Adepta Sororitas 1st Impressions

[Sly]

I hit a Screamerstar with two Condemnor Boltgun shots. All two-four Heralds die, regardless of the whole "2+ re-rollable invulnerable save" shenanigans. That's already about 500 points dead for your opponent, and another 200 or so when the Screamers lose their psychic buffs. And this is from two 10 point upgrades on my basic squad sergeants - Veteran Superiors. Pretty much any psyker in the game is dead meat against Sisters of Battle.

To be fair, however, I think that Screamerstar is going to keep an alternate mode where the Heralds hang back with Horrors squads until some of bolts are spent, giving you only one Psyker per squad to hi. I certainly wouldn't set up all 4 in one unit if facing Sororitas. It will certainly hurt Screamerstar as its usual Deathstar configuration won't be effective until the bolts are spent, but it's not as if Heralds, Horrors, and Screamers are bad units on their own. If you need to upgrade first to a Veteran sergeant in each squad in order to take that Condemnor boltgun, for 6 shots you're spending about 120 or so points, which hit 4 times and kill 2 Heralds (plus 4 Horrors if they're holed up in Horror squads). That's solid given that each Herald is around 130 pts, but it's not an Auto-Win button.

[DarkLink]

You only really need to kill the Herald with the Grimnoire. Once you've done that, it's not a particularly difficult unit to deal with anymore. It's the rerollable 2++ that makes it so annoying.

[Sly]

"If the unit suffers the Perils of the Warp, or any other attack that specifically targets Psykers, it is resolved against the character, if there is one (and he is alive), or against a random, non-character model in the unit, if there is no character (or he is dead)."

That is from the Brotherhood of Psykers rule, which the Horrors have. It seems that it clearly indicates that the squad upgrade leader (if any) eats the Perils, then after that, you start killing Horrors (since they are the only non-character models in the unit). So you can clearly hide the Heralds inside a Horror squad.

I think that I'd just set up a backup squad of 16-20 Horrors in a Screamerstar list, and drop the Horrors into it if I'm facing Sororitas. At this point they can either run the Horrors as the Heraldstar unit (with Forewarning/Grimoire), or try to protect them a bit by keeping them at max range (remember that Sororitas don't really have much long-range anti-infantry, they would have to close to Flamer range to really start threatening a lot of Horrors) while still using Forewarning/Grimoire on the Screamers unit even if they don't have the Heralds.

In the end, I think that a good Daemons player would still make it competitive, though clearly it's a setback for the list.

[Redhat88]

Hurray for Sisters! Seems like they've gotten a well deserved major update. Tell me though, why wasn't something like this possible for Black Templars??? Would a Legion style anti-psycher marine army truly not have a spot?

[Lord Krungharr]

If another model had the Grimoire, they'd have to focus on killing that first, and in general a Herald shouldn't have the Grimoire, as the bearer cannot be benefited from it.

Furthermore, Screamers are not bad on their own. Mainly they provide an 18 wound super fast meat-shield for the Heralds. I'm also very unimpressed with psychic shooting that's not AP3 or better, it's been shut down plenty of times against me, and seems like all the stuff I want to target with it has plenty of toughness and good armor saves. So I wouldn't mind running just the Screamers on occasion. They're plenty fast to assault those units with the Condemnor bolters so they can't shoot anything!

Also, how about Burning Chariots? Those provide (albeit crappy) protection for a Herald of Tzeentch. Can't target passengers! Of course plain bolters could take it out; soooo crappy.

Do the Sisters of Battle have psykers at all? I always liked that pipe organ tank.

[DarkLink]

That is from the Brotherhood of Psykers rule, which the Horrors have.

Assault it, and that unit becomes useless for the rest of the game. Screamer's close combat abilities makes that deathstar work.

[chicop76]

Ok.

After thinking and looking at my daemon list I realized that I can simply put my true names in a khorne hound squad with my khorne herald as the bearer. At first I was going to try to adt fkr the just in case, but the combi weapon isn't a huge factor against almost 40 daemonettes and 20 hounds.

I am thinking of adding screamers to my army as well. Which means only Fateweaver and one Tzeentch herald is the onky two who will worry about the combi weapon.

It does however deter me even more to do a mono tzeentch list if a decent amount of models have the anti-psyker weapon.

I think overall Grey Knights should worry about it more than Daemons should.

As a side note I am not making my Slaanech herald into a psyker.

[Aegis]

For squads of psyker's that lack the "Brotherhood of psykers," how are the perils handled? Would every psyker in the unit be hit with a perils, or does it default to the manner in which the brotherhood operates. For that matter, are there units of psyker's that lack that rule, as that would make this question a moot one...

[Kyban]

For squads of psyker's that lack the "Brotherhood of psykers," how are the perils handled? Would every psyker in the unit be hit with a perils, or does it default to the manner in which the brotherhood operates. For that matter, are there units of psyker's that lack that rule, as that would make this question a moot one...

I'm pretty sure most of them describe how they take the perils, GK squads act like Brotherhood, IG PBS takes d3 if the overseer is alive or all if not, GK inquisitorial squad psykers all die.

[daboarder]

Ok.

After thinking and looking at my daemon list I realized that I can simply put my true names in a khorne hound squad with my khorne herald as the bearer. At first I was going to try to adt fkr the just in case, but the combi weapon isn't a huge factor against almost 40 daemonettes and 20 hounds.

I am thinking of adding screamers to my army as well. Which means only Fateweaver and one Tzeentch herald is the onky two who will worry about the combi weapon.

It does however deter me even more to do a mono tzeentch list if a decent amount of models have the anti-psyker weapon.

I think overall Grey Knights should worry about it more than Daemons should.

As a side note I am not making my Slaanech herald into a psyker.

thats not going to help against a condemnor, the unit takes a perils. which ,means regardless of how large your meatshield is that psyker is taking a wound.