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http://natfka.blogspot.com/2017/05/sisters-of-battle-leaks.html

Sisters of battle leaks from the other day. Not sure how I feel about the changes to AoF.

Here's the first leak that has some of the rules written out.
http://natfka.blogspot.com/2017/05/8th-ed-sisters-of-battle-revealed.html

update:
Here's an image leak with the points list (from the dakka new's and rumors thread) as sisters are part of the ministorum
http://i.imgur.com/ZlNw2NT.jpg

Think outside the box,
We soulburstin' now.

Not sure myself either.

Kind of disapointed by the fact that Sister didn't get a boost in CC outside of being able to use bolt pistols which is an advantage only for the Seraphim who will probably be the next MvP unit of the Sisters of Battle in this eddition in my opinion. I would have hoped for a to hit on 3+ on regular Sisters and an option for a Chainsword.

The new Act of Faith are pretty usefull. Shooting twice in a round with Retributors and Dominions can be very nasty and the others are far from being bad. The only problem is that it doesn't scale with the size of the army. A single allied squad of Sisters of Battle will be able to use one such ability every round without much problem making it very powerful. In a 2000 point match, it's much less impressive. The Imagifier can mitigate this a little bit, but it's not that impressive. This seems to indicate that GW intend to camp Sisters of Battle as an "allied" or auxillary army. You pick a few units of them to make a small, but extremely efficient support force.

Celestine and the Canoness seems like pretty solid force multiplier while also being good combattant. Celestine is not as OP as she used to be while still being very powerful. The ability of lead the righteous sounds particularly good to me.

While this isn't bad stuff so far, its pretty much held doen by the fact that Sisters of Battle have a very limited model range and options to work with.

Looks quite positive

Points reductions to basic Sisters, Canoness etc

AOF - whilst limited in usage seems powerful - Celestine can AOF move, move again and then charge - so 24" + 2D6

This seems to indicate that GW intend to camp Sisters of Battle as an "allied" or auxillary army. You pick a few units of them to make a small, but extremely efficient support force.

Agreed - however if they become a go to Auxilary force then people will want to buy - which is a good thing

 Mr Morden wrote:
Agreed - however if they become a go to Auxilary force then people will want to buy - which is a good thing

If they had reasonnably priced and plasti models, a lot of Imperium of Man players would be interested in grabbing a squad or two (especially if they already have Celestine), but I don't see a lot of people doing it at the moment. The irony is that the constent rumors of new models for the SoB comming soon makes people interested in buying one or two squads dely their purchase since nobody wants to line up $90 and than see a bunch of better, cheaper models being released a few months later. If GW was clearer on its intention on that point, it would help their sales.They should announce an estimated release date for them if they have the intention of doing so within a year or say clearly that they don't intend to release any new Sisters of Battle until at least (insert year).

epronovost wrote:
Kind of disapointed by the fact that Sister didn't get a boost in CC outside of being able to use bolt pistols which is an advantage only for the Seraphim who will probably be the next MvP unit of the Sisters of Battle in this eddition in my opinion. I would have hoped for a to hit on 3+ on regular Sisters and an option for a Chainsword.

The new Act of Faith are pretty usefull. Shooting twice in a round with Retributors and Dominions can be very nasty and the others are far from being bad. The only problem is that it doesn't scale with the size of the army. A single allied squad of Sisters of Battle will be able to use one such ability every round without much problem making it very powerful. In a 2000 point match, it's much less impressive. The Imagifier can mitigate this a little bit, but it's not that impressive. This seems to indicate that GW intend to camp Sisters of Battle as an "allied" or auxillary army. You pick a few units of them to make a small, but extremely efficient support force.

Celestine and the Canoness seems like pretty solid force multiplier while also being good combattant. Celestine is not as OP as she used to be while still being very powerful. The ability of lead the righteous sounds particularly good to me.

While this isn't bad stuff so far, its pretty much held doen by the fact that Sisters of Battle have a very limited model range and options to work with.

Problem, they've added negatives to allying with a different army.

 NenkotaMoon wrote:


Problem, they've added negatives to allying with a different army.

In many cases, I would say the benefit outweight the risk, especially when it comes to Sisters of Battle. There is a price to pay to have auxillaries in your army to jugulate abuse, it doesn't necessarly a bad decision in most cirmcomstances.

Even at that, it's forfeiture of a bonus, rather than a direct penalty. Therefore, if you gain more from adding the allies than you lose in command points, they're still a good bet.

Scaling up AoF would be.. painful at times if you scaled it up, added Celestine and Imagifier and had several units fire twice per turn.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Scaling up AoF would be.. painful at times if you scaled it up, added Celestine and Imagifier and had several units fire twice per turn.

I expect that's why it's somewhat difficult to spam Acts of Faith.

The picture in the first link is blurry, but it really looks likethey're using the same models that are currently out.

I hope this is not the case. After all it took 20 years for any sort of codex to leak, lets hope it doesn't take 20 more for models.

I think the Canoness is a bit of a missed opportunity as she doesn't fight very well (her profile will always look like a joke compared to the equivalent marine characters, and she will never be given the wargear to compensate because GW hates us), and doesn't support very well either (seriously, just 6" bubble?). She could have had Celestine's free Act of Faith ability, or maybe something that boosts Simulacrum (makes the AoF happens on a 3+ or even a 2+) and then she would have been a real big part of the army that you want to use to the best of her ability and the opponent wants to kill her and stuff. But here she seems useless!
Not as useless as that stupid, stupid, STUPID PANT ON HEAD STUPID OH MY GOD HOW CAN THEY BE SO STUPID dispel ability that literally doesn't work on any spell with difficulty 6, and only works on a difficulty 5 spell (easiest difficulty there is as far as I know) if the spell was passed with exactly a 5, and then we roll a 6. That rule might as well not exist…

Otherwise the rest seems okay or good. The acts of faith seems a bit hard to use sometime. The close combat one is the hardest because it requires you to START YOUR TURN in combat, so if you charge some unit, you can't use it in your charge turn, then you can't use in their turn, and THEN, after 2 rounds of combat, IF they didn't retreat, you can finally use it… The shooting one means you need to shoot before moving so not always optimal. The move one is easy though, and can make Celestine fly at plane's speed! I don't know if she can advance both during the AoF and her movement phase for some 24+2D6 movement! And the blade is assault so… that doesn't even prevent her from shooting, without suffering the usual -1 to hit drawback because autohit!!!

How the acts of faith work is still not very clear to me but that's my interpretation though.

Relying on Acts of Faith is a gamble now.

There's an 83% chance you get one act of faith in a turn. With Celestine, you get an automatic one in addition. With a 40 point Imagifier, you get a 50% chance to get an additional that can only be applied to a model within 6" of the imagifier, while the imagifier is alive. For reference, battle sisters are 9 points apiece now-- for the cost of two imagifiers, you can just buy another squad of battle sisters with meltaguns-- less if you're going SBs or Flamers.

I'm thinking Hospitallers and Dialogous will be far more valuable to Sisters than Imagifiers or Acts of Faith. The former has a 3" diameter aura applying to every squad in range; each squad rolls a d6 and there's s 50% chance they'll regain a lost squaddie. The ladder has a 6 inch "reroll failed morale checks" aura, which is very good for its cost. These two characters will make non-mech Sisters much more durable, far moreso than imagifiers will. And a MSU mech sisters list has difficulty using imagifiers, as they don't apply to infantry in transports-- and disembarking from a vehicle is in the movement phase, while acts of faith are before the movement phase.

That said, imagifiers are basically 4 wound Celestians, while hospitallers and dialogous have far more limited armaments. So an imagifier can add an additional bolter to bolter shock, but hospitallers and dialogous can only add to melee-- where they're not particularly very good (dialogous having -1 to hit, while hospitaller uses strength 3 even if it gets -1ap).

So, my opinion? The additional characters are nice, but you should bear in mind their limitations, and plan around them, and don't be surprised if they don't make a big an impact as you might expect for their points costs. And of the new characters, Hospitallers and Dialogous will be far more valuable.

 Melissia wrote:
The former has a 3" diameter aura applying to every squad in range; each squad rolls a d6 and there's s 50% chance they'll regain a lost squaddie.

From what I could read it only works on a single squad, that you can chose between all in range. So a bit less cool…
All the turn it does nothing are going to feel so bad.

While I like most of the list, it would appear they went full r****d with regard to the Shield of Faith ability to Deny the Witch. I haven't read all of the psychic powers, but so far the lowest warp charge value I've seen is a 5+ and since DtW requires you beat the enemy's result, the only time they will *ever* get to use it is if their opponent happens to roll a 5, and then they will only deny it on a natural 6. If the power is a 6+ or better they can't even roll for it. Seriously WTF? I honestly cannot think of a much worse rule than that.

EDIT: I counted the psychic powers. Assuming my calculations were correct there are 49 total psychic powers (48 from the armies plus Smite) of which 7 are WC5 and 1 is WC4. So Shield of Faith will only work on 8 of the total 49 powers and then only 1/54 of the time. I sure hope the rule is a typo, otherwise it's essentially pointless.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
The former has a 3" diameter aura applying to every squad in range; each squad rolls a d6 and there's s 50% chance they'll regain a lost squaddie.

From what I could read it only works on a single squad, that you can chose between all in range. So a bit less cool…
All the turn it does nothing are going to feel so bad.

Ah, you're right, my bad. But the same could be said of Imagifiers-- both only wokr 50% of the time. I guess only Dialogous are truly reliable support units...

I just want tomsay that I don't feel everything that Sisters have is bad, but I do have a ew key issues with what we're seeing. Basically if I don't gripe about it's probably fine. That or I haven't spotted the issue yet.

1. DCA vs Repentia.
For some strange reason both of these units run 17ppm and yet DCA are 2 for 1 power and Repentia are 3 for 3 power. I can't see why this is a thing outside of bad proofing.

2. Acts of Faith
Let's start from the top: an army's core mechanic should NOT be tied to a random die roll to work. AT MINIMUM the army-wide AoF should have been automatic and the Imagefiers should pop theirs on a 2+. This gives the army a chance to fail using mulitple AoF without crippling the army's ability to scale with game sizes.

I mean it's not like they didn't tie our scaling to a lone model with a handful of wounds shose ability doesn't work from inside of vehicles...no, wait, that's EXACTLY what they did. And that alone was enough to balance the army getting access to more AoF per turn.

I swear, if any Marines get the AoF abilities as CT they don't to roll to use I may burst a blood vessel, climb a church and start preaching aout heretics,

Am I understanding the general leaks properly when viewing the following?

Imagining this as I read through, together in a Rhino:
Uriah Jacobs, reroll to hit on charge (Zealot, himself), aura 6" +1 Leadership, aura 6" +1 to attack characteristic (War Hymns, Ministorum / Militarum)
Canoness, aura 6" reroll 1's to hit (Sister's Order)
Mistress of Repentance, aura 6" reroll advance and charge moves (Sister's Order, Repentia)
And 7 Sisters Repentia, all charging a large something, means (not counting Overwatch losses, etc) ...

21 Repentia Eviscerator attacks at S6 ap -2 Dmg 2 with re-rollable charges and re-rolled 1s to hit
4 Neural whip attacks at S3 ap -2 Dmg 1, with re-rolled 1s to hit and +1 to wound on low leadership.
6 Canoness chainsword attacks at S3, ap 0, Dmg 1 (assuming stock wargear)
5 Uriah Jacobs chainsword attacks at S3, ap 0, Dmg 1, re-rollable to hit...

So, a potential 36 attacks and 57 damage (improbable in the extreme, but just speaking to max damage numbers as I am not mathammer enabled)? Above data acquired from leaks at http://imgur.com/a/LrwVm.

I don't mean this sarcastically - is that good? Is that an improvement of potential vs synergies in 7th? I see similar potential with Celestine and Seraphim in which Seraphim would get the +1 to invl saves near her, which would then be re-rollable 5+ with Angelic Visage. That all seems cool, but I feel like I'm missing something important, or I'm placing too much value in potential, etc...