40k in 40 mins SoB force

[rbryce]

hi all, playing 40k in 40 mins tomorrow at the local GW, and was wondering what advice people can give. ill be playing sisters of battle, and my opponant is (likely) to be playing blood angels. if you dont know the rules for it, though most of you will, its basically 400 pts, 1 troop compulsory, no more than 2 wounds on a model, AV cant exceed 33(front, rear and side combined), maximum 3+/4+ armour for infantry etc. my list stands at:

Palatine w/ book, bolt pistol, power weapon

13 battle sisters(2 flamers, frags) with vet. superior(bolter, sarissa, frags)

4 seraphim(1 hand flamers, frags/kraks) with vet. superior(bolt pistol, pwr wpn, meltabombs, book)

the plan is to run the palatine with the battle sisters squad for general purpose stuff(Anti-infantry) and use the seraphim as mobile support/anti armour/distraction. any ideas or advice is helpfull, unfortunately, i cant add a second flamer to the seraphim as i dont have another model for it(usually like dominions, though many dont). im not a competative player, and i only normally play with some friends, thisll be my first game at a store against people i dont know that well, so it should be fun.

[tjkopena]

I don't have any experience w/ Sisters of Battle, unfortunately, so take this with a grain of salt, but a few thoughts:

- I don't think flamers are generally that useful against Marines (Power Armor). Unless the SoB versions have different stats (S4 AP5), the 3+ armor save is too strong, negating the usual flamer advantage of ignoring cover. They also don't usually have tons of guys bunched up, so even if you can get close enough to hit with the template, you're not taking down a ton of guys and it's tough to get that close to get the hits without either being assaulted or being practically forced to assault yourself.

- At those point values, getting locked up in combat is huge. Since there's only a couple units, having a few tied up in combat is a big deal, and can really shut down the game. It's not like a normal sized game where you might have a couple combats at any given point, and a bunch of other units doing their thing. If you have a couple units locked up here, that's your whole army... If you're playing on a smaller table that's all doubly true because they'll hit each other that much faster. On top of all that, if they're running Blood Angels then they're almost definitely looking for the assault and will be on top of you even faster with Assault Marines or overdriven Rhinos. I don't really know enough about the Sisters to comment beyond that, but I think you should really be ready to stand up in the assault phase or negate it---deploying in corners as far away as possible, ridiculous firepower, grouping units together, etc. In my experience close combat is an even larger aspect of small points game than its already arguably disproportionate emphasis in normal games, so you need to think about it more.

[rbryce]

the flamers can be made ap1 on 6's, and the seraphim have there own "automatic" hit and run move at the end of any given cc phase, so im hoping to tie them up a bit with that. i did consider slightly mech, with a squad in rhino, and a dominion squad in another, with a cheap JP palatine, but its a very tight squeeze.

[tjkopena]

That all sounds reasonable to me. 400pts is really tough, there's just so little room to play around with different options. Definitely fun though.

[Nabterayl]

Probably too late for this, but especially if you anticipate playing Blood Angels, I question the value of the frag grenades. Blood Angels are likely to come to you, which means you could drop the frag grenades and pick up, say, an eviscerator instead of a power sword, doesn't it?