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Quick and dirty math hammer, Power Axe seems to still be king of all situations except against T5, where sword and axe would both be wounding on 5+ . Fortunately this toughness value is reasonably uncommon.
(EDIT: Sword would also be better against T8 and above where Sword/Axe both wound on 6+)

The below chart of unsaved wounds assumes all 4 of the Canoness' attacks hit (pretty likely given WS2+ with rerolling 1s)




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Also Combi-Plasma seems like a great choice for the Canoness' ranged weapon as you can supercharge it and reroll the 1s using her ability. Not sure how to work out the overall probability for two dice (rapid fire), but it's a <3% chance to roll a one followed by another one.

Jim, there are two reasons we are saying this.

Firstly, in the Transports section of the core rules, it states that:

'embarked units cannot normally do anything or be affected in any way whilst they are embarked. Unless specifically stated, abilities that affect other units within a certain range have no affect whilst the unit that has the ability is embarked.

As Acts of Faith occur at the start of your turn (before the movement phase where you disembark), this means:

- No Act of Faith on units inside a transport
- Embarked Imagifier cannot affect any other units with its ability
- You have to disembark and wait till the start of your next turn to use the Imagifier's ability

Secondly, and this is up for some debate, it is unclear whether the Imagifier can be used to grant an Act of Faith to a vehicle itself as the wording simply reads 'Pick an <ORDERr> unit within 6" and perform an Act of Faith with it'. Some people are reading this as bypassing the restriction in the Act of Faith Ability which states 'one unit from your army with the Acts of Faith ability can perform and Act of Faith chosen from the following list'. Vehicles do have the <ORDER> keyword but do not have the Act of Faith ability, nor have they in previous editions, so I would very much expect this to be FAQ'd very soon as not possible with the Imagifier. Same for Celestine's 'Saintly Blessings' ability (vehicles do also have the ADEPTA SORORITAS keyword.




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The Ynnari soulburst ability from last edition is a good precedent in that people also interpreted that the same way to grant vehicles a soulburst action when they did not inherently have this ability. They've reworded this ability in the new edition to be more explicit that vehicles can never perform a soulburst, and I full expect them to do the same with Acts of Faith.

Taikishi wrote:


Also, on the matter of eviscerators and power weapons (because Rubenite's data doesn't include chance to miss):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HnXYfQ5IYq6MZFIe3hD1ISOY1KAaglqM-y9Za0kwldY/edit#gid=0

Awesome stuff Taikishi! Thank you so much for doing the hard work and sharing it with us. That's certainly a comprehensive spreadsheet!

Whilst I do still think the Axe is the go-to, the Eviscerator is certainly a fun choice! The D3 damage per hit is is where it really shines, as so many 2+ saves have an Invul. It's perfect as a character killer. Expensive though, so you may wish for her to be accompanied by a small squad of Celestians to increase her survivability. Add a priest for the +1 attack, and a Power Axe on the Celestian Superior (who has 3 attacks base) and you have a pretty mean CC unit starting to come together - could this be a combo worth taking?

On the subject of Celestine, has anyone thought about or playtested only taking one Geminae over two?

In my theoryhammer, taking one seems like the better choice, as you could spend 55 points on 5 Seraphim instead of 50 points on one Geminae, and they have:

- More wounds (5 vs 2)
- 5++ reroll (thanks to Celestine's buff + Angelic visage) is better than 4++
- You can stick them in front of Celestine so her unit cannot be targeted (as they have Character keyword)
- More versatility as objective holders etc.
- Good synergy with Celestine's 6" bonus Act of Faith

 pretre wrote:

Drider wrote:
The problem I see with it is that once Big C takes a wound you then have to allocate wounds to the wounded model in a unit. She'd be taking all the wounds even if she had one or more geminae. you'd then have to spend you're AoF on healing her up to full so that you can allocate wounds to the geminae.

I, and i think most people, plan on running Big C with both geminae and by 10 seraphim. It seems pretty mandatory to take to take Celestine and it seems even more mandatory to bring the seraphim to tank for her.

Never allocate to Celestine if there are Geminae up.

Hmmmmm I see what Drider is saying - a common scenario will be:

- Celestine's unit gets hit with enough firepower to kill Geminae and wound Celestine
- Your next turn you revive Geminae, but as Celestine is still wounded any further hits will have to be allocated to her before Geminae as per core rules
- You can mitigate this somewhat by using AoF to heal D3 wounds, but you'd need to restore her to full to be able to allocate to Geminae again.

This to me just emphasises the value in taking the Seraphim in a ring around her so that her Character unit is never the closest target. I've got 6 Seraphim in my current list, but with big C handing out a leadership buff to 9 a blob of 10 would probably fare reasonably well under morale.

Hmmmm reading the Sniper Rifles rules I'd say they allow you to target a unit with the CHARACTER keyword even if it's not the closest unit. But as the 'Celestine' unit consists of the Saint Celestine and 1-2 Geminae Superia models, I'm pretty sure you can still allocate wounds to your models as you wish (other than wounded first). In close combat as well your opponent could target the 'Celestine' unit but you could still allocate to the Geminae.

Hospitaller is a good idea but I don't see it happening in practice, especially at the END of the movement phase. She's just not fast enough to keep up with Celestine or you'd have to waste a turn moving Celestine closer to her. I don't think it would work as a tactic, but certainly an opportunistic heal or resurrection of a Geminae would be pretty cool.

As an aside, I'm loving the discussion happening with this edition in that there seem to be a lot less 'auto-includes', 'must-takes' and 'optimum/most efficient' load-outs for squads and characters. Almost everything seems perfectly viable and each with its pros and cons. Storm Bolters vs. Flamers is a great example.


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On the subject of this 'rerolls occur BEFORE modifiers' business, I've noticed that makes the Seraphim's Angelic Visage less useful with Celestine's buff:

On your first invul roll you'd have to still reroll the 5s as the reroll triggers before the +1 comes in. Kinda sucks.

That's...freaking genius. If you do end up in that situation, use your 2+ AoF to revive Celestine and then as it's still at the start of your turn, use Celestine's AoF on another unit within 6". I love it!

Healing Tears then activates at the start of the movement phase. So if you are down to a one wound Geminae you can revive Celestine on 1 wound and the other Geminae. Those will be some delicious tears from the opposite side of the table!

(EDIT: Reworded as you can't AoF the same unit twice)

For the Celestine Hospitaller trick it's worth noting that your remaning Geminae on the field will need to be UNWOUNDED. The wording of the HEALER ability is such that you can only resurrect a model in a unit if you are unable to heal D3 wounds on a wounded model.

Spirit of the Martyr however lets you choose between healing and resurrecting.

We're uncovering some quality stuff here. There was talk of starting a new thread a couple pages back, any interest in doing this and collating the info either in the OP or in a Google Doc or something?

What Warlord trait is everyone thinking for her?

All three seem like perfectly viable choices - though as we tend to favour MSU I'd probably only use the leadership buff if I was running her with 10 Seraphim.

The 6+ 'FNP' one - if you are hit by a multi-damage weapon do you roll once for everything or once per damage/wound? Reads like the latter.

 Hoboanarki wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

You roll the 6 for each and I would take that one every time, but that's because I tend to use her as a wrecking ball more than a scalpel. I also am still not 100% sold on seraphim, especially with how wonky the 5++ rerollable is.

Beacon of faith adds one to the invulnerable save, rather than the invulnerable save ROLL, so it isn't actually affected by the re-rolls before modifiers rule since it's not actually modifying the die roll.

Hmmmmm, debatable - we really need this FAQ'd. I checked for similar wording and being in Cover states 'add 1 to models' saving throws...' and assuming throw=roll I do see that the seraphim wording omits either of these words. You could argue it's the same difference as 'add 1 to your to hit rolls' vs. 'add 1 to your WS/BS'. But clarification from GW definitely required.

Or ideally I'd rather see Angelic Visage worded as 'you can reroll failed Shield of Faith Invulnerable saves for this unit'

 vipoid wrote:
Bear in mind that the reroll page in the rulebook says that you don't add/subtract any modifiers until after the reroll (if applicable).

So, if you get to reroll 1s, but have -1 to hit from something, you wouldn't reroll 2s. Those would just miss.

This is true, but what Hoboanarki was getting at is that it's possible that Celestine's Beacon of Faith adds 1 to the Invulnerable Save Ability, not adds one to the saving roll made against that ability. It's wording simply states to 'add 1 to their shield of faith invulnerable saves'.

It's unclear whether this is a modifier to the save roll or a buff to the characteristic itself. I can see a case made either way.

R E P R E S S O R. Rules now out in Index: Adeptus Astartes.

Holy Emperor, this changes EVERYTHING. Guess I'm going to have to convert a third!! The only reason left to take a Rhino is that it can transport Ministorum infantry and it's marginally cheaper.

But what to fill it with? Dominion obviously, but Meltaguns? Flamers? Storm Bolters?

With the Vanguard move of 12+D6", first turn 12"+D6" you're looking at a threat range from deployment of 38"-48" on 5 -1 to hit Meltagun shots and 34"-44" on 5D6 flamers :O. People are going to hate us.


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Or 10 Melta/Flamer shots if you load 2 Dominion Squads into a single one...