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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Eeesh. That's no good Quo. So do you feel it was a codex thing? A weakness in your list somewhere? Or just some terrible rolls?

Also what was your list?

I feel it is a codex thing. Not so much a weakness in AS but, gawd, eldar are so damn strong right now. Compared to Eldar, sisters are too frail, too immobile and too short range.

I had a few bad rolls but just as many brilliant ones. My worst rolls were the exorcist's number of missile rolls. 1, 1, and 2. Next would be Celestine's Look out, Sir! rolls. I had two opportunities to roll LOS, rolled 1 both times. Both shots were from star cannons, so, you know. Instant death. Twice.

My List:

Oddities are due to either model limitations or strategies I've adapted to combat my eldar opponent who I play frequently.

No, I didn't bring priests, and no, I don't regret it. The only time I had a squad fail a morale check (besides one AoF), it was actually helpful. The fall back move put a squad of dominions further away from the wraithlord who was preparing to charge. He made his charge roll anyway though. On the other hand, a battle conclave with a priest might have been able to hold off the avatar. Probably even kill it.

I've had a lot of success with IP seraphim. Deep striking meltas is one of the few strategies I've found to combat eldar mobility. Dominions are pretty sweet, and even more so now, but in my experience they get one and only one chance to make a difference. Seraphim on the other hand can continue to chase targets around the table. They work wonders vs Crisis suits too. They can keep up with the JSJ shenanigans and the IPs inflict instant death. Yeah, the inferno pistols are over-priced and yeah, they're only 6 inches, but I feel they definitely have a niche. And in this case, they killed the wraith lord, so they made their points back plus some. The other reason I like IP seraphim is that they're one of only a few units in my codex that my eldar opponent is afraid of. When they land in his back line he gets a little panicky and sometimes slips up. I've had them completely stall his momentum on a number of occasions. I'm fond of deep striking Celestine too for the same reason.


His List, as best as I can remember.

He won the roll off and elected to go second. We were playing long sides, so I felt outflanking the dominions was too risky. Since I deployed first, only one dominion squad was in range of something juicy. They popped the wave serpent with no trouble. The explosion killed 3 of the 8 dire avengers inside. The other dominion squad couldn't get to any hard targets, so instead they wiped out the other dire avenger squad.

Turn two, the seraphim and warp spiders came in. I was hoping for the seraphim on round 3 or 4 to counter the war walkers, oh well. Seraphim mishapped, he placed them in the far corner. Not too big a deal, honestly. Without the war walkers on the table they didn't have a great target, except the wraithlord whom they killed on the way back. The warp spiders came in right where they needed to be, killed 3 of 5 girls in a sister squad and then survived shots from that half squad plus another squad of 5 sisters (flamers only got a hit or two a piece) who made it into range thanks to their rhino. On the subsequent rounds, the warp spiders jumped around shooting my tanks up the ass with S7 assault 2 guns. 2d6+6 inches in the movement phase, re-rollable d6 inch combat focus move in the shooting phase, and 2d6 inch jump move in the assault phase means these guys can go wherever they want. And unless your vehicles have their rear armor up against a wall (which my exorcist did) they're boned. Warp spiders are really really good.

By the time the war walkers came in, my immos were craters, my dominions had been eaten by MCs, and the exorcist was just not pulling its weight (again, 4 missiles total, some missed, some failed to wound). War walkers smashed celestine's face in, (roll of 1 on LOS) and killed half her seraphim with 12 S6 AP2 shots. Next round celestine got back up, finished off his last troop and then died hilariously again to another volley from the war walkers. Avatar killed the exorcist wtih his melta. My choice was either take the melta and hope the ADL saves me, or try to run and expose my rear armor to the warp spiders. The melta seemed safer, whoops. Avatar, war walkers and warp spiders finished off my troops. Game over.

The game was Big Guns Never Tire. I had first blood and 1 heavy support kill. He had Slay the Warlord, Line Breaker, 1 heavy support kill and 1 objective captured by his scoring (thanks to game type) war walkers. Final score 6 to 2.

shadowsfm wrote:
in my experience, its the limited acts of faith that is the greatest challenge to overcome in this army

i think he needs more exorcists

I agree on both counts. I really felt starved for AoFs. Dominions used theirs to great effect in turn 1. But I had a BSS that really could have used preferred enemy more than once while chasing warp spiders around. Killing the warp spiders earlier might have made the difference, honestly.

As for the single exorcist, it's currently a model limitation. I LOVE the piano, and have no interest in a whirlwind proxy or any other for that matter. But god, that exorcist model is a pain. I dunno about you guys, but the molding on mine was awful. I spent hours and hours filing mold lines and flash.

For a single exorcist 1d6 just isn't reliable. 3d6 on the other hand. . . .

Yeah, I finally ran into an Eldar power list this weekend. 3 Wave serpents, two riptides, a bunch of crisis suits with a farseer on a jetbike attached.

It was at a local event and against a guy I am friends with. I called it halfway through turn 1, it was that bad. To top it off, it was a kill points mission. It was so miserable of an experience that I don't even know if I want to go to any more tournaments because I know my local meta is going to run similar lists.

However, these new sisters continue to dominate power armor lists. I steam rolled through a chaos list before that.

@Quo you must of been lucky with that wave serpent, it has a 5/6 chance of down grading every pen to a glance. Then he could of premeasured to be 36'' away from your deployment zone (Dominions can start 12 off board, scout, 6, move 6, get out 6, 6 inch melta range) and be relatively safe, did he know you where using dominions and just forget to premeasure? He probably should of started with Warwalkers on the table, they would of eaten a squad a turn with only the exorcist as a threat. He would want you to shoot missiles at them, because you can only kill one and it means those shots aren't going into more expensive Avatar.

Any way good game, it seems you had little chance due to him tailoring to beat your army. Against any other army, a single wave serpent would be bad and star cannons would be lacklustre. Against any other army the Avatar would be very fragile, but against and army that practically only uses melta to handle big foes? He's monstrous. Maybe try switch up the list (even with no models its possible with allies and the like) to turn his tailoring on himself

Played a 1500 pts friendly game at the local store on Sunday - defeated but better than last time

He had a mixture of Crimson Hunter Exarch, Spirit Seer, Wraithguard, Wraithknight, Wraith Lord, Wriath swords, some Bikes and an Autarch on the bike. He was not that conversent with the rules - in a nice way so we often went through them with him.

First shot of mine was the Exorcist into his bike unit with the Autarch at the front - I did give him the chance to Look out it and explained how that worked but he was happy to take it - so one dead Autarch. So that was good but felt a bit bad and eased up - which was a mistake.............

Melta and Missiles were otherwise very poor - you would think that AP1 S8 weapons hitting on 3's would be good but the sheer amount of misses etc was shocking - again. I would have def won with more agressive tactics and some better rolling - Ceestine mishpaed and then fluffed her charge rolls when she got back into the fight, then she chraged the bikers and got insta killed by a single non rending Shuriken cannon hit on overwatch. The only time I got 3 melta wounds his Wraith Kinght it saved all 3 with its shield.

Killed his Spirit Seer, the Wraith blades - Celestine slaughtered them, Wave serpent, half his Wraithguard and his bikers and lost 4-2 on VP

My dice hate me :(

I couldn't find the "whiff" image I really like but that'll do.

Played my silly 40 arco flagellant list against a foot chaos. My dice failed me for the first two turns but it didn't matter. In the end, the luck reversed as I got into hand to hand range and that was that.

Funny things:
- Arcos just eat MEQ for lunch if they make it into hand to hand. With or without priests. They died in droves to shooting. I think of my 40 or so arcos and crusaders, about 10-12 made it into any sort of hand to hand. The ones that did? Holy crap. 5 attacks each, 3's and 3's to hit and wound. Poof, there goes a squad.
- It totally wasn't worth putting priests in the arco squads, they should have been in Uriah's blob.
- Don't forget to feed people your Superior before your priests. They are totally challenge bait.
- Uriah's blob of sisters with priests (I only had 3 in there) ate the crap out of everything it touched. First turn, +1 attack and reroll practically everything. It was disgusting. They ate cultists, Lucius, a couple havoc squads and the last noise marine squad.
- Acts of faith were easier and I used them much more. Everyone had used all their faith by the end of the game. It was great.

Good news on the Arcos.

I personally won't be trying them however, my meta has a lot of Tau players and I am afraid they will fall short against a Tau gun line.

Voldrak wrote:
Good news on the Arcos.

I personally won't be trying them however, my meta has a lot of Tau players and I am afraid they will fall short against a Tau gun line.

It's a silly list. But when you have 40-50 arcos, only one squad needs to make it there to just eat their line. I had one squad of one guy who ate an overwatch for Jacobus' blob which was hilarious.

Played 1850 vs Necrons on Sunday (2x wraiths, 2 Dlords, 3 barges, 2 units of deathmarks and 3 fliers).

Celestine is not worth her points in a Sisters blob, sadly. Jacobus's warlord trait synergizes so much better, and there is too much S6/7 ID floating around. The only real thing she brings to a unit is hit and run it seems, and I'd rather have the extra exorcist.

Speaking of which... 20 sisters with a simiulacrum, 5 priests (one must have litanies), and jacobus? F-ing insane. IN-SANE. They soak so much shooting, and with three turns of preferred enemy they can return it in kind. They munched 2 units of wraiths, a unit of deathmarks,and a barge. LOVE THEM

5 TL MM Immolators were not as much an answer to fliers as I was hoping -- between jinks and misses I did one glance to one croissant, plus they die very quickly. Still going to take them, as I think they are a better investment than rhinos, but I need to learn to play more defensively with them.

I am toying with a double blob list with IG allies, one group of Sisters led by Jacobus and priests, the other guard with Celestine. Sisters blob is stupidily killy with 4 smashing priests rerolling hits and wounds, IG blob still pulls Power Axe shenanigans but now has hit and run from Celestine. Not sure how it will work in practicality, but it sounds hilarious to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 pretre wrote:

- Uriah's blob of sisters with priests (I only had 3 in there) ate the crap out of everything it touched. First turn, +1 attack and reroll practically everything. It was disgusting. They ate cultists, Lucius, a couple havoc squads and the last noise marine squad.
- Acts of faith were easier and I used them much more. Everyone had used all their faith by the end of the game. It was great.

Absolutely my experience as well. Glad to see it was not my dice being fluke-y.

Got my first game with the new book against a Black Templar player over the weekend. Here was the lists:

AS list
Uriah
Priest with melta bombs
5 BSS H.Flamer, Flamer, Bombs in MM immo
5 BSS H.Flamer, Flamer, Bombs in MM immo
5 Doms 4x melta, combi-melta, bombs, in MM immo
5 Doms 4x melta, combi-melta, bombs, in MM immo
5 Doms 4x melta, combi-melta, bombs, in MM immo
Exorcist
Exorcist
Exorcist
And for the fun of it, 10 repentia

His list
Big assult character on bike, artificer armor, relic - storm shield, relic blade
Vindicator
Land Raider Redeemer
tac squad (10) with melta and plasma and an emperors champ in Raider
tac squad (10) with melta and plasma in rhino
tac squad (10) with melta and plasma in rhino
tac squad (10) with plasma and rocket launcher
5 scouts with sniper rifles

We played the kill points mission on the corner-to-corner board and he got the roll to set up first. Threw his raider, biker commander and demolisher on my right and the rhinos on the left. A building in the center held the snipers and the psudo-heavy weapons squad.
I decided that outflanking was probably the correct thing to do, but wanted to be silly aggressive so I scouted instead. Threw all 3 of my dom squads towards the land raider and demolisher. Had my repentia heading towards the rhinos and a nice little firebase in the back with my exorcists. BSS squads kinda hung out and fiddled.
Tried to steal initiative and succeeded!

Turn 1


Turn 2


Turn 3


The rest of the game.



Summery and thoughts on the game:

I find myself worrying about not having enough flamers in the list. I won’t be taking repentia again for a while as they were frankly awful. I was afraid to even charge anything as they would be totaled by practically anything. I’ll stick with flagellants as they are cheaper and have Feel No Pain all the time. I’ll get more BSS squads for the next game, clearly I needed to have more of the little flamer squads in immos.
Model-wise I ran some proxies that need changed. I ordered a couple immos the other day and I’ll need to paint them up. I really need to find some melta armed sisters as I only actually have 4 of them right now. That needs to change because the alpha strike with doms is amazing! You can easily de-mech almost anything in the first 2 turns and the doms are such a threat that the BSS (SCORING!) squads are totally ignored.

I’m thinking that the 1, 2 punch of melta followed by flamers is the way I’ll set up the list. Seems to work well and I can see some success in that build. The exorcists did well at killing anything on the field. They’re almost always good, but I’m still considering doing the flamer box…… we’ll see on that one. I don’t have enough heavy flamers to outfit more than 5 BSS with heavy flamers so I would have to reduce most of them to 2x normal flamers if I did the Burnerrets (I like BurnerRets better than easy bake oven)


We were both getting use to new lists so it was a bit of a struggle remembering what all of the things in the lists do. Things have changed, but I do believe that AS can make a very nice take all comers list.

A couple things I may try in the near future are:

10 Doms with 4x melta, combi-plasma, in a rhino. Shooting those cowardly marines in the building was nice. Having more shots could really be good.

Pen engine squad of 3. Here's my thinking on this unit. Noone will care about them because of all of the S8 AP1 all over the field. If they use their high strength shots on the Pen Engines then i'll be able to use my immolators and exorcists more. If they don't, then the damage from the dom's will already be done and the Pen Engines will be able to clear out all of the pesky foot troops fairly easily with their 2x H.flamers. I suspect I will not do much charging with them as I find their hand to hand ability suspect given all of the krak out there. Situation dependent of course. 80 pts for 2x heavy flamers that only move 6 isn't all that great though...... Idk, we'll see. It does give my opponent a huge target to waste his shots at.

Priests? I'm not sure if they'll have a place in my list. Hand to hand is not something I want to gear towards and the BSS tend to get wiped more than they get reduced. We'll see what happens with the Condemner bolt gun debates for that one. I don't want my game to get bogged down in rules discussions so I won't use them (C. Bolt guns that is) for now.

I have noticed that Sisters don't fair very well in assault, mostly because of their low Toughness and Strength. When you overcome those, they tend to fair better.

Or maybe it's just me being bad at the game.

Sisters aren't good at assault, but anyone can be good at assault if they reroll all hits, reroll all wounds, reroll all missed saves.

From everything everyone's posted here, the old multi-purpose BSS load-out of one melta & one flamer is dead, dead, dead. I presume that's because Dominion squads with four ignores-cover meltas are just too good at killing tanks for you to need any more melta-armed infantry, so you specialize the BSS in crisping enemy foot troops instead?

BSS with Meltas can still work. Their act of faith is decent at getting their hits off, but I much prefer flamers on them.

You are removing one point of failure from the equation by not having to roll to hit and with a heavy flamer (and preferred enemy), you're almost guaranteed that all your hits are wounding.

I find that my opponents don't like small sister squads moving up with flamers and will focus a lot of fire on an otherwise rather cheap unit. This allows me to get my other elements into place.

war wrote:

Model-wise I ran some proxies that need changed. I ordered a couple immos the other day and I’ll need to paint them up. I really need to find some melta armed sisters as I only actually have 4 of them right now.

I am one of the worst when it comes to conversions, but I did find one that works out fairly well for this. Take the BSS model of the sister pulling a grenade pin out with her teeth while holding the boltgun down in her left hand. You can snip the bolter off completely and swap in a meltagun fairly easily.

Given that I have way more BSS than I will ever need, this was a much cheaper solution than buying more meltagun sisters at $12 a pop.

war wrote:I find myself worrying about not having enough flamers in the list. I won’t be taking repentia again for a while as they were frankly awful. I was afraid to even charge anything as they would be totaled by practically anything.

Something I noticed, is that the 3+FnP is for the entire phase, so activated before the charge.
While there's a risk you'll have activated it and not make it, it makes you quite resilient to Overwatch.

 pretre wrote:
Sisters aren't good at assault, but anyone can be good at assault if they reroll all hits, reroll all wounds, reroll all missed saves.

them being bad in assaults is a deception. all them rerolls really help, until they run out of acts of faith, then they are screwed. i'm hoping in the next codex they have infinite acts of faith

i'm not convinced the right units have the right acts of faith. i'm wishing the canoness was more well rounded with prefered enemy, battle sisters have shoot through cover, dominions had shred, and seraphim had hatred (or something)

Yea, I hate cutting the metals too much. I think that what i'll do is just slowly pick them up when I have some money at the end of the month or something. At this stage I've given up on rushing to run out and buy everything all at once. Far too much on my painting desk now anyway.

As fun as Arcos sound I don't think I'm going to bother picking any up. I'll settle for DCA can openers with Crusaders to provide ablative shielding.

 Green is Best! wrote:
It was at a local event and against a guy I am friends with. I called it halfway through turn 1, it was that bad. To top it off, it was a kill points mission. It was so miserable of an experience that I don't even know if I want to go to any more tournaments because I know my local meta is going to run similar lists..

There is a reason that the top tables in big events are full of those lists.

There are a few things that make that completely broken. GW could fix a lot of that problem fast by not allowing ICs to join riptides. (like ICs cannot join any other MCs)

I think i'm missing something. Tau IC's can join riptides? I thought that IC's couldn't join single figure units. What lets them join riptides?

war wrote:
I think i'm missing something. Tau IC's can join riptides? I thought that IC's couldn't join single figure units. What lets them join riptides?

If you put a missile drone with it, then it's no longer a one-model-only unit, which skirts that requirement, letting you take say, an ecm commander for bs5 drones, ignores cover, enrolls and such.

shadowsfm wrote:them being bad in assaults is a deception. all them rerolls really help, until they run out of acts of faith, then they are screwed. i'm hoping in the next codex they have infinite acts of faith

Umm. Hymns of War is unlimited use which is what grants them most of the rerolls.

war wrote:Yea, I hate cutting the metals too much. I think that what i'll do is just slowly pick them up when I have some money at the end of the month or something. At this stage I've given up on rushing to run out and buy everything all at once. Far too much on my painting desk now anyway.

Pro-tip for converting melta sisters without cutting up a model.

Take a heavy sister without the heavy weapon.
Get a blister of GW's meltas.
Affix melta to right arm.
Find a gloved hand from any other mini and put it on the left arm (I use Warzone troopers, since they are cheap and I have a bunch).

Voila! Melta trooper.

Not a bad idea, I do have a heavy body laying around.

Riptides... yea, thats just wrong. Clearly win-at-all-cost mentality. (well, clear to me at least. Lucky for me, mine's the only opinion that matters :-) )

Uriah bugs me a bit.

If you use him, and are planning on using his warlord trait... then you cannot take either Celestine or a Canoness or otherwise he cannot be your warlord.

Celestine and Seraphims are such a decent tool to have in your box so I am not sure about how well they work together.

 Ovion wrote:

war wrote:
I think i'm missing something. Tau IC's can join riptides? I thought that IC's couldn't join single figure units. What lets them join riptides?

If you put a missile drone with it, then it's no longer a one-model-only unit, which skirts that requirement, letting you take say, an ecm commander for bs5 drones, ignores cover, enrolls and such.

I really wish drone upgrades would get treated as Wargear again just to solve that issue. Plus the darned thing is -still- an MC and has restrictions on what it can be a "unit" with. Just look at Tyrant Guard who need a special rule to get around that.

Voldrak wrote:
Uriah bugs me a bit.

If you use him, and are planning on using his warlord trait... then you cannot take either Celestine or a Canoness or otherwise he cannot be your warlord.

Celestine and Seraphims are such a decent tool to have in your box so I am not sure about how well they work together.

Yep. I like that you need to make choices. 5++ is good, but I think that Celestine may be better. A blob with Celestine and Jacobus is just going to be crazy.

Voldrak wrote:
Uriah bugs me a bit.

If you use him, and are planning on using his warlord trait... then you cannot take either Celestine or a Canoness or otherwise he cannot be your warlord.

Why would you. His warlord trait is marginal at best.

Now, Celestine....you can bank on her trait, and its a damn good one. It changes priest Hymn's from being semi-reliable to really reliable. (58.33% success) to (91.66% success)

 Green is Best! wrote:
Yeah, I finally ran into an Eldar power list this weekend. 3 Wave serpents, two riptides, a bunch of crisis suits with a farseer on a jetbike attached.

It was at a local event and against a guy I am friends with. I called it halfway through turn 1, it was that bad. To top it off, it was a kill points mission. It was so miserable of an experience that I don't even know if I want to go to any more tournaments because I know my local meta is going to run similar lists.

Yeah this is literally all I run into, People abusing fortune with farseers on jetbikes. Dark Eldar Beast Packs or whatever they are with rerollable invulnerable saves. Riptides for days with assault moves that put them out of LOS. I think most of my entire 2000 points of Orks killed 3 of the warp beasts and didn't even scratch one Riptide. 40k just seems like a waste of time for anyone but powergamers now.

Warmachine anyone?

ClockworkZion wrote:

 Ovion wrote:

war wrote:
I think i'm missing something. Tau IC's can join riptides? I thought that IC's couldn't join single figure units. What lets them join riptides?

If you put a missile drone with it, then it's no longer a one-model-only unit, which skirts that requirement, letting you take say, an ecm commander for bs5 drones, ignores cover, enrolls and such.

I really wish drone upgrades would get treated as Wargear again just to solve that issue. Plus the darned thing is -still- an MC and has restrictions on what it can be a "unit" with. Just look at Tyrant Guard who need a special rule to get around that.

If I remember rightly, a Hive Tyrant isn't an IC anyway, which is why it needs the rule.

Thiugh I am tempted to put an ECM commander with my rupture for giggles,, being I've stopped really using suits (apart from my 1 riptide) but then I could only have 2 ethereals for sbiper drone/firewarrior support...
Maybe at 2k?

On a side note, I'm going to design some Condemned Boltguns for 3D printing for you guys.:p