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SO, I'm playing with the idea of building a small Ecclesiarchy crusade force based around 9 Penitent Engines. I'm thinking around 1000pts to start. The force would be Ecclesiarchy-themed rather than Battle Sisters. However. I've never played serious Withchunters before and wondering if anyone had some ideas/answers. I'll be using all my old Cawdor and Redemptionist models, and a hell of a lot of scratch-conversions.

Unallowed units - Exorcists, Immolators, Battle Sisters of any type, Cannonesses, Officio Assasins

Allowed, fluffy units - Priests, Arco-flagellants, Penitent Engines, Death Cultists (Zealots??), Repentia (More Zealots??), Inquisitors (High-ranking priests, cardinals, etc)

Not sure how to represent the regular Frateris Militia yet - Inducted Guard? Inq Stormtroopers?

More to the point, I'm aware that all my 'allowed units' are generall considered the rubbish ones from the codex. Any ideas on how to make Priests, Arco-Flagellants and Repentia actually useful in an army? I'm thinking I'll need some anti-tank, but then maybe nine crazy dreadnought ccws is enough? Dunno.

Any ideas???

Aren't Repentia a kind of Battle Sister?

Commander Endova wrote:Aren't Repentia a kind of Battle Sister?

yeah but they're sisters who've been bad and sort of expelled from the order. (or something like that) They don't wear power armour and are pretty fanatical so I guess they fit in with the OPs theme.

I don't know how to make the theme competitive though, I played with tooled up inquistors for a while, and although their retinues looked cool they never performed well one the battlefield. I think that the way to make it competitive might be for MSUs of inq stormtroopers in chimeras, not sure though. As i'm not sure if this would make the fluffy army wanted.

Frateris Militia would not necessarily be well trained, or particularly good at killing stuff, being basically an angry assembly line worker on a battlefield of genetically enhanced super warriors.

So probably I-IG. Or even conscripts.
The idea for the army sounds really cool though.

If you're willing to break your set rules and go for fluff.

Grab two battle sister squads. Make them temple guards or something to the resident high priest.

This will give you access to mobs of Zealots as per the previous white dwarf chapter approved article.

You can get 20 zealots per troops for a little over 100 points if you dont equip them. They make great cannon fodder and would allow you to somewhat funnel your penitent engines to where you want them to go by positioning them so you can control their movement... at least to a certain degree.

Thanks for the comments, guys

Commander Endova wrote:Aren't Repentia a kind of Battle Sister?

They are, but since they're only 4+ save, they could easily be some sort of counts-as crazy priest Eviscerator squad

Crystal-Maze wrote:Frateris Militia would not necessarily be well trained, or particularly good at killing stuff, being basically an angry assembly line worker on a battlefield of genetically enhanced super warriors. So probably I-IG. Or even conscripts.

I was originally thinking IG, but a basic 20 man blob with a couple of flamers starts at 150pts. Might not be any other option, though.

Voldrak wrote:If you're willing to break your set rules and go for fluff. Grab two battle sister squads. Make them temple guards or something to the resident high priest. This will give you access to mobs of Zealots as per the previous white dwarf chapter approved article.

Does anyone have this article? I'm could make it pre-vandire and come up with some Frateris Templar, I guess, which could be counts-as sisters. I just don't want the whole army to go down that route. I like the idea of a crazy zealous horde...

So yes, do you know where to find this article?

Thanks!