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PLayed a team game last night. 1K Sisters of battle and 1K IG on my side, and Space Wolves + Space marines on the other.

I have to say: the relic mission is just so tailor made for the Sisters of Batle. I've lost ZERO games on that mission. It's like taking candy from a baby (well...depends on the player, but sometimes they are babies about it. hehehehe).

Has anyone here lost on that mission yet? Seems like you'd need to try fairly hard to lose it.

Okay, I'm curious. What advantage do SOB have on Relic versus any other army?

 pretre wrote:

You can't run the 2HB from the top. You can use the Rending with the Quadgun, but IME the extra heavy bolters are better.

If you're going to do that, put the MM on the top with an Icarus and the HB on the bottom with the HB.

Not a fan of MM rets though.

I meant if you switched the teams, so you would have the SSB unit inside the building. I am liking the thought of going retributors with quad gun, especially if going for a pure sister list. Can anyone in the unit man the gun, or does it have to be the superior?

Regarding having two ret teams, I was thinking MM inside would be better because they only have 24" range, being higher up slightly reduces that range in favor of better los, and having the mounted heavy bolters means that even if they are out of range, they might have 2 heavy bolters they can still fire at 36". I also agree that I don't like MM ret's much, since I feel the 24" range is too low for a unit that can't move and fire, combined with not being a scoring unit so you have no reason to keep it stationary at an objective, the added rending is also pretty useless so no point bringing a simulacrum here. Then there is the fact that it's taking a slot away from an extra exorcist, HB team or even an avenger. It could be fun to try, but the enemy would need a reason to go 24" near the building, and any other heavy support choice would be better.

Rets with quad are fine but rets with 2 extra hb are better. You want to give the sup the hb or quad because of precision strikes.

 pretre wrote:
Rets with quad are fine but rets with 2 extra hb are better. You want to give the sup the hb or quad because of precision strikes.

Precision strikes? Damn, how do I keep missing out on these rules. What is interesting is that it seems none of my opponents pick up on these rules either. Well, free precision shots/strikes for all my (and my future opponents when I inform them) squad leaders it seems. Thanks pretre.

 pretre wrote:
Okay, I'm curious. What advantage do SOB have on Relic versus any other army?

Hopefully I can explain this on a forum well. You need to be a heartless general to do this so if you feint at the sight of your own blood, you might want to try something else!

2 Dominion Rhinos straight up the middle on a scout move, then 6+6" drop off brings them into base with the Relic centerline (unless you're using a monomolecular objective, not that it matters anyways as they are Fast Atttack). The Dominion run forward turn 1 to form two Dominion walls (preferably flamers in front though theres no guarantee on which one will run further, so fate will decide that) with Celestine behind them forming a third wall, so to speak with her run . Seraphim can form a fourth wall or be part of the third (personally I'd separate them unless depp striking them for that task which is mighty dangrous with so much crap around). Other tanks form a wide diamond behind in preparation. Sisters etc... fill the hollow in the diamond. The tanks form more tank shocking walls as the sisters fall back later in round 3. Move and run the troops up to take control in round 2 (filling the available space, given cover by the Rhino Diamond), moving backwards afterwards.

Its really bloody but really effective. we take huge losses but In five Relic Missions doing it, no game losses. Mostly lopsided. 6-1 and 5-2 type scores thanks to the Exorcists ability at getting first blood on a tank along with the Aegis (if you use one) and the inability to stop the Sisters from getting Linebreaker (enemy has to commit to the center) and often Celestine simply isn't killable. In the worst of games, a tie is probably the worst outcome you can hope for, especially when going second.

If going second, the plan changes only slightly, because now you can actually USE both the Dominions firepower, whereas you can only use 1 units firepower in plan 1 (because in plan 1, the near unit will likely be charged and forced to run when the enemy assaults them, though I do use 10 Dominion squads so I suppose theres always a chance they could hold). Either way works fine, really, it's just slower and you're more likely to be on the attack instead of simply sacrificing units left and right as in plan 1.

Most armies that have similar "wall speed" cant stand up to the shooting of the sisters and in any event are at least matched in positioning because of the scout move and now dont really have the option to assault.. So they dont really gain advantage per se on the objective unless they too are willing to make even MORE massive sacrifices than we would. Its not as if they can move very fast once the relic is in hand and we still have the walling ability to isolate the unit that took it if going second.

Not full proof. But it has been very frustrating to opponents. Heldrake provided the best answer to it to date. The new FAQ for Heldrakes is brutal, and will make it even tougher to fight. So far, the Heldrake fight was easily the hardest but we still prevailed 4-3.

So in that one mission, it's been good. It just takes too darn long to get through all that, spatially. Some tried the flank with Ds forces, but Sisters Repentia really kinda hurts a deep striking unit and the Rhino diamond plus available cover protects them until needed to a large extent... Not that the enemy can afford too much fire on anything but Dominions and troops in this kind of attack anyways, but still.

Maybe people will find that bit of tactica useful. Or not. Go Sisters of battle! Relic mission for the very bloody win.

That actually makes a fair amount of sense. Thanks, J.

I went to the grand opening of the GW shop in Jacksonville this past weekend. They did a 200 pt Kill Team tournament. Force Org was limited to

0-1 Elite
0-2 Troop
0-1 Fast Attack

I brought:
5 Celestians with 1x HB and 1x Flamer
5 Seraphim with 1x twin hand flamer and a PS on the Superior (I did this because I have an Ephrael Stern model and I always use it in my SoB lists so I had to buy the PS to make her WYSIWYG)

First match was against Tau, 2x6 FW and 3x Stealth Suits. The game was over in less than 15 minutes because for the life of me I couldnt roll a single armor save. Once you take 50% casualties you take a leadership check which I promptly failed with boxcars =-(

Second match I played against the exact same list and won by a pretty serious margin wiping all his units out with only taking three casualties.

Third I played a Grey Knight list that was 6 Knights in power armor with storm bolters (psy ammo?) and Force Halberds. I think there was some other wargear mixed in because the guy talked about one of his guys being "the deamon one". I dont know but I gunned him down pretty fast because I had numbers on my side.

Last I played an IG list that had 5 Storm troopers with 1xMelta, 1x Plasma and two Sentinels with Multi-lasers. This was over quick since all I had to do was focus on his troops forcing a LD check. even with 4+ armor they died quick. I think I only lost one girl due to a plasma pistol shot.

All in all, if you havnt tried kill team you should give it a shot. All models work independently and the board size we used was 2x3. The ruling on AoFs was that I had to roll for each model separately using a faith point each time. Fun times!

Cool, thanks for the report!
@jancoran: are you disembarking the doms during scout move?

Kill team sounds like fun!

 pretre wrote:
Cool, thanks for the report!
@jancoran: are you disembarking the doms during scout move?

No. I just redeploy the Rhino 12" in the assault move. On turn one they disembark and form up their walls. If going second, you still go 12" because getting blown out of the Rhino is no big deal when all you plan to do is wall up anyways.

It's made no difference to date which way it goes. The Dominion are 100% expendable and as an abonus, if you can get Kyrinov nearby behind them (which I am not currently doing but...) then his fearlesssness will REALLy make those dominion obnoxious.

OutlawBandit, how did the flamers and HB serve you in killteam? I've put some thought into a killteam before, and the HB sounded like a great idea with primarily infantry targets and the ability to fire each shot at a different target. Flamers didn't sound like they'd be as effective though with no coherency. How'd that work out in practice?

I'd be tempted to just make a dominion squad with 4x melta or 3x melta and 1x flamer. I think that comes to about 200, with maybe enough for a combi on the Superior.

 Jancoran wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Cool, thanks for the report!
@jancoran: are you disembarking the doms during scout move?

No. I just redeploy the Rhino 12" in the assault move. On turn one they disembark and form up their walls. If going second, you still go 12" because getting blown out of the Rhino is no big deal when all you plan to do is wall up anyways.

It's made no difference to date which way it goes. The Dominion are 100% expendable and as an abonus, if you can get Kyrinov nearby behind them (which I am not currently doing but...) then his fearlesssness will REALLy make those dominion obnoxious.

Aha. Makes more sense. I thought you were disembarking during scout, which is a no-no in 6th. Cool, thanks.

I love my sisters models, though I can't afford to get more (I have 1 Flamer, 1 Meltagun (both converted), 4 other sisters and a Canones converted into a superior).

I want to play with them so I'm considering getting one more blister, Celestine and an Exorcist (eventually a Rhino as well) and ally them to my DA. What do you think?

Sounds like a fluffy and fun matchup.

You can use the canoness as a superior, and then you have a BSS squad.

That was my plan

I saw a Battle report where they had 4 motorized Sisters units all Wargeared up, 3 Exorcists, St Celestine and a Seraphim squad.

I thought 4 was one too many Sisters Squads even though it obviously presents a pain in the arse as far as scoring threats go.

Just kind of an interesting build. No Sisters Repentia nor battle conclaves to repel Deep Strikers/rearguard threats et al, No Priests or Confessors of any kind, no dominion, just the one Seraphim unit and no Retributors. About as plain a list as you'll see. He used basically just three units.

Anyways, does anyone here have a build that so many are preferable? With the other elements he has, would you take 4? It's not like they wouldn't do damage. Bolters are bolters, they're pretty good weapons, but only when they are out of the Rhino. And with no way to guarantee preferred enemy for them, which would be a good reason to take them in goodly numbers...?

Just throwing it out there for ideas.

Yuck. I usually run as few BSS as possible.

Perhaps but tactically, how does one make this work.

Let's say you face the Dark Eldar. You know that they can probably silence the Exorcists in round 1, if not actually kill them all. So that leaves you with pretty few options to kill any Dark Eldar with initially. Field shrinks and noiw youre in round 2. Same story and charges are becoming imminent. Bolters and Seraphim get some kills in round 2 probably. But will it be enough? Even the most basic of assault troops will not find a Sisters Squad overly difficult, even though Celestian is going to have a say.

The Dark Eldar go secopnd so they may just lose some speed elements early, but will it be enough?

hmm... It stands on a precipice. It would work great against hordes and such. LOTSA dakka once things get close. Maybe the Exorcists really aren't there to threaten, just be ablative for the Rhinos. that makes sense. It just puts so much pressure on Celestine and crew to perform.

I will ponder this further...

My battles against Dark Eldar have always revolved around staying in cover as much as possible. Against Dark Eldar your Exorcist will, as you say, probably get busted too quick, unless you're lucky with cover saves.

Retributors aren't as easily silenced as Exorcists, which is why I take always at least 1 unit of them.

Note.. Celestine versus Lilith Hesperax doesnt end well. I learned this the hard way.

 Jancoran wrote:
Perhaps but tactically, how does one make this work.

You don't. If you only have 3 exorcists and Celephim to do your killing, you're going to have a bad day against pretty much any opponent.

Yuk is right.

Sounds like a 1.5kish point level.

By then i have added guardsmen in to add spammable Heavy Weapons to compliment the Sister squads.

3 exorcists will probably die but not ALL in turn 1. You should at the very least have 1 maybe 2 left unless you just didnt utilize cover at all.

Even if they all died at least guardsmen add some LCs and RLs to take out those pesky Raiders/Venom spammers.

CCS orders Fire on my Target to force a reroll on all cover saves. Something has to hit em eventually .... Then send in the flamers to finish off anything that lost its ride.

I said silenced if not dead.

So had my tournament today. Ended up slightly modifying my list since I needed fully painted/based models and I hadnt had a chance to paint my aegis line of defense.

1000 points. 5 turns max. 2 hours per game max. 4 x 4 tables. Useless warlord trait

Celestine
10 x BSS, Melta, Multi Melta, Melta Bombs
10 x BSS, Melta, Multi Melta, Combi Flamer
5 x Dominions. 2 x melta gun, plasma pistol and immolator with heavy flamer
7 x seraphims. 2 x hand flamers, plasma pistol and eviscerator
Exorcist
1 x Penitent engine

Game 1 was against a Vulkan list. Crusade and dawn of war deployment. 3 objectives, all mostly deployed center field. Same useless warlord trait.

Vulkan
2 x 10 man tax squads rhino and drop pod
5 x scouts
2 x land speeders
tech marine with thunderfire cannon

Went into this game very rusty (only 1 game under my belt with 6th edition rules) and unaware of the 5 turn max at the time.

I went first and he failed to seize initiative. We had night fighting in place. I had everything on the table except for the Penitent Engine which I reserved.

He had everything on his far side of the table except for his scouts who infiltrated into bolstered ruins beside an objective.

Was a bloody matchup. My first turn was uneventful only netting me first blood on the rhino, but his first turn claimed some sisters, the exorcist and the immolator thanks to the speeders and drop pod. I made him pay for this afterwards. By turn 5 all he had left was 4 scouts and his tech marine in a far off ruin which I ignored. I still had Penitent Engine, a squad of sisters and a few seraphims and dominions on the table.

I failed a 3 inch charge on his scouts (rolled snake eyes) in turn 5 with my dominions to pull them away from the objective so shot at them with my sisters rather than run in range of the objective. Big mistake as I couldnt finish the squad of. In his turn 5 he simply moved a scout out of the ruins to claim the objective and get 3 points. This is when I learned there was no possibly turn 6. Had I known, I would have moved sisters rather than shoot, but live and learn.

Vulkan : 4 - Objective , Slay Warlord
Sisters: 2 - First Blood, Slay Warlord

Highlight of the game was Penitent chasing and burning down Vulkan and 10 tac marines. I wouldnt charge him since Iniative 3 would have meant being insta gibbed and he refused to charge since he was busy chasing down a squad of sister I kept running away from him and out of sight. He eventually killed them, but that Penitent engine got the best of Vulkan and squad with heavy flamers alone. Talk about irony!


Game 2 was against Orcs. Vanguard deployment and Purge the Alien

Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun
Wyrdboy
4 x squads of 30 boys. shootas big shootas and klaw
2 squad of lootas
Dakkajet

Boy did a mission ever get so aptly named. By turn 5 all he did not have anything left on the board. The only thing still alive was the dakkajet, which I ignored and simply flew off. The guy was a great sport about it all considering how bad it went for him.

Highlights were Celestine and squad deep striking in the middle of his forces and not scattering. 1 Shooting phase later, 30 orcs dead. He charges me on his turn with 20ish boys. Celestine challenges and kills the Nob and then I proceed to make 14 armor saves on Seraphims, hit and run and toast that squad as well on my turn.

Penitent Engine also once again shined. He only killed roughly 12 boys. but he made five 6++ saves during that game, three of which from a single Lootas voley. Immolator also made an unnatural amount of smoke launcher saves on the turn it drove up.

Sisters: 11 - everything except dakkajet. First blood, slay warlord and linebreaker
Orcs: 2 - took all he had over 5 turns, but eventually Immolator and Penitent Engine went down.


Game 3 was against Space Marines. The relic and Dawn of War. Warlord trait = scoring unit. Nice for this mission

Librarian - Gate of Infinity. He didnt use other power.
5 x sternguards with mix of weapons
10 x tactical marines. flamer multi melta rhino
5 x scouts
Ironclad in drop pod with beacon
Vindicator

Another bloody game. Celestine and seraphims died in turn 2 as he focused pretty much everything on her to prevent her from getting away with the relic and she unfortunately did not get back until turn 5. By the end of the game he had no troops left, my last troop was engaged with his Ironclad (melta bomb kept failing with 1s on the Pen table) and the relic was untended by Celestine that had to flame a marine to make it drop, but unable to pick it back up.

Sisters: 1 - Firstblood
Marines: 1 - Linebreaker

1 win, 1 tie and 1 loss. First tournament I've been to. Had never played against marines or orcs since my circle of friends don't play them so I am happy with the results given the circumstances.

The guy I tied against won his first two games so he got best general. The orc guy got best sportsman (he had a blast, but lost his 3 games). I got best painted army and best overall for total accumulated scores so I was fairly happy with those results.

Hold on, are you seriously telling me that there's been a sisters of battle post going on for 74 pages and I'm just NOW hearing about this? Man, I really need to go on the Tactics part of this more often...

Either way I've covered this pretty extensively in my article on the other part of the forum: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/489105.page
I compare the effectiveness of 5th sisters to 6th sisters.

The main conclusion I drew was that I have now abandoned the Jacobus bomb as it's not as effective as it once was. I usually just import Coteaz and a squad of henchmen with shiny guns to pick up the slack. However, Jacobus or Krynov is still a good choice for a 20 girl sisters blob sitting on an objective. They don't kill much at range but they're fun to camp with.

Celestine got better, as did the Seraphim because of that.

Also, I've been having fun putting 2 Plasma pistols on my BSS superiors and abusing their act of faith to re-roll 1s. It can be fun. I typically place pretty high at my local tournaments 2-4th out of a group of 14-18 people so I feel pretty good about them. They're still mono-build so it gets a little redundant so I often switch over to my Tau. (I'll have an up to date, competitive army eventually...Don't get me started on my Eldar...)

 Jancoran wrote:
I saw a Battle report where they had 4 motorized Sisters units all Wargeared up, 3 Exorcists, St Celestine and a Seraphim squad.

I thought 4 was one too many Sisters Squads even though it obviously presents a pain in the arse as far as scoring threats go.

Just kind of an interesting build. No Sisters Repentia nor battle conclaves to repel Deep Strikers/rearguard threats et al, No Priests or Confessors of any kind, no dominion, just the one Seraphim unit and no Retributors. About as plain a list as you'll see. He used basically just three units.

Anyways, does anyone here have a build that so many are preferable? With the other elements he has, would you take 4? It's not like they wouldn't do damage. Bolters are bolters, they're pretty good weapons, but only when they are out of the Rhino. And with no way to guarantee preferred enemy for them, which would be a good reason to take them in goodly numbers...?

Just throwing it out there for ideas.

At 1500 im using 3 squads of SOB troops and 3 squads of dominions with 3 exorcists and celestine. I don't like the elite choices in our book, i dont want another HQ unit, and using all of my heavy and fast attack slots already im just forced to take more sister squads or fritter away my points on upgrades which may or may not be useful.

You could always just take an Allied army to spend points.

Myself and many others add an IG detachment.

All of a sudden you have points to spend on Heavy Weapons, More tanks, Vendettas, or massive number of bodies.

At 1.5k I run
2 Sob squads
Saint Celestine
3 Exorcists

The rest is just IG
2 Infantry Pltoons
CCS

Nets me 3 Lascannons, 4 MLs, 4x Special weapons.

 Celtic Strike wrote:
Hold on, are you seriously telling me that there's been a sisters of battle post going on for 74 pages and I'm just NOW hearing about this? Man, I really need to go on the Tactics part of this more often...

In all seriousness, I've been wondering where some of the SOB regulars have been in this thread. I just figured they didn't like us.

Welcome to the party, Celtic.

Most folks have abandoned the bomb at this point. The lack of assault transport really killed it. That being said, there are a lot of other good combos for sisters that we have gone over.

Mikhail-Lenin's Nova Sisters/GK/Bastion were great.
I ran Wolf / Sisters very successfully.
Sisters / IG have been pretty popular in a lot of places.

Lots of neat tricks.

Another tournament in March. 1500 points this time. Should have hopefully plenty of time to get stuff painted and thinking of bringing:

Celestine

2 x 10 Sister squads - Flamer, Multi Melta, Combi Flamer. - I didnt get much use of the melta's on these. Multi however was nice to threaten at range. Once they got charged however, I would love the additional flamer so going to try it this time.

5 Dominions - Meltagun x 2, plasma pistol and Immolator with Multi melta

7 Seraphims - handflamers x 2, plasma pistol and eviscerator.

Exorcist

5 Retributors - Heavy Bolters x 4

Allies:

Coteaz

Servitors x 3 - Heavy bolters x 2 and multimelta
Jokaero

Dreadknight - heavy Incinerator

Bastion with Icarus Lascannon


That gets me with 55 points to spare and not sure what to do with them at this point. I think the list setup is fairly straight forward and should play well on a 4x4 table.
I thought about a teleporter for the knight, but that would need me 20 more points from somewhere and given how small table is I am not sure it will see a lot of use.

Why plasma pistols on the Doms and not Combi-Meltas?
And why Plasma Pistol on the Seraphim superior?

PP are just not that good for points. You could use those points to get a Simulacrum for your Rets.

Also, why a multimelta for your Servitors and not another HB or another Joker?

Might be able to fit a teleporter with some of those changes.