can be higher, but it is still useless.

They aren't Space Marines, but they are still elite trained humans. As it stand they have +1 LD and +1BS to a guardsman. They are not supposed to be a horde army, occupying as they did the middle range between GEQ and MEQ, but that is what they seem to be becoming. A horde army that has an army special rule which scales terribly the more squads you have.

Celestine is excellent, one of the few bright points in this book. The Cannoness gets +1WS and a mediocre act of faith, hardly a scintillating buff.

Acts of Faith are situational, but that is irrelevent. They are what is supposed to make this army different, as I said, how would you feel if all the SM special rules only worked on a 5+ and were limited to a D6 per turn? Even then it would be better than AoF, because at least most of the SM special rules are useful. In fact I can't think of a 5th ed codex with so many useless or subpar abilities as this codex.

I have said many times we do not know the full picture, but this is not a kneejerk reaction. It is a considered reaction to the facts as we know them at present. It doesn't look good. Maybe the wargear section will fix everything, I truly wish it would. But I do not hold out much hope.

I don't want an overpowered codex, I want a fun, fluffy army that is exciting to play and offers an interesting variety of choices. That is not what we are getting, and I honestly don't see how the wargear section could alleviate the mediocre tedium that is the Acts of Faith.


Be honest...you'll have squad leaders for the LD9...maybe even priests. You're just looking for something to be mad about there.

Also, Acts of Faith are situational. You won't need to pop them on every single unit in your army every turn.

The stat lines are mostly the same. Two units had initiative decreases from four to three. This brings them more to par with what they should be imo. They aren't Space Marines. They're normal humans in really nice armor. Celestine and the Canoness got buffed. Celestine is on par with a DE Archon...boohoo right?

Dominions can have twin linked special weapons now. Retributors get rending. Yeah those Acts of Faith are totally useless I don't know what I was thinking...in fact all the AoF are pretty useful for the units they're assigned too.

I agree with the complaint about being hindered at higher point games. That doesn't make much sense to me. 2D6 for 1000-2000 pts is pushing it though. You won't even need that many points in a turn unless you roll amazingly bad. Maybe 1D6+3 would make more sense, but thats a moot point.

Regardless, you have no idea what your wargear options are or what some of the special gear in the book is. Knee jerk reactions are usually superb right?


Quite so, I could live with this codex if I had lovely new plastics, yet they certainly aren't coming in August and there are no pictures of them in the WD to build anticipation so it doesn't bode well. So at present it looks like we will have a horde army with a defininf gameplay mechanic that doesn't work with a horde army that has some of the most expensive basic troops models in the entire game, that are outdated and damned difficult to convert. Hurrah.


I've got only one real question. It's not a rules one; it's the absolutely most important question.

If there are no new models, what on Earth is the point of this whole exercise?

Seriously, turd-level codex is fine as long as I get shiny new plastics. But turd codex and same old malformed sculpts?

What are they even bothering? The need to fill White Dwarf with padding must be high indeed...

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I'm not a sisters player, but from a mini-designer/developers point of view : AWFUL.

I don't think it would of even been THAT bad if they had actually released plastic kits. Sisters main weakness was the lack of plastics, and ancient models that date back to second-edition, and of course all being metal too!

What they SHOULD of doneis release the CORE of the miniatures they need, as an example I think it should of worked like this ;
1) a plastic 10-girl kit that makes your generic sisters (DE warriors/wyches price)
2) a plastic 5-girl kit that makes Dominions/Celestians/Retributors)
3) a plastic 5-girl kit that makes Seraphim
4) a plastic kit that makes a Penitent engine

Basicly, effectively giving Sisters players a "core" of the minis they NEED, with the WD rules being just a "temporary" thing until they get a proper codex in early 6th edition (say no more than a year later) - and with the "core" minis in plastics it would of enabled them to do add lots of new stuff and give them "good" rules when the time came to do the real codex as it would of freed up the release-slots.

But no, all I see as a "release slot filler" hackjob, when it could of been a great way to give them the miniatures they so desperately need and deserve. I'll still hope the final part of the codex proves me wrong and they WILL give sisters players some plastic kits - but I'm not holding my breath.

Sisters players really deserve more IMO. If this was an army I played id be quite annoyed.

[wittdooley]

Why would they release the minis with a WD codex.

Do we know if the minis are even ready?

We know they're as WD codex that no one here likes. That's it.

[Melissia]

Be honest...you'll have squad leaders for the LD9...maybe even priests. You're just looking for something to be mad about there.No.

We have lost Light of the Emperor for all squads except Battle Sisters. With the Armoury gone (no 5th edition codex has one), that means we also lack BoSL.

Imagine if you removed ATSKNF and Combat Tactics from all Space Marine armies. Would they be weaker as a result? Don't answer that question, I'll do it for you: The answer is yes.



edit: as a side note...


"I like how you are able to call this "duh worst book EVAH" from looking at two units in the book"

I've looked at the entire bestiary.

[chicop76]

Be honest...you'll have squad leaders for the LD9...maybe even priests. You're just looking for something to be mad about there.

Also, Acts of Faith are situational. You won't need to pop them on every single unit in your army every turn.

The stat lines are mostly the same. Two units had initiative decreases from four to three. This brings them more to par with what they should be imo. They aren't Space Marines. They're normal humans in really nice armor. Celestine and the Canoness got buffed. Celestine is on par with a DE Archon...boohoo right?

Dominions can have twin linked special weapons now. Retributors get rending. Yeah those Acts of Faith are totally useless I don't know what I was thinking...in fact all the AoF are pretty useful for the units they're assigned too.

I agree with the complaint about being hindered at higher point games. That doesn't make much sense to me. 2D6 for 1000-2000 pts is pushing it though. You won't even need that many points in a turn unless you roll amazingly bad. Maybe 1D6+3 would make more sense, but thats a moot point.

Regardless, you have no idea what your wargear options are or what some of the special gear in the book is. Knee jerk reactions are usually superb right?

With the material that's out there so far it's worst then before, Retributors and the whole army could rend, now only Retributors.

So far the only improvement I've seen is the Dominions and the Repentia who couldn't use faith before cqan now hit back if they die.

The higher the game the more units you have, if you have like 10 units sharing d6 faith a turn it hurts the army.

The old faith system I gained faith for every faithful unit I had, 13 is a good number of fatith to start off with and 2 more from Litanies of faith, if your faithful models die you generate faith so that 13 could easily be 25 and 27 counting LoF, minus one due to if everyone is dead who would use the faith.

The +2 invulnerable save Paired Cannoness with master crafted eviserator and blessed weapon was boss, it's similar to two Archons that keep a +2 invulnerble even if they failed their save. It's a huge differance to juse give them a 2/4. This might not be the case when we se the wargear, but frm what we see so far it would piss off any SoB player.

Old Faith did this
1. Fearless
2. Invul save
3. +2 strength at 1 int
4. + 2 int, doesn't work wth 3
5. Ap 1 on rolls of a six either shooting or in hand to hand

3 and 5 faith roll was squad size and under, while 1,2,4 was squad size and higher. So by controlling your squad size and with gear that allows you to roll 3 dice disgarding 1 faith wasn't hard to pull off.

Now each squad gets 1 faith ability and have a pool of 1d6 to share with the army. The faith abilites suck compared to the old ones. The major part of sisters was faith and they crapped on it, so yeah I would be mad. I guess the +6 invulnerable is a snide joke to remind us that they had a +3 invulnerable.

I'm still waiting for the point cost and the wargear options. If the points is cheaper and we have all the same options I wouldn't waste my time playing sisters. The wargear and unit options have to make up the mess they did to the faith system.

An old sister squad popping out of a rhino firing at marines with a 1 use flamer, heavy flamer, melta, and 16 rapid fire shots with rending would kill 8 marines easy with ignoring allocation. With the new dex that's 5 dead marines. Also against nurgle marines they would kill 5 nurgle marines or kill a tyrant, now they would be lucky to put 2 wounds on those units.

Even if the Retribution squad have rending look what slot the squad is in, one less exorcist, assuming the missle lancher does the same thing.

[deadshane]

Also, Acts of Faith are situational. You won't need to pop them on every single unit in your army every turn. Nor do you with the current rules. That isnt the point. The point is that the powers are less defining...less important, and that means less fun.


The stat lines are mostly the same. Two units had initiative decreases from four to three. This brings them more to par with what they should be imo. They aren't Space Marines. an initiative decrease is HARDLY "mostly the same". The difference between I3 and I4 is HUGE.
They're normal humans in really nice armor. Normal humans do not receive the training that SOB would...especially within the elite forces.
Celestine is on par with a DE Archon...boohoo right?...of which they can get two...probably for less points?


Dominions can have twin linked special weapons now. Retributors get rending. Yeah those Acts of Faith are totally useless I don't know what I was thinking...in fact all the AoF are pretty useful for the units they're assigned too. Your tone is unneccessarily condescending. Obviously a choice of the current acts of faith is much more versitile and provides for more fluid performance of units on the tabletop. Locking the units into a singular menu of what they can do basically limits us as to what one can do with a unit. More choices, more options=more fun.


Regardless, you have no idea what your wargear options are or what some of the special gear in the book is.

While this is true, it does nothing to alleviate the pains from the "dumbing down" of the 'faith' mechanic...a DEFINING mechanic for SOB since they've been with us.

Sisters players may be rightly irritated....obviously...its not over yet however. We will hope and pray to the emperor to deliver us from terribad rules.

...EMPEROR HEAR OUR PLEAS!

[wittdooley]

"I like how you are able to call this "duh worst book EVAH" from looking at two units in the book"

I've looked at the entire bestiary.

Have you seen the points? I didn't know if there was a leak of them floating about.

Would it make a difference if all the Sister was say, 10 points?

[silashand]

If SoB are cheaper, that means more squads, which makes the new Faith system even more useless.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. 1D6? Really? Sheesh...

[eldargal]

If Sisters have low points cost it will certainly make them competitive, but at a cost. AoF becomes more problematic* due to more squads and only a D6 worth of points, the new models probably aren't being released with the WD codex so we would be left with a horde army that is two or three times as expensive as other horde armies. Not to mention it leaves Sisters as basically an elite guard army without all the interesting, fluffy options.

[silashand]

They downgraded a few stats and increased a few others.

Actually no, they usually don't change stats.

And I have been playing this army for almost 15 years. I think I am perfectly capable of seeing a nerf when it happens to them, playing games with the new rules or not.

Besides: no new units and (apparently) no new models means how many people are going to pick up Sisters as a new army that is still all metal, or worse, Finecrap? It's already hard to get people to buy all metal armies. Now you just insured no one probably will. If you think Sisters/WH armies were scarce before, they'll be downright extinct if even existing players don't feel like they are worth playing.

Cheers, Gary

[chicop76]

Have you seen the points? I didn't know if there was a leak of them floating about.

Would it make a difference if all the Sister was say, 10 points?

Sisters are cheap to begin with. That's 1 point cheaper then before, that doen't make up destroying the faith system.

[Melissia]

Lowering the Celestians / Seraphim initiative to 3 essentially removes those units as effective assault units.

Imagine a full assault marine squad assaulting a full Tactical Marine squad. Now imagine if the Assault Marine squad was I3 instead of I4. The result is drastically different.
Have you seen the points? I didn't know if there was a leak of them floating about.

Would it make a difference if all the Sister was say, 10 points?Why would a one point decrease make anything better?

[silashand]

Sisters are cheap to begin with. That's 1 point cheaper then before, that doen't make up destroying the faith system.

Amen. Plus no one has noted that we no longer have any ability to negate psychic powers, something that has been a hallmark of the Sisters since their inception (only the BRBv3 version lacked any and the Design Team rectified that after complaints from Sisters players). Really GW? You take away/nerf probably the two most significant elements of the army's character (faith and hatred of/immunity to psykers) and you give them what in return? IMO abso-effing-lutely nothing.

[w7west]

It looks pretty bad but there are a few things to point out:

Rending heavy bolters

Haha everything else suck though. I was about to start a sisters army too, I was really excited about using a cool old codex since they took away my old de dex.

Looks like I will be keeping my money... wtf is this garbage?

[Melissia]

Rending heavy bolters

Not as impressive as it sounds. On average, 12 shots. 8 hits. 1 rending hit. So the result on average from a full retributor squad is ONE armor ignoring hit, ONE hit which gains a buff to armor penetration. For what? 11+d3 penetation? It still probably won't even penetrate a predator, and it'll never mind a leman russ. The reason rending is good in close combat is because said hits are made against rear armor. Even AP1 on battle sisters is better, because with 20 shots you get on average 2 armor ignoring hits, without the having the delusion that the unit's bolters might be useful against vehicles.

[JxKxR]

Amen. Plus no one has noted that we no longer have any ability to negate psychic powers, something that has been a hallmark of the Sisters since their inception (only the BRBv3 version lacked any and the Design Team rectified that after complaints from Sisters players). Really GW? You take away/nerf probably the two most significant elements of the army's character (faith and hatred of/immunity to psykers) and you give them what in return? IMO abso-effing-lutely nothing.

In my opinion you have hit the nail on the head! I haven't read many stories with the sisters in it but the ones I have they are phsycic voids. Like in a thousand sons the physkers get near them and don't feel anything.
I had been thinking I would make a little sisters force but not at all now. I doubt I will even buy the white dwarf's. I was really hopeing the sisters would get the dark eldar treatment with new bad *** rules and most importantly NEW MODELS!!! If they don't have new models who really cares?

[Lancel]

Yeah, we've seen the whole bestiary. This was definitely a rush job without much (if any) play testing. Heck, the Tyranid VS Sister battle report next issue may very well BE the play test. :P It doesn't breed a lot of confidence when they picked possibly the most underpowered 5th edition codex to battle report against.

I hadn't even realize the scaling with size, but that is true, the Sisters will be even worse off in Apocalypse. These faith powers are nowhere as good as what we had before, and often those faith powers were the only thing that enabled the Sisters to win ever before. You could argue that yes, now we don't have to worry about squad sizes to use abilities, but that really didn't matter because we tailored the squad sizes anyway to fit what we wanted them to do, so we didn't have to worry much about random die rolls. Now in fairness the squads will start with a 4+ to succeed with their Sister Superior, and will pretty quickly get a 3+ to succeed once they take a casualty, but there's still the d6 roll just to see how many acts of faith you can actually make that turn, where before we just had points and we could rely on them being there.

The faith powers themselves just don't scale up to what once was had, especially with the complete loss of such staples as Spirit of the Martyr and the restriction of Light of the Emperor and Divine Guidance to a single squad each. The key loss, however, is flexibility. We did frequently tailor squad sizes to use the faith powers they most needed (small squads for Spirit of the Martyr, large squads for Divine Guidance), but the difference is we could design the squad that way ourselves, and now the role is forced on us much more considerably, with very little flexibility in how we use that squad. Wargear options may fix that, but I am skeptical, as it could take some considerable options to return that same level of flexibility in the army.

Divine Guidance, as an aside, was actually not typically used on Retributors because Heavy Bolters are pretty powerful in their own right. It was more often used on squads with mass flamers and rapid fire boltguns to score tons of hits and therefore many chances to get a rend result. Retributors didn't get it because 12 shots is a lot less than 20, so the only time it was worth it is if the Retributor squad was at close range, and that's supposed to only happen when things go wrong, because really, you're supposed to shoot at things from 24-36", not from <12" with a Heavy Bolter squad. The extra 4 shots you'd get over a 10-sister Battle Sister squad just isn't worth the points. It sounds awesome, but isn't actually. I might see using it on AV 10-12 though for the extra armor penetration, but that's not a sure thing.

At least the Canoness is Stubborn, but that's just another example of something we could previously apply universally being suddenly restricted to a single unit.

Addendum: I am a bit saddened to see the psychic save thing go away, but they do have an army wide 6++ to make up for it.

[Aegis]

Well... This is terribly disappointing. Unless we see an amazing hail mary move in the second half of these rules, I got one last game with my Sisters to play, and then they are getting packed up...

Think I will try Tau...

[wittdooley]

The bytching about faith points boggles my mind.

How often SHOULD their prayers be answered? I'm sorry, I thought they were supposed to be at least a semi rare thing.

I thought they were sitting at 13 points, TBH.

Basically the gist of what I'm readin here is that GW would have been better off NOT releasing a WD codex and allowing people to complain simply until the full one--which i'm sure will have all new units, etc-- was ready? Is that bout right?

[Melissia]

How often SHOULD their prayers be answered? I'm sorry, I thought they were supposed to be at least a semi rare thing.
Oh shut your pie hole. We're talking from a gameplay value here. If you want to talk about fluff, NO army is accurate. Orks and Tyranids are unfluffy because they're unable to field as many troops as Guard for example. Marines are unfluffy because they aren't wanked enough in the rules like they are in the fluff. CSMs are unfluffy because it doesn't emphasize their "I'm 10,000 years old and have terrible daddy issues" enough. Daemons aren't fluffy because they aren't random enough / don't have a corrupting aura.. Guard isn't fluffy because there's not enough variation. Eldar aren't fluffy because their highly skilled nature isn't really brought across. Blah blah blah, don't ***** about ONE army being unfluffy when EVERY army is. Next you'll be saying that GW should stop selling Marines because they're supposed to be rare :P

If you want Acts of Faith to be rarer, they also need be be more powerful for game balance-- they aren't. They're WEAKER than before. And then to make it worse, the Acts of Faith are limited by squad-- how would THAT match the fluff? Why is the Emperor's miracles limited to preventing Battle sisters from being routed, but not Celestians?

Rare but powerful acts of faith would be better than what we currently have...

[JxKxR]

Well... This is terribly disappointing. Unless we see an amazing hail mary move in the second half of these rules, I got one last game with my Sisters to play, and then they are getting packed up...

Think I will try Tau...

I would wait for Tau to get a new codex since now you can build the best Tau army and still have to rely heavily on luck to maybe win. Unless you play with a bunch of people who just play fun list.

[Lockark]

The bytching about faith points boggles my mind.

How often SHOULD their prayers be answered? I'm sorry, I thought they were supposed to be at least a semi rare thing.

I thought they were sitting at 13 points, TBH.

Basically the gist of what I'm readin here is that GW would have been better off NOT releasing a WD codex and allowing people to complain simply until the full one--which i'm sure will have all new units, etc-- was ready? Is that bout right?

I kinda like how now instead of being out right miracles, their more like acts of religious conviction. (It's not a miracle, but their religious zeal inspiring them to greater feats.)

[chicop76]

The bytching about faith points boggles my mind.

How often SHOULD their prayers be answered? I'm sorry, I thought they were supposed to be at least a semi rare thing.

I thought they were sitting at 13 points, TBH.

Basically the gist of what I'm readin here is that GW would have been better off NOT releasing a WD codex and allowing people to complain simply until the full one--which i'm sure will have all new units, etc-- was ready? Is that bout right?

So far yes. Unless the second half offers some pretty amazing stuff. The diffedrence is this.

Old Codex:

With faith two Canonness can wipe out half an army by themslves.

New Codex:

Now the two Canoness combo will have a hard time defeating a Marine HQ.

It's like taking the best things in the army and destroying them. This is worst then what they did with nids.

Rending heavy bolters. Big deal the whole army could rend
Stubborn Canonnesses. The Book of St. Lucious did that as a 5 point upgrade and effected units within 6" of the book which all upgraded characters had acess
Re grouping troops. Heck I could make the whole army fearless
+1 int. The whole army could have +2

Dominions aside, everything is worst then before assuming war gear is the same. This is like taking synapse away from nids completely.

[Melissia]

I kinda like how now instead of being out right miracles, their more like acts of religious conviction.So wait, through religious conviction one can make a bullet hit harder?

[Lancel]

So wait, through religious conviction one can make a bullet hit harder?

Well, it works for Orks. >>

[Melissia]

Well, it works for Orks. >>

Go read the act of faith descriptions in C:WH. With the exception of Divine Guidance and Spirit of the Martyr, they were all essentially already done through religious conviction.

The difference is that now they're all limited to one act of faith, most of which suck. +1 strength and fearless is HORRIBLE on Celestians with their initiative nerfed to I3 and Holy Hatred removed, for example. They'll take more casualties than they give and then suffer even more casualties because of fearless.

[silashand]

This is like taking synapse away from nids completely.

This is about as accurate a description of the new PDF as has been said yet. I know PDF rules aren't as fully fleshed out as real codices, but this? This is a travesty (barring as someone else said some "wargear miracles")...

I just played in Feast of Blades yesterday with my Sisters (went 2-1-0) and frankly those three games may be the last ones I play with them for a really long time :(.

Cheers, Gary

[lattd]

All those complaining about acts of faith you can have 6 points and only decrease the total faith points if you fail an attempt. So how does that make them weaker.

[silashand]

All those complaining about acts of faith you can have 6 points and only decrease the total faith points if you fail an attempt. So how does that make them weaker.

Obviously you have not actually read the rule. It's D6 faith points for the entire army and you deduct from the total before rolling. If you fail you still lose it just like now. The average will be 3-4 per game and then each one (barring units joined by certain characters) has roughly a 50-66% chance of working. Yeah, that's worth it...

[MadCowCrazy]

Rules Lawyering Time!
Act of Faith system: "The unit immediately gains a bonus and/or special rules until the end of the phase."

Sororitas Command Squad: "This Act of Faith is used in the MOVEMENT phase. If successful the unit gains the Relentless and MTC USR until the end of the turn."

I'm sure an ******* would claim that since the rules for acts of faith state they only last 1 phase that this AoF would only last the movement phase :P

Force Org question.

Gw usually has their force org organized like this: HQ, Elite, Troop, Fast Attack, Heavy Support and Special Characters

So does this mean :

HQ
Canoness
Sororitas Command Squads
Ecclesiarchy
Ecclesiarchy Battle Conclaves

Elite
Sisters Repentia
Penitent Engine

Troops
Battle Sisters
Celestian Squads

Fast Attack
Dominion Squads
Seraphim Squads

Heavy Support
Retributor Squads
Exorcists

I know I've read from one of the rumours leakers that there would only be 2 units per force org slot.

Any thoughts?

[silashand]

I suspect Repentia are troops and Celestians will be elites. Otherwise your list is probably correct.

[lattd]

Obviously you have not actually read the rule. It's D6 faith points for the entire army and you deduct from the total before rolling. If you fail you still lose it just like now. The average will be 3-4 per game and then each one (barring units joined by certain characters) has roughly a 50-66% chance of working. Yeah, that's worth it...

You have to get a 4+ from the start of the game as each squad has a superior, as soon as you loose a girl it goes down to a 3+. So how exactly is that weak SoB are still better than tau even if this WD codex is worse!

[novatomato]

after reading through the bestiary it seems already like an army that wants to have a chance will have to take Uriah for any sort of reliability. Either that or have two Cannonesses jumping from unit to unit that require faith rolls to try and capitalize on the 3+ to succeed in the attempt . . . . . .
Once again, hoping the units can by wargear upgrades that are useful enough to make the army not rely on the faith rolls . . . . . . . . all in all this means I'm going to be delaying my real jump into 40k again as Sisters was the only army I was every really interested in.

[isotope99]

Seems like there can be only one solution for existing sisters players:

Counts as Blood Angels

Celestine = Sanguinor
Cannoness = Reclusiarch
Celestians = Honour Guard
Sister hospatiler = Sanguinary priest
Seraphim = Assault marines
Battle sisters = Tactical marines
Repentia = Death company
Penitent engine = Furioso dreads
Immolators = Razorbacks
Rhinos=Rhinos
Exorcist = Predator

Play a razorspam list = sorted :cool:

[JxKxR]

One good thing is this white dwarf dex seems unfinished so the rumors of them releasing a full codex in a year seem much more likely.

[Melissia]

All those complaining about acts of faith you can have 6 points and only decrease the total faith points if you fail an attempt. So how does that make them weaker.

You have d6. Not 6. This number does not increase with he size of your army. You have D6 faith points per turn. No more. No less.

The current faith point system scales with army size..

Similarly, each unit ahs one act of faith, Just one. The current act of faith system has all units being able to activate the act of faith relevant to the situation instead of merely only having the one that they can use.

[Verilance]

not necessarily true

if a unit has a Canoness it can use two acts of faith, if a priest also joins it has access to three, while this codex may not please everyone (or even anyone) it is very much still a WIP. Only moved into WD if the rumours were true because the necrons were not yet ready.

until someone actually plays with the new rules in there entirety all we still have is idle speculation.

[Toxik]

Does anyone remember the BA White Dwarf list? Their WD list sucked so much that BA practically went extinct. But look at how they are now.

It's a WD codex. It's going to suck, they've all sucked and it's far more than likely they always will. But looking at what happened with BA when they got a new book should give people some hope, especially when considering that Sister's actually look to be slated for a full codex release sooner rather than later (something that was not the case with BA).

But, that's just my thought about it.

[Lancel]

Go read the act of faith descriptions in C:WH. With the exception of Divine Guidance and Spirit of the Martyr, they were all essentially already done through religious conviction.

The difference is that now they're all limited to one act of faith, most of which suck. +1 strength and fearless is HORRIBLE on Celestians with their initiative nerfed to I3 and Holy Hatred removed, for example. They'll take more casualties than they give and then suffer even more casualties because of fearless.

I know, Sisters already are about like that, well, maybe with a little deliberate ambiguity with what actually does it, but I was just being a tad facetious.


All those complaining about acts of faith you can have 6 points and only decrease the total faith points if you fail an attempt. So how does that make them weaker.

And this basically is why the acts of faith are worse off now. It's a combination of everything. Severe limitations on who can use what acts of faith, the notion that we may only be able to use one or two acts of faith in a turn, and still have a risk of failing the rolls as opposed to accepting a bad roll and using the larger game-wide pool that you know you have as opposed to the turn poo. It's much harder to plan on acts of faith than it was, and overall the acts of faith themselves are weaker.

As Melissia points out, the new Hand of the Emperor is awful, it's going to do more harm than good against anything with a bit of melee optimization, like Assault Marines. If it were at I4 like they used to be, sure, I could see that being useful, but with this it's only going to be useful for killing weak things a bit faster. What's the point of two attacks at S4 if nearly half the squad is dead before they can use them anyway? The faith power can't be relied on and when it does work they're STILL not as good as Assault Marines (who have T4 and I4 over them). And then Fearless only applies in the assault phase, so you can't even use it to avoid getting pinned or ignore morale checks for shooting losses, only in melee and only when you actually get it off. Of course you might say it's better than them getting sweeping advanced, but compared to 3rd edition, where that Celestian Squad would have been effectively stubborn, it's not really.

Honestly I think all that means is that we're going to start seeing more Battle Sisters in Rhinos and less Celestians in Immolators. Or any Celestians at all. Their melee isn't very strong, so might as well just shoot them, and if we want to take Immolators we can use Retributors or Dominions and not even give them a weapon upgrade and have them be better shooters because of their faith power, and I'm pretty sure a Dominion or Retributor isn't going to cost more than a Celestian.

[Melissia]

not necessarily true

if a unit has a Canoness it can use two acts of faith, if a priest also joins it has access to three, while this codex may not please everyone (or even anyone) it is very much still a WIP. Only moved into WD if the rumours were true because the necrons were not yet ready.

until someone actually plays with the new rules in there entirety all we still have is idle speculation.

It's not WIP. It's a release version.

[Necron2.0]

From what I've seen and read, yeah ... this thing sucks harder than a toothless ten dollar crack whore. An apt analogy, considering what will happen to sisters every single time they take the field.

There is a solution, however. Everyone should turn towards 52° 56' 26.70" N by 1° 10' 26.76" W (or in Google Earth: 52.94075N, 1.1741W). When properly aligned, raise your right hand (or left, if you're left handed) with your palm facing towards you. Curl down your thumb, index, ring and little fingers and repeat after me ... "FUG you! I'm going to play the old codex, allies and all, until you people over there can scrape together enough neurons to form the merest spark of a clue."

[JxKxR]

Necron2.0 = WINNING!!!

[HsojVvad]

Not sure how people have read this, did you get an early copy? I haven't read it but from reading the comments here, it looks like Melissia is right. Too bad, I was hoping she was wrong.

So I guess the question is now, who plays for fun and can still use the old codex. I guess in tournies you can't use the old codex.

So out of curiosity, what is the better codex? SoB or Tyranids? Guess it doesn't matter if you are a SoB player. What is the reasoning for this. Talk about spitting in the face of your customers.

Oh well, maybe GW is thinking this will piss of the remaining SoB players to start collecting something else. Otherwise I can't believe GW would do this all over again.

[Verilance]

It's not WIP. It's a release version.

compare the Blood Angels WD release to the final released codex, they are very similar I am sure...

if it was completely finished they would have released a codex not put it in WD anyone except a very paranoid person with perhaps a persecution complex would understand this.

it is a trial balloon only just to update a very old codex in the direction they plan on taking it.

[Verdius]

The bytching about faith points boggles my mind.

How often SHOULD their prayers be answered? I'm sorry, I thought they were supposed to be at least a semi rare thing.?

So are Daemons. So let's limit the Chaos codex to 1 daemon prince and maybe 3-5 lesser daemons. The daemons will also lose their Gifts of Chaos and will have to make standard Psyker tests.

[Lockark]

So wait, through religious conviction one can make a bullet hit harder?

More like their shooting more accurate. Rending represents a bullet/shot hitting the weak spot in someone's Armour. It other represents a weapon that's accurate enough, or shoots fast enough to accomplish this. I.E Sniper Rifles and Assault Cannons.

I don't know what the official fluff explanation in the new book is. But so me it sound like the sisters concentrating to gun down the enemy they hate so much.

[fuzzbuket]

so its a fact:

GW hates =][=


gk was vanillaed into generic marines with some complicated weapons and sisters units, and well remove the cool stormtroops. however we will make it competitive so people will play it.

now SOB may be going the same way , according to mellisa. but they will be competitive if you spam metal bawxes.


*cries*
*invents time machine back to before IG, SW , BA and GK*
*ahhh better*

@verilance
not slightly DC,DC dreads, most of the IC's and the black rage all are different. oh and they gave rhinos doors.






There is a solution, however. Everyone should turn towards 52° 56' 26.70" N by 1° 10' 26.76" W (or in Google Earth: 52.94075N, 1.1741W). When properly aligned, raise your right hand (or left, if you're left handed) with your palm facing towards you. Curl down your thumb, index, ring and little fingers and repeat after me ... "FUG you!


done.

[silashand]

Seems like there can be only one solution for existing sisters players:

Counts as Blood Angels

Celestine = Sanguinor
Cannoness = Reclusiarch
Celestians = Honour Guard
Sister hospatiler = Sanguinary priest
Seraphim = Assault marines
Battle sisters = Tactical marines
Repentia = Death company
Penitent engine = Furioso dreads
Immolators = Razorbacks
Rhinos=Rhinos
Exorcist = Predator

Play a razorspam list = sorted :cool:

I'm at the point now this might be the only way I'd even consider playing Sisters, and mostly not even then.

[Verilance]

@verilance
not slightly DC,DC dreads, most of the IC's and the black rage all are different. oh and they gave rhinos doors.


sarcasm is often lost on the internet :p

I was reading the BA WD codex the other day whilst looking through my old WD

[chicop76]

More like their shooting more accurate. Rending represents a bullet/shot hitting the weak spot in someone's Armour. It other represents a weapon that's accurate enough, or shoots fast enough to accomplish this. I.E Sniper Rifles and Assault Cannons.

I don't know what the official fluff explanation in the new book is. But so me it sound like the sisters concentrating to gun down the enemy they hate so much.


Sigh. This is not new at all. The whole army can do that in the old codex and now only one squad as a heavy support choice can.

That's like taking power from pain and drugs from dark eldar, split up the effects to different squads. Example wytches only get drugs and d6 movement. Warriors only get fearless, etc.

After doing that you roll d6 to see which unit can use it's effects and by the way you still have to earn pain tokens.

[relasine]

I'll agree that the chopping up of the Faith System was a serious blow to the faction, but I don't think it had to be their death sentence. They could have very easily done this:

Remove Faith Points from the codex. I like resource management, but if Acts of Faith are really supposed to be a defining part of the army, they shouldn't rely on a pair of single d6 rolls (one to generate Faith Points, one to trigger an Act of Faith). It's too volatile of a mechanic.
Make Acts of Faith trigger on a successful Leadership check.
Act of Faith rolls are made at the beginning of the player's movement phase.
A unit may only make one Act of Faith roll per round. Attached Independent Characters may also make an Act of Faith roll. A unit's and attached Independent Character's Acts of Faith apply to both the unit and the IC.
Add an extra Act called "Bastion of Faith" to every unit allowing them to up their Shield of Faith Invulnerable Save to 4+.

This would effectively remove options from the codex in accordance to the current design philosophy while also still leaving options between the unit-specific Act and the generic Bastion of Faith. It also reduces the randomness of the single d6 mechanic. You could theoretically add a penalty for failed Act of Faith checks like "A unit that fails an Act of Faith check may not use Acts of Faith during the next round". Have appropriately costed (i.e. costly) wargear available that allows a unit to reroll (Icon Bearer) or roll once per game for two Acts in one turn (Relic).

The current rules are just so unimaginative and uninspired. GW has to get it out of their heads that rolling a single d6 solves all problems. It's certainly appropriate for resolving attacks, wounds, and saves, but there are much better alternatives available for other things that need some kind of accompanying random mechanic.

Just my opinion.

[HsojVvad]

Is anyone going to be quitting SoB now or just shelving them till whenever a proper codex comes out, or suck it up like a DA player and be stubborn and keep playing?

[Lockark]

Sigh. This is not new at all. The whole army can do that in the old codex and now only one squad as a heavy support choice can.

That's like taking power from pain and drugs from dark eldar, split up the effects to different squads. Example wytches only get drugs and d6 movement. Warriors only get fearless, etc.

After doing that you roll d6 to see which unit can use it's effects and by the way you still have to earn pain tokens.


As I already said. I don't see a issue with making the Sisters units more focused/specialized, I also don't get why everyone is acting like chicken little and the sky is falling when they only have half the codex. (Witch most people complaining haven't even seen all of the 1st half. just a page or so.) As far as I'm aware we don't even have the war gear section of the book until sept.

It's more logical to sit down with the new book once it's fully out and then pick it apart. Comparing it to the last book proves nothing, and we can keep argueing about it untill we're blue in the face.

But once it's full out and people can start putting together 5th ed lists, That is what matters most. How dose the list as a whole preforms in the current game.

[SMC]

The codex gets worse with every new post in this thread apparently.

[silashand]

Is anyone going to be quitting SoB now or just shelving them till whenever a proper codex comes out, or suck it up like a DA player and be stubborn and keep playing?

Mine are going on the shelf (I don't sell armies unless I need the money).

[Lancel]

Is anyone going to be quitting SoB now or just shelving them till whenever a proper codex comes out, or suck it up like a DA player and be stubborn and keep playing?

Like the new Canoness, I am stubborn. We'll see how may victories I get with it, but it doesn't look good so far. We'll see if the Wargear section offers a small miracle. I may also need a few more Sisters, which I was hoping I could make plastic, but that doesn't seem to be on the table anymore.

[chicop76]

60 dollars for 9 sisters ouch. They don't sell them in box of 10s. The henchmen combo pack is not a bad buy for a free 10 dollar crusader. Also the Serepham only come 1 at a time. I will have to think about spending more money on a bad army.

[harveydent]

i guess when i see a codex release like this, it happens for a few reasons. let's look at the times when they did this in the recent past:

1) blood angels
2) warriors of chaos

the WD BA 'dex got rid of the old variable sized death company and made the BA army similar to the DA book that had come out in 07 (still 4th ed). it was an effort to streamline, as well as eliminate problems with an old, overdone codex.

the WD WoC army book was released so that GW could release the chaos daemons army book without making players' existing chaos armies useless. they had a hard choice to make (between WoC and Beastmen), and they chose WoC to release in WD. i think it was the right choice, and because of the medium-to-low power level of the WD list it didn't take the army out of its current tier.

releasing WD lists without releasing new models is also a way to generate interest in an army. GW probably has a LOT of SoB metal stuff lying around that hasn't sold for lack of popularity. heck, 2003 was the last time they were released (IIRC). anyhow, they can get rid of their stockpile of old metal models AND generate interest so that when the new stuff comes out (hopefully in a year or two) they will have primed the player base for a new army and new models.

[Dalleron]

This codex seems to have me leaning to shelving my army as of right now. I'm sure my army will get smaller, and thus require more models which I would rather not buy. That, and the pure garbage-ness that the codex appears to be.

[Lockark]

i guess when i see a codex release like this, it happens for a few reasons. let's look at the times when they did this in the recent past:

1) blood angels
2) warriors of chaos

the WD BA 'dex got rid of the old variable sized death company and made the BA army similar to the DA book that had come out in 07 (still 4th ed). it was an effort to streamline, as well as eliminate problems with an old, overdone codex.

the WD WoC army book was released so that GW could release the chaos daemons army book without making players' existing chaos armies useless. they had a hard choice to make (between WoC and Beastmen), and they chose WoC to release in WD. i think it was the right choice, and because of the medium-to-low power level of the WD list it didn't take the army out of its current tier.

releasing WD lists without releasing new models is also a way to generate interest in an army. GW probably has a LOT of SoB metal stuff lying around that hasn't sold for lack of popularity. heck, 2003 was the last time they were released (IIRC). anyhow, they can get rid of their stockpile of old metal models AND generate interest so that when the new stuff comes out (hopefully in a year or two) they will have primed the player base for a new army and new models.

Not quite sure. GW has been letting the Sister's stock reduce for awhile now. For example you can't even buy boxs of Seraphim any more. They only come in single blisters. I'm not 100% convinced this is a marketing ploy to push old metal stock.

I think this is simply they wanted to bring SoB in line with the other books before 6th ed comes out. Because the truth is then the community would point fingers at the sisters and how they were the next "dark eldar" of 40k. So by giving them a rules re-write, it gives them time to bring them out proper for 6th.

I remember a large rumer dump about how they wanted to bring to focus the struggle between the Warp and their followers, and the mortal races of the universe. What better way to do this then with a nice new shiny Chaos Legion and SoB book.

[Melissia]

I think this is simply they wanted to bring SoB in line with the other books before 6th ed comes out.They failed.

[Dalleron]

no argument here on her post

[silashand]

Yeah, all the ****ers like you who are insulting Sisters players for not liking the nerfs that we've gotten can go shove it up your ***.

Like.

Cheers, Gary

[Unzuul the Lascivious]

I was excited re: Sisters, now I am not. I'm quite depressed about it. So far GW is having a s**t second half of the year.

[StraightSilver]

Ok so I haven't seen the new White Dwarf yet, and could only see one page in this thread so forgive me if I get this completely wrong but my understanding of how the Faith Point system worked was this:

Each Faithful Unit generates 1D6 Faith Points.

You roll a D6 for each unit and add the total, this gives you your Faith Pool.

Your Faith Pool equals the number of Dice you can roll for each unit that wishes to pass a Faith test, and they pass on a 5 or 6.

So as an example if your 1500pt army has 3 Faithful Units you would roll 3D6 per turn and add the total.

Let's say you roll 3D6 and get 11 in total.

This then gives you 11 rolls of Faith to spread across your units that turn.

So you could use 5 rolls on your Celestians, 3 on Your Repentia and 3 on your Seraphim.

If any of these dice come up with a 5 or 6 then your act of Faith has passed.

At the end of your turn your Faith Points are lost and you cannot carry any over into your next turn and must reroll your pool.

That is how the new Faith Points were explained to me and I even had a chance to play them too so I am a bit confused if they have now just given the army 1D6 per turn, which as explained doesn't scale and isn't very fun.

The exciting thing about the above way of doing it was never being sure how many dice you should allocate to each Act, making it tense and a bit of a tactical gamble.

[eldargal]

Sadly no, the Act of Faith rule specifically says just one D6 for the whole army.

[StraightSilver]

Hmmm, well that's just stupid.

I will say to everybody though that if what I have heard is correct White Dwarf magazine will be reverting to its old style "Chapter Approved" days.

This means that it will be a test bed for new rules etc.

I don't know if anybody remembers but this is where the trial assault rules (which then became 4th Edition) were first tested, along with Cityfight, etc.

This means that this WD Codex really is just a filler and there will no doubt be changes before the actual Codex is released, but if the info I have is correct it may be further away than people think.

Although it seems as soon as I am told one thing someone goes along and changes it! :)

[eldargal]

It would certainly be nice if GW said something like "this is a WIP, email your opinions to [email protected]", but I doubt it. I have to say the only thing making this codex bearable is the fact it will be replaced quite rapidly if the rumours are to be believed (next year).

I do love that WD is getting more rules, but it should be limited to new units not whole booke.

[chicop76]

Hmmm, well that's just stupid.

I will say to everybody though that if what I have heard is correct White Dwarf magazine will be reverting to its old style "Chapter Approved" days.

This means that it will be a test bed for new rules etc.

I don't know if anybody remembers but this is where the trial assault rules (which then became 4th Edition) were first tested, along with Cityfight, etc.

This means that this WD Codex really is just a filler and there will no doubt be changes before the actual Codex is released, but if the info I have is correct it may be further away than people think.

Although it seems as soon as I am told one thing someone goes along and changes it! :)

So I guess they will start chapter approved again and do the 3.5 mess. As a Tau player I remember 3.5 very well.

[Necron2.0]

It would certainly be nice if GW said something like "this is a WIP, email your opinions to [email protected]", but I doubt it. I have to say the only thing making this codex bearable is the fact it will be replaced quite rapidly if the rumours are to be believed (next year).

I do love that WD is getting more rules, but it should be limited to new units not whole booke.

Ah, now wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't it be great if WD were a place where rules could be discussed, player concerns could be validated, and optional new rules could be field tested (prior to official release). Wouldn't that be .... just like how ALL gaming magazines were in the 80's, back when they were worth a damn.

Back in the day, game companies used to be run by gamers for gamers or by people who at least understood their target market and the products they sold. That changed in the 90's, when the control of many game companies fell to cookie cutter corporate suits without one damned original thought in their head. I am most familiar with this from TSR and most recently from WotC, but I understand GW has suffered a similar fate.

[wittdooley]

Back in the day, game companies used to be run by gamers for gamers or by people who at least understood their target market and the products they sold. That changed in the 90's, when the control of many game companies fell to cookie cutter corporate suits without one damned original thought in their head. I am most familiar with this from TSR and most recently from WotC, but I understand GW has suffered a similar fate.



And they were all making far less money. They're a publicly traded company now, making loads more cash, expanding their IP in a greater number of arenas.

From GWs standpoint, I'd hardly thing making a lot more money is "suffering" any kind of fate.

[Lemt]

Yeah, all the ****ers like you who are insulting Sisters players for not liking the nerfs that we've gotten can go shove it up your ***.

I myself was excited for the new codex, but it does like ****ty. :(

[Lancel]

For a successful company business aspects can't be ignored, but there is such a thing as too much business focus.

Back to the codex, I curse the Necrons for being delayed. :P Maybe this was just rushed because of them and with anything new stripped out and largely play test or just conservative because they didn't have time to thoroughly play test it. At least we can get through this now instead of after they make a big print codex, so maybe any issues can be resolved by then, with help from our own experiences. Hopefully. Maybe.

Addendum: Oh, I will say that the codex is pretty though, so kudos to whoever did the layout/editing/writing/whatever on that. My only peeve is that Sister with Heavy Bolter is actually Sister with Multimelta.

[Necron2.0]

... expanding their IP in a greater number of arenas.

Are they? Are they indeed? I've actually been watching them contract for several years now, becoming more and more niche oriented. Meanwhile, other companies like PP and Corvus Belli are expanding to fill the gaps GW have vacated. Even Confrontation is about to make a comeback. What I'm observing is GW is in its Red Giant stage. It's pushing out dramatically in an attempt to retain its relevance, but largely what it is producing is sub-par, old, tired and is making its own name somewhat toxic. DE were good. Some parts of Storm of Magic are good. The Ultramarines movie was terrible - video clips for the games have been of better quality. Finecast has been scandalously bad. Grey Knights were meh. Now, SoB are looking to be stillborn. They screw up too much more and I don't see how they'll stay in business long ... unless fanboys come to their rescue.

[SMC]

Yeah, all the ****ers like you who are insulting Sisters players for not liking the nerfs that we've gotten can go shove it up your ***.

So you wanted a new codex just like your old codex, but more powerful? Got it. So how many games have you played with the new "nerfed" codex? I mean, you've been spreading the gospel so much you must have like twenty games or so under your belt.

[wittdooley]

Are they? Are they indeed? I've actually been watching them contract for several years now, becoming more and more niche oriented. Meanwhile, other companies like PP and Corvus Belli are expanding to fill the gaps GW have vacated. Even Confrontation is about to make a comeback. What I'm observing is GW is in its Red Giant stage. It's pushing out dramatically in an attempt to retain its relevance, but largely what it is producing is sub-par, old, tired and is making its own name somewhat toxic. DE were good. Some parts of Storm of Magic are good. The Ultramarines movie was terrible - video clips for the games have been of better quality. Finecast has been scandalously bad. Grey Knights were meh. Now, SoB are looking to be stillborn. They screw up too much more and I don't see how they'll stay in business long ... unless fanboys come to their rescue.



Apparently you have no idea what "other arenas" means.

Their video game lines are quite healthy, and Space Marine looks to be a relatively big game based on industry buzz.

The Black Library has grown exponentially. They continue to release more and more books, and retain an increasingly large stable of authors.

The relationship with Fantasy Flight Games continues to be fruitful. There are multiple board/card games being released, with (it looks like) two slated for appearance at GenCon Indy (Blood Bowl Card Game, Black Crusade RPG).

Despite what you think about the movie, they made a CG movie. It's a big deal.

Your post is, quite frankly, pretty foolish.

[eldargal]

So if we made ATSKNF, combat tactics, power of the machine spirit and whatever other special SM rules there are limited to D6 uses a turn and reduced the efficacy of some of the abilities to the point of uselessness, you would need to play games with it to tell if it was bad or not?

[Lockark]

Are they? Are they indeed? I've actually been watching them contract for several years now, becoming more and more niche oriented. Meanwhile, other companies like PP and Corvus Belli are expanding to fill the gaps GW have vacated. Even Confrontation is about to make a comeback. What I'm observing is GW is in its Red Giant stage. It's pushing out dramatically in an attempt to retain its relevance, but largely what it is producing is sub-par, old, tired and is making its own name somewhat toxic. DE were good. Some parts of Storm of Magic are good. The Ultramarines movie was terrible - video clips for the games have been of better quality. Finecast has been scandalously bad. Grey Knights were meh. Now, SoB are looking to be stillborn. They screw up too much more and I don't see how they'll stay in business long ... unless fanboys come to their rescue.



huh? what? I seem to be lost here. What was so bad about Grey Knights? people were angry they were not broken like Space Wolves or something? =/ I haven't sat down with the book yet, but it seemed like a good book to me.

I also don't quite seen how this is going to be "the end of GW". Yes. GW has sadly stopped supporting small skirmish games, and alot of other companies filled the small skirmish game void.

But their isn't companies stepping up to try and fill the "large army" games that WHFB and WH40K fill. GW is also not vaccinating that niche.

Mantic games have been giving it a good try with Kings of war, and the upcoming warpath. But let's face it. Most people just buy manic's cheaper models to use in GW's games. Even then it's only the more net savvy.
*Shrugs*

I'm not saying that GW hasn't made some disappointing mistakes as of late, but saying this will be the end of them is kinda jumping to conclusions.


So you wanted a new codex just like your old codex, but more powerful? Got it. So how many games have you played with the new "nerfed" codex? I mean, you've been spreading the gospel so much you must have like twenty games or so under your belt.

If someone's only way to win a argument is to call you a "F***er" and to shove it up your "A**", then they already lost the argument. Best not waste your time.

[Melissia]

So you wanted a new codex just like your old codex, but more powerful?

You have a problem with that?

C:WH consistently ranks at the bottom of the pile, with only Necrons and maybe Tau (depending on the player) being worse off. Yes, people still win with C:WH, but let's face it, it's old and weak and even when it was new it wasn't ever anything spectacular. If it ISN'T a better codex it won't be able to stand toe to toe with fifth edition codices, and if it can't do that, what's the point of having a new codex in the first place?

[harveydent]

yeah, if WD was a regular dump for new rules, i would definitely pay $9 a month for it.

between 1997 and 2009 (or whenever it went to $9) i bought it every month. since then i think i bought one issue - the one with the Spearhead rules.

[wittdooley]

Is it fair to say that you think GW should have just waited until they release the full codex with new units, new weapon options, etc? We all know that if/when they do release a non-WD codex, it'll have a bunch of new unit types and variable weapon options that aren't presently available.

I think the stop-gap notion is a good one, but is ultimately destined to fail because it is so limiting by what is presently available. The good news is that, based on the Blood Angels precedent, that Sisters players could have a lot to look forward to when the new codex comes out.

[silashand]

From GWs standpoint, I'd hardly thing making a lot more money is "suffering" any kind of fate.

Well, they were losing money as of their mid-term report. Their final full year report is due this week I believe if last year's date is correct and I personally am interested to see what it says.

Cheers, Gary

[eldargal]

They weren't losing money, profits were down on what they expected. It was the terrible Christmas the UK had for retail which did it, a lot of other companies in the same boat.

[Melissia]

Is it fair to say that you think GW should have just waited until they release the full codex with new units, new weapon options, etc?I think if they made a stop-gap codex, it needs to NOT SUCK.

Ideally they should have kept the same statlines-- the nerf to Celestians/Seraphim alone makes the codex worthless to me, nevermind the incredibly poorly designed new Acts of Faith.

[lattd]

Am i the only one that thinks these rules aren't that bad for a rush job and i would happily try them out.

Finally we don't know points and no one has played this army yet so please stop whining, i swear the everyone suggests the sky is falling every time a new codex drops.

[wittdooley]

I think if they made a stop-gap codex, it needs to NOT SUCK.

Ideally they should have kept the same statlines-- the nerf to Celestians/Seraphim alone makes the codex worthless to me, nevermind the incredibly poorly designed new Acts of Faith.

How cheap would sisters have to be to make them viable, IYO? Legit question, I don't know.

If they were cheap enough that SoB became a Power Armored Horde with tons of flamers, would that be bad?

[DrBored]

How cheap would sisters have to be to make them viable, IYO? Legit question, I don't know.

If they were cheap enough that SoB became a Power Armored Horde with tons of flamers, would that be bad?

Wonderful point. The rules may look crappy now, but if you can take 6 squads of troop Sisters, 20 strong, and still not break 1000 points, I'd call that a win. If you can have 3 Penitent Engines on the table without paying more than about 80 points for each, then that's a vast improvement. If you can get Seraphim on the table for 8 points a model, then who cares how 'crappy' the rules seem?

Without points values, all of this is rather worthless because we can't make any lists. We can only assume. Saying anything about any of the new beastiary is bad is premature extrapolation, so chill out till we get the point values, then you can bash it all you want. Bashing it now is like bashing politics when you don't even know what a democrat or republican is.

[Lancel]

Am i the only one that thinks these rules aren't that bad for a rush job and i would happily try them out.

Finally we don't know points and no one has played this army yet so please stop whining, i swear the everyone suggests the sky is falling every time a new codex drops.

I'm just telling it how I see it right now with our first look. Obviously none of us can play it right now because we only have half a codex. We can all make some opinions based on what we've seen so far. I'm not going to pass judgment on the whole until I actually see the whole, but I am going to say that what I've seen hasn't been great in terms of making the Sisters competitive. Rather to specifically say the bestiary and army rules looks like it went off in the other direction compared to the bestiary and army rules of CWH. Of course sometimes a rule by itself isn't very strong, but a combination of other rules or wargear can make it quite powerful. As we've said though, that's a wargear miracle.

Points may also help, though it'll be weird having them as a power armored horde when some fluff suggests there may be fewer Battle Sisters than Space Marines. I really don't want my Sisters to die by the score like Orks and Guard.

[Lerra]

I plan on encouraging my local store and local tournaments to allow the Witchhunters codex regardless of the WD rules. If the WD codex remains as bad as it looks, I can't imagine people would fault a sister's player for wanting to use the paper codex instead.

Does the recent WD say anywhere that it replaces Codex: Witchhunters?

[silashand]

I really don't want my Sisters to die by the score like Orks and Guard.

Same here.

[wittdooley]

Same here.

Doesn't their power armor ensure that they don't?

[chicop76]

Wonderful point. The rules may look crappy now, but if you can take 6 squads of troop Sisters, 20 strong, and still not break 1000 points, I'd call that a win. If you can have 3 Penitent Engines on the table without paying more than about 80 points for each, then that's a vast improvement. If you can get Seraphim on the table for 8 points a model, then who cares how 'crappy' the rules seem?

Without points values, all of this is rather worthless because we can't make any lists. We can only assume. Saying anything about any of the new beastiary is bad is premature extrapolation, so chill out till we get the point values, then you can bash it all you want. Bashing it now is like bashing politics when you don't even know what a democrat or republican is.

Truth be told you can do 5 squads of 20 for 1010 now. Fitting in an extra squad of 20 sisters is not going to help much. Also you have to think in terms of spending as well. A pack of 3 sisters hit around 20 dollars and any upgrade models hit at 10 a piece. So a squad of 10 with melta, flamer, and upgrade char is going to cost you 90 dollars before taxes, the good news is you can buy two more squads at 70 dollars a piece making 3 squads of 30 models costing you 230 dollars before taxes. That's almost a dollar per point and you thought guard cost a lot. Assuming 6 squads of 20 will cost 1k pts that's 8.3 points a pop. So at 230 dollars before taxes I'm getting 250 points of sisters and through in 40 dollar rhinos that's 350 dollars I'm spending for 355 points and that's before taxes.

So with an all metal army cheaper is not really better. I would think GW would make them appealing so people will buy up the metal models. Right now I have a cannoness, saint celestine, 20 sisters, 2 immolaters, 2 exorcist, and 10 repentia. I was going to do pure sisters before the hike and I wanted to wait for the codex to come out, now I don't know if I should had bought the models or be thankful I didn't buy them.


Doesn't their power armor ensure that they don't?

Just because they have power arour doesn't mean they're super durable. Being t3 they take more wounds than marines and die often enough. Weapons like hotshot laspistols wound on 4 instead of 5. Also Tau wounds on 2s which is a bother on saves as well.

[silashand]

Doesn't their power armor ensure that they don't?

You obviously haven't played SW, BA, GK or IG lately. With the number of power/AP3 or better/longer range weapons in those lists (combined with the number of attacks the three marine lists can dish out), the *only* thing that keeps my Sisters competitive is the 3+ invul and the occasional DG AP1 shot. Without either of those these armies will wipe the table with the Sisters. Now that both are effectively gone, I don't see anything at all to compensate in the current environment except maybe taking big units of DCAs (which aren't even Sisters :( ).

Cheers, Gary

[andrewm9]

You obviously haven't played SW, BA, GK or IG lately. With the number of power/AP3 or better/longer range weapons in those lists (combined with the number of attacks the three marine lists can dish out), the *only* thing that keeps my Sisters competitive is the 3+ invul and the occasional DG AP1 shot. Without either of those these armies will wipe the table with the Sisters. Now that both are effectively gone, I don't see anything at all to compensate in the current environment except maybe taking big units of DCAs (which aren't even Sisters :( ).

Cheers, Gary

Sisters have lost a serious amount of marine killing power with the loss of divine guidance. Perhaps if the number of special weapons our squads can us goes up then Sisters might do OK for killing power. Since I see no mention of new weapons in the fluff listings for units I must assume that weapon ranges oevr 24" are still limited to the heavy bolter and the Exorcist for now. For an all shooting army the amountof long range fire power Sisters have is extremely limited. What I am seeing so far fixes none of the issues that Sisters had and introduces whoel new ones. I am willing to wait for the 2nd half of the codex before I pronounce final judgement, btu I am not filled with confidence.

On another note I used to play regualry against the old Blood Angels codex and it was a fairly solid codex but it lacked any possibilitty of chnaging up the army for competitive play. This looks to be worse for Sisters with the near removal of the defining mechanic for Sisters. No unit listing made me say "Wow!" like other new 5th edition codexes have. I'll just wait and see though for the wargear as there are no other special rules to found in this half I imagine with the other few pages being all fluff.

[Necron2.0]

Well, they were losing money as of their mid-term report.


AAaaaggghhh! Help me! I'm shrinking!!

:D

[wallweasels]

Bleh, I agree entirely with all the hate being spread around. I was note excited while reading any of the rules so far :/ You know you get all little excited or jaw-dropped when you read stuff like strength 7 rending psycannons or Jaws of the World Wolf :P Really Iwas just not very interested in what I was reading.

For the most part the poeple who are going "oh yeah power armor horde" don't play sisters, or at least might have played sisters before but don't care much for them now. Now the issue is, sure if that works and its somehow hyper-competitive well thats nice...but it doesn't "feel" right now does it? Does it really feel like the sisters we had? its a complete tone change of the rules and thats something thats very hard to accept when you like the way something works. It is easy to look at low points costs and power armor and think "AMAZING!!!1!" without considering the damage they can actually deal. A horde of orkz boys works because if half die, they can still dish out 4 attacks each. While 2 shots per bolter from 20 sisters might hurt a unit, if half die before they get there...they won't hurt much. Combined with the horrible morale issues that seem to exist so far...I can see "horde" being easily tabled by a good combat force.

My ONE saving grace is this: The bestiary, unlike other bestiaries in codex's, does not define unique weaponry. The Exorcists profile doesn't mention its unique weapons rules. Repentia don't tell you what Eviscerators are or even neural whips. Notice the lack of definition of wargear? Well hopefully we have some snazzy wargear on the second part :| Hell maybe even Book of St Lucius still exists in some form and might solve the moronic morale issue. Going from stubborn to "some fearless" is a really big disappointment.

Also: Long time lurker first post :p

[DarkLink]

Doesn't their power armor and being significantly cheaper ensure that they don't?

Fixed that for you.


We'll see what happens when, y'know, we actually see the whole rules all you whiners.

[Melissia]

If they were cheap enough that SoB became a Power Armored Horde with tons of flamers, would that be bad?Undeniably yes. Sisters are supposed to be shining examples of all that's good about humanity, elite soldiers who protect the faithful, defend the Imperium, and take back what was lost to heretics and xenos so long ago.

The Imperial Guard is cannon fodder, and that's kinda unfair even to them. Sisters are the absolute best in unaugmented (in the sense of cybernetics and biological implants, like the Skitarii and Astartes) human soldiers, the elite of humanity.
Doesn't their power armor ensure that they don't?Not really, given the large number of power weapon like effects, or AP3 or better weapons. Try facing Imperial Guard with said 6x20 footslogging Sisters. It'd be a massacre.

Celestians USED to be able to hold themselves in melee against tacticals and devastators, but now they probably won't even win a battle against devastators even if they get the charge. Seraphim are right out-- they'll be lucky to get off a hit and run now, with Initiative 3.


We'll see what happens when, y'know, we actually see the whole rules all you whiners.Shut up, troll.

[SMC]

Undeniably yes. Sisters are supposed to be shining examples of all that's good about humanity, elite soldiers who protect the faithful, defend the Imperium, and take back what was lost to heretics and xenos so long ago.

The Imperial Guard is cannon fodder, and that's kinda unfair even to them. Sisters are the absolute best in unaugmented (in the sense of cybernetics and biological implants, like the Skitarii and Astartes) human soldiers, the elite of humanity.Not really, given the large number of power weapon like effects, or AP3 or better weapons. Try facing Imperial Guard with said 6x20 footslogging Sisters. It'd be a massacre.

Celestians USED to be able to hold themselves in melee against tacticals and devastators, but now they probably won't even win a battle against devastators even if they get the charge. Seraphim are right out-- they'll be lucky to get off a hit and run now, with Initiative 3.

Shut up, troll.

The sisters are church and inq fodder. The rest of that stuff is all you dude. Basically fanatical storm troopers in PA. That's the way the fluff and black library have been going for years.

[Lockark]

The sisters are church and inq fodder. The rest of that stuff is all you dude. Basically fanatical storm troopers in PA. That's the way the fluff and black library have been going for years.


Don't you know? Melissia writes the fluff now, and we're all "F***ers" and Trolls for questioning her on anything related to Sisters of Battle. You might as well save your breath.

;)

[Melissia]

The sisters are church and inq fodderNo they aren't.

Sisters are "shining examples of all that is good about humanity". This is the blurb that is put EVERYWHERE that GW describes Sisters. 1000 Sisters conquered 100 worlds alone, unaided. Sisters practice a form of martial arts training that allows them to "accomplish feats miraculous to the unschooled", and are rightly feared throughout the galaxy for their combat prowess (even Ciaphas Cain admits their fighting ability, despite disliking their faithfulness-- and this from one of the best fighters of his era, capable of dueling Astartes and even Warbosses with ease).

The Frateris Militia are cannon fodder. The Sisters of Battle, however, are the best humanity has to offer.


Don't you know? Melissia writes the fluff now, and we're all "F***ers" and Trolls for questioning her on anything related to Sisters of Battle. You might as well save your breath.

;)No, I gave those labels because certain posters have been, and still are, calling people whiners for disliking what they see. Hell, even though I disagree with (and am slightly annoyed by) people who complain about the Tyranid codex, I can at least understand their frustration (and I certainly disagree with a few FAQ rulings) and I don't go around openly insulting them for it, at least not intentionally.

[Melissia]

double post

[Lockark]

:| Hell maybe even Book of St Lucius still exists in some form and might solve the moronic morale issue. Going from stubborn to "some fearless" is a really big disappointment.

Also: Long time lurker first post :p


Because no one here seems to have read the July white dwarf. This is a stratagem in the July CoD white dwarf.


"Sisters of Battle: Consecrated Shrine
Key Building Stratagem

The shrine houses a relic of great importance. The Sisters of Battle will stop at nothing to protect this revered artefact, finding fresh reservoirs of faith to call upon and defeat their foes.

Rules: Any Sisters of Battle units within a Consecrated Shrine count as having a Simulacrim Imperialis. In addition, if a Sisters of Battle unit within the building successfully makes an Act of Faith, roll a D6: on a roll of a 5 or 6 your army immediately gains a Faith point (see next issue for more details)."

[Lockark]

No, I gave those labels because certain posters have been, and still are, calling people whiners for disliking what they see. Hell, even though I disagree with (and am slightly annoyed by) people who complain about the Tyranid codex, I can at least understand their frustration (and I certainly disagree with a few FAQ rulings) and I don't go around openly insulting them for it, at least not intentionally.


Any yet we're the F***ers and trolls only because we disagree with your views, and your the one slinging around names.

You need a reality check.
:rolleyes:

[JxKxR]

Don't you know? Melissia writes the fluff now, and we're all "F***ers" and Trolls for questioning her on anything related to Sisters of Battle. You might as well save your breath.

;)

She is passionate about her army she loves so much. I think she has every right to be pissed and to her credit she hasn't showed the kind of rage that I expected out of her. If Games Workshop screws your codex up I think you NEED to vent, or else explode in ball of furry and go all Khorne on people. If squats get put in the Tau book you can expect me to hold it all in until I'm face to face with the writer. NERD RAGE!!!

[Lancel]

The sisters are church and inq fodder. The rest of that stuff is all you dude. Basically fanatical storm troopers in PA. That's the way the fluff and black library have been going for years.

Firstly, Storm Troopers aren't cannon fodder. Secondly, some of the older fluff suggests there may be fewer Battle Sisters than SPACE MARINES. No matter how people lay it, they're a little more than mere Stormtrooper quality religious fanatics. Standard religious fanatics don't get regular divine interventions, and while the Sisters call it the Emperor's will, it's not clear what the source of it is. The Emperor was a psyker. Faith powers are NOT psychic powers, but I digress. They aren't super soldiers, they're regular humans, and they represent the best of humanity for being nearly incorruptible.

They are the best HUMANITY has to offer. Space Marines barely count as human. They're also more corruptible than Sisters.

[Melissia]

Any yet we're the F***ers and trolls only because we disagree with your views, and your the one slinging around names.

You need a reality check.
:rolleyes:You need to stop being a dick.

[Lockark]

She is passionate about her army she loves so much. I think she has every right to be pissed and to her credit she hasn't showed the kind of rage that I expected out of her. If Games Workshop screws your codex up I think you NEED to vent, or else explode in ball of furry and go all Khorne on people. If squats get put in the Tau book you can expect me to hold it all in until I'm face to face with the writer. NERD RAGE!!!

I play Chaos. Nuff Said. You make do with what you got and move on.

Picking fighting with people on fourms like a internet tuff guy, and screaming to the high heavens that the sky is falling is silly. She has bassicly sat here and claimed that SoB are done as a faction is ridiculous.

Their is being passionate, and then their is acting like a tool and thinking it will make me give a flying fish.
:rolleyes:


You need to stop being a dick.

To the day your 3rd eye opens.
*Cheers*

[Melissia]

I play Chaos. Nuff Said. You make do with what you got and move on.Chaos Space Marines have the most powerful codex that isn't fifth edition. No, that isn't "nuff sed".

As for picking fights?

Stop being a hypocrite. You're the one picking fights, going around being an a-hole to everyone who doesn't like the WD codex being vomited out into the reading public.

[Verilance]

despite the wd codex not being the next best thing, I will still collect SoB (when and if I can ever get the models) because..

a) They are the only army that I entirely like from fluff to model design

b) I will never play competitively but only for fun (I can't beat my son in video games why should 40k be different :p)

I am willing to bet that immolators have not been nerfed as everyone is saying.

wargear is twin linked heavy flamers, old special rule was twin linked heavy flamers.

next month we may see that the wargear allows what the special rule used to (full move and shoot)

[JxKxR]

I play Chaos. Nuff Said. You make do with what you got and move on.

Picking fighting with people on fourms like a internet tuff guy, and screaming to the high heavens that the sky is falling is silly. She has bassicly sat here and claimed that SoB are done as a faction is ridiculous.

Their is being passionate, and then their is acting like a tool and thinking it will make me give a flying fish.
:rolleyes:



To the day your 3rd eye opens.
*Cheers*

Your the one who started calling people whiners. Your the one starting crap.

And am I the only one who likes the current chaos dex? I guess so. Not to say the old one was bad but I like the newer one.

[Lockark]

Chaos Space Marines have the most powerful codex that isn't fifth edition. No, that isn't "nuff sed".


Well I sure miss being able to use my noise marine havocs and Termies for starters. Just say'in.



As for picking fights?

Stop being a hypocrite. You're the one picking fights, going around being an a-hole to everyone who doesn't like the WD codex being vomited out into the reading public.

So far you've personal called me a F***er and a dick. Are you sure you were not just looking in a mirror and mistook one of your posts for mine?


Your the one who started calling people whiners. Your the one starting crap.

And am I the only one who likes the current chaos dex? I guess so. Not to say the old one was bad but I like the newer one.

For starter. If you like the current chaos dex? My reply is good on yah. I'm sure you have a good reason you like it, and I can totally respect that.
=)


As for starting crap. I think not.... I have been trying to find out what is GOOD about this book so far. But it's kinda hard to find in 17+ pages of people claiming this is the worst thing ever ect, ect, ect.

When the current Chaos dex came out, the 1st thing I did was go threw it and find what I liked, and what worked. I then continued on. But here all I see is people saying they are going to pack up their SoB armies for good with out even seeing the other half of the codex. Sure this book isn't looking like the greatest thing out their. But from what I've gathered they were basically trying their best to take what they had and make it work.

For example we don't even know if the Book was removed for not, but we had a huge debate about how with out the book sisters are done for as a army. Head scratching to say the least.

[JxKxR]

Well I sure miss being able to use my noise marine havocs and Termies for starters. Just say'in.


I always use my terminators! Stop being such a whiney baby.

[Lockark]

I always use my terminators! Stop being such a whiney baby.

*Noise Marine Terminators modeled with thier sonic weaponry with is now illegal.
;)

I also wish to point were I edited my post in response to yours to explain my stance better.

[Lerra]

At the end of the day, the most important rule is to have fun. The second most important rule is the "rule of cool".

To me, an army of humanity's elite faithful, so well trained that they can compete with the outrageous augmentations of the quasi-human space marines, is very cool. Their faith is so strong that not only can they break the rules of physics in a way that no one can explain, but they are more resilient against corruption than any chapter of space marines.

A horde of all-female storm troopers in power armor who serve as cannon fodder for the church is not nearly as cool.

[Lancel]

Ooookaaaaay then, can we stop shooting at Melissia here and accept that this is a discussion? Melissia just happens to have great passion about it? This still surprises people after god knows how long? And she didn't even attack you? My experience is that it's almost always someone else directly pointing the finger at her that starts this. Look, we are all here expressing opinions on what we've seen of this codex, if you don't want to form any kind of opinion on what you've seen until you see the whole thing, that's fine, but stop shoving that philosophy down our throats like we're idiots for not subscribing to it. I, and I believe Melissia and a few others here, are expressing our current opinions and what we might do with the knowledge we presently have. Obviously if the second part of the Codex turns out to be the end all, be all Sisters-rape-everyone Codex then our opinions will undoubtedly change. Until that time, we are forming opinions and predictions and plans based on what we've seen. Is there anything wrong with that? Are we committing some sort of great and irreversible mistake by voicing our feelings on the matter as things stand?

I honestly don't see that we are, but apparently these opinions of ours offend people, and the only reason I can see for why is a matter of philosophy, subscribing to a "wait and see" model. I rarely subscribe to it myself, because I feel I could end up waiting and seeing until the cows come home, and I'd rather consider current scenarios and think about them even with limited information. If you do, though, I don't judge, if you want to wait and see before you make any kind of opinion, that's fine by me. I just don't see why anyone here has to be branded a whiner for expressing an opinion on what they've seen, regardless of the passion involved or the lack of the full picture. Nothing can be done to get the full picture except wait, though I'd ask whether we ever have the "full" picture.

For a lot of you, the Sisters codex probably doesn't affect you much, so whatever it brings is no big deal. Heck, it's probably more a relief that there is nothing brokenly strong in it so far. For some of us though, we take this seriously, because it's our preferred army and we very much like it. Now if you don't mind I'd like to have a civilized if passionate discussion on the Sisters and the rules we've seen without nonconstructive negative criticism on my thought processes.

[Lockark]

At the end of the day, the most important rule is to have fun. The second most important rule is the "rule of cool".

To me, an army of humanity's elite faithful, so well trained that they can compete with the outrageous augmentations of the quasi-human space marines, is very cool. Their faith is so strong that not only can they break the rules of physics in a way that no one can explain, but they are more resilient against corruption than any chapter of space marines.

A horde of all-female storm troopers in power armor who serve as cannon fodder for the church is not nearly as cool.

I'm expecting them to become cheap, but not IG/Ork cheap. That would just be way to head scratching a change in thematic. Would be funny in kinda a tragic way I guess if sisters were basically turned into Imperial Guard in power Armour.

I'm expecting the "Simulacrim Imperialis" to do something niffty in the new book, since the sisters have a stratagem that when inside the chosen building the squad counts as having one.



For a lot of you, the Sisters codex probably doesn't affect you much, so whatever it brings is no big deal. Heck, it's probably more a relief that there is nothing brokenly strong in it so far. For some of us though, we take this seriously, because it's our preferred army and we very much like it. Now if you don't mind I'd like to have a civilized if passionate discussion on the Sisters and the rules we've seen without nonconstructive negative criticism on my thought processes.

A very good friend of mine plays the Sisters actually. I'd rather see the book be good and them on the table more often, then on a shelf chill'in for the next year.

Looks kinda Same-ish as it is now, apart from watered down faith. My hope is that the wargear and points will give them the kick then need to be "Good".

[Tynskel]

I love you, Melissa!
You have the best comments.

Most of these @$$holes cannot write like the way you do.


keep telling them off!

[relasine]

Ah, now wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't it be great if WD were a place where rules could be discussed, player concerns could be validated, and optional new rules could be field tested (prior to official release). Wouldn't that be .... just like how ALL gaming magazines were in the 80's, back when they were worth a damn.

Back in the day, game companies used to be run by gamers for gamers or by people who at least understood their target market and the products they sold. That changed in the 90's, when the control of many game companies fell to cookie cutter corporate suits without one damned original thought in their head. I am most familiar with this from TSR and most recently from WotC, but I understand GW has suffered a similar fate.



But even still, WotC puts up preview rules that are not final, asking for player input before it goes to publication. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/TOC.aspx?x=dnd/4new/drtoc/401) (Scroll down to Class Compendium Playtest: The Arcanist - the article isn't out yet, but you get the idea). They've been offering these articles for months.

[Lancel]

On subject, has anyone else noticed that it seems technically impossible for Acts of Faith to actually require a 5+ roll? I mean, the only units with actual Acts of Faith are Sister squads and the Canoness (The rest have Acts of Faith but no associated abilities, the way the rules read specifically mentions that they need Acts of Faith to reap the benefit if joined to a unit), and all of them are undoubtedly going to have a Sister Superior attached, which gives a +1 that means a 4+ roll works. This goes away if she's taken out, but if she's taken out, she's a casualty which means the squad still gets the +1 for a martyr which... is still 4+. I actually don't see a way for the 5+ to ever actually be required, a 4+ seems the actual least probability, with 3+ reasonably likely and 2+ possible with certain characters attached.

On the suggestion of possibly other acts of faith in wargear or something I dunno, there's something about the way the Acts of Faith are worded that makes me think there isn't. Something like "The nature of the bonus depends on the unit using Acts of Faith".

I also have no idea what a Simulacrum Imperialis does now that I'm thinking on it. It clearly must be something useful for buildings based on that WD strategem, but I'd think if it were a bonus to Acts of Faith it would be listed. It doesn't necessarily have to be listed, but it seems like it should be listed under Acts of Faith. I suppose we'll find out, but it might be interesting to speculate.

[Melissia]

My guess: Simaculrum imperialis is simply a re-roll of the test or another +1.

[wallweasels]

My guess: Simaculrum imperialis is simply a re-roll of the test or another +1.
I doubt it will be a reroll. Why? Because Seraphim already gain the ability to reroll and its not called the samething. Why give Seraphim the same bonus if it did the same thing?
+1 I dunno...it is already possible to achieve a 2+ to roll and although there is no "1 is auto fail" rule GW usually runs by that premise. Allowing up to +4 means there are scenarios that faith auto passes...which I doubt will happen

Most likely it will be a like chance to use another faith test for free or getting a point back OR possibly allows you to keep a faith point in "reserve" from a previous turn. We still dont know what units can have them. Kryinov counts as one, and a laud hailer, so I think thats supposed to be one of his "important rules" that makes him special. So maybe both of those items are very effective but you can only have 1-2 of them? I mean the imagifer in the command squad section says "Celestian with Simaculrum imperialis" and it isnt brought up anywhere else. Not that it doesnt stop normal celestians or battle sisters having it...but yeah. Thoughts? :x

[edit]Lancel I personally don't care if a 2+ is possible as the powers themselves do not make me go "oh my~!" The only power I think that will ever be consistantly used is twinlinked meltas/flamer dominions and rending heavyflamer/bolter retributors. Yeah...they can take heavy flamers again, the ret page shows a "retributor with heavy flamer" :x x4 rending heavy flamers? Well thats fun, but it doesn't bring any light to the whole army.

[eldargal]

Anyone who thinks Sisters are cannon fodder clearly haven't read any of the fluff or know anything about them. They are the very best the Schola Progenium can produce, the same organisation that produces Stormtroopers and Commissars neither of whom are cannon fodder.

Even if the wargear system is brilliant, I can't see how it would make Battle Sisters Aof worthwhile or Seraphim, Immolators, repentia worth taking it all. Also every army will pretty much have to take Jacobus to have a chance of utilising what vaguely useful AoF on the few useful units there are. I foresee armies of Celestians, Retributors and Dominions only, backed with a few exorcists.

[wallweasels]

Anyone who thinks Sisters are cannon fodder clearly haven't read any of the fluff or know anything about them. They are the very best the Schola Progenium can produce, the same organisation that produces Stormtroopers and Commissars neither of whom are cannon fodder.

Even if the wargear system is brilliant, I can't see how it would make Battle Sisters Aof worthwhile or Seraphim, Immolators, repentia worth taking it all. Also every army will pretty much have to take Jacobus to have a chance of utilising what vaguely useful AoF on the few useful units there are. I foresee armies of Celestians, Retributors and Dominions only, backed with a few exorcists.Pretty much. So even if the outcome of this second half of the rules ends up putting us in a position of being totally overpowered (somehow)...I will STILL have a problem with the methods they used to get there. GW has screwed up pretty badly if I can look at guardsmen and see 'pro veterans that never die' and look at sisters and see "meatgrind zapp brannigan 'kill bot' strategy"

[SMC]

Firstly, Storm Troopers aren't cannon fodder. Secondly, some of the older fluff suggests there may be fewer Battle Sisters than SPACE MARINES. No matter how people lay it, they're a little more than mere Stormtrooper quality religious fanatics. Standard religious fanatics don't get regular divine interventions, and while the Sisters call it the Emperor's will, it's not clear what the source of it is. The Emperor was a psyker. Faith powers are NOT psychic powers, but I digress. They aren't super soldiers, they're regular humans, and they represent the best of humanity for being nearly incorruptible.

They are the best HUMANITY has to offer. Space Marines barely count as human. They're also more corruptible than Sisters.

Lets be honest here. EVERYTHING is the best humanity has to offer. EVERYTHING is cannon fodder. The details just depend on which codex you're reading at the time.

Look at the stats of the book you all seem to be lamenting so strongly. Normal human stats with bolters and power armor.

Everything else you guys are saying is flowery language meant to hype people to spend their money on Sisters of Battle.

[eldargal]

Normal humans don't have BS4 and LD8, nor are they given some of the most expensive armour the Imperium can mass produce. They also don't receive years of intensive training at the Schola Progenium.

Imperial Guard are cannon fodder. Sisters of battle are elite humans. Space Marines are super humans. Grey Knights are elite super humans. This is the hierarchy of Imperium forces.

[wallweasels]

Normal humans don't have BS4 and LD8, nor are they given some of the most expensive armour the Imperium can mass produce. They also don't receive years of intensive training at the Schola Progenium.

Imperial Guard are cannon fodder. Sisters of battle are elite humans. Space Marines are super humans. Grey Knights are elite super humans. This is the hierarchy of Imperium forces.

However you can't deny that he is right: 40k always says your army is awesome. Although, that being said, guard does very much so pound on you that they win wars by attrition and bodies.You could say that Veterans are elite warriors. Well sure, but Veterans are highly experienced and thus have good profiles, but thats not the entire imperial guard. The common guardsmen is the human version of fodder. The only more "fodder" level humans are conscripts and militia forces. Sisters are quite reputable in the sources, even against them, that they are included. Although arrogant in some stories, who isn't in 40k? I think Faith and Fire spelled it out quite nicely in terms of how people see sisters and their expectations. Because in 40ks terms...power armor is power and marines are only slightly more durable than sisters when it comes to direct resilience under fire. Marines have the survivability advantage because of their organ structures allowing normally mortal wounds to the chest to be possibly saved. However, power armor is power armor and that is very highly treasured in 40k. Both die in droves to sustained bolter fire (in fluff). Be fair fluff bolters are like AP 3 at least. Hell fluff heavy bolters should have the rule called "red mist" since that is all they leave <_<

[eldargal]

I'm not denying that, but nowhere does it say the Imperial Guard are elite or the best of the best. The codex makes it clear they win through numbers and don't give a damn about casualties. They are described as heroic and the backbone of the Imperiums defence forces, but they are never described as elite. Because they aren't. SoB are.



They are also often seen fighting alongside he Imperial Guard, adding a core of highyl skilled, totally devoted and superbly equipped warriors to supplement the massed ranks of the Imperial armies... the Space Marines and Battle Sisters both respect each other's prowess and skill at arms. Many times thefoes of the Imperium have been eradicated by a combined attack from these two elite forces.

Yeah, that sounds like cannon fodder.

The fluff says they are elite, the rules used to reflect that. Now they do not. That is a problem. If SMs were dropped to BS/WS/S/T 3 and Ld 7 and had their unique abilities nerfed everyone would be up in arms, ditto any other army. But for some reason SoB players are expected just ot be grateful to have a 5th ed book.

[StraightSilver]

My understanding was that some of the statlines for SoB were dropped because they had a high chance of getting off their Acts of Faith every turn with the majority of their units.

This made them too powerful so some stats were reduced.

However it seems as though at some point somebody said "it'll just be easier if we give the whole army D6 Faith Points rather than the Faith Pool" but then didn't consider putting the stats back up.

The whole thing just seems like a bit of a mess to be honest.

And I hadn't even considered that they had lost their ability to negate psychic effects, which although not that effective in my experience a lot of the time was still a cool thing to have in the army.

I will wait to see the whole thing but I am disappointed, the initial impression I had got was that this would be an update most people would enjoy, but now I am not so sure.

[SMC]

Perhaps cannon fodder was the wrong word to use. I was using it as a relative term, but you folks seem to be latching on to that as literal. I can see how you could construe it that way though.

Regardless, I stand by what I said earlier about Sisters basically being specialized Storm Troopers with even better gear. Have you read the Storm Trooper codex entry? Take away the God Guard duties and magic powers and it reads pretty much the same as the Sisters. Even the stat line is the same aside from LD7 being their base and having a 4+ instead of the all important 3+ save. And, yes, Storm Troopers are BS 4. I could be wrong, but aren't they even both trained within different programs by the Schola Progenium?

I could copy and paste their entry, but I don't think you want that...

Its worth mentioning that they're 17 pts per model.

Sisters are not Marines no matter how much you want it to be so. They are not gene enhanced. They do not have hypno induction and training. They do not, generally speaking, have hundreds of years of constant battle experience fighting for the Emperor.

A good number of Sisters defend Ecclesiarchy holdings. Elite garrison troops when not serving an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor, guarding pilgrimages, or carrying out a Crusade for a high ranking Ministorum official.

I'm not ****ting on your army. If what I'm saying hurts your feelings folks then I apologize. I'll leave you all to your pity party because that's clearly all you want at the moment.

I'd say that you guys would better spend your time and effort discussing new strategies...army lists...etc etc etc

But you only have half of an idea what your army is at the moment...oh wait. :rolleyes:

[eldargal]

Yes, and thanks to Acts of Faith being made next to useless and unreliable, we now have an SoB army which is exactly like a Stormtrooper army without the fancy tanks. This is exactly why I hate it so much. Elite humans are elite humans, the thing which made SoB special was acts of faith and they are now just like an inferior IG orders system.

I could cope with the reduced statlines if their special abilities made up for it, but they do not.

[Sister Rosette Soulknyt]

People keep saying wait the points cost will drop, some how i don't see it, 11 points is not that bad for a powered armoured SoB, but like every here keeps saying making something cheaper doesn't make it better. Now you just have lots of troops that are next to useless.

My main concern is the Excorsist.
In 3rd ed codex, it's a Str 8 AP1 D6 attacks. Reason i am worried because until we see if there is any improvement (unlikely to me) you have our only long range tank (if you can actually call it that) that still fails horribly against AV14 armour.
You need a 6 to glance, and then another 6 to get a Wrecked result. (6 -2 Glance, +1 AP1 =5). Now with all those new tanks out there and LR's its unilkely to me, and i play four Excorcist that pounded away at 2 LR's for 3 turns to desroy just one, find them under powered.
What you need is not 2d3 missiles, you need Str 9 missiles atleast. I hope GW addresses this issue. But will have to wait a whole month to see this.

The new 6+ Invun saves to all SoB and vehicles to me, is just sad. Really, a 6+ save is next to useless, its about as good as an ork.

[lattd]

A 6++ is better than nothing. I still think everyone complaining when they know half the rules is a tad sad. Reminds me of when the nemesis force stave rumours hit and everyone complained that the world was imploding etc etc.

[eldargal]

We have most of the rules, what we lack is equipment, and equipment won't make up for lacklustre statlines and useless special rules. Even if the wargear section is fantastic, it still doesn't make up for the fact that the defining characteristic of the army has nerfed to point of irrelevence.

[Lockark]

@Eldargal

I hate to bring up past arguments. But was not people making the point the book of St Lucious and it's stubron bubble and big part of what makes the sister's function as a army? Is not the different holy items the sister's take to battle also something iconic of the army?

Also doesn't the fluff go on about their different holy relics, books, and icons meant to also be are large part of what defines the sister's of battle army? (Meant basically as a reference to the different holy relics and Bones the crusades would drag around with them selves when marching to war.)

Having realy good war gear/relic items would make alot of sense for the Sister of battle.


I know what I just said basically boils down to useless speculation, witch is something I personally try to avoid when in these kind of topics. But my point is, it's quite possible that we just don't have the full pitcher.


From a white dwarf codex I don't expect alot. But I do expect we will probably see one or two realy good army lists that keep the army competitive.

[eldargal]

That is true, and don't get me wrong, if the wargear section makes the codex a fluffy, fun army to play I will be the first to admit I was wrong, and happily. But at this point it rests on 'yes, everything thus far as been dissapointing, but the wargear section might be wonderful!'. It may be so, but I'm not hopeful. Acts of Faith did do a lot to make the old book work too, and it was one of the things which made them Sisters as opposed to MEQ or a stormtrooper army.

[wittdooley]

Do we know if the Acts of Faith are actually limited to the unit that brings them to the table? I can't access all the images at work, but what if having that particular unit on the table unlocks the Act of Faith? Be a nice solution to spamming.

[Calypso2ts]

What made the SoB army effective was Faith more than any wargear. The 'unique' warear items for SoB were the BoSL and Mantle of Ophelia. The rest was a mirror of current weapons (Blessed Weapon is a Relic Blade, Eviscerator a Chainfist, St. Aspira is Artificer Armor).

Unique was the ability to turn their Armor Save Invulnerable and to generate AP 1 wounds. Regrouping below 50% was icing on the cake, but was always less useful than the other two.

Based on the rumors and these posts, the SoB army loses its dominance in 12" range shooting with its loss of Divine Guidance. It loses its ability to tarpit or even go toe to toe with larger enemies with the loss of Spirit of the Martyr.

Downgrading the Celestian statline, removing Holy Hatred and making Immolators imitation Razorbacks is just gravy on top of the brutalization of Faith. Even if an AoF enables Celestians to recoup the 1 I and a version of Holy Hatred they are still S3 attacks at I4 (nothing special) throw in another AoF to make them S4 and they remain nothing special. I would rather have a shot at an I1 hit using Hand of the Emperor...on that note remember SoB can no longer ID a T4 character in assaults either.

As for the proposed Faith system, I have seen conflicting reports that each faithful unit generates 1d6 or 1d6 for the whole army. If it is the former that is an average 3.5 dice per unit. The odds to fail an AoF on that many dice is - (2/3)^3 = 8/27 ~ 30%

It is also obvious that many of the people posting in this topic do not play SoB, so they really do not appreciate how central Faith is to their operation. I am okay with a change to the con ops for a SoB army, but all I see so far is general weakness.

[eldargal]

Yep, each unit has its own act of faith, for example a unit of regular battle sisters can try and regroup in the movement phase or re-roll 1s to hit in the shooting phase, Celestians get +1S and I in the assault phase (so they might be able to kill one or two SM devastators before dying instead of none) etc.


I should say, if GW surprise us and release lovely new plastics in september afterall, all will be forgiven as far as I'm concerned.:rolleyes: Want pretty plastic girls now.

[wittdooley]

I'm quite excited for the plastics, myself. If they look anything close to as nice as the DE, I'll buy a box of each, at least.

Still waiting for Celestine to come out in Finecast. She's so damned top heavy in the metal version.

[andrewm9]

I'm quite excited for the plastics, myself. If they look anything close to as nice as the DE, I'll buy a box of each, at least.

Still waiting for Celestine to come out in Finecast. She's so damned top heavy in the metal version.

I'd buy a lot more than that as my metal army is starting to show its age despite the love and care I have given them. if we become a horde army imagine how many new miniatures people will have to buy especially if they are a 5 pack. They need to something and soon though as a full squad of Seraphim costs a minimum of $122.50 (US) and more if you buy hand flamers. A minimal dominion squad costs 51.85 $ with 4 special weapons and a veteran superior plus a transport. Retributors are 60.25 with 4 heavy weapons and superior. They will never sell without something happening.

[gcsmith]

I really dont hope thet get cheaper 11 points under old book was too cheap if you compare to armies like tau, tho I geuss I can see them getting cheaper as long as tau go to like 6-8 points per model

[eldargal]

Personally I like my living saints top heavy. Hur hur hur.


Yes, imagine paying twice as much per model for an Ork army as you do now, that is what SoB players will face without new plastics.

[andrewm9]

I really dont hope thet get cheaper 11 points under old book was too cheap if you compare to armies like tau, tho I geuss I can see them getting cheaper as long as tau go to like 6-8 points per model

If they don't get cheaper somehow to compensate for loss of special rules or without amazing wargear to prop them up, Sisters will be slaughtered on the field and more than Tau and Necrons

[Nabterayl]

I agree that an 8 point sister compared to a 10 point fire warrior would be ridiculous, but the answer to that is to make tau cheaper, not keep battle sisters more expensive.

I have to say that while I respect the complaints being voiced here, and I agree that this is a very ... um, conservative update for sisters, the actual trends of the nerfs are in line with my understanding of the Sororitas fluff. In the 3rd edition codex sisters you were very reliant on faith, but the result of that was that you essentially had an army of pseudo-sorceresses. While effective, especially in historical context points-wise, Acts of Faith are not depicted anywhere else as being that common, or that big a part of a battle sister's arsenal.

A year or two back we had a good conversation in the background section on what exactly the Sisters of Battle were and were not as an army. The consensus, which for me has only been confirmed by subsequent material, is that the Orders Militant were to the Imperial Guard as the United States Marine Corps is to the United States Army - and compared to the Adeptus Astartes, the Orders Militant are slower, less mobile, less practiced at the full spectrum of fighting arts (in particular CQB and related disciplines), and accomplish their mission not by divine intervention but by sheer bloody-mindedness and an institutional willingness to accept casualties. If a force commander suffers 25% casualties he's likely to pull out. A palatine is not.

So while I would like to see a more imaginative\\sensible reorganization of the Sororitas FOC, and I admit that depending on points costs this leaked army may be less capable than the old army, what I'd like to see in a new sisters codex is a large number of difficult-to-break storm trooper-quality soldiers with marine-quality gear and limited vehicular support, which it seems is what we're getting. Admittedly this is a very conservative\\poor version of that, but I wouldn't want a new sisters codex to rely on overt miracle-type Acts of Faith to win battles, because battle sisters don't.

[Lancel]

Do we know if the Acts of Faith are actually limited to the unit that brings them to the table? I can't access all the images at work, but what if having that particular unit on the table unlocks the Act of Faith? Be a nice solution to spamming.

The rules pretty clearly mention that the specifics of a successful acts of faith for the unit are determined by the information in the bestiary. Really the way it's worded suggests that there will be only one Act of Faith per unit type.

To answer another question, yes, the rules are also very clear that it's D6 faith points per turn for the entire army.

I still like the 6++, if mostly for the fluffy bit of it of all of them with a miraculous save, but I know realistically it won't help much, just maybe save one Sister every pie plate or so. It's nothing you can really design a strategy around, but maybe one day at a critical juncture a pie plate will land and every Sister will roll a 6. :P I mean on average this is maybe going to make a 10 Sister squad into something more closely resembling 11 Sisters without the 6++.


Personally I like my living saints top heavy. Hur hur hur.

Har. Perv~

[DarkLink]

tho I geuss I can see them getting cheaper as long as tau go to like 6-8 points per model

Obviously, since firewarriors suck. Retaining overpriced models in a brand new codex because an old, out of date codex has an overpriced crappy unit that doesn't compare well is a poor way to bring old armies into line with 5th ed.


I agree that an 8 point sister compared to a 10 point fire warrior would be ridiculous, but the answer to that is to make tau cheaper, not keep battle sisters more expensive.


Exactly. Compared to an actual good unit with roughly similar transports and tanks, such as Space Wolves or Grey Knights, 8pt sisters is pretty reasonable. IG isn't a good comparison because the rest of the army is so different, but sisters have rhinos, pseudo razorbacks and pseudo predators, plus bolters and meltaguns and such.

[andrewm9]

I agree that an 8 point sister compared to a 10 point fire warrior would be ridiculous, but the answer to that is to make tau cheaper, not keep battle sisters more expensive.

I have to say that while I respect the complaints being voiced here, and I agree that this is a very ... um, conservative update for sisters, the actual trends of the nerfs are in line with my understanding of the Sororitas fluff. In the 3rd edition codex sisters you were very reliant on faith, but the result of that was that you essentially had an army of pseudo-sorceresses. While effective, especially in historical context points-wise, Acts of Faith are not depicted anywhere else as being that common, or that big a part of a battle sister's arsenal.

This is true to an extent, but its a common way to repsent the flavor of an army. Its is literally the only special rule to set this army apart from another army. Its kind of like saying ATSKNF shouldn't happen all the time or even a Tau's markerlights or dark Eldar's drugs. Faith should have small but noticeable effect ont eh game. The previous effects can be explained in a number of ways that don't literally have to "magic".




A year or two back we had a good conversation in the background section on what exactly the Sisters of Battle were and were not as an army. The consensus, which for me has only been confirmed by subsequent material, is that the Orders Militant were to the Imperial Guard as the United States Marine Corps is to the United States Army - and compared to the Adeptus Astartes, the Orders Militant are slower, less mobile, less practiced at the full spectrum of fighting arts (in particular CQB and related disciplines), and accomplish their mission not by divine intervention but by sheer bloody-mindedness and an institutional willingness to accept casualties. If a force commander suffers 25% casualties he's likely to pull out. A palatine is not.

So while I would like to see a more imaginative\\sensible reorganization of the Sororitas FOC, and I admit that depending on points costs this leaked army may be less capable than the old army, what I'd like to see in a new sisters codex is a large number of difficult-to-break storm trooper-quality soldiers with marine-quality gear and limited vehicular support, which it seems is what we're getting. Admittedly this is a very conservative\\poor version of that, but I wouldn't want a new sisters codex to rely on overt miracle-type Acts of Faith to win battles, because battle sisters don't.

I appreciate your view point on the matter as I happen to largely agree, but the list doesn't seem to accurately reflect that yet Sisters of all stripes except Repentia are just as likely to break in CC as any other unit in the game and be sweeping advanced by just about any CC unit especially when its not thier turn.

[gcsmith]

I think toning the faith acts down was needed in the end, making your save invun every turn was well powerful, At least now that you dnt run out of faith points. you get new ones every turn.

So now you get your faith points for the whole game and as a consequence get less poweful ones.

[chicop76]

I don't know why people think Tau Fire Warriors will drop to 8 pts or lower. If you compare to like ranged models I doubt it's going to happen.

8 pts for a normal eldar guardian. Tau have better range, weapon strength, and save and is a better model on a 1 to 1 basis so 8 pts would be too low.

10 pts for Guard Vets which is at the same cost with fire warriors with the same save. Major difference is Vet have better int, ws, bs, but they're stuck with a str 3 weapon, while the Tau have a str 5 weapon. 9 pts a pop might be slightly realistiic, but 10 pts seems to be on line with every one else

9 pts eldar warriors, they have pfp, a worst save, but can get fnp, similar stats to a guardsmen, but slightly better then a vet and their weapon is poisoned. On a 1 to 1 basis if 10 tau and 11 dark eldar warriors fired at each other no upgrades Tau would win every time. 1 can wound on 2s and ignore saves against better bs that wounds on 4 and the tau can save against it. It takes 6 dark eldar to kill one Tau vs two Tau killing on Dark Eldar. Not to mention Tau shoots 30" farther.

13 pts marine scouts with rapid fire bolters do just as well against non vehicle models like Tau at 13 pts.

12 pts dire avengers in regular shootingout performs Tau, but Tau have 12"s more range and perform the same in rapid fire range leaving a 6" gap for better dire avenger shooting.

11 pts for sisters of battle. At 11 pts they have a better save than all the above mentioned models. A fair comparision would be with guard vets, but for 1 pt more they get a better save, higher str weapon, +6 inulnerable save. Compaing to even 13 pt marine scouts the sisters are better. Comparing to true born, blood brides, and wycthes is difficult since all 3 are specailist and sisters are jack of all trades with a marine save. Looking at the last codex you have a few henchmen at 10 pts or a guard type char with a boltter and a +4 save at 9 pts. I doubt the sisters will drop in points. If anything they would raise the points on them.

Back to Tau the unit cost is not the problem, upgardes is the real problem, which every unit mentioned above have decent upgrades. Also Fire Warriors do poorly in combat with same priced models, except orcs.
Tau with a 4+ save and can hit on 4s can deal with some units, but throw in power weapons it's not a good thing. Marines walk through all of the above except old sisters so of course tau will suck in combat against a marine.

With sisters I can't imagine a drop from the 11 pt standard troop. Serepham will drop in cost for sure and maybe celestine too, but other then that I doubt at best under 10. 11 points is still very realistic. In the old sister codex you can easily see the sisters being the best troop in th game overall. Can't really say that now yet.

[sukigod]

OK - this is coming from a 17+ year vet of orks who has been waiting to start a Sisters army...

I've read through countless threads (everywhere) and yeah, not the greatest of news on the Sisters front, everyone is up in arms. Twp things I've noticed are people claiming the Seraphim lost Hit and Run (the copy I saw has this listed.

The other is the outrage about Faith Points. I know it doesn't seem to scale and seems really low vs larger armies but we haven't seen the wargear specifics. I'm so noob about Sisters I had to look up what a a Laud Hailer did for the game. I have a proposal that might change some peoples perspective. What if they changed the wargear, say making the Laud Hailer a 1d6 faith points per turn?

I have no basis for this idea, didn't read anything anyone else hasn't, just thought that this one thing might make a difference in the Faith Point system.

[andrewm9]

Overall Sisters will need to get cheaper than they are currently and here is why. In a vacuum Sisters appear to be well priced but if you add a special weapon and heavy weapon along with the Book and a vet at current points in a Rhino they are like 5 points cheaper than a similarly equipped marine tactical sqaud. In fact with both grenades they are more expensive.

Everybody quotes that point cost without realizing what else must be paid for in the current squad since Vets and therefro faith aren't free. If they get any sort of 5th edition treatment then they wil be lowered in cost somehow. Sure the basic trooper may work out be 11 points int he new codex but I imagine it will actually go up to 12 points per model. I'm also betting that we lose access to sqauds over 10 girls and they will be 5 to 10 models in a squad of battlesisters.

[chicop76]

OK - this is coming from a 17+ year vet of orks who has been waiting to start a Sisters army...

I've read through countless threads (everywhere) and yeah, not the greatest of news on the Sisters front, everyone is up in arms. Twp things I've noticed are people claiming the Seraphim lost Hit and Run (the copy I saw has this listed.

The other is the outrage about Faith Points. I know it doesn't seem to scale and seems really low vs larger armies but we haven't seen the wargear specifics. I'm so noob about Sisters I had to look up what a a Laud Hailer did for the game. I have a proposal that might change some peoples perspective. What if they changed the wargear, say making the Laud Hailer a 1d6 faith points per turn?

I have no basis for this idea, didn't read anything anyone else hasn't, just thought that this one thing might make a difference in the Faith Point system.

In a sence Serphim lost hit and run. It went from being auto matic to making an int test. That wouldn't had bugged me as much if they didn't drop then int to 3. Also in the old dex I could had made the int which would had still be ok. Now I'm stuck with a 50% chance to do so.

[andrewm9]

OK - this is coming from a 17+ year vet of orks who has been waiting to start a Sisters army...

I've read through countless threads (everywhere) and yeah, not the greatest of news on the Sisters front, everyone is up in arms. Twp things I've noticed are people claiming the Seraphim lost Hit and Run (the copy I saw has this listed.


They didn't lose it exactly but since hit and Run is now dependent on an Initative test they will only succeed on a 50/50 chance. They are the only unit in the game (that I know of) with Hit and Run in the game besides Dekk Koptas with an initiative less than 5.

[wittdooley]

So.... how would everyone feel if sisters had access to Null Maidens as an elite choice, similar to the Sanguianry Priest. You can take....1-5 per elite choice, and split them up into units. They'd grant a 6" shrouded bubble, making them immune to Psychic attacks/effects, and would grant a cover save even in open ground. They'd also be an IC...making your base sisters unit Act of Faith roll a 3+ if you include one, potentially a 2+ if you take a casualty.

Would that be fun? Would that make the army any better? It would be hella fluffy, would make your acts of faith easier to pull off, and would be a nice way to make a footslogging sisters company viable.

Further, since we haven't seen the equipment options: who's to say there isn't going to be an inexpensive relic that allows you to roll 2d6 for faith points per turn, and take the highest.

I understand how integral faith points are to the army, but the biggest complaint seems to be that we don't get enough of them AND they're not strong enough. Now, I think Mel mentioned that she'd be happy if they were more rare, but more powerful--I'm totally down with that idea. Would it be a happier compromise if the d6 roll stayed as the WD presentation, but allowed for more powerful Acts of Faith?

[Calypso2ts]

So.... how would everyone feel if sisters had access to Null Maidens as an elite choice, similar to the Sanguianry Priest. You can take....1-5 per elite choice, and split them up into units.


Nice a model that I cannot add to normal SoB units in Rhinos since they are base size 10 that enable a specific foot slogging only paradigm. This way I can be guaranteed to be assaulted by Terminators and then to lose my whole unit (or multiples) since Spirit of the Martyr is gone...I guess I do have that 6++ save that is completely worthless as an actual mechanic to protect a unit...so long as BoSL remains in its current form, at least I can choose to fail morale and try to shoot the Terminators, too bad there is no Divine Guidance...




They'd also be an IC...making your base sisters unit Act of Faith roll a 3+ if you include one, potentially a 2+ if you take a casualty.


Awesome I can use my new AoF that generally stink even more often to be almost on par in power to normal units!



Further, since we haven't seen the equipment options: who's to say there isn't going to be an inexpensive relic that allows you to roll 2d6 for faith points per turn, and take the highest.


This would be a great a piece of wargear that I have to include in every army to have my units be almost as good as everyone elses!



Would it be a happier compromise if the d6 roll stayed as the WD presentation, but allowed for more powerful Acts of Faith?

Probably not, let's do the math on that one. If I get 6 dice that is an 8% chance to fail...which is exactly the same as trying to Divine Guidance a 10 man squad or get a 2++ on my Canoness now. Are the acts going to be more powerful than that?

[wittdooley]

Your reply simply sounds like you want female marines with Acts of Faith....

[chicop76]

Overall Sisters will need to get cheaper than they are currently and here is why. In a vacuum Sisters appear to be well priced but if you add a special weapon and heavy weapon along with the Book and a vet at current points in a Rhino they are like 5 points cheaper than a similarly equipped marine tactical sqaud. In fact with both grenades they are more expensive.

Everybody quotes that point cost without realizing what else must be paid for in the current squad since Vets and therefro faith aren't free. If they get any sort of 5th edition treatment then they wil be lowered in cost somehow. Sure the basic trooper may work out be 11 points int he new codex but I imagine it will actually go up to 12 points per model. I'm also betting that we lose access to sqauds over 10 girls and they will be 5 to 10 models in a squad of battlesisters.

Obviously the rhino will drop between 35-40 pts although you can be Blood Angels, but they can get it for 15 pts if you take the right squad. Also I can see the veteran superior may or may not drop in price, but I doubt the 11 pt motif will change.

186 points for a vet upgade with heavy flame, book and melta gun plus rhino looks realistic. 10 dark eldar warriors in a raider hits 150 pts without up grades which would equal sisters at 145 pts without upgrades.

We can probably say good bye to the book due to the Cannoness will have stubborn.

[Maelstorm]

How about 18 points per model, minimum 10 models (180 points per squad, 2 required to meet minimum FOC), no heavy weapons, no close combat weapons, no sergeant, no upgrades, no transport, a 3+ Save, Initiative 2 and a basic bolter that shoots green and glances on a 6? Kind of makes them the walking dead that are auto-sweep in close combat... :eek: No wait, that would make them equivelent to the one and only scoring unit in a Necron army. :rolleyes:

Take everything you read here with a HUGE grain of salt. Don't jump on the rumour wagon and wait for the real print - it just fans everyones blood pressure higher. I quit reading the Necron rumour forum here because it was having the same effect on me. :D

Just another month or three and the WD based codex will dribble out of GW. Only then can a proper uproar unsue in good faith - right up until the FAQ dribbles out 6 months later to correct the errors and confusion. Just in time for 6th Edition and 6 more colors/flavors of Space marines. :cool:

[chicop76]

How about 18 points per model, minimum 10 models (180 points per squad, 2 required to meet minimum FOC), no heavy weapons, no close combat weapons, no sergeant, no upgrades, no transport, a 3+ Save, Initiative 2 and a basic bolter that shoots green and glances on a 6? Kind of makes them the walking dead that are auto-sweep in close combat... :eek: No wait, that would make them equivelent to the one and only scoring unit in a Necron army. :rolleyes:

Take everything you read here with a HUGE grain of salt. Don't jump on the rumour wagon and wait for the real print - it just fans everyones blood pressure higher. I quit reading the Necron rumour forum here because it was having the same effect on me. :D

Just another month or three and the WD based codex will dribble out of GW. Only then can a proper uproar unsue in good faith - right up until the FAQ dribbles out 6 months later to correct the errors and confusion. Just in time for 6th Edition and 6 more colors/flavors of Space marines. :cool:

Yes, but you have the monolith and destroyers. When played right Necrons are hard to beat. Unless you're playing tau or nids with a lot of zonathorpes. Anyway I've seen Necron players do well thanks to destroyers and the monolith.

Necrons might go up in price as well since they cost two more then a marine and have the abiltity to come back on a 4+ twice with a 3+ save. Although the other units in the army might drop though.

Also Necrons can teleport out of combat and rapid fire the unit that dared to assault them, unless they got cought or wiped out in initial combat.

[Lancel]

Sisters of Silence really have nothing to do with the Sisters of Battle, though they have similarities in creed and organization. There's nothing to suggest they've ever worked together, but they share a lot of the same duties in fluff. Heck, given the Sisters of Silence disappeared and the Sisters of Battle started escorting Black Ships (Like in Faith and Fire), it's not impossible to suggest the Sisters of Silence were absorbed or otherwise disposed of. A quick write-up though could clear that up and add the Sisters of Silence to the Adepta Sororitas like the Hospitaller and so on. There's room for it. I don't think their respective fluffs even inhabit the same millennium.

As for faith, the fact that the acts of faith are kinda weak is my biggest complaint about them. The mechanics I could live with if the acts of faith weren't so constraining and ultimately pitiful.

I'd also like for the Immolator to not be a Razorback and for Sisters to stop being a science project for nerfed Space Marines.

I'd also like for this to be a complete lie:


written by Robin Cruddace and Matt Ward

There's also rumors on the fluff, but I'm especially ignoring that, but at least it said most of it reads like a straight up Copy/Paste.

Also Monoliths are awesome.

Also, I missed the part about how the Sisters are no longer immune to instant death by Force Weapon. Yet another way for the Canoness to get slaughtered.

[Lockark]

written by Robin Cruddace and Matt Ward

Hey guys don't worry! This obviously means that Exorcists are Heavy 20 S8! :D

[Melissia]

Lets be honest here. EVERYTHING is the best humanity has to offer.

No.

[Melissia]

Your reply simply sounds like you want female marines with Acts of Faith....Not really.

This is basically what the statline should have been:

Battle Sisters, Dominions, Retributors: WS3, BS4, S3, T3, Wn1, I3, A1, Ld8 (9 on superior), 3+/6++
Celestians, Seraphim, Command Squad: WS4, BS4, S3, T3, Wn1, I4, A2, Ld9 (10 on superior), 3+/6++

How is that Marines with acts of faith? They're still human. If they were marines, they'd be S4/T4. Only a moron says 3+ saves = marines.

[Lerra]

Acts of Faith, imo, is what makes Sisters fun and unique. I understand that in the fluff, divine intervention isn't very common, but realism hasn't stopped other armies. Think of how often a Space Marine army loses a named character, or 50 space marines die in one small skirmish. Or how common Grey Knights and Daemons are on the tabletop. Fun should trump realism anyway.

Sisters need something to separate them from the other Imperial armies, and Faith seems like the best option.

[Melissia]

I think toning the faith acts down was needed in the end, making your save invun every turn was well powerfulYou couldn't do that anyway. Each Faith Point caused ONE unit to have a chance of turning its armor save invulnerable for ONE phase.

[silashand]

Hey guys don't worry! This obviously means that Exorcists are Heavy 20 S8! :D

You forgot large blast, barrage, melta, lance and rending... ;)


They will never sell without something happening.

If you think moving them to Finecast is going to drop the price I think you are sadly mistaken. If anything the prices will go up. I really wonder what they were thinking when they came up with this list. If the rules aren't uber then few if any players are going to pick up an all-metal army because of the cost. If they make the rules even worse (which they appear to have done in spades) and raise the price by virtue of their new crappy resin, how exactly is anyone supposed to want to play Sisters?

Cheers, Gary

[wallweasels]

Sisters of Silence really have nothing to do with the Sisters of Battle, though they have similarities in creed and organization. There's nothing to suggest they've ever worked together, but they share a lot of the same duties in fluff. Heck, given the Sisters of Silence disappeared and the Sisters of Battle started escorting Black Ships (Like in Faith and Fire), it's not impossible to suggest the Sisters of Silence were absorbed or otherwise disposed of. A quick write-up though could clear that up and add the Sisters of Silence to the Adepta Sororitas like the Hospitaller and so on. There's room for it. I don't think their respective fluffs even inhabit the same millennium.
Actually you are somewhat correct. Although not mentioned much at all "now-a-days" in 40k lore there is no reason to assume they are missing. I have always debated on how to "increase the functions of sisters" without overstepping into silly territory. One of the ways to do this...was taking the job that the telepathica normally does: rounding up psykers with blackships.

Right now Sisters are, sometimes, stationed on blackships but it isn't their "job". Please remember though that there are Telepathica Blackships AND Inquisition Blackships. Although there are less of the latter than the former. The sisters of silence are effectively the military of the Telepathica. Not a full fledged "force" but definitely capable of small skirmishes. I wouldn't like to see Sisters of Silence INCLUDED in sisters, but their job certainly could be. They would be more in line with "legion of the damned" units if they were included, a one time unique unit that more popped up to help rather than part of the force. In terms of lore it is more important that we get an Abbess in place first...we haven't had someone on the High Lords for a long time :x Which could easily explain our general stagnation in terms of lore :cool:
Would be cool to have a fleet of our own, we seem kinda gimpy having to hitch a ride :P

You couldn't do that anyway. Each Faith Point caused ONE unit to have a chance of turning its armor save invulnerable for ONE phase.
Well yes. The way I imagined faith (I was writing a fandex for awhile but stopped due to massive writers block) was making faith have much more options and varied uses. I had it setup so each unit had its own act of faith that defined its function, but that the entire army had a general list. While I had put faith as being a leadership test, there were so many more options and scenarios to use it in, you'd never be able to use it all the time. You run out on turn 4? well then you may be screwed in Turn 5/6. By making faith more useful and more "powerful" overall you actually promote more varied and deep tactics to play.

Lets say you had 20 chances that game to use faith that would of swung what happened...you only have 10 choices...which do you pick? :P Do you build an army around that faiths strength, or do you create a force more capable to adapt? That was kind of my intension. Sadly...thats far from what we got. They got my "units get their own faith that defines their function" somewhat right but stripped the armies core in the process. :(

[Lockark]

You forgot large blast, barrage, melta, lance and rending... ;)


The joke is Cruddace seems like putting Heavy 20 in all his books. XD 1st Gaurd, then nids.

XP

[Lordgimpet]

hmmm after reading the next WD all i can do is sigh, however I am willing to give it untill the next issue with the points and details before i got looking for blood, I just hope in the meantime then fix the dam typos
such as Arco flagellants in sisters army are weaker (S4 instead S5) but are good with guns (BS3 instead of BS1) compared to the GK versions WTF.. and minor things like a pic of a sister with a multi melta but stated as a Heavy bolter. This sloppy work sums up the whole release.

That said though we only have half of the picture, though not a good one and I cross fingers for wargear that extends /increases faith pool, holy bolts ammo, +2 int polearms... hah haa and anti psy etc.

I personaly feel this is the stopgap to fill as a result that the necrons were delayed for some reason and this was used to fill the void untill the real dex shows up.. Untill then I will go and sit in the corner with my eldar dex held close crying softly :P

[Nabterayl]

I hear what you're saying about making the army distinctive, Lerra, but I think they could have done that in other ways. A Sisters army that relied primarily on cheap, powerfully equipped infantry would still be distinctive in my mind. I'm not saying that acts of faith should go away, and I'm not saying what we're getting is what I would have liked to see, but I don't think faith is the only way to make battle sisters distinct. Neither IG nor space marines have cheap well-equipped infantry, after all. Space marines still run 15 points or more per model, and carapace vets are 10 points per model without high quality equipment.

[silashand]

The joke is Cruddace seems like putting Heavy 20 in all his books. XD 1st Gaurd, then nids.

XP

I know. My response was because Mr. Ward likes to take innocuous rules and run them so far over the top that they sprout wings... ;)


I hear what you're saying about making the army distinctive, Lerra, but I think they could have done that in other ways. A Sisters army that relied primarily on cheap, powerfully equipped infantry would still be distinctive in my mind.

While that may be true, for those of us that have played Sisters for some time (15 years for me) it is a radical diversion from the established background and fluff. Before Acts of Faith we had Sacred Rites. Sisters have also always had some invulnerability to psychic powers. Both of these are IMO integral to the character of the army. Making them less of a focus means the Sisterhood becomes less the gleaming scions of purity in the Imperium and more just Guard with good armour and fewer toys. There is no reason why they cannot keep both those iconic attributes and still make them unique and interesting to play.

Cheers, Gary

[Nabterayl]

While that may be true, for those of us that have played Sisters for some time (15 years for me) it is a radical diversion from the established background and fluff. Before Acts of Faith we had Sacred Rites. Sisters have also always had some invulnerability to psychic powers. Both of these are IMO integral to the character of the army. Making them less of a focus means the Sisterhood becomes less the gleaming scions of purity in the Imperium and more just Guard with good armour and fewer toys. There is no reason why they cannot keep both those iconic attributes and still make them unique and interesting to play.

Cheers, Gary
Well, I don't disagree with any of those things (and I particularly forgot to mention psychic defenses in my last post). But the impression I get from a lot of comments is that sisters shouldn't be competitive without slinging miracles, which I don't think is true to the background. I think what the background establishes is that they should have miracles, and they should have pervasive psychic defenses, but those should be a supplement to rather than the source of their combat power.

[wallweasels]

Well, I don't disagree with any of those things (and I particularly forgot to mention psychic defenses in my last post). But the impression I get from a lot of comments is that sisters shouldn't be competitive without slinging miracles, which I don't think is true to the background. I think what the background establishes is that they should have miracles, and they should have pervasive psychic defenses, but those should be a supplement to rather than the source of their combat power.
Well the problem with the fluff is that despite boasting all this stuff it -never- happens in their battles.
The net result? Do you know how many sister battles end in defeat? the list well sided towards loses than wins and that is ones OUR CODEX TELLS US. Usually your codex tells you all the wins and maybe a few "dramatic" losses. Nope...sisters just lose a lot of sisters to do anything. Now. in our defense, alot of these situations are pretty damned grim...entire world being infested by a hive fleet? What are some ground force sisters going to do to stop that? :X Hell even marines end up just exterminatinus the planet. :|

Faith in 40k is very strong, people have literally banished daemons purely by brandishing an icon of faith (like the imperial "I" or other symbols) and literally blindly believing against the daemon and banished it. Faith is powerful in 40k but it very hard to write into a battle format. It would be like writing a "cheat" button in any situation. Its as cheesy as just when your characters about to die his buddy finally comes in to save the day. Yet it happens EVERYTIME you have a conflict.

I personally think faith should be an incredibly important part of the army to the point that playing without it means you lose. Sure, it shouldn't do everything for you, but using faith properly and in the right situations (however limited amounts you can use it), creates a unique tactic to the army. Just having "minor" bonuses from faith is not important at all. It just creates boring mechanics and generally "meh" rules that most armies have for free on their troops. Which, effectively, is exactly what this WD/PDF will/has do(ne)

[Melissia]

Neither IG nor space marines have cheap well-equipped infantry, after all. Space marines still run 15 points or more per model, and carapace vets are 10 points per model without high quality equipment.
Space Marines are VERY damned cheap for what you get. Especially Space Wolves.

[wallweasels]

Space Marines are VERY damned cheap for what you get. Especially Space Wolves.
Honestly I always look at chaos space marines for the "bang for your buck". For 15 points you got CCW, BP, Bolter, base reroll morale tests on a 9/10 and several weapon options. Optional banners allowed extra choices but not always optimal. They got the CCW/BP/Bolter before it was "cool" ;) Not saying the codex didn't have problems, but when people like to compare unit costs they tend to never mention CSMs.

Not directly talking to you Mellissia: Besides, direct point to point comparrisions are never a good thing. People always forget that usually troops cost reflect how the entire army functions. 40k rarely results in vacuum comparisons.

[jtheodorec]

So.... how would everyone feel if sisters had access to Null Maidens as an elite choice, similar to the Sanguianry Priest. You can take....1-5 per elite choice, and split them up into units. They'd grant a 6" shrouded bubble, making them immune to Psychic attacks/effects, and would grant a cover save even in open ground. They'd also be an IC...making your base sisters unit Act of Faith roll a 3+ if you include one, potentially a 2+ if you take a casualty.

Fluff-wise, here's the problem with that: the Sisters of Silence vanished with Russ in the Warp at the end of HH, as I understand it. Since then, those females with strong "pariah" gene powers tend to get singled out for culexus temple or into organizations like Eisenhorn's Distaff - if they're lucky. The Sisters would be the first to put them on the Black Ships rather than have them serve alongside them. Celestian Miriya in Faith and Fire talks about her time as a warden on a Black Ship; htere are other mentions of Battle Sisters on Black Ships in other books.

[Nabterayl]

Space Marines are VERY damned cheap for what you get. Especially Space Wolves.
I agree. But a 1500-point army of 60 marines is still considered a lot of marines. If I had my druthers, 60 battle sisters at 1500 points would not be considered a lot.

[eldargal]

Everything starts to make sense:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=115109&d=1311750979

[Emerald Rose Widow]

I am reserving my judgement to be honest still, but i think i wouldn't be able to make a fair comparison as i never played sisters back before all these changes, so we shall see.

[Unzuul the Lascivious]

AAAAAARGH! CRUDDAAAAAAAAAAACE! This could explain a lot...

[Emerald Rose Widow]

AAAAAARGH! CRUDDAAAAAAAAAAACE! This could explain a lot...

there are a lot of people who hate him, with all the name calling of him, i would expect the man never stop sneezing -winks if you got that-

[Kieranator K82]

August 27th? IT COINCIDES WITH THE NEXT HALF OF DOCTOR WHO SEASON 6!

[wittdooley]

Only a moron says 3+ saves = marines.

It's frustrating to me that you find it so hard to be civil without lobbing out the requisite insult. I made my comment purely because everything he said indicated that he basically wanted a female marine army with acts of faith.

As for Null Maidens...are the Black Ships not crewed by some of them? I thought that they were....

[Necron2.0]

I just hope in the meantime then fix the dam typos such as Arco flagellants ...

For a second there, I thought you were indicating they'd called them "Arco flatulents." ;)

But this brings up a point. It's obvious that even in WD, GW cannot release a codex that doesn't need massive editting and rework straight out of the box. For those with more experience in this arena, can you speculate on whether a FAQ for a WD codex is likely?

[Calypso2ts]

I made my comment purely because everything he said indicated that he basically wanted a female marine army with acts of faith.

How was my response in any way indicative of that view point?

I shot down the idea that you include a Sanguinary Priest equivalent in the Elites section, which was ill conceived given the standard SoB squad has been 10 models and including this almost mandatory option is a band aid at best that prevents the SoB player from using Transports. Further, this proposed IC enables powers that are not powerful enough to be considered a distinguishing characteristic. Consider the Canoness power - +1I and Preferred Enemy - really? How does this power help anything, it is like giving grots a CCW...

I shot down the idea that you have a piece of wargear that you would have to include in your army to be competitive - assuming Faith is a necessary property of the army which it should be. When wouldn't I take this item, I DISLIKE choices being made for me on such a specific basis.

Finally, I pointed out the statistical properties of needing a 5+ for a faith ability. If we are going to add all sorts of crazy modifier like if the unit takes a casualty, has an IC or a squad leader we might as well leave the old system. It is less confusing.

What I want is an army with the standard SoB statline - 3's across the board except for BS that actually has some character and depth. I want interesting tactical decisions and a unique playstyle (like they have now). I want to own the 6"-12" shooting zone but remain vulnerable to assaults - which is an INTERESTING and CHALLENGING dichotomy. Your solution accomplishes none of this, it just proposes making crappy AoF's easier to use.

[Lancel]

AAAAAARGH! CRUDDAAAAAAAAAAACE! This could explain a lot...

Maybe, even in combination if rumors are true we got a rushed, unplaytested, conservative (to avoid being overpowered) codex with anything new taken out written by Cruddace. Can't hate the man for this though, the deck was stacked against him. And from the looks of things this WD issue was still stacked toward Storm of Magic unsurprisingly and next issue will be stacked toward WFB again with Ogre Kingdoms. That pretty much seals the deal on new Sisters model releases (that is, there aren't any).


there are a lot of people who hate him, with all the name calling of him, i would expect the man never stop sneezing -winks if you got that-

Do people not know that? That's not exactly a pop culture reference. Heck with all the sneezes he probably thinks he just has a cold. ;)


It's frustrating to me that you find it so hard to be civil without lobbing out the requisite insult. I made my comment purely because everything he said indicated that he basically wanted a female marine army with acts of faith.

As for Null Maidens...are the Black Ships not crewed by some of them? I thought that they were....

No one really wants female marines. Heck, most of us are pissed that the Immolator got made even more like a Razorback, as opposed to less. Besides, S4 and T4 is what really defined Space Marine to me. I4 really makes me more think of Eldar. Either way, it's not important what the stat lines are, as long as the army and units play with a distinct feel and style, like the various Space Marine codices do for the most part, despite all being literally Space Marine equivalents.

According to fluff, the Black Ships have Null Maidens on board, the trouble is that they've been going conspicuously unmentioned for quite some time, even when a Black Ship is involved, but of course, it's unclear if they were Inquisitorial or Telepathica. Nothing to suggest they aren't still there, but they are strangely absent from recent fluff.

[wittdooley]

You mean, aside from the fact that you want your army to be "like everyone else's." To me, this indicates MEQ.

I'll give you the BS 4, absolutely. But beyond that, shouldn't the basic Sisters have the profile of a guardsmens, with perhaps higher leadership? The fact that changing one stat profile adds "character and depth" is a bit ridiculous to me. So they're IG Vets? Thanks.

If you put the girls in transports, then they would need the potentiall 'null maiden' buff less, wouldn't they? Because they're more protected. From everything I've read, Sisters take to the field of battle on foot more often than in Rhinos. I disagree that it's ill conceived. It would allow a foot slogging Sisters army to be a ton more survivable. Not every army armor spams, despite what the tournament meta would suggest. And really? A gun line of psychically untargetable boltguns with power armour isn't distinguishable? No other army offers that.

So, how often is a Sisters player actually going to have to roll a 5+ for their AoF? Are there gonna be an abundance of squads without a leader? No? Well shoot. So their AoF roll is a 4+, or 50% chance? That's just unfair that a miracle is only going to happen half the time. And the modifiers being "too complicated?" Gimme a break. Dammit, I have to bring some counters now. No one else has to do that. Wait, what? DE use pain tokens to modify? They must have HUGE problems with that counting, too!

As for "Acts of Faith" being the distinguishable trait of the army? Guess what? Distinguishing traits of plenty of other armies aren't used in "competitive" lists? What is supposed to be the IG "distinguishing trait?" What's that? An abunance of bodies and firepower using orders? That's the norm, right? Wait, no it isn't. It's MeltaVets in Chimeras with Vendettas. How about Blood Angels? They're supposed to be jump pack masters, utilizing their mobility and Descent of Angels, right? Oh wait. No. Their "competitive" lists revolve around tired razorback/predator spam. How about Space Wolves? Tenacity and counter-attacks, right? Oh wait. No. Long Fangs and Razorback spam again.

[lattd]

Finally, I pointed out the statistical properties of needing a 5+ for a faith ability. If we are going to add all sorts of crazy modifier like if the unit takes a casualty, has an IC or a squad leader we might as well leave the old system. It is less confusing.


Its mostly going to be a 4+ or less, plus we have seen no rules that say faith acts do not stack. We have seen rules in a bubble and as usual, everyone is complaining that the sky is falling. Yes Cruddace is a rubbish codex writer, but we still don't know points or wargear options.

[eldargal]

Lots of bodies and tanks is still the fluffy option for IG, and it still works well enough even if it isn't what a minority of players favour for tournaments. I want SoB to be a fun, fluffy army to play, and as it stands I wouldn't even bother using most of the Acts of Faith or half the units in the list. I couldn't care less how competitive it is, but I want to be able to field an army that fits in with the lore. A handful of useless acts of faith a turn doesn't really do it.

[Lancel]

I shot down the idea that you have a piece of wargear that you would have to include in your army to be competitive - assuming Faith is a necessary property of the army which it should be. When wouldn't I take this item, I DISLIKE choices being made for me on such a specific basis.

This made me think about the wargear miracle theory. It's not going to be much of an option if it's the only thing that makes the army viable. Kinda like how BoSL was pretty much standard equipment I mean what's the point in wargear options if you HAVE to have them?

[wallweasels]

You mean, aside from the fact that you want your army to be "like everyone else's." To me, this indicates MEQ.

I'll give you the BS 4, absolutely. But beyond that, shouldn't the basic Sisters have the profile of a guardsmens, with perhaps higher leadership? The fact that changing one stat profile adds "character and depth" is a bit ridiculous to me. So they're IG Vets? Thanks.

If you put the girls in transports, then they would need the potentiall 'null maiden' buff less, wouldn't they? Because they're more protected. From everything I've read, Sisters take to the field of battle on foot more often than in Rhinos. I disagree that it's ill conceived. It would allow a foot slogging Sisters army to be a ton more survivable. Not every army armor spams, despite what the tournament meta would suggest. And really? A gun line of psychically untargetable boltguns with power armour isn't distinguishable? No other army offers that.

So, how often is a Sisters player actually going to have to roll a 5+ for their AoF? Are there gonna be an abundance of squads without a leader? No? Well shoot. So their AoF roll is a 4+, or 50% chance? That's just unfair that a miracle is only going to happen half the time. And the modifiers being "too complicated?" Gimme a break. Dammit, I have to bring some counters now. No one else has to do that. Wait, what? DE use pain tokens to modify? They must have HUGE problems with that counting, too!

As for "Acts of Faith" being the distinguishable trait of the army? Guess what? Distinguishing traits of plenty of other armies aren't used in "competitive" lists? What is supposed to be the IG "distinguishing trait?" What's that? An abunance of bodies and firepower using orders? That's the norm, right? Wait, no it isn't. It's MeltaVets in Chimeras with Vendettas. How about Blood Angels? They're supposed to be jump pack masters, utilizing their mobility and Descent of Angels, right? Oh wait. No. Their "competitive" lists revolve around tired razorback/predator spam. How about Space Wolves? Tenacity and counter-attacks, right? Oh wait. No. Long Fangs and Razorback spam again.So what is it you are trying to actually say here Dooley? I mean you talk a lot but you haven't said much, no offense.
Are you implying in your last section here that we should just give up on faith being the distinguishing traits of sisters because "distinguishing traits...aren't used in competitive lists"? Is it possible that MAYBE someone might want the traits that make an army special to actually be USED? That sure is a strange thought. Since you seem just want us to abandon what was our namesake, just because other lists are poorly written and have to abandon their core concepts due to badly balanced units.
Maybe Long Fangs were meant to give cover fire while your counter-attack bolter force advanced forward...well some of thats true. Blood angels do heavily utilize their mobility...just not the jump pack part to much. So GW gets it half right...but never goes full circle on it.
I believe I can expect my rules to be useful, personally. Is that wrong? :o

Personally, I would love an all sisters on foot army to be viable. I ran an infantry heavy sisters army for a long time, usually with some mixed transported units. I found it worked because my LGS used some pretty hefty terrain that supported it. But when you play on a table that has a 4"x4" half inch tall mole hill for terrain...usually walking up 6" at a time isn't always best. You can be a marine in all senses of profile and not be MEQ because you are S/T3. S3 to S5 is what most weapons in 40k are, and that one point of toughness makes a heavy bolter from "pretty harmful" to "oh god why". its why Sisters have always been kind "miniMEQ". Not horde, not MEQ, just...between it. Lets call it "SMEH" or "Semi-Marine Equivalent Horde" :p I am proud to be a SMEH player.

On faith...honestly I hear about players saying they have a hard time understanding how many faith a sister player they have played has. HOW? Seriously I make it clear, I indicate dice that show the amount...and every sister player I have known has used some form to keep that obvious as well. The modifiers are not complicated here...but it is really boring. GW has done more annoying systems to remember: Like me trying to remember what buffs each of my ogre units have, or what my opponents chaos lord/trolls/chosen have for buffs from eye of the gods. Hell Pain Tokens are almost more bothersome to remember than the amount of faith points an army had. Keeping tabs PER unit is just silly.
Although as someone who spent a good year writing a fandex on C:WH, I always tried to make faith into three things: Easy to get off (it was a leadership test), Powerful in effect (they'd sway the outcome of a units fight), yet limited in quantity. Because of their finite nature you want faith to be MORE viable in MORE situations. The more choices the sister player has...the more tactics involved. If you had 5 faith points to use...but you had 10 situations to use it in, which do you pick? Save that squad or let them die to use faith on that other unit to wipe out that expensive squad the enemy has or gib their leader, etc. Kind of pointless to mention now, since usage is hardly going to be subject to debate. Especially since its useless in the enemy turn and you cannot plan for next turns faith usage due to the randomness of it.

[Nabterayl]

Lots of bodies and tanks is still the fluffy option for IG, and it still works well enough even if it isn't what a minority of players favour for tournaments. I want SoB to be a fun, fluffy army to play, and as it stands I wouldn't even bother using most of the Acts of Faith or half the units in the list. I couldn't care less how competitive it is, but I want to be able to field an army that fits in with the lore. A handful of useless acts of faith a turn doesn't really do it.
Out of curiosity, eldargirl, what is it that strikes you as unfluffy about this? Most of the Acts of Faith are not so much miracles as expressions of zeal. The statlines seem appropriate for a service made of human beings that has always de-emphasized CQB. The implied army structure matches up with what we've always known (with the possible exception of specialized dominion squads, which has always been a pet peeve of mine). We have Ecclesiarchical instead of Inquisitorial auxiliary elements. We have limited vehicular support, based on the traditional chassis for elite Imperial forces.

This all seems to me like it fits very much with the lore - if anything, moreso than the 3rd edition army of pseudo-sorceresses. Are you objecting to the fluffiness of what's presented, or how useful you think it will be?

[eldargal]

Unfluffy in the sense that there is hardly any point in bothering with AoF even in a friendly game, if you see what I mean. Instead of being an integral part of the army, helping seperate it from, say, a hypothetical Stormtrooper list, its just a mechanic one could easily ignore in most cases, for all the good it does you.

[isotope99]

The problem at the moment for sisters IMHO is that they don't have a real role in the 40K system that defines them.

Some examples:
Tyranids - Hordes and big monsters
Grey knights - Super elite marines
Imperial guard - Cannon fodder and lots of tanks (although veterans are too common for my liking)

I'd describe Sisters based on what I've seen so far as lame T3 salamanders with no Vulkan, drop pods, land raiders or terminators (i.e the best bits). Not exactly inspiring.

Having said that, the right wargear could still make a difference. If seraphim could take inferno pistols and hand flamers for example.

[Nabterayl]

Unfluffy in the sense that there is hardly any point in bothering with AoF even in a friendly game, if you see what I mean. Instead of being an integral part of the army, helping seperate it from, say, a hypothetical Stormtrooper list, its just a mechanic one could easily ignore in most cases, for all the good it does you.
Hmmm ... not to be dense, but I'm not sure I agree. I can't think of anybody else's "distinguishing characteristic" that is required to use. Space Wolves would be pretty darn good even without Counter-Attack, Red Thirst can't be relied upon, ATSKNF doesn't come up very often in my experience, at least, orders are useful but I don't think they're necessary, synapse can be largely ignored these days, and so on.

When I think of battle sisters, I think of them as zealous, not miraculous. Battle sisters who can rally better than space marines, celestians who can charge better than space marines, seraphim who can shoot better than space marines, dominions and retributors who are willing to expend massive amounts of ammunition, repentia who die like frenzied tyranids ... these are the sorts of effects that it seems to me should be the bread and butter of sisters' faith, fluff-wise. Power armor that can stop plasma cannons and power klaws virtually on demand always seemed over the top to me; I much prefer (from a fluff standpoint) the 17% chance that a sister who should have died doesn't.

I think it's premature to say that the various AoF we now have useless. Divine Guidance, Holy Fusillade, and The Emperor's Deliverance all seem comparable or better to me than the old Divine Guidance. Endless Crusade is something new and good, Spirit of the Martyr seems like a pretty excellent accompaniment to eviscerators ... with the exception of the loss of the 3++ switch, which always seemed to me the least fluffy of the 3rd edition Acts of Faith, I'm not sure I buy that the new Acts are useless. And useless or not, I'm certainly not convinced that they don't fit the background to a T.


The problem at the moment for sisters IMHO is that they don't have a real role in the 40K system that defines them.

Some examples:
Tyranids - Hordes and big monsters
Grey knights - Super elite marines
Imperial guard - Cannon fodder and lots of tanks (although veterans are too common for my liking)

The Orders Militant are to the Imperial Guard as the United States Marine Corps is to the United States Army. They have inferior armored support but even their basic infantry is better than the Guard's elite. They don't have the mobility or the special operations capability of space marines, but unlike space marines, they can and will smash you to bits, and nothing you can do will stop them from coming at you.

If space marines are the scalpel of the Emperor, and the Imperial Guard is the twenty-pound sledgehammer of the Emperor, the Orders Militant are the battle axe of the Emperor. A scalpel won't worry my mail, and a sledgehammer will crush me but only if you can hit me with it. A battle axe will still crush me and is a hell of a lot handier.

To put it another way, suppose the Imperium is attacking a large, well-defended target such as a fortified city. A lord general tells three Imperial commanders that the city must fall, because time is of the essence.

Space Marines
The space marine force commander says, "My scouts can infiltrate the city and I can assassinate the enemy general, or sabotage their water works."

The lord general says, "As always we value the assistance of the Astartes, my lord, but that will not cause the city to fall tomorrow. Can your battle-brothers not smash a hole in the main defenses for the guardsmen under my command to exploit?"

The force commander says, "They could, but we will not. I will not throw away the lives of my battle-brothers and the Chapter's war machines in so crude an assault."

Imperial Guard
The Imperial Guard colonel says, "My regiment will smash this city flat. Give me two weeks to prepare the assault and I assure you, the city will fall."

The lord general says, "We don't have two weeks. Assault the city immediately with what you have."

The colonel says, "Yes, my lord ... though I warn you, without proper logistical support such an attack has a low chance of success, and we will lose many men regardless."

Sisters of Battle
The Sororitas palatine says, "My sisters and I will lay waste these heretics' fortifications. We will attack tomorrow."

Somewhat surprised, the lord general says, "I thank you, my lady. Will you not suffer heavy casualties by launching a direct infantry assault?"

The palatine says, "My concern is not that my sisters may lose their lives, but that the Emperor's foes will lose theirs. Tomorrow we will send our dead to the Emperor's side on a funeral pyre made of this city's defenses, and your guardsmen can finish the heretics within - if they get to them before we do."

The space marines simply refuse to attack. The Imperial Guard attacks quickly and fails. The Sisters of Battle attack quickly and succeed.

[Fibonacci]

I am coming off the bench to add a few points about points.

First, think about the basic SoB strat as it is now. Get 12" away and unload rapidfire bolters. Any marine army can do that. Sisters also have a 3+ save like any other marine. So why are Sisters loath to go into assault?

S3 T3. It is that big of a difference. It means that vs a marine squad I am taking wounds on a 3+ and causing wounds on a 5+. Those one point differences mean that a Sisters squad will take twice the number of casualties. It is a small shift, but it is also critical one.

Sister troops do no assualt. Given the choice of rapid firing or fireing once and assualting, it is better to stand and fire. Currently Sisters do not come with pistols or grenades. You do not buy them frag grenades because they are not going to assualt. Bolt pistols are not an option and not missed because they will not be assualting. Those points are better spent elsewhere.

So now we see the new codex. Grenades and bolt pistols all around. Why? So we can die twice as fast in CC? Even without seeing the wargear or unit costs I can tell you those are points we no longer have the option to spend elswhere. They will be spent on CC gear for troops that will never assault. Every one knows the Sisters are poor in CC. It seems to me like R.C. thought he would help them out a little by equiping them for CC for us, but failed to realize that these few things will not change the fact that SoB troops will still die twice as fast due to combat mechanics, not lack of gear.

Witch Hunter players, I feel for you. You got shafted. Not only did your effectiveness get reduced but your story lines are kind of flat now. I can see if they wanted to take SoB in the direction of a horde army. They can be a lot of fun; I never met an ork player that did not love his army. But this whole thing is kind of ... amaturish. Renaming old models and reducing choices in both unit types and abilities is just. I'll say it. It's ****ed up. Lazy. thoughtless. The last PDF did nothing but reduce your choices from the printed codex and now this WD slashes it even more. Why not just make Sister of Battle a troop choice for Grey Knights and drop the whole facade of actually working on a Witch Hunter update?

[Fibonacci]

celestians who can charge better than space marines

10 elite Cel vs 10 tac SM:

Celestines get 2 attacks, plus one for pistol and CCW. 30 attacks.
WS 4 vs WS4 so 15 hits.
S 3 vs T 4 so wounds on 5+ for an average of 5 wounds.
3+ armor save means 1.6 average unsaved wounds.

SM get 1 attack pluse one for pistol and CCW. 20 attacks.
WS 4 vs WS 4 so 10 hits.
S 4 vs T3 so wounds on a 3+ for an average of 6.66 wounds.
3+ armore save means 2.22 average wounds.

Elite vs the most basic troop. Celestines take about 39% more casualties. If you want to compair charges it gets worse. A basic SM causes 56% more damage than the elite Celestines. And this is with the 2 attacks the Celestines get in the WD codex.

What's the chance that a Celistine model will cost about 60% of a basic SM?

[Melissia]

Amusing. Ogres get bold text, and Sisters are a side note "well, we couldn't find anything ELSE to put in here..."....
It's frustrating to me that you find it so hard to be civil without lobbing out the requisite insult. I made my comment purely because everything he said indicated that he basically wanted a female marine army with acts of faith. I wasn't responding to you in specific.

And I don't really find it hard to be civil so much as I have no desire to be civil to the people who continually argue that Sisters are MEQ despite all logic and reason. My opinion of them is lower than my opinion of the turd my cat laid on the carpet this morning.