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good point melissa. again sisters have the upper hand. love it when you make my case for me

No, I'm telling you you have no damn clue how to play the faction. You have repeatedly shown you don't know what you are talking about, and yet you continue to insist that somehow wasteful use of Faith Points proves that in some insane, unlikely situation Sisters might be broken, and yet you have no actual proof.

Alex, Oscarius
what steam dragon's math shows is that the cannoness is more likely to wound the blood thirster than the blood thirster is to wound the cannoness. Effectively in this combat the canonness is a 2 wound model, so that helps her; all the same a model that costs half or less what a blood thirster costs has an excellent chance of destroying it in close combat, or at least locking it up. But like Melissa said you can just blast it with the exorcist so why bother.

Run the numbers on her in combat with any of the best close combat stuff in the game. I promise that for every one you find that can beat the canonness strait up I can find you three who will get wiped, no contest; in either case the model she's fighting will almost certainly cost more than she does. This is because she gets a 2++ for free, is immune to instant death (the 1st time, whoopity, how many times are they going to fail a 2++?), because she carries a high strength (potentially str 8) power weapon, all for a fraction of the cost of the opposing model, which very often cannot get better than a 3++, is not immune to instant death even once, and cannot use such a high strength weapon for fear of getting wiped before getting to use it, which the sister does not have to fear, because, again, 2++. The numbers, both in points and in odds, are all on her side.
AF


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Well Melissa I'm sorry you're feeling so pissed off and emotional that you can't keep the conversation civil. Really. I am.
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:yes. if she drops her armor of faith or whatever she dies.

sisters have enough faith points to keep it up though. If you play 5 sister squads + 2 cannonness + 1 seraphim squad + 3 exorcists they have 10 faith points, adn they get them back every time something dies. Assume they take 50% casualties, they have 15 faith points to spend over the course of the game. Yes they have to keep using them but sowhat? It's a combat with a blood thirster it's important, and they have plenty of them. As for hand of the emperor or whatever she doesn't actually have to use it; it helps but it isn't crucial.AF

First you want to make it a one-on-one battle and when your tactics fail at that you make a scenerio that's more to your liking. In the one-on-one the Canoness gets a whole 2 faith points. That's good for 2 phases or 2 abilities for 1 phase. So, at best you can use any ability twice during the duel. Now to be fair when the sister dies she gets some more points for her faith pool but I think it's fair to say that Elvis has left the building at that point.
As for the scenerio above what are you giving the bloodthirster to work with at an equivalent value? Or are you just saying that an entire roster of sisters shouldn't be able to annihilate even the toughest demon who's on his own? Also you infer that whenever any sister dies the player gets faith points which is absolute bunk. Sure if you want to give up a canoness (note the one "n") or a sister superior then you can gain points but you are usually hurting a unit more by removing a key character than helping in that particular fight. Basically you seem to want to prove a point that isn't there. A blood-thirster is more than a match for a Canoness in a duel and a single blood thirster is no match for a company of sisters we all know this so what is your point?

AbaddonFidelis wrote:what steam dragon's math shows is that the cannoness is more likely to wound the blood thirster than the blood thirster is to wound the cannoness.

No, it doesn't. It shows that the Canoness is more likely to wound the Bloodthirster than vice versa in the first Assault phase, and only if the Canoness charges. In every following Assault phase she does less damage than the Bloodthirster, and she strikes last, meaning she'll get one less Assault phase worth of damage in than her opponent.

AF: I wouldn't call that an excellent chance, I would say 2, maybe 3 wounds on the bloodthirster before the Cannoness gets it, meaning that you pretty much brake even (half a bloodthirster for a whole cannoness) but you've also lost 2-4 faith points (pending on success, including the +2 for a dead hero)

So you mean that a special anti-MC/character hunter is doing good killing...MC's and characters? How about a decent sized ork mob or hormogants, how about things that can deep strike deep in your army with s6+ weapons. Heck, a couple of battlesuits w. Plasma have a decent chance of killing the cannoness off in a single shooting phase (unless you activate the power, in which case they'll shoot at something else)

Anyway, I'm not saying that the Cannoness is BAD, far from it. But I think you overestimate her, and the whole army, slightly. It seems that you think that Exorcist's and "rending" flamers will handle everything, which I don't really agree with.

And yet, you still have yet to actually prove anything. Your constant, barely coherent arguments do nothing for your cause.

Yes, a Canoness might be able to hold a Bloodthirster's attention for two turns, if she gets lucky and you spend eight faith points on her for it, out of ten in total. Two turns. Out of five or more.

And the rest of the Sisters army has to suffer with having no faith points against a full fledged Daemon army that can rip them to shreds in assault (Daemonettes, any Khorne unit), and even has nasty shooting units which can rip them to shred in the shooting phase, too (Flamers of Tzeentch, Soul Grinders, etc). ALL of which deep strike, meaning that your exorcists are effectively doomed to getting side and rear shotted to death from any Tzeentch units.

And with the entire army having Invulnerable saves, there's always a 1/3 chance of your exorcists shots (3.5 shots average, 66.7% chance of each shot hitting, 83.3% chance of each shot wounding, leaving roughtly 1.9 wounds on average) being saved. 1/2 chance for Tzeentch creatures, all of which can rip open your transports with a Bolt of Tzeentch and are relatively cheap to boot.

Then of course Nurgle creatures all have high toughness, FNP, and are even cheaper, making them resist bolter shock and flamer spam (the primary means of dealing wounds to infantry models). Khorne creatures will still probably strike first (they're at least I4) and they have power weapons. Slaanesh creatures will definitely strike first and have rending, and sometimes even Hit and Run.

And if Sisters are spending all of their Faith Points on tying up a single monstrous creature, that means they have to rely entirely on exorcists, bolter shock and flamer spam to get rid of everything that's left. You can't, say, assault a Tzeentch unit and use Hand of the Emperor to try and overwhelm it in an assault (lots of S5 attacks is better than bolter shock when the Tzeentch creatures are WS2). Or prevent a Sisters squad from falling back off the board with Light of the Emperor. Or use Divine Guidance to let your squad have a better chance of wounding a Bloodcrusher or Daemon Prince.

Once again, you have no clue what you are talking about. You do not know much about Sisters. Or Daemons for that matter. Or 40k.

In b4 Melissia locks another thread for lack of civility.

Melissia wrote:And yet, you still have yet to actually prove anything. Your constant, barely coherent arguments do nothing for your cause.

Yes, a Canoness might be able to hold a Bloodthirster's attention for two turns, if she gets lucky and you spend eight faith points on her it, out of ten in total. Two turns. Out of five or more.

Who is having coherency issues?

@ Melissa- As one who is mainly lurking, I would still would like to ask you to knock off the personal attacks. They interfere with the discussion, damage your credibility and usually lead to de-railing the discussion to the point of you adding another locked thread to the long list of ones ruined by your vitrol.

SpitfireArsonist wrote:In b4 Melissia locks another thread for lack of civility.

What? So far all I have seen her do is argue. Well. pointing out that someone's wrong and that their arguments are inane isn't a lack of civility.

focusedfire wrote:

Who is having coherency issues?

@ Melissa- As one who is mainly lurking, I would still would like to ask you to knock off the personal attacks. They interfere with the discussion, damage your credibility and usually lead to de-railing the discussion to the point of you adding another locked thread to the long list of ones ruined by your vitrol.

"She done locked my thread she did!"

Leo
yes I assume the presence of other elements of both armies. If it were a strait up fight we'd have to have 250 points of sisters minimum, which, again, favors the sisters side.
AF


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Oscar
well if you just look at the averages sure. Remember though that the blood thirsters 4++ will allow some things through that the sisters 2++ will block; ie were talking about whole wounds here not fractions of wounds.

I'll grant the blood thirster example isn't as heavily in the sisters favor as I said; but that their damage averages out so close to each other when one costs just over half what the other costs is to me indicative of an imbalance.
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:Leo
yes I assume the presence of other elements of both armies. If it were a strait up fight we'd have to have 250 points of sisters minimum, which, again, favors the sisters side.
AF

No it doesn't.

With the way you have your Canoness kitted out, the most you could afford is a five member Celestian squad, which you couldn't really upgrade. This reduces your chance of getting the Acts of Faith you want to use, making them more vulnerable, and since you only have three faith points you better not fail any of them-- once they run out, the squad is dead. And because they aren't jump infantry, they won't be getting the charge.

Then your almost automatic passing of the Faith point test becomes a lot more murky. Now you have to account for how many extra sisters you have and you have to base the test on that number. But why not make the Thirster 300 points (with options) since a really supped up Canoness cost about 200 and give her a small retinue. If you played it out ala kill team the Thirster would probably do fairly well considering it would be down in number of attacks and wounds and the sisters can concentrate their attacks. I'm not sure if it would win but I can practically guarentee that there won't be many sisters left on the board by the end.

AF:

Well, my fantasy clanrat champion have killed a dwarf thane with re-rollable 2+ save too.

In these kind of situations (i.e. da interwebs) I think you can only do these one vs. one fights with averages, as the dice is always random.
Anyway, I don't think the imbalance is that great. Remember that the Canoness in this case is pretty much a MC/Character hunter (Like you said, 2++ save, immune to ID, s6-8 weapon) so she should do rather good against a bloodthirster, even if it's a stretch to try to kill a "full health" one.

Melissa
the last time I adressed your arguments in detail you completely ignored them. You'll do the same thing here so why should I bother? If you want to have a serious conversation that 1000+ word post I wrote you, not your cheap jibes and insults, needs to be the starting point.
AF



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Oscar
if she's going to be that good she ought to be coated appropriately. For my money I'm against anyone getting a 2++ under any circumstances whatever. It makes for degenerate game play.
AF

That's because many of your "in detail" arguments I have already disputed or refuted several times in this thread, and multiple posters aside from me have done much the same. As I said, I do not feel like repeating myself. When you present something new, I respond.

But I will continue to ignore the more banal and tiresome parts of your arguments which have already been refuted.

AF:

Yes, I have to admit that a 2++ save is OTT, in any way.
Luckily I can only think of 2 other things that have them (DE Special Item, Ork Special character) and one thing that is better (fortuned Eldrad). And as with all these things it 1 model per army who has it and not one is completely failsafe.

And we play a game of dice, meaning that that 1 will come up sooner or later.

Edit: 3'rd time I've had to edit in an "AF:" to make it clear who I'm speaking with...

But then, over-the-top units are the norm for 40k anyway.

Deep striking land raiders, longfangs able to target multiple units, being able to move your opponents army around, most vehicles in the IG codex, the doom of malantai...

Every army has something which is OTT. It adds flavor to the game. And since every army has something, it doesn't necessarily break balance.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:I'll grant the blood thirster example isn't as heavily in the sisters favor as I said; but that their damage averages out so close to each other when one costs just over half what the other costs is to me indicative of an imbalance.

Only because you are incorrectly assuming that 1 wound inflicted on a Bloodthirster has equal value to 1 wound inflicted on the Canoness. In a 1 on 1 match, the Canoness will only inflict about 1.6 wounds on the Bloodthirster before dying, which only represents half of the Bloodthirster's survivability.

And you're still talking about expending your entire army's supply of Faith points on this one combat.

@AF:
The blood thirster example is a bad one, admit you were wrong about it and move on.

@Everyone else:

I think you guys are missing AF's larger point. The SoB hero can be on par with most codex's close combat heroes for a fraction of the cost, (albeit you will need to spend 2 or more faith points to do it.)

And its precisely because of faith points (which are essentially free) that the SoB army can be amazing. Again noone is claiming "broken", but the SoB army gets essentially free game changing abilities. And their only drawback is that their squads can only take flamers and meltas... Well that's all my guard army takes anyways so no dice there.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:Melissa
the last time I adressed your arguments in detail you completely ignored them. You'll do the same thing here so why should I bother? If you want to have a serious conversation that 1000+ word post I wrote you, not your cheap jibes and insults, needs to be the starting point.

In detail? The only thing that has been derived from your arguements is that a Canoness that costs about half the points of a Bloodthirster can wound it and tie it up in close combat for two turns if she gets the charge.

For my money I'm against anyone getting a 2++ under any circumstances whatever.

Oh noes! However shall I deal with those Over-powered terminators!

Red_Lives wrote:@AF:
The blood thirster example is a bad one, admit you were wrong about it and move on.

@Everyone else:

I think you guys are missing AF's larger point. The SoB hero can be on par with most codex's close combat heroes for a fraction of the cost, (albeit you will need to spend 2 or more faith points to do it.)

True if you want your Canoness to be on par with other heroes for 1 turn. After that you are seriously digging into the rest of your armie's fath point reserve, which pretty much kills their survivability.

And its precisely because of faith points (which are essentially free) that the SoB army can be amazing. Again noone is claiming "broken", but the SoB army gets essentially free game changing abilities. And their only drawback is that their squads can only take flamers and meltas... Well that's all my guard army takes anyways so no dice there.

Not exactly free, and also play an integral part in your army.
AF IS claiming that they're broken, or at least overpowered. The Acts of Faith can be exploited, and are very annoying for players who don't realise that acts of faith must be made before any shooting takes place, but they're not game changing, they're just boosts to certain units at certain times. They're not an Ace in the Hole, Acts of Faith are (essentially) pick-me ups that can increase the effectiveness of SoB squads.
BTW, you don't see any usefulness in Lascannons?

@EF

Lazcannons aren't that good. They are a long range anti-tank weapon. In this edition if they are shooting at a vehicle with cover they become essentially useless. Since cover reduces their chance to destroy a vehicle even more. The only time I ever take lazcannons in my guard is on vendettas and everyday I take more and more Valkyries and less vendettas. In my experience meltaguns are the king of AT. (Since it will pen better, and if intelligent the opponent will not receive cover from terrain) Also SoB have an exorcist which is really good because of that AP1 at smashing transports open, leaving the meltas to do more important jobs of heavy tank hunting. (Anything AV13 or greater)

Also, I said essentially free not exactly free. Faith points are not calculated into the cost of any SoB unit. Making them better than they should cost. (Granted their transports cost too much so in today's environment it evens out)

SoB are not a top tier army because they lack a handful of useful tools needed to be so. They lack any useful scout/infiltrate units. And they lack a "Fast" vehicle killer (No Attack bikes, Speeders etc)

Red_Lives wrote:Faith points are not calculated into the cost of any SoB unit.

Veteran Sister Superior.

Alex
we've been over the faith point thing; every time I give my explanation it gets ignored, then two posts later someone brings it up again. Just scroll up; I'm not ignoring the point, Im just tired of repeating myself.
AF


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Red
yes it wasn't the best example. Admitted. That they are even comparable shows a gameplay imbalance, since the canonness is so much less expensive.


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EF
it was before the whole blood thirster conversation. Scroll up.
Terminators don't have a 2++ they have a 2+
AF


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Oscar
yes that's all I'm saying. It's over the top. And free :|

Melissia wrote:

Red_Lives wrote:Faith points are not calculated into the cost of any SoB unit.

Veteran Sister Superior.

Except no, because all 3rd ed and early 4th codexi had an optional purchase upgrade to have veteran sgts. The benefit was higher LD 1 more A and access to the wargerar section. That's what you pay for with the vet sister, the faith point is still a free bonus.

No unit in the SoB army pays for faith points, none.

LAST WARNING IN THIS THREAD.

KEEP IT CIVIL, OR YOU WILL FACE.... sanctions.

Thanks!

Red_Lives wrote:Faith points are not calculated into the cost of any SoB unit.

Neither are IG orders. Or Space Marine Combat Squads.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:2. Yes in an assault MEQ whip sisters, but since sisters do the same to marines in shooting, it's a question of points cost. 11 vs 16, the sisters are more efficient in this fight. Simply put the sisters can afford to trade like that, the marine player cannot.AF

I've seen several people make this point. However, it is not quite that simple. For 11 pts. you get bubkis. You have to add a Vet, power weapon, maybe a storm bolter, 2 specials or special/heavy, the imagifer (required really), and let's add frag and kraq to be as MEQ as possible and a squad of 10 costs 214 pts. (That is no book or others extras); plus 50 for a rhino.

I am not intending to continue any arguments, but feel it is important for those who are not so familiar with the army of its realities. So that would be 264 points to put 10 Sisters on the table with mobility and 2 meltas. Marines ar not nearly as costly. Just a point.


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AlexHolker wrote:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:what steam dragon's math shows is that the cannoness is more likely to wound the blood thirster than the blood thirster is to wound the cannoness.

No, it doesn't. It shows that the Canoness is more likely to wound the Bloodthirster than vice versa in the first Assault phase, and only if the Canoness charges. In every following Assault phase she does less damage than the Bloodthirster, and she strikes last, meaning she'll get one less Assault phase worth of damage in than her opponent.

One other thing to consider. I, at least, have never seen someone play a Canoness with an eviscerator. I only see blessed weapons. They are by no means bad, making her S5 with one reroll. I think she is going to be in serious trouble against a thirster; unless help comes pretty quick.

In short: not broken, kinda gimp in some areas, excel in others. Bulk fire does the job as it does with most other armies. Discussion solved, moving on to the next one.