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Hi. I'm new here and in the process of building up my Sisters force. I've come up with a 1850 2CAD MSU list i think i'm going to aim for in terms of purchases, but i'd be interested in seeing what you guys think of.

(Combined Arms Detachment 1)
HQ
Canoness [Bolt Pistol, Chainsword, Rosarius]

Troops
2x Battle Sister Squad [4x Battle Sister, Flamer, Heavy Flamer] Sister Superior [Bolt Pistol, Boltgun]
Sororitas Rhino

Fast Attack
3x Dominion Squad [4x Dominions, 4x Meltagun] Dominion Superior [Bolt Pistol, Boltgun]
Immolator [Twin-Linked Multi-Melta]

Heavy Support
3x Exorcist

(Combined Arms Detachment 2)
HQ
Canoness [Bolt Pistol, Chainsword]

Troops
2x Battle Sister Squad [4x Battle Sister, Flamer, Heavy Flamer] Sister Superior [Bolt Pistol, Boltgun]
Sororitas Rhino

Heavy Support
3x Exorcist

An option would be dropping one exorcist for wargear, combi/relics/etc.

I wasn't really thinking about it in terms of spamming AV13, but rather leveling out the randomness of the exorcist D6 shots. The theory being that the more exorcists there are the more likely it is to get the average 3.5 shots across 6 of them. or the average 21 shots out of a possible 6-36 range.

I don't think line breaker will be a massive issue. Once all the transports have disgorged their contents that's potentially 4 empty Rhinos on a table where they are the lowest priority target, any one of them being able to make an 18" move to grab Line Breaker or objectives.

My experience with Seraphim has been a little mixed, mostly bad but, if they Deep Strike they get shot to bits on the turn they come in. If they don't die out right and they get charge 4x D3 hand flamer hits is really good in overwatch. But yeah they can be a useful tool in your toolbox. if i was to extend this list up to 2000pts I'd add in a squad or two for DS objective grabbing or suicide DS on something that needs to die or be tied up for a turn.

++Edit++
Another option for extending up to 2000pts would be add a Priest or swap a Canoness for Jacobus and take an Ecclesiarchy Battle Conclave with 2 Crusaders and 3 Deathcult Assassins in a rhino.

i like the idea of the VSG for turn 1 protection maybe even the Knight, it's worth taking into consideration and having a think about.

Having the second group be an Allied Detachment wouldn't work because an Allied Detachment cannot be of the same faction as the Primary Detachment.

I think you're probably right about VSGs. after having a think about it, VSG strikes me as the type of thing that you'd only take if you had a left over points and if you've got that many points left over you'd probably be better off reworking your list.

I'm also not convinced about if Celestine is really worth the points. In the right situation she has the potential to really shine but most of the time i feel that she's mediocre at best. If you run her solo or even with a small squad of seraphim bubble wrap she tends to attract unwanted attention and tends to be high up on the other guy's target priority list. Leading to situations where she's running around the place trying to stay out of trouble long enough to do something useful, or forced into a bad situation where she gets crumped, stands up finding her self in an even worse situation where she doesn't have her bubble wrap and gets cumped again. I think to be truly worth the spend she's got to be in a meaty CC unit, i think the ideal would be something like blob squad death company with jump packs if your playing allies. which in it's self is a lot of points to sink into 1 squad and IC which kinda defeats the purpose of MSU despite how potentially good it could be.

Don't think i like the model but on the subject of kit bashing a conversion for a peni, how about something as simple as a dreadknight with pewter peni driver rather than the marine in the baby carrier.

On the subject of Aerial problems; I've been giving thought to putting a few points into an Inquisitorial Detachment specifically to give Prescience to Exorcists/Rets. If your talking about only hitting flyers on 6s then re-rolling "all failed To Hit rolls" is pretty huge. Or even for your Rets on that turn you really want to Rend something to death, although you'd want to get Litanies into the Ret squad to guarantee that the AoF goes off.

Setup for the detachment looks like this:

HQ
25 pts Inquisitor (bare bones and ordo of choice)
Elites
18 pts Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband: Psyker, Acolyte, Acolyte.
18 pts Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband: Psyker, Acolyte, Acolyte.
18 pts Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband: Psyker, Acolyte, Acolyte.
79 points

You'd get 3+d6 dice for manifesting powers and if your lucky enough, get prescience off on 3 targets.


And.... if you really wanted to abuse it, the henchmen could each take Land Raider (240-250pts +X for vehicle equipment) or Valkyrie (125pts + X equipment) as Dedi Transports. You could also add in Servo Skulls(up to 3, 3 pts each) on the inquisitor if you want some scout/infiltrate protection or if you Deep strike within 6" of one you only roll 1D6 for scatter.

upgrading the Inquisitor to a Psyker (ML1) and adding 2 sevo skulls, gives you a 4th Psyker and comes out at 115 points for the detachment exactly the same as a 5 girl BSS squad with F/HF in a Rhino.

I tried out the the dirt cheap triple psyker henchmen tonight and was actually really surprised about how fun and effective it was!



Prescience on HB Rets is supper effective! On the turn they popped their AoF, prescience meant that all 12 shots hit, which made a huge difference to how many rending wounds i inflicted. It doesn't feel like you get as much bang for your buck from prescience on Exos and my opponent didn't field any flyers so i couldn't test out the "poor man's skyfire". The extra couple of dice on top of the community dice to deny the which came in extremely useful as my opponent was using a combination of Precog and shadow fields to give his warlord a re-rollable 2++. Despite this, a clutch deny the which roll (with my entire dice pool) bagged me a turn without the re-roll and i was able to drop his warlord.

But with all that being said it is incredibly fun and satisfying to declare "this psyker is manifesting prescience on X' then rolling 5 dice (about 80% chance to manifest and 20% chance to peril) and just not giving a f**k if the psyker's head explodes. it just feels like thats how sisters would use psykers. 'Use' being the operative word, as psykers are a tool of the Imperium. you don't care if you break a tool, you just go and get another.

 MrFlutterPie wrote:

Also I am confused on the template ruling. Can we place different templates all at once so we don't lose out on hits due to casualties?

Nah, it's atrociously worded but it means; fire the heavy flamer, then resolve those hits then fire the normal flamer and resolve those hits, then if you want throw a grenade and/or shoot bolters with the rest of the girls.

FAQ as intended or FAQ as written

they lose their drop pods but scout moves are done after seize rolls, scout 12", move 6", disembark 6" shoot 12" (melta at 6") so that's a 30"-36" threat bubble before turn 1 starts. If you go second you can always scout them behind cover or off to one flank. sure it's not as good as a drop pod but it is by no means bad.

I've have jokingly had this conversation with guys at my club, the general consensus is that strictly speaking I could if i wanted to, but if i did then i would definitely be considered 'that guy' and it's a bit like using the word of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. It's widely accepted that the Inq/GK/AS codexs are, for lack of a better term, the latest and most recent edition of that codex. Not to mention weather or not it would stand up at tournament. i'd be interest to find out if someone tried it at an ITC/ETC event what the ruling would be.

However I am literally just home from my club after beating Tau with a 1500 pure sisters list. so i'm in a good mood. We were playing the draft FAQ and the only thing that really effected the game was the 1 grenade in combat ruling. In the end it didn't make much of a difference as the only time it came up was when i was drip feeding 5 girl squads into a unit of 3 Riptides to try to lock them in combat for a turn.

I was having a think about how viable it would be to put together a Sis-Quisition death star and came up with this. I was wondering if you guys would take a look and see what you think.



This is the one of the cheaper bare bones versions and basically what it boils down to is a 16 model unit with, 3 crusaders to tank with. the majority of of the attacks coming from 7 death cult assassins. 4 priests with P.Mauls for hymns, zealot, re-roll wounds/saves and smash for the back up priests (one with litanies). 2 Inquisitors for a rad/psychotoke grenade and psyker upgrade for buffs and free force weapons. all packaged in a 16 seater Land Raider (picked up by either making the battle conclave a henchmen unit or adding in henchmen unit to grab the dedi transport), with Celestine (for fearless and hit and run) tucked in behind the LR as it moves up the table who then attaches to the unit when it disembarks.

I think the concept is reasonably sound, has some nice synergies going on and is comparatively cheep when compared to some other death stars. the main thing i haven't made up my mind about though is what the best psychic table to roll on would be. There isn't one single primaris power which stands out as amazing. Prescience is only half value because of the combination of Hit and Run and Zealot and everything else that's decent is a random roll to get.

it might also be interesting to play around with the inquisitors a little, drop the psyker upgrades, swap one out to an ordo hereticus and give him a Null Rod to turn off the buffs on say a superfriends death star, rad grenade them down to T4 and then go to town with a shed load of high initiative AP3 attacks.

Or maybe they're making the FAQ forward compatible with soon to be releases. New Sisters codex and 7.5.5 ed or 8th ed rules confirmed!

Half life 3 confirmed as well!

Not many people will be in my boat but if the fire point on the immo comes through it's going to be a real annoyance for me. I used the spare turret that comes on the sprue when you buy an Exo on top of a rhino in a kind of pseudo razorback configuration as my Immos. I'll wait and see what happens with the FAQ to find out if i'm going to have to 'fix' these, but a few options spring to mind, conversion(still trying to think of a non gak looking way to do it), recasting or 3D printing the top plate.

I've played a similar sort of game for the campaign at my club(only restriction was is no special characters). i don't have the list anymore so can't give the exact wargear, but off the top of my head at 1500 points i brought:

Double CAD
2x Canoness,
4x BSS, F, HF, 2 rhinos, 2 immolators
1x Seraphim, 2x2 hand flamers
2x Exorcist
1x Ret (squad of 10), 4x HB, simulacrum,
3x Penitent Engines (Individual units, not squaded)

My only problem was he brought 2 flyerant who smashed Rets by T2. although I did force a failed grounding check on one of them who then got ripped apart by a penitent engine.

Here's a few pictures from the game.
http://i.imgur.com/ethU2mm.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UMsUPfi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/cNSoVuJ.jpg

Penitent Engines are really good at what they do. The problem is the seldom get to do it as they lack mobility and are really hurt by Open topped.. I think more people would run them if they were Elites rather than Heavy Support and if they had a better profile, I'm in the camp who thinks they should be MCs.

Posted on the bolterandchainsword forum
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/322048-sororitas-dreadnoughts/

If you're playing a casual game and your opponent is ok with it you can figuratively do anything you want.

With that being said there's no way this would fly in any competitive or semi competitive environment. The profile is so old it doesn't even have Hull Points on it's stat line, it does have Structure points but it's covered up by an unfortunately placed picture.


D'oh, i was a bit to slow on the post!

Or for 40 points you can get Promethium Relay Pipes that do the same thing only better.

The double CAD, six Dominion rush list is real!

Call it, Domino Rally.

you can do it at 1400 points if you take a couple of 70 point ( BSS, 5 girls, HB) units as your mandatory troops and use bare bones Canoness'. Or you can fit it into 1600 if you kit out the troops with flamers and rhinos and a bit of kit on the Canoness'.

TBH i don't see this as a reflection on dominions but more a reflection of the randomness of exorcists.

Weather or not your bringing an Exo or Dominoes, if your opponent wants them dead on the alpha then they'll be dead on the alpha. With that being said one of the few ways to combat "the crazy number of alpha strikes people can and do bring" is to break up the points to go hard MSU and points wise an Exo is the cheaper option.

 Jancoran wrote:
A min/max squad will just die. So i dont know what you EXACTLY mean when you say MSU

I don't know how to reply to that MSU comment without coming off as condescending and I apologize in advance.

I mean Multiple Small Units, not just small in model count but small in points cost as well. The minimum amount of models and points to make the unit function effectively. Yes they get die if they're targeted but that's the point, any excess wounds are wasted and because you've spent the minimum amount of points on the unit you can put the points into getting another unit. If you take a unit of 10 models and they get attacked by something that does 10 wounds then they all die. But if you have 2 units of 5 models and that same something that does 10 wounds attacks one of those units then it dies, but you still have 1 unit of 5 models remaining. The points you spend putting those extra 3 models into a unit of dominions is not much and, yes, it does give the individual unit a bit of staying power. But if you take those extra 36 points and you add it up across how many units you could have hand another entirely separate unit. The same argument extends to Dominions Vs Exorcists if you are looking at them doing a similar job. The way I play my Dominions is 165 points (5 girls, 4 melta and an Immolator) Vs an Exo for 125 points. 40 points is not much but it adds quickly across multiple units.

 Jancoran wrote:
there are ALWAYS casualties in 40K. the trick is to try and make sure you control which one and how many.

As you say there are always casualties in 40k and the trick is to control those casualties. The way you're talking about doing it is to spend a few extra points into each unit as ablative wounds to give those individual units more staying power. The way i'm talking about doing it is to build it into your list by taking as many small units as possible. So that when a unit dies it has the minimum possible impact to the total points cost of your army. Both of these strategies is equally as valid as the other and comes down to personal preference.

At no point did anyone say anything about not giving them a dedicated transport.

PanzerLeader wrote:

I would go with list two. The Inquisitor adds more to the army. I'd also make him Xenos and give him the good grenades.

For the guard, I'd keep Yarrick but convert two of the veterans squads into a platoon with a blob squad of 30-50 guardsmen and 5 power axes. Put Yarrick and the Inquistor in there. That lets you bubble wrap the Baneblade more effectively when needed and gives you solid backfield line.

With a blob squad like that try to find at least 65 points for 2 priests and give one litanies. 50 man guard blob with zealot for re-roll hits on the first round, hymns for re-roll wounds and re-roll saves.

I understood what you said, It was a reiteration of what had already been said about spending a few extra points to protect 40 points of special weapons versus using those extra few points across several units to squeeze in another unit as a platform to take more special/heavy weapons. which didn't need a reply because i feel like I'd already given my opinion in a clear and concise way.

You segued into to talking about about artificial model restraints in our hypothetical scenario, "So only if you dont wish to take a rhino" I automatically equated this to mean 'what if i don't have X rhinos, i only have X-1', which I disregarded out of hand because it's a non-issue. From there into transport costs, which for a army that's widely accepted as best when played as a Mech army, most people would automatically factor in the cost of a transport into the unit cost when building a list. Then you started getting mad about the Gladius strike force. That last line was borderline incomprehensible, but i took the gist of it to mean 'if you were buying a unit without a transport it would probably be a ranged unit, HB/Melta/MM - BSS/Rets/CS or an Exorcist as that is all the ranged synergy we have and then you're back to square one'

On a related side note. Most of the meaning in communication between people happens non-verbally via tone of voice, body language and facial clues. Only 7% of meaning is in the words that are said. Without these cues it can be very hard to convey (when speaking) and interpret (when listening) the meaning of pure text format communication. When you type a word in full upper case you may think you are putting emphasis into what you're saying but it can easily be interpreted as holding hostility.

Honestly Exorcists are just so unreliable I'm starting to think that the best way to play them may well be to dangle them out to draw fire away from the rest of your army rather than actually hiding them away in the back line. I mean at least if the dice are cold and their shooting sucks they could potentially draw fire away from transports and they look a lot more threatening in the middle of the table.

The formation bonus looks nice and they could be used to help the notorious SoB melee short comings.

For min/max MSU it's probably the way to go.

putting aside their anti psyker stuff their closest counterparts are repentia or a unit of deathcult assasins. Vs repentia, they're more durable and better at killing troops and are more durable with a 3+, while repentia are better at killing vehicles. Vs deathcults, they're better at killing anything with a 2+ but are potentially not as durable as DCA with a few crusaders to meet shield with 3++. DCA are just better at killing things with a 3+
all these VS MCs are going to be pretty even but repentia are probably going to win out with them having the highest strength when rolling to wound.

I like the idea of a 10 girl unit of SoS with Executioner greatblades and maybe 1 or 2 flamers for overwatch protection. plus a couple of priests for hymns for zealot, reroll wounds, reroll saves.

That's a nice collection you've got there.

When i look at shots like that i keep thinking about an offer i have to buy a friends sisters collection to add to my own. If i did i'd have in the region of 5000 points. I kinda want to, but i'm not sure if i really need to have 8 penitent engines or 5 exorcists or 7 rhinos.... although having 6 immolators would be nice and i could always use more special/heavy weapons... oh and seraphim and repentia, i need more of those...

Damn it... my head and wallet tell me no but my heart keeps telling me yes.

What lists do you guys think do the best in an ITC environment? I've got a fairly set 1500 list but i've never really been able expand it up to 1850 in a way i'm happy with.

I usually play:
Celestine
4xBSS(5, F, HF), rhino
3x Dominion(5, 4xMelta), Immo(TL-MM, DB) (2 LH)
3x Exo

My standard for 1850 is to fiddle with the vehicle equipment a little, split it into double CAD and add in:
Canoness(MoO, 4++, power weapon)
3x Penitant Engines (sometimes squaded, sometimes not)

it just feels that for an extra 350 points i'm not actually bringing that much more to the table when compared to other factions who say they feel restricted at 1500 but all their flashy toys really start showing up at 1850.

Thoughts on running a naked Canoness to feed slay the warlord in order to save points and trigger martyrdom?

We all know that T3 is paper thin but just what is the most reliable way to suicide an HQ as quickly as possible.