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Melissia wrote:I think that if GW does put actual effort into it with good looking, normally priced plastic miniatures that are available in reasonably sized boxes (IE ten per squad, or two sprues of five with extra bitz more likely), excellently written lore, a wide variety of interesting color schemes, a varied and powerful army list, etc... you'll find people will be interested and buy it.

Right now, Sisters have none of this, of course.

Most armies only need one or two of those to work. For sisters to need the hat trick says something.

All fifth edition codices (save Tyranids, arguably) have all of those.

Melissia wrote:I think that if GW does put actual effort into it with good looking, normally priced plastic miniatures that are available in reasonably sized boxes (IE ten per squad, or two sprues of five with extra bitz more likely), excellently written lore, a wide variety of interesting color schemes, a varied and powerful army list, etc... you'll find people will be interested and buy it.

Right now, Sisters have none of this, of course.

The fluff in the WD makes them seem like...well, pompous donkey-caves. To a degree in any exaggerated dark-ages-catholic-gothica in space should have an element of that, but they really didn't do much other than that. It's just "sisters arrive, being angry with FAITH makes them kill everything".


They could have done so much with the fluff here, even with relatively limited space...and didn't


that said, I'm mostly ok with the army list. On the whole its a bit cheaper, losing some of the wargear and faith stuff sucks but it's not all bad, 85pts for 4 HB's that rend 50% of the time is cool.


That said, more than anything, what the were they thinking with the Immolator? Why on earth is that thing 65pts? 45/50 I could see, but 65?


Also, lol celestine still doesn't have Hit and Run, making her an anchor on seraphim squads. Though for 115pts she's not bad at all.

Seraphim only hit and run half the time now instead of all the time like they used to anyway, so relatively speaking it's not as big a hit to the seraphim squad.

Melissia wrote:All fifth edition codices (save Tyranids, arguably) have all of those.

Only half the codexes are fifth though. Demons have many of the same issues sisters do concerning metal and lack of customization.

And you might notice Daemons are not as popular as fifth edition armies, yes? Glad you agree with me

Melissia wrote:And you might notice Daemons are not as popular as fifth edition armies, yes? Glad you agree with me

They're about on par with tyranids and orks. They're beating tau and necrons. They aren't dead last like the sisters have always been. When the witchhunters came out they had plenty of support and the level of modeling most armies had. They still had to be sent back to the distributer since no one was buying them off the shelves.

Vaktathi wrote:Also, lol celestine still doesn't have Hit and Run, making her an anchor on seraphim squads. Though for 115pts she's not bad at all.

Separate in the Movement Phase, assault the same target separately. But yeah, there is the anchor business for when you are assaulted.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Melissia wrote:And you might notice Daemons are not as popular as fifth edition armies, yes? Glad you agree with me

They're about on par with tyranids and orks. They're beating tau and necrons.

Woah there, I'd like to see your research on these statements. In my experience (purely anecdotal I know) Tyranid players and Ork players far outnumber Daemons players in 40k-- it's mostly in WFB that Daemons players rock out with their... socks out, as it were. Besides which, those armies, aside from Tyranids, are not actual fifth edition armies.

Melissia wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Melissia wrote:And you might notice Daemons are not as popular as fifth edition armies, yes? Glad you agree with me

They're about on par with tyranids and orks. They're beating tau and necrons.

Woah there, I'd like to see your research on these statements. In my experience (purely anecdotal I know) Tyranid players and Ork players far outnumber Daemons players in 40k-- it's mostly in WFB that Daemons players rock out with their... socks out, as it were. Besides which, those armies, aside from Tyranids, are not actual fifth edition armies.

Which is why I keep hearkening back to when the witchhunters were new and failed to sell. The new army bump would probably see some people buy them, but unless they managed to reverse the trend of every other sisters release that bump would be temporary and small. Whatever the sisters hook is, GW hasn't found it.

My anecdotal experience has them roughly tied by the by, I'm mostly going by alliance sales reports.

Sorry if this was addressed, but is there any explanation for all the Inquisition iconography on the sisters minis anymore?

I'm thinking of converting some DE warriors & witches & am trying to figure out what to put on them.

Japache wrote:Sorry if this was addressed, but is there any explanation for all the Inquisition iconography on the sisters minis anymore?

I'm thinking of converting some DE warriors & witches & am trying to figure out what to put on them.

It isn't inquisition iconography for the most part. The I is shared by most of the different organizations in the Imperium. It was the Sigilite's sign, iirc.

ShumaGorath wrote:Which is why I keep hearkening back to when the witchhunters were new and failed to sell.

You mean when they released them very close to the end of third edition and people were afraid third to fourth would be like the transition from second to third, so they didn't want to invest in models? And the fact that it has very few pages of actual lore? And the fact that it has a very limited army list? And the fact that it essentially has copy/pasted units from a previous army list? And the fact that they were still mostly using the same exact models from second edition, no new plastic troops choices? And the fact that they were almost never actually seen in GW advertisements, especially WD?

Gee, how shocking that they didn't sell as well as armies that GW actually put effort into.

Does anyone else associate actual voices with people on the interwebs? Like you hear a certain voice in your head whenever you see them post?

Probably not.

Only for Frazzled. I associate the sound of yipping weiner dogs with his posts.

Melissia wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Which is why I keep hearkening back to when the witchhunters were new and failed to sell.

You mean when they released them very close to the end of third edition and people were afraid third to fourth would be like the transition from second to third, so they didn't want to invest in models? And the fact that it has very few pages of actual lore? And the fact that it has a very limited army list? And the fact that it essentially has copy/pasted units from a previous army list? And the fact that they were still mostly using the same exact models from second edition, no new plastic troops choices? And the fact that they were almost never actually seen in GW advertisements, especially WD?

Gee, how shocking that they didn't sell as well as armies that GW actually put effort into.

That didn't happen to the orks moving into fifth! It's an endless cycle, BDSM nuns in rhinos don't sell well so they don't try hard. They don't try hard so they don't sell well. I'd prefer they kill the army entirely and just do a mechanicus army, the sisters have a bad relationship with existing and I really don't see that ever changing. Games workshop isn't going to invest the amount of money required on the chance that the sisters could redeem themselves in sales. They're going to spend the least possible for as long as possible. They're direct only as it is, they already have a foot in the grave.

ShumaGorath wrote:That didn't happen to the orks moving into fifth!

Because people expected the fourth to fifth transition to be like third to fourth, which wasn't all that dramatic.

Wow. This thread needs to be put down.

pretre wrote:Wow. This thread needs to be put down.

With spam posts like yours helping it to the grave. It's at 30 pages at this point, the question of sales viability of sisters was going to come up eventually.

The topic is still news, if not to our regulars. Please don't spam the thread with requests that it be locked or other off-topic comments.

Melissia wrote:I think that if GW does put actual effort into it with good looking, normally priced plastic miniatures that are available in reasonably sized boxes (IE ten per squad, or two sprues of five with extra bitz more likely), excellently written lore, a wide variety of interesting color schemes, a varied and powerful army list, etc... you'll find people will be interested and buy it.

Right now, Sisters have none of this, of course.

I don't think anyone disagrees with that. And I don't think GW plans to squat the Sisters, they have potential for a great visual theme which is just what GW likes, and their relaunch a'la Dark Eldar could be huge. Really, what happened is probably just that while they were talking around the water cooler just how awesome the upcoming DE range was and how all sculptors were busy with big Tomb King and Ogre monsters for FB, somebody blurted out "Hey, but what about the Sisters of Battle?" "Oh crap, we forgot about the Sisters of Battle!" "Hey, how about we just quickly write them a WD codex to show the SoB players that we haven't forgot them?" "Hey SoB players! Here's a new codex for ya which shows we haven't forgot you!"

I'm not a SoB player but I can sympathize with some of the nerd rage over the codex. Obviously all the simplifications take out lots of character from the army, even if it's not necessarily weaker (see: Chaos Space Marines...). Of course, the fluff is extremely bare, though improvment in the sense that it makes the SoB about the SoB, and not Inquisition. It is disappointing they didn't add much in the way of new units to replace what was lost. I mean, why not put Repressor in? Sure it doesn't have GW model, but it's not like that has stopped them before, often there is not even any kind of picture how the unit is supposed to look. At least Celestine looks like a good choice now, following the current GW style to make named characters near-mandatory.

Funny thing btw: Blood Angels PDF codex, which caused similar reactions amongst BA players what we see amongst Sisters players now, actually made me interested about starting Blood Angels. Then Space Hulk came out, and my interest grew...and then the real codex came out, and my interest just totally died. It was bizarre. I'm still not sure why, but maybe the lesson is that sometimes less is more.

Dominions really do rely on 1st turn it seems; though they do buy some much wanted exorcist (and seraphim in my case) time.

I'm having trouble getting Jacobus and the Assassinettes in the most useful of places; certainly teleporting can be a pig, but you've got a good half of the board under their watchful eye. Edit: At present I have two crusaders in here, I'd do another I think, but I can't find another dark angel storm shield

Seraphim not having reliable HnR, and no 3++ has really caused some hurt. But double tapping re-rolled wound hand flamers is rather nasty. Both pistols make their points back. I'd still trade it in for 4th edition double tap after hit n run on enemy assault

If you use Repentia at all, and do the whole Retributor Immo/Rhino for them, do your best to make sure they aren't going to see anyone, and they aren't going to get pie plated. Having Scouts distract your repentia from getting in the vehical they are smoking outside of on first turn really does throw points away.


I can't tell you how sad I am that my master of the ravenwing conversion canoness doesn't get to play anymore. Perhaps an overimaginative jump pack canoness model, but I liked it. I somewhat doubt there will be a jet bike option in a future dex, so into the brake fluid she goes~

The only new unit they added was the command squad, which itself isn't actually a new unit, it's just three celestians, a hospitaller, and a dialogous (even the squad itself is basically a reworking of Celestian retinues)... and the ecclesiarchy battle squad thing, which itself isn't actually a new unit, it's just a group of crusaders, DCA, and/or arco-flagellants... all of which were pre-existing units.

So basically nothing actually new at all, just a slight re-organization of old units.

I personally think is even just a sisters squad come out in plastic people will buy sisters probably as popular as GK if they got a good average codex.

ShumaGorath wrote:
That didn't happen to the orks moving into fifth!

Uh, they put Orks in the starter set? And that is very well written codex, and the army was very powerful, arguably the top army for quite some time.

Manchu wrote:The topic is still news, if not to our regulars. Please don't spam the thread with requests that it be locked or other off-topic comments.

We'll have to agree to disagree. The WD is out and has been for a little while now, so it isn't really news or rumor at this point. Also, as SG just pointed out we haven't been discussing the actualy topic of the thread for pages and pages now (anyone not aware of the actual news might be hard pressed to find it in the midst of the 30+ pages). The current topic of sales viability of SoB is a bit off from 'SOB WD Part 2'.

Anyways...

Melissia wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Melissia wrote:And you might notice Daemons are not as popular as fifth edition armies, yes? Glad you agree with me

They're about on par with tyranids and orks. They're beating tau and necrons.

Woah there, I'd like to see your research on these statements. In my experience (purely anecdotal I know) Tyranid players and Ork players far outnumber Daemons players in 40k-- it's mostly in WFB that Daemons players rock out with their... socks out, as it were. Besides which, those armies, aside from Tyranids, are not actual fifth edition armies.

In my Tournament experience, Deamons make up 75% of the armies I face. Personal experience doesn't mean much I guess.

ShumaGorath wrote:It's an endless cycle, BDSM nuns in rhinos don't sell well so they don't try hard. They don't try hard so they don't sell well. I'd prefer they kill the army entirely and just do a mechanicus army, the sisters have a bad relationship with existing and I really don't see that ever changing. Games workshop isn't going to invest the amount of money required on the chance that the sisters could redeem themselves in sales. They're going to spend the least possible for as long as possible. They're direct only as it is, they already have a foot in the grave.

Strange - I'm pretty sure that people were saying similar things about the "BDSM Elves on Sail Barges" before there was confirmation of the DE relaunch - I'm a little dubious about the "BDSM nuns" label, as I'm fairly sure you could only really apply that to the repentia, not the army as a whole.

2nd ed SoB suffered from being the last codex before 3rd ed, and (from what I remember) not getting as much support in WD as previous codexes had.

Codex: WH also suffered from being late in an edition cycle, from seeing a limited number of new SoB figures (maybe half the new releases, with the rest being the =][=, including the Walking Throne of Doom) - and those new releases only giving two new selections to the SoB, in the Repentia (which didn't go down very well at the time, due to sculpts) and the Exorcist (and, for some reason, people hated on the pipe organ look, though I thought it was pretty cool).

When your basic troops choice(s) are all metal - at a low(ish) points cost - and you're recycling sculpts that were 5-6 years old to start with, people are unlikely to rush out to buy a new army.

Daemonhunters got away with it as you didn't need that many of the metal troops, as they were expensive - and, in the case of the Terminators at least, they were gorgeous sculpts.

Repentia went down badly because they were terrible units that cost huge amounts. If they had only been faithful, as they rightly should given their fluff, they might have been picked up.

I don't get why people hate on the organ either; was very thematic.

Well, to be fair, they always have been heralds of a new edition. If you look back, they were the last released 2nd edition codex...and then shortly after 3rd ed invalidated their codex. They were one of the last 3rd ed codecies, and while 4th ed didn't invalidate them, it did cause a lot of rules problems. They might not be the herald of a new edition this time, but they damn well are close to it again, since 6th ed is already in the works.

Looking back...investing in sob/witchhunters is a fool's errand. They didn't get a codex in 4th, and it looks like they won't really get one in 5th. When they get updated, they are always the last to get updated...so of course they sell poorly. If you invested in them in 2nd edition and got burned..you had to wait until near the end of 3rd before you got an official release. Gw follows a production line approach, not a service approach. That means some armies that are less popular will always be less popular.

Privateer Press's expansion model actually works better here imo because then all armies get treated equally. Everytime a new expansion comes out, everybody gets something new/updated.

So why even have this white dwarf? I guess the idea is do away with allies and remove an army book that allowed some strange weirdness and loopholes to happen. Now every "book" is self-sufficient.

Like I said before, if you thought it was for serious playtesting or was something they put a lot of effort into, I'm sorry...it's just not what the company does.

Edit: So to be on topic, what is news? Well, there won't be a Sisters of Battle codex before 6th edition. If they were going to do one, they wouldn't have bothered with this white dwarf. Remember that BOLS rumor that was saying 5th's focus was supposed to be on imperial armies and 6th on xenos? I hope that rumor is not true, as the implication is that the army will be screwed again. I was really hoping that maybe they would be in the upcoming starter box or something, but that seems really really unlikely.