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 ShatteredBlade wrote:
So about six years ago I decided to start saving up for a sisters of battle army. I put aside some cash every month and, at first, was setting aside quite bit. But as time went on I started to put aside less and less and now I've quit because I can't fathom adding more money to a large sum that would probably buy me an apocalypse army outright. So here we are, 6th ed 40k and I'm still waiting for plastics.

With that mentality, you should just invest everything you've saved so far and then sell your stock when the SoB have a plastic range. Two things are bound to happen:

Either:

1. You sell your stock for a massive army of SoB (and likely have plenty of cash to spare)

or

2. You retire.

If GW wanted to save the Sisters all they have to do is release a new 6th ed. Codex that puts them at the top of the power creep. Imagine logging in and reading endless posts about how over-powered Sisters are and veteran players complaining about all the new players jumping on the Sisters bandwagon.

But seriously, it would be nice to see GW release a nice plastic kit for Sisters. Something like the Grey Knights Strike Squad were one kit can be made into just about any Sisters unit.

I have no desire to do a Sisters army but if updated rules and some nice models were released I would certainly like to build a small allied for force to play with my Inquisition list.

If GW wanted to save Sisters, all they'd have to do is use their pewter molds for injected pastic and put together 5-girl sets of the existing models at a more affordable price. The cost to do that would be significantly less than a full release (make new molds from the old masters, brief QA, and all other costs are already rolled into day-to-day operations with, what I assume, are full-time graphics, White Dwarf, and online editors).

Unless you already have a full SoB army, you can't say you wouldn't jump at the chance to fill up your army for less money.

But this is just one man's opinion.

Solis Luna Astrum wrote:
If GW wanted to save the Sisters all they have to do is release a new 6th ed. Codex that puts them at the top of the power creep.

It'd take more than just overpowered rules to sell Sisters models. They need new, high-quality sculpts as well.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:Few years ago one GW men who works in high staff said that GW will never again squat an army. So SoB are save when it comes to that ( ask Lynata for details ).

Ouphhh ... I'm afraid I can't add any detail to that, as it was just internet scuttlebutt that I had repeated. I've since become a bit more sceptical as far as repeating hearsay is concerned.

I keep seeing "GW promised to never squat an army again" all over the internets, but I have no idea where it originates from, or whether there's any truth to it. I just have no idea where it originates from, or whether there's any truth to it (a lot of stuff that gets repeated often has little substance, especially amongst 40k fans).

What I do know is, however, is that Jervis Johnson (in a statement following the Squats' removal) said that Squats were not dropped because of poor sales and that, in fact, GW has no problem maintaining armies in spite of any sales figures. So sales should not threaten the Sisters' continued existence, even should they be almost non-existing by comparison (which I think none of us really knows).

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Want to see how the Necrons were marketed?

To be fair, that was when they still did not have a Codex of their own but were marketed as Necron Raiders.

This was the issue of WD by the time of their Codex release:


The Sisters' first miniatures and rules to use them (as attached components to Marine and Guard armies) were introduced with this issue:


Granted, the gap between the Necrons' WD list and their Codex release was considerably larger than for the Sisters (years rather than months). Another two things that may deserve to be mentioned, however, was that the WD issue you posted came with a free Necron mini, something which never happened for Sisters. Also, letting Necron Raiders win against SoB in the battle report ("Massacre at Sancruary 101") just after having released the latter's Codex may have been a weird decision, from an advertising PoV, given that it's an unwritten rule to have the new army win in every WD battle rep.

Melissia wrote:Second part states "the number of White Dwarf issues which included Sisters in any way", which was four, by my count, aside from the two issues which the codex was unnecessarily split over (and which contained contradictory stats and information about the various units). That includes ANY representation of Sisters... pictures, stories, fluff bits, even just Sisters being included as enemies to be killed.

Okay, I can safely say you're missing a bunch of WD issues there...

Sisters have unfortunately never been popular compared to the other armies, but GW did not ignore them that much.

Amaya wrote:If a freaking 1000 strong (1200-1500 with support) Space Marines Chapter can have fething warships, tanks, various fighters, gunships, bombers, artillery, APCs, etc organic to their fething organization than the significantly larger Adepta Sororitas should have that as well. At the absolute minimum each Orders Militant is several times the size of Codex Chapter.

The six Major Orders are (maximum size 7.000, average 3.500 by accounting for attrition), the smaller ones tend to be only around a hundred Sisters large (single convent, locally limited). The Major Orders are, however, also dispersed all across the galaxy in smaller task forces with temporary convents. The largest organisational unit they may deploy is called Preceptory and may contain as much as 1.000 Sisters.

That being said, GW fluff did say that the two Major Convents (Ophelia and Terra) have "their own fleets and conduct their own affairs in much the same way as the Space Marine Chapters", so there is certainly some room to expand the Sisters' armouries with things like the Lightning fighters they had in Dawn of War, or Valkyrie drop-ships for launching their Seraphim. GW might also re-introduce the Dominica-pattern Drop Pods from the Citadel Journal army list that Andy Hoare once wrote.

However, let's not just turn themmop into Marine clones any more than they already are. The Astartes are specialised shock troops for surgical raids into heavily defended territory, whereas the Sisters are a crusaders focused chiefly on defense and purges. Each of these two armies occasionally does the other thing as well, but their wargear and vehicle garage represent the role they are intended to fill. Also, the Sisters are much better connected to the Imperium than the Astartes and will usually conduct major fighting with support of other military forces such as a seconded regiment from the Imperial Guard.

Furyou Miko wrote:The Adepta Sororitas are banned from holding fleet assets by the Decree Passive.

That's a popular assumption, but may not be entirely correct, at least going by Codex fluff:

Amongst other prohibitions on military activity, the Decree Passive forbade the Ecclesiarchy from controlling any 'men under arms'. Sebastian Thor was ordered to disband the Frateris Templars of Vandire and any armies and fleets assembled by other members of the Ministorum while seperated from Terra. This was duly done, but for one exception."
- 3E C:WH

In short, the Decree Passive does not apply in full as far as the Sisters are concerned.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the Decree Passive puts at least some limitation on the Sisters - but that's more of a perceived thing rather than anything official. In short, how far can the Ecclesiarchy/Sororitas push the limits until either the Ordo Hereticus or the High Lords feel it's "too much". They also have the Frateris Militia, which obviously are "men under arms" as well.
Ultimately, the Sisters operating their own fleets was said in 1E and 2E, the Decree Passive was introduced in 2E, and the Designer's Notes for the 3E Codex (which can be found in WD #292) greenlighted any SoB fluff ever having been printed by GW as still being valid, even going so far as to directly quote the Rogue Trader description.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:Honestly, I'm scared of what modern GW might do with the SoBs if they made a new codex. FFG's supplement has a lot of neat background, and a new codex would flush it all away.

Ehh... FFG had some nice ideas, but ultimately ended up nerfing the Sisters. Wow, according to Blood of Martyrs they can actually fight Orks and even the Imperial Guard! Gee, thanks, I think I'll stick with my GW-Sisters that can purge entire Space Marine Chapters.
Not fond of how FFG made them shoot lasers out of their eyes, too, turning Acts of Faith into full blown space magic rather than the vague mix of superstition and harsh training that they represented in the Codex fluff.

Lynata, there is no established size for the Adepta Sororitas. I've seen anywhere from millions of them to only a few thousand per Order.

Amaya wrote:Lynata, there is no established size for the Adepta Sororitas. I've seen anywhere from millions of them to only a few thousand per Order.

Where exactly?

"Two and a half thousand years later, two more Orders were created by Deacis VI ( the Orders of the Bloody Rose and Sacred Rose) and the Convent buildings were extended to accommodate almost 15,000 warriors each. In recent years, the number of the Militant Orders' members has declined slightly and each Order now number between 3,000 and 4,000 Battle Sisters, of which perhaps 500-750 will be trained as Seraphim.These warriors are spread throughout the galaxy in various battle zones and on extended tours of duty. The size of an Order waxes and wanes irregularly, depending on the quality of recruits availble and battle losses. On occasion an Order may number no more than a few hundred warriors, all fighting the enemies of the Emperor while at other times it may reach a peak of six or seven thousand warriors, with much of the Order fighting in distant wars but still leaving a reserve of several thousand Battle Sisters and Seraphim that can be despatched if needed."
- 2E Codex SoB

"There are three major Orders of Adepta Sororitas, the fighting strength of each numbering several thousand warriors, as well as many lesser sisterhoods comprised of around a hundred or so Battle Sisters."
- 5E Rulebook

And check out their representation on Armageddon or the 13th Black Crusade compared to, say, the Marines...


Unless of course you are referring to the issue that 40k has no canon and thus we will have different sources telling us different things. Sadly, I am very much aware of certain licensed products ascribing them much larger sizes than Games Workshop's own fluff.

Let's just say it has about 47 levels of a canon and it would take years to organize it all to the point where it was internally consistent.

That too. And they'd have to actually want to do something like that first.

The only place I know talking about millions of Sisters was Dawn of War and how Kaurava became a holy site visited by them, although one could even rationalise that by simply assuming that it'd refer to "over the millennia" rather than at one point in time.

But as mentioned above, FFG bumped up their numbers a lot as well. Black Industries, the original creators of the Dark Heresy RPG, actually had a (subjectively) better idea there by only assigning 50 Battle Sisters to the Calixis sector (newly arrived and under leadership of some Palatine Rhiannon) and calling that an unusually large force that has caused a lot of nobles to speculate on what they could be there for.

Then FFG released Blood of Martyrs and, boom, thousands of Sisters all over the place.

 Lynata wrote:
maximum size 7.000

That's a bit of an ass-pull, Lynata. You know GW isn't that specific.

 Melissia wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
maximum size 7.000

That's a bit of an ass-pull, Lynata. You know GW isn't that specific.

Glad to see you're bringing your own brand of polite to SOB threads again, M.

edit: Also entertaining because she quoted at least one source that was that specific.

Dakka could really live without any Pretre-Melissia arguments over SOB guys.

Guy stop. Stop guys.

 Amaya wrote:
Dakka could really live without any Pretre-Melissia arguments over SOB guys.

Guy stop. Stop guys.

Awww. I stopped debating with her a while back.

I just stepped into see how the monthly 'why do SOB have no minis' thread was doing. About the same as ever is the answer.

 Amaya wrote:
Let's just say it has about 47 levels of a canon and it would take years to organize it all to the point where it was internally consistent.

Millions of Sisters? Never in a GW publication.

But millions of Battle Sisters in the galaxy should be quite realistic number.

Only if you're including the 3 non-militant Orders of the Sororitas as well (the Dialogus, Famulous and Hospitaler). These aren't Battle-Sisters, though.

pretre wrote:

 Amaya wrote:
Dakka could really live without any Pretre-Melissia arguments over SOB guys.

Guy stop. Stop guys.

Awww. I stopped debating with her a while back.

I just stepped into see how the monthly 'why do SOB have no minis' thread was doing. About the same as ever is the answer.

That's good. Someone might get banned.

Brother Captain Alexander wrote:But millions of Battle Sisters in the galaxy should be quite realistic number.

Yes, it really would be, but...

Psienesis wrote:Only if you're including the 3 non-militant Orders of the Sororitas as well (the Dialogus, Famulous and Hospitaler). These aren't Battle-Sisters, though.

...apparently a trillion odd guardsman makes senses, as does one million Space Marines, but there are only 42,000~ actual Battle Sisters.

It's even better when you consider that the Grey Knights killed 100+ of them during the Bloodtide incident. Thats the equivalent of wiping out over 2000 Space Marines at once, relatively speaking.

Heck, extrapolating from the casualty numbers in the fluff, the entire Adepta Sororitas should be wiped out several times over.

 Psienesis wrote:
Only if you're including the 3 non-militant Orders of the Sororitas as well (the Dialogus, Famulous and Hospitaler).

It would be realistic even not including them. The Imperium is huge, and the Ecclesiarchy is as well. A few million is pocket change to them, a dropped penny to a millionaire-- not worth the time to pick up in a literal sense.

Yeah, it does. The IG recruits from just about every planet in the Imperium, including the ones who haven't even discovered digital watches yet (there are Feral World regiments in the IG, after all). The Schola Progenium is the *only* source of recruits for the Sororitas, and it has *one* Order Militant plus *three* other Orders to fill... and compete with the Administratum, the Munitorum, *and* the Commissariat (to name just 3 massive organizations) for members.

It also has a grueling recruitment process, requiring not only absolute, profound faith that many people simply aren't capable of, but also physical requirements (that, likewise, many people simply aren't capable of meeting) just to become an Initiate! This is before they get tracked on to whichever Order is going to be their "home Order" once they "graduate" to it, which has its own set of requirements and standards to meet.

Where does it say that the Schola Progenium is the only source of Sisters?

 Psienesis wrote:
The Schola Progenium is the *only* source of recruits for the Sororitas

The Schola Progenium is also massive.

It isn't just a single college campus on some remote world nobody knows about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amaya wrote:
Where does it say that the Schola Progenium is the only source of Sisters?

I don't have exact page numbers to answer this... but the only other place that Sisters are known to recruit from is Feral Worlds, and that's only if you include FFG's supplements.

And that's probably just FFG being silly and trying to make Sisters more like Space Marines.

The Schola Progenium are schools run by Missionaries of the Ecclesiarchy. These schools teach and train orphans of Imperial officials who have given their lives in the service of the Emperor. Orphans are educated by the Missionaries and receive a strong Imperial cult upbringing, and soon learn to regard the Emperor as their spiritual father. Graduates of the Schola are known as Progena, and because of the loyalty their training has instilled in them, graduates are sent for further training and service within another Imperial organization, often becoming Storm Troopers and Commissars in the Imperial Guard, Imperial assassins, and Inquisitors. Many girls join one of the Orders of the Adepta Sororitas.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Schola_Progenium


Even with a limited supply of female orphans they would still be churning out hundreds of thousands at a minimum.

We also have lore stating that the Schola Progenium tries to push female candidates to joining the Sororitas over the other organizations, such as the Commissariat-- which is why, fluff-wise, female commissars aren't as common as male ones.

They might push them to do so... but also remember that the Ecclesiarchy has other orders of its own to fill, and not every girl is going to be able to make the grade.

I know that the Schola system is large, but let's look at who gets to go to it. It is said that "these schools teach and train orphans of Imperial officials who have given their lives in the service of the Emperor. " This is usually said to refer to the IG, though I imagine that other Adepta could also be included (more on those in a moment). Using the IG as our baseline, the vast majority of people in the Guard are not "officials", they're rank-and-file, and so are disqualified. For those who are "officials", not all of them have children, and thus have no offspring to send to the Schola. For those who *do* have children, not all of them are single parents, nor are all of them serving in a combat theater alongside their spouse (or, alternatively, have their spouse serving in another combat theater elsewhere), and with a surviving spouse thusly leave no orphans. So while the IG is absolutely huge, the actual chances of one being an orphan of an IG official is very, very remote. Like, one in a billion remote. So even if the IG has 1 trillion soldiers (it is more likely that it has hundreds of billions, though), you have (statistically) 1000 candidates for the Schola... and this assumes that all viable candidate-parents are killed. Of course, this assumes only 1 child per IG Official family, but even if we stuck with the average 1.5 children, it's still only 1500 kids. It's unlikely that these sorts of people have broods of 5 or 6 or more kids.

Now, to extend to other Adepta, while they may be more numerous than the IG, they are also less likely to die in the Emperor's name in the course of their jobs. Sure, a particularly famed Administratum clerk might be crushed by a falling book-shelf... but again we get into the same problem as with the IG. How many clerks are married? Have children? Also have a deceased spouse? So, again, while I'm perfectly sure that the orphans of famous Bursars, Tithe-Accountants and Gelt-Counters are inducted into the Schola... feasibly, how many children can we be talking here? Five thousand a year? Maybe ten thousand?

There's roughly a million worlds in the Imperium. Most of them don't lose a Planetary Governor and his/her spouse every year to then send all of their kids to the Schola. That event is probably exceedingly rare, in fact, and also enters into the same requirements as previously mentioned (requiring having kids already, having a deceased spouse, etc.) so as to be statistically insignificant.

So the Schola is getting... what? Let's be generous and say thirty thousand children a year, seeded into the Scholas scattered around the Imperium, though I think that is a *very* generous estimate.

Sure, it takes years to graduate from the Schola and get on the track to whatever your calling is going to be, but not everyone's parents die when they're infants. What about the kids entering the Schola in their early teens? Based on fluff, the generally-accepted age of majority in the Imperium seems to be 16 (following the British standard, of course). That's not a lot of time to turn what could be some spoiled, corpulent little noble-brat into Stormtrooper or SoB material. These kids are going to end up in the Administratum or the Ecclesiarchy as priests, rectors, reves, whatever.

How the hell are the odds of being an orphan remote when we are talking about 40k? Hello McFly, there is war every day and casualties abound at astronomical amounts.

Even if there are only 500 billion soldiers in the Imperial Guard (just the Imperial Guard) you're looking at at least 5 billion officers and that is an extremely low estimate. It may be as high as 5 to 10% of their military are officers. A basic rifle company for example would have a CO, XO, a few staff NCOs, and 3 to 4 40 to 50 man platoons led by an officer. That is at least 6 officers to around 200 enlisted. Just under 3% of the company would be officers. I think it would be reasonable to put the number of officers in the IG at over 10 billion.

Then you have the entire Imperial Navy (which has somehow been forgotten) to think about. There's another several billion officers.

Then we have ALL the various officials and nobility of the Imperium. The IoM has a population well into the trillions. Even if there is only some form of an official for every hundred thousand you're looking at several hundred million officials.

So now we have a total pool pushing twenty billion. Even if only one out of 50 has a daughter that leads us to as many as 400 million daughters right there. Even if only one out of a thousand of those daughters becomes an orphan that is four hundred thousand orphans alone. Even if only one out of four of them become a Battle Sister that is at least 100,000.


One hundred thousand total in the Adepta Sororitas is on the extremely low end. It could easily be ten times that number.

I think I illustrated the points quite well, but for those missing at home...

One: These officers need to have families. The IG is extremely mobile, it's unlikely that any offspring they do have is recorded anywhere, or even recognized by the officer parent.

Two: Same with the Navy. Lots of officers, relatively few with families. Might have a woman (or man) in every port.. but they're not going to recognize the children they have with prostitutes. Those kids don't go to the Schola.

Three: All other officials... the odds of them dying in the exact circumstances that would allow the Schola to get involved are extremely remote. Also, nobility is *not* an official. You might be a high muckety-muck on a given planet, but that simply makes you wealthy, *not* an official of the Adeptus Terra. In fact, it is only going to be the Planetary Governor (appointed by the HLoT) who fits this bill. Everyone else on the planet under him/her is a local, and not a representative of the Imperium Itself.

And your incredibly thought out conclusion would provide the Adepta Sororitas with less than a thousand fresh recruits a year.

They would be struggling just to replace losses.

Millenia of war, genetically modified super soldiers who can't reproduce (I'm probably wrong there), forced service to the IoM military... All that adds up to an unsustainable birth-to-death ratio.

As soon as you start trying to figure out how logistically feasible 40k is, you start running into problems. Just accept the silliness and move on.

 Amaya wrote:
And your incredibly thought out conclusion would provide the Adepta Sororitas with less than a thousand fresh recruits a year.

They would be struggling just to replace losses.

Yes, yes it would, and yes, yes they would. That's kinda my point. I can hand-wave that there are only ~50,000 Sisters in the entire Imperium because what I've done is provide a statistical model for how the Schola Progenium gets its students. There will, of course, be outliers to my model, as well as the possibility that there are more potential donators of children to the Schola than I am figuring for... but I've provided a baseline scenario that explains *why* the Stormtrooper Battalion is only 10,000 soldiers strong, why the Sororitas is only 50,000 total strong (note: They're not recruited all at the same time every year, there are young Sisters and there are old Sisters and there are Sisters in between), why not every regiment of the IG gets a Commissar, why the Administratum gets the bulk, etc.

Matney X wrote:
Millenia of war, genetically modified super soldiers who can't reproduce (I'm probably wrong there), forced service to the IoM military... All that adds up to an unsustainable birth-to-death ratio.

As soon as you start trying to figure out how logistically feasible 40k is, you start running into problems. Just accept the silliness and move on.

Space Marines actively recruit new members, reproduction by the actual Marines is not necessary.

Humanity is capable of breeding very quickly. It's not entirely inconceivable that the population would remain static or grow slowly.

Over 87 million people were killed in WW1 and WW2 combined. 87 million just from those two wars alone...in less than 4 decades.

You might find this interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll