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Hi all!

I'm new to the hobby and have heard that this is the group of people to come to with your 40k questions, so I'm hoping you can help me out with a bit of a general query.

My current plan is to build an Imperial Fists, Primaris heavy army with a supplemental force from a different codex thrown in for a bit of flavor and enhanced table presence. For this I have settled on the new Sisters of Battle models as the perfect ally for my Fists. I like the "in-world" idea of the stolid, determined Fists pairing with a smallish detachment of fanatical Sisters. Everyone working together but giving everyone the side eye the whole time, kinda thing.

As a new player I don't want to just toss models together without any thought to army cohesion. I don't need to be super competitive but I want my choices to make sense.

My question is in a typical 2000 point army of primaris space marines what units would be the best to swap out for sisters? My thought was, 15 intersessors (3 5 man squads) replaced with a 10 man squad of Battle Sisters and a 5 man squad of Retributors.

Does this make any sense? From the data sheets alone it seems to from my perspective. But again, I am very new.

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

-Mike

If you take sisters, your losing a big chunk of IF rules. So the question about this being sensible is a bit strange. In general if it is for playing the game, the IF have better bolter options inside their own book. If you don't care about the rules and are just asking for the legality of doing it, then I would propose getting a sister HQ, 3 troops squads and the retributors.

GW has started incentivizing mono-build armies with the release of Codex Space Marines 2.0.

Space marine DOCTRINES only work if every detachment in the army is a space marine detachment.

Sisters have SACRED RITES which only work if every detachment is an Adepta Sororitas detachment.

Both factions lose those rules if they ally. The exception is that you can take and Inquisition detachment without messing things up.

Now some folks feel that it's worth it, You do double up on available strats, and there may be other synergies.

Comp isn't everything. If you want to have allies, you go for it!

I'd suggest making a separate detachment - picking up at least another 5 regular Battle Sisters alongside what you've just described there (maybe convert the rest of the box into another unit of Retributors!) so that you could do 3x5man units of Battle Sisters, pick up a pair of Canonesses (or any two Sororitas HQ units), and get a good amount of Command Points you can use to give yourself some buffs.

So, your army would look something like:
Imperial Fists Detachment (consisting of whatever you happen to have)
Sisters of Battle Detachment (consisting of 2 Canonesses, 3x5 Battle Sisters, and 2x5 Retributors)

You'll want more Rets than that. 5 of them will get picked off pretty easily and you don't have any ablative bodies to soak up wounds.

retributors is a good idea, with mircle dice those heavy weapons can be really potent.

As it has been pointed out, unfortunately there now are rules which you lose by allying. For Sisters the rules lost are not terribly significant, so you can sacrifice them for a decent ally, marines however lose far more by allying.

I think your idea would work better if the Sisters are the main force with some marine allies, that way it will be less crippling.

That being said, if you're planning to play in a very casual environment, it doesn't necessarily matter massively, and you can just get whatever you think is cool.

Thanks so much for all the valuable feedback everyone, I really appreciate it! While I don't plan on being a tournament player, I also don't want to lose too many abilities for the sake of asthetics/theme.

Sounds like Ive got some more homework to do!

red1soul wrote:
Hi all!

I'm new to the hobby and have heard that this is the group of people to come to with your 40k questions, so I'm hoping you can help me out with a bit of a general query.

My current plan is to build an Imperial Fists, Primaris heavy army with a supplemental force from a different codex thrown in for a bit of flavor and enhanced table presence. For this I have settled on the new Sisters of Battle models as the perfect ally for my Fists. I like the "in-world" idea of the stolid, determined Fists pairing with a smallish detachment of fanatical Sisters. Everyone working together but giving everyone the side eye the whole time, kinda thing.

As a new player I don't want to just toss models together without any thought to army cohesion. I don't need to be super competitive but I want my choices to make sense.

My question is in a typical 2000 point army of primaris space marines what units would be the best to swap out for sisters? My thought was, 15 intersessors (3 5 man squads) replaced with a 10 man squad of Battle Sisters and a 5 man squad of Retributors.

Does this make any sense? From the data sheets alone it seems to from my perspective. But again, I am very new.

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

-Mike

Short answer, No, it doesn't make sense at all.

The Imperial Fists have a bunch of buffs that only trigger if there are no non-Imperial Fist models in your army. Sisters do as well, but theirs are weaker so you lose less by not being mono with sisters.

I also, wouldn't run BSS in squads of 10, our strength is in the fact we get 2 specials in 5 instead of 1 in 5 and 2 in ten, so you should generally be running BSS in min squads, either min with full specials for power or min with no upgrades for cheapness.