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Hello Dakka,

As my free time gets less and less but my pay increases. i have decided to commission an army to be painted, just to have it done. I would like to do SOB and ..own ..SO many models...but..I can only you know..pay for so many models to be painted. So my question is

what is the best starter force for sisters that would be a core set for any army build. Like, what are the units and how many of them that you will always want to take as your core SOB army, before deciding on fine tuning or going a certain direction.

Just trying to figure out what to put together to get painted. and then i can do my own painting to go a certain direction..or add in a certain cool thing to see how it works

Thanks in advance

Ray

One thing to keep in mind if you are commissioning units to be painted is play mode. Even if all the units might not have a spot in competitive full-40k lists, you might want to make sure you have the units from the combat patrol and kill team done. Just so you can play those games.

So your recommend for a core army is the minis from combat patrol and a kill team squad. Any other suggestions on what is just a good base SOB army to have painted up?

 rayphoton wrote:
So your recommend for a core army is the minis from combat patrol and a kill team squad. Any other suggestions on what is just a good base SOB army to have painted up?

Full disclosure: I have no idea what a good sisters army would be. I’m just giving my thoughts on how I’d collect/paint a faction.

From my perspective (opinions will vary), getting a Battle Sister Squad on every objective in the game is important, not just for the Victory Points, but also because this will feed your Miracle Dice Pool. So I would recommend 3-5 of those.

You'll probably want to beef each of those up with a character.

 rayphoton wrote:
So your recommend for a core army is the minis from combat patrol and a kill team squad. Any other suggestions on what is just a good base SOB army to have painted up?

Here's the problem with Sisters of Battle.

Their combat patrol is actually terrible. Only the Rhino is a complete kit. Everything else are mono-build pushfits. It's not a good value for starting an army.

HOWEVER, if you want to play combat patrol, it's the best combat patrol kit because everything only has 1 option so it's super easy to build and keep track of.

If you DO want to play combat patrol, buy the combat patrol. If you don't want to play combat patrol, the Boarding Patrol box is a much better value. So are either of the recent Christmas boxes that you can still find in a lot of stores for their original sticker price.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:
From my perspective (opinions will vary), getting a Battle Sister Squad on every objective in the game is important, not just for the Victory Points, but also because this will feed your Miracle Dice Pool. So I would recommend 3-5 of those.

You'll probably want to beef each of those up with a character.

3 Max. If you ever have the opportunity to have BSS squads on 4 or more objectives at the start of your own command phase, you already tabled your opponent so it didn't even really matter what you brought.

It's really hard to say since it feels like the rules change every other month.

The general consensus is that the sisters are in a not so great place. Their codex will have a lot of things to adjust.

I'd say you couldn't go wrong with at least 20 battle sisters and their accompanying rhino. A squad of rets wouldn't be a terrible investment since their MM's are arguably the sister's only reliable anti tank.

After that, a cannoness or Celestine. Maybe St. Katherine.

This edition seems really big on having characters lead units. Sisters characters are pretty bad overall, but it's possible they'll get better. Vahl might be an option just because the model is neat.

Noviates will probably continue to be a cheap option to holding backfield stuff.

Other than those, it's hard to judge what will be decent in the future. I'd personally get some Seraphim.

Fortunately ..I own a ton of sisters stuff (collected over the years but never touched...like we do)..so I don't need to buy the combat patrol box or anything like that.

General consensus then is
20 sisters
10 Novitiates
1 Rhino
Ret Squad
Cannoness (or 2)
1 squad of Seraphim
As a commission to get me ..just prepped for most battles

And then of course I can build to taste/whats performing well going from there and paint my own.

I look forward to more input.

According to the Tactics Thread, Seraphim and Zephyrim are standout units for SOB.

Definitely get at least one squad of 10 Zephyrim, they're a simple enough unit that, unless GW overcosts them or nerfs power weapons for every army, they're always going to be a great unit.