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GFdoubles wrote:

 Vilgeir wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:

2) even if they build a list competently those lists don't match up evenly one list is getting protection from rerolls which doesn't help much if your not running vahl due to low points and protection from MW spam which you are not using. The other is gaining bonus to A and bonus to AP both of which help. BR will therefore have the advantage. The compromise is to try minoris and take +1 to hit in the first round of combat and can only be wounded on 1.2 which will provide protection vs a number of choices you may make. You should be winning 95% of mirrors based on the above to facts alone.

I know the conversation moved on a bit from this, but I think you confused Valorous Heart for Order of our Martyred Lady in this point. VH disables wound rerolls and providers a 5+ wound shrug on mortal wounds. I believe the poster's friend was playing Martyred Lady, who instead gain a miracle dice at the end of any phase in which one of their units were destroyed, and +1 to hit for any unit below starting strength.

What you said about VH is insightful and accurate though.

Yea I noticed this during the conversation too, but I understood the point. The bottom line is there is a reason that Bloody Rose is head and shoulders above the other Major Orders right now and my opponent is playing their OoML list excellently regarding our secondaries despite playing a less optimal Order and being relatively new to the faction (that and, as I said, I have been telling him tactically what moves to make usually in order to have the best chance of winning or drawing the game). My inexperience with Bloody Rose has been showing in these last few games too and I am too focused on wiping units while denying my opponent points instead of just scoring more of my own secondary objectives (Leap, Shrine, and Sacred Grounds usually). I will be playing my buddy again soon and I have already told him I am going all out this time, playing my best and not helping him nearly as much as I have been over the last few games. That combined with at least three games of BR lists under my belt should help me best whatever list he comes up with now. I am determined to at least get better at playing BR in case I do enter some local tournaments soon.

Thanks for pointing this out though!

While BR definitely has the advantage, output is pretty much irrelevant in mirror matches. Whether your Repentia are doing 2 attacks at AP-3 or 3 attacks at AP-4, either way there are only 3 units in the army that MIGHT survive them(Morvenn, Celestine, Paragons). Also, unless you brought paragons or a castigator, your shooting is mostly irrelevant in the mirror as well.

A BR list and an OoML list played against each other, both piloted perfectly, should go to the BR player 8 out of 10. HOWEVER, any mistake you make will be punished extremely harshly just by the sheer nature of the matchup. Screw up one movement phase and fail to pickup one turn of shrine or leave a juicy target for a long MD charge and you'll dig yourself a very deep hole only your opponent screwing up will be able to dig you out of.

The mirror is a very fragile state of affairs.

I agree completely that any minor mistake in the mirror will be punished quickly and brutally. If I look at the 4 games we have played the mirror match so far, I won the first based on sheer experience as it was only his second or third time playing the army and actual missions aside from just practice games learning the basics. The second game he deployed without realizing I could move the Rhino with Repentia for 2CP at the start of the game and I made him pay immediately, he pretty much called it by the end of Turn 2 after I wiped out about 60% of his models and had a massive points lead. The third game (which happened right after the 2nd as I let him redeploy) pretty much went to him as soon as I failed a very early 7" Repentia charge with a reroll (only had low MD so nothing I could do to help that unfortunately). I stayed in the game as much as I could but the final score was around 100-60 in OoML's favor. Granted I was not playing that tourney list in this game, and purposely tried some different things that I was pretty sure would not work but wanted to see how much they would not for myself. The final game was that "draw" we played last week, but again, on further review it turns out that I narrowly won in that final turn about 64-62 or around that point total give or take some miscalculated points throughout the game, as I said it was messy to say the least.

So if you simply look at those 4 games my BR has a record of around 3 out of 4 or 75% of the games. This is an incredibly small sample size and means almost nothing but there is no doubt that the BR lists are winning a majority of the time against OoML even if you take that draw as kosher and give my BR lists a record of 2-1-1 instead.

Something else that is just such an outlier are that in some of these games wild things are happening like a Mortifier with Flails putting out about 30 attacks over several turns against about 3 Battle Sisters on an objective and it took three rounds of combat to wipe them. Honestly I would say I rolled below average on most of the hits or wounds with it but still, my opponent rolled 4+'s like crazy. I know he doesn't have any weighted dice but there have just been some crazy rolls in many of these games that feel like they tip the balance at various points and lead to such a struggle. I know dice rarely should be making the difference in most of these games, but at least two of them feel like failed charges, below average hits and wounds, and in particular my top bracket Castigator firing 15 shots at a single battle sister not in cover and failing to kill her, really played a huge role in deciding the outcome in those final turns.

Again, these couple of games are almost meaningless of course and I cannot go by any of these results as anything definitive. I just didn't fully realize how much of a struggle it actually is to play us until I started to lol. Glad we are so good at least!

People always underestimate variance - in dice roles - I had a novitiate squad tank the shooting of 6 aggressors losing only one girl - improbable things happens but in general it evens out

Charges are good examples of when a fail vs a success makes a huge difference to outcome but the good player will consistently have their models position correctly and so minimise charge successes

U02dah4 wrote:
People always underestimate variance - in dice roles - I had a novitiate squad tank the shooting of 6 aggressors losing only one girl - improbable things happens but in general it evens out

Charges are good examples of when a fail vs a success makes a huge difference to outcome but the good player will consistently have their models position correctly and so minimise charge distances

My variances lately was two seperate situations where Vahl need to pass 3 out of 6 saves to live, including a Miracle dice guarantee save AND enough CP and miracle dice to do Moment of Grace from 2+. She died both times.

Are people finding hymns to be necessary in lists nowadays? I just find most of them pretty underwhelming, especially given they need a roll of 3+ if you don't want to burn a CP. Seems the only good ones are the pseudo smite (clutch against Ctan/Ghaz/Phoenix lords), the psychic protection (situational), and perhaps the bolter buff. I dunno, I'm just not entirely convinced.

EDIT: +1 Attack is probably the most consistently useful of the hyms.

U02dah4 wrote:
People always underestimate variance - in dice roles - I had a novitiate squad tank the shooting of 6 aggressors losing only one girl - improbable things happens but in general it evens out

Charges are good examples of when a fail vs a success makes a huge difference to outcome but the good player will consistently have their models position correctly and so minimise charge distances

No doubt that the good/more experienced player should always put themselves in positions where even large amounts of variance in dice rolls do not completely swing in a game, even on a failed charge of 7" or less or dozens of shots/attacks not removing a key model or two. Even things like what ERJAK had happen to his Vahl on those separate occasions should hopefully not be costing you a game even though it just sucks to have those things happen, like Celestine failing her roll to come back (which actually happened to both my Sisters opponent and I in one of our games lol). What I am finding regarding variance determining outcomes in certain games is when everything just goes wrong at once. Several failed charges of 5-7", 15-30 shots/attacks failing to wipe out one model that is not even in cover, my opponent's Vahl tanking 8-12 melta shots to the face and not a single point of damage going through, etc. Variance definitely evens out throughout all games, but in my last few it has definitely felt like bad luck has just kept adding up for me. That "draw" in our last game almost entirely hinged on my opponent's Vahl tanking 8 melta shots without taking a single point of damage. I concede completely that I misplayed slightly in some positioning as well which didn't help me, but if even one melta shot goes through in that turn the game looks very different.

Of course my own good luck in dozens of games evens all of this out, but variance has not been my friend of late, at least in the mirror match lol.

Is Morvenn Vahl still a really important unit for us in general? I'm painting mine up and haven't proxied her before. I know she was massively hyped when she first arrived, but it seems like a lot of that has worn off. I get the sense nowadays she's mainly a buff unit, with her decent close combat ability being more of a counter punch/deterrent than a wrecking ball in itself. Perhaps that was always the case.

ArikTaranis wrote:
Is Morvenn Vahl still a really important unit for us in general? I'm painting mine up and haven't proxied her before. I know she was massively hyped when she first arrived, but it seems like a lot of that has worn off. I get the sense nowadays she's mainly a buff unit, with her decent close combat ability being more of a counter punch/deterrent than a wrecking ball in itself. Perhaps that was always the case.

She's still pretty nasty, and mostly an auto-include in competitive play. Her buff is really powerful, and nothing wants to be in close combat with her, considering she can (once per game) fight twice. If I was playing Sisters this year, I'd still be windmill slamming her into every list I ran, no question. I'm focusing on Imperial Knights for this year though, but whenever I come back around to Sisters I expect to still be running her (unless she gets new rules next edition that make her total crap).

She's a good unit most players will include her I don't feel she is essential but she is certainly a solid choice especially in BR which is the majority of comp lists. I'm running her to BITEM next weekend ( although my list there is a tad experimental).

(I say non essential though because I wasn't running her my last 3 events and I was still able to get some solid mid to upper results through board control and Novitiate spam)

Hey there guys, I just had a few questions come up in some of my previous games, either from my opponents or from other opponents that some of my friends have played. I was hoping to get some clarification on here so I know how best to answer them! Thanks!

1. If multiple Repentia squads are destroyed by your opponent in a single phase (other than morale of course), do you still only get one Miracle Dice that phase? Additionally, if it is an Order of Our Martyred Lady Repentia Squad that is destroyed, do you get two Miracle Dice, or still just the one?

2. If Celestine is performing an action such Sacred Grounds and gets destroyed but then resurrects using Miraculous Intervention, then does she still complete that action as long as she is still in range of that objective and maintains control of it? I guess the question here is does her losing her final wound result in the action being failed at all? I don't believe so but I wanted to make certain I hadn't missed some kind of FAQ or other clarification.

These are just some interactions that have come up lately and I want to make sure that myself, my opponents, and my friends who also play Sisters are all getting them as right as possible! Thanks again!

1) repentia are seperate from other miracle dice rules and triggered for each unit

2) Sadly no when she dies it fails same as with the stratagem that resurrects a dead character the why I can't remember but I have had this ruled at tournaments and their was a clear explanation.

Not to rehash what the poster above said too much, but there's lots of interactions here, so I wanted to outline exactly what you need so you can reference it to anybody who asks.

1. Look to both the Sisters Repentia data sheet and the page on Acts of Faith, specifically the section on gaining Miracle Dice.

You gain 1 Miracle Dice at the end of a phase in which any of the following conditions were met - Vengeance, where you kill a unit, or Sacrifice, where a Character unit of yours is killed. Sacrifice doesn't apply to the Repentia unit, but could apply to something else that phase, so keep that in mind.

The Order of Our Martyred Lady conviction (Blood of the Martyrs) separately states that you gain a Miracle Dice at the end of any phase in which any units with that conviction were killed. This would apply to the Repentia. It would also apply if the condition for Sacrifice or Vengeance was also met that phase - it's in addition to, not instead of. Keep in mind though that you only ever get one per phase from Sacrifice or Vengeance, and one per phase from Blood of the Martyrs no matter how many times you could trigger the condition.

Finally, Sisters Repentia have a fully separate rule on their data sheet called Martyrdom where a Miracle Dice is gained if they are destroyed in any phase except the morale phase. This is also separate from gaining dice from Sacrifice/Vengeance and Blood of the Martyrs. So you would gain a Miracle Dice for each Repentia unit killed in any phase except the morale phase, and if you're Martyred Lady you would gain an extra at the end of that phase because you lost the unit. You could also gain an additional one at the end of that phase if you lost a Character unit as well.

2. If a unit is destroyed, it fails the action it was performing per the big rule book section on actions. Since Miraculous Intervention, per her datasheet, specifically calls out that it triggers when she is destroyed, then the action fails.

Thanks to you both for clarifying all of that! Definitely some weird interactions here and there between our codex and each of the different seasons so even some of the more mundane things are tough to keep straight! Even in my own games this will help me be more aware!

GFdoubles wrote:
Thanks to you both for clarifying all of that! Definitely some weird interactions here and there between our codex and each of the different seasons so even some of the more mundane things are tough to keep straight! Even in my own games this will help me be more aware!

Ugh, don't even get me started on how much the seasonal adjustments have slowly killed the diversity in subfaction usage in the competitive scene.

Tournament report:

10 man locals, played the following:

Bloody Rose battalion
Morvenn
Celestine
WOE Canoness with Relic Sword and Blazing Ire
BSS
BSS
Novitiates with PS on Superior
Dogmata Chorus
9 Repentia
5 Repentia
5 repentia
10 Zephyrim+Banner
10 Zephyrim+Banner
10 Zephyrim
Large ret squad+Cherub and Simulacrum (8 i think? idk, shaved extra bodies for points)
Min Ret squad with Cherub.

Round 1 played Deathguard on Icons. Ended up being a scrum in the middle but I had better coverage shooting the midboard so I had priority. Once he committed I hit him with Celestine+Morvenn+2 units of Zephyrim in a deathball. He almost took it anyway because he had the Anti-Reroll Aura thing on his demon prince. Ended up being a low scoring knock down drag out affair but I won by about 10 points thanks to a single BSS superior who survived 2 full rounds of Non-LoS shooting from PBCs. Took all 3 Sisters secondaries. Maxed Defend the Shrine and Leap, only got 6 on sacred ground.

Some significant rules errors here. My opponent was under the impression that ALL SoB armies stopped you from rerolling wounds and I was short counting my Zephyrim's attacks all game. Probably wouldn't have mattered, but worth noting.

Round 2: Played into Chaos Knights. Shooty knight, Punchy Knight, 3 helverins, 2 melee armigers, 2 standard loadout armigers. Repentia + Canoness took out the 2 melee wardogs first turn. Zephyrim were really only there for holding objectives. Celestine and the HERO WOE canoness using MD, and Moment of Grace to survive a round of CQC against a shooty knight managed to kill it largely thanks to Outrage of the Matriarch. Didn't count the extra attack from Blazing ire all game. Ended up winning 68-97 thanks to really easy secondaries (he didn't contest the center for most of the game so an easy 11 on sacred)

Third game against Goff Orkz with Ghazkull. Easily the toughest game of the night. Got first turn on abandoned sanctuaries, declared the center objective my shrine. put one unit of Zephyrim on all 3 center objectives and did the action on 4 objectives first turn. He WAAGHED and bumrushed the center on right objectives (failed the charge on the left) killed my entire centerpoint unit of zephyrim with Stormboyz. Still got 11 VP.

My turn killed his center and left contesting units. His turn killed all my zephyrim and most of my repentia. My turn, killed Ghaz and most of his objective grabbers.

Ended up taking it 91-71.

Summary: 30 Zephyrim is too many. Almost every game I had one full unit die before it did anything and had 0 left at the end of all 3 games. 20 in a 10-5-5 cofiguration would be A LOT better.

5 girl units of repentia are amazingly valuable, especially with Leap. WOE canoness continues to be an absolute monster, as are Celestine and Morvenn. Retributors quietly huge difference makers, especially in CQC mirrors. Novitiates surprisingly killy and even less resilient than I thought.

All in all, nice 3-0 day that gives me 150pts to play with in my next list.

Are you taking +1 to advance and charges or exploding 6s in close combat, for your sacred rite? Seems like a hard choice for BR.

ERJAK wrote:
Summary: 30 Zephyrim is too many.

I suspected this would be the case, but I always still wanted to give it a shot just for the visual. I love those models lol

But I never did add more than 10 to my collection thus far...

I ran a full squad of Bloody Rose sacresants recently. Although I liked the damage output, they were much less durable than I hoped. Maybe it was just an unfortunate match up vs chaos knights.

I was initially planning to run another full squad, but now I'm wondering if a squad of repentia or zephyrim would be a better bet, and I could split the sacresants into 2 5-strong units. Any thoughts?

Personally I think Zephyrim are better than Sacresants these days; they are faster and have more attacks, albeit at lower strength, and even though their invul save is worse (and even with AoC that could matter). Zephys also have access to the (admittedly expensive) stratagem Embodied Prophecy for +1 to wound.

Yeah I think the introduction of AoC really closed the gap in durability between sacresants and other sisters units like zephyrim. That 2+ save (without AoC) means a lot less now, not that I'm complaining. I was just surprised and a little disappointed by how quickly my sacresants were whittled down. I might need to be a bit cagier and hug cover next time.

ArikTaranis wrote:
Yeah I think the introduction of AoC really closed the gap in durability between sacresants and other sisters units like zephyrim. That 2+ save (without AoC) means a lot less now, not that I'm complaining. I was just surprised and a little disappointed by how quickly my sacresants were whittled down. I might need to be a bit cagier and hug cover next time.

I feel like losing the AP reduction on Sacresants and missing out on AoC is like the number one reason Valorous Heart isn't seen more often these days. Cold take probably lol

I'm thinking about starting a Bloody Rose army, just wondering; how many characters are too many? I'm dead set on taking Vahl and Celestine. A Canonness seems auto include too. Hospitaler seems great with Retributors, Repentia Superior seems great with Repentia and Dogmata seems good in general. Is that too many?


For context; this is the list I'm currently working with (playing some TTS games):

1988 points, probably just taking a cherub on one of the retributor squads for the final 10 (thought about dropping 2 repentias for 2 cherubs per squad, but that seems not quite worth?)

No Force Org:
Hospitaler
Repentia Superior (WT: Beacon of Faith)

HQ:
Canoness (Blessed Blade, Rapturous Blows, Mantle of Ophelia, Blazing Ire)
Celestine
Morvenn Vahl

Troops:
5 BSS
5 BSS
Novitiate Squad (Power sword on the Superior)

Elite:
Dogmata (Sigil Ecclesiasticus, Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude, Verse of Holy Piety)
3 Paragon Warsuits (MM, Grenade Launcher, Sword)
7 Repentia
5 Repentia
5 Repentia

FA:
5 Seraphim (2x flamer)
5 Zephyrim (Pennant)
5 zephyrim (Pennant)

HS:
5 Retributor (4x MM)
5 Retributor (4x MM)

Dedicated Transport:
Rhino

 M0ff3l wrote:
I'm thinking about starting a Bloody Rose army, just wondering; how many characters are too many? I'm dead set on taking Vahl and Celestine. A Canonness seems auto include too. Hospitaler seems great with Retributors, Repentia Superior seems great with Repentia and Dogmata seems good in general. Is that too many?

Not at all. Every single one of those are the linchpins of like nearly every successful tournament Sororitas list in Nephilim.

 M0ff3l wrote:
For context; this is the list I'm currently working with (playing some TTS games):

1988 points, probably just taking a cherub on one of the retributor squads for the final 10 (thought about dropping 2 repentias for 2 cherubs per squad, but that seems not quite worth?)

It isn't.

Your list is pretty much what we've seen referred to as 'bloody rose goodstuff'. It can be very effective on the table, with slight variations coming in through personal preference and local meta. Looks great to me.

Personly not a fan of more than 5 hq I don't like making assassinate easy

You probably only want 1 Cherub in the rets

Played a 1k point Incursion game against none other than the Leagues of Votann this afternoon. Depending on how you look at it, I either lost by 1 point or won by 9 as my army was painted and my opponent's wasn't . I was running Bloody Rose with Morvenn Vahl, a single BSS, some melee stuff, and some Retributors in a Patrol detachment. My opponent was running Ymyr with a High Kahl, an Einhar Champion, 3 Hearthkyn squads, and 2 3-model bike units. We were playing with the nerfs in place, and I gotta say those space dwarfs are the real deal. Hearthkyn are a lot tougher than they look. One of the only reasons I did so well is that my opponent even with some rerolls and stuff whiffed hard with his Champion into Morvenn Vahl, who mercilessly squished him. If Vahl had died right there, I would have been steamrollered, but because she lived, she took out a bunch of other models before the Kahl took her out of the game (really flubbed my saves hard on that one). This game was my first small game of 9th (I previously had only played 2k games), and it's a lot different at the lower points level. Personally I think Sisters have a pretty good game into Votann, but not being able to reroll any wounds against them hurts (you're only getting half of Morvenn's buffs).

If you had 10 points; would you rather grab a cherub for 1 retributor squad; or hand flamers for 2 retriubtor superiors (to enable holy trinity)?

The Cherub, for sure. It almost always gets to do something, unless the whole squad does nothing and then the hand flamer would be pointless as well.

For the hand flamer on the other hand, I doubt it will ever be really useful. The superior is typically the first to die (unless you run a squad of 6+, which you might run considering you mention holy trinity) and if you're within 12" of your target, odds are high that you delete the target anyway. And if not, I doubt the loadout of the superior would've made a difference. I assume you mean multi-melta retributors, for heavy flamers or heavy bolters the hand flamer would make even less sense to me.

So I plan on making a more general thread about this in the general discussion thread, but I thought I would bring it up here first. With all the Toughness 9 in the game, especially the new Rogal Dorn tank along with all the Guard superheavies, do we think melta weapons are going to eventually see some kind of buff? I know we personally have other answers for T9 (BR Repentia) along with some limited S9 weaponry to combat the toughness increase (Warsuits with Maces, Castigator Battle Cannon) but while the amount of T9 in the game is still relatively rare, it does feel kind of inaccurate to have melta weapons (you know those things designed to destroy armor?) wounding a fair number of vehicles on 5s.

Any thoughts? I only discuss it here first because Melta has always been the Sisters' "main" way of dealing with armor.

 M0ff3l wrote:
I'm thinking about starting a Bloody Rose army, just wondering; how many characters are too many? I'm dead set on taking Vahl and Celestine. A Canonness seems auto include too. Hospitaler seems great with Retributors, Repentia Superior seems great with Repentia and Dogmata seems good in general. Is that too many?


For context; this is the list I'm currently working with (playing some TTS games):

1988 points, probably just taking a cherub on one of the retributor squads for the final 10 (thought about dropping 2 repentias for 2 cherubs per squad, but that seems not quite worth?)

No Force Org:
Hospitaler
Repentia Superior (WT: Beacon of Faith)

HQ:
Canoness (Blessed Blade, Rapturous Blows, Mantle of Ophelia, Blazing Ire)
Celestine
Morvenn Vahl

Troops:
5 BSS
5 BSS
Novitiate Squad (Power sword on the Superior)

Elite:
Dogmata (Sigil Ecclesiasticus, Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude, Verse of Holy Piety)
3 Paragon Warsuits (MM, Grenade Launcher, Sword)
7 Repentia
5 Repentia
5 Repentia

FA:
5 Seraphim (2x flamer)
5 Zephyrim (Pennant)
5 zephyrim (Pennant)

HS:
5 Retributor (4x MM)
5 Retributor (4x MM)

Dedicated Transport:
Rhino

Hospi. generally isn't great w/o extra wounds in a (Ret) unit.

GFdoubles wrote:
So I plan on making a more general thread about this in the general discussion thread, but I thought I would bring it up here first. With all the Toughness 9 in the game, especially the new Rogal Dorn tank along with all the Guard superheavies, do we think melta weapons are going to eventually see some kind of buff? I know we personally have other answers for T9 (BR Repentia) along with some limited S9 weaponry to combat the toughness increase (Warsuits with Maces, Castigator Battle Cannon) but while the amount of T9 in the game is still relatively rare, it does feel kind of inaccurate to have melta weapons (you know those things designed to destroy armor?) wounding a fair number of vehicles on 5s.

Any thoughts? I only discuss it here first because Melta has always been the Sisters' "main" way of dealing with armor.

We are just going to become more dependent on the vahl rerolls and Massed repentia

They wont buff melta as they like to differentiate more from the Las cannon