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That's also why it's important - to me - to field her with the 2 geminae. 4 wounds with 2+/4++ to get through is a nice buffer before being forced to allocate to Celestine (the 4++ is specially nice vs high damage weapon).

the_Jakman wrote:
I haven't seen the Index yet, but I thought I might float an idea. The buff to stormbolters may give me a reason to use all my unused SB Sisters.

Im assuming the vanguard rule works similar to scout, SBs get 4 shots under 12", and theres an AoF that allows 2 rounds of shooting for a squad. A 10 strong Dominion squad in a Rhino with 4x stormbolters and another on the Superior, would have 60 shots in one turn, from one squad. Plus another potential 8 if you give the rhino 2 of them. Thats almost 70 shots, how many points would this squad cost? I cant imagine its much.

I think this would be pretty cool. Thoughts?

I believe the sister superior can also take a SB for up to 5 per squad. (Technically you could fill a rhino with 2x5 SB squads.) I think a unit that's that far in front of your army will die and SB won't pack enough of a punch before they do.

I am however tempted to pay my troop tax with 3xSB BSS though.

Rubenite wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Drider wrote:
The problem I see with it is that once Big C takes a wound you then have to allocate wounds to the wounded model in a unit. She'd be taking all the wounds even if she had one or more geminae. you'd then have to spend you're AoF on healing her up to full so that you can allocate wounds to the geminae.

I, and i think most people, plan on running Big C with both geminae and by 10 seraphim. It seems pretty mandatory to take to take Celestine and it seems even more mandatory to bring the seraphim to tank for her.

Never allocate to Celestine if there are Geminae up.

Hmmmmm I see what Drider is saying - a common scenario will be:

- Celestine's unit gets hit with enough firepower to kill Geminae and wound Celestine
- Your next turn you revive Geminae, but as Celestine is still wounded any further hits will have to be allocated to her before Geminae as per core rules
- You can mitigate this somewhat by using AoF to heal D3 wounds, but you'd need to restore her to full to be able to allocate to Geminae again.

This to me just emphasises the value in taking the Seraphim in a ring around her so that her Character unit is never the closest target. I've got 6 Seraphim in my current list, but with big C handing out a leadership buff to 9 a blob of 10 would probably fare reasonably well under morale.

Pretre, why would anyone ever do that?

Rubenite, actually the scenario I was thinking of was someone going out of their way to counter Big C. I'm not sure if the sniper rule or some other mechanic would bypass the unit wound allocation rule and force you to take a wound on Celestine. If it does then all they have to do is dink her armour and then dakka her to death. Another one I had in mind is that if her geminae have been cumped and she's on her own, she takes a wound. Next turn A Geminae gets up. If Big C is still 1 wound down then she's going to be vulnerable.

I kinda wonder if it's worth running a single Hospitallar to try to shadow Celestine with. If she's not trying to patch up Big C then she could be trying to respawn one of the little Gs or seraphim. It opens up the option of Aof healing at the start of the turn and then Hospitaller healing at the end of the movement phase, potentially healing 2D3 wounds.

Hmmmm reading the Sniper Rifles rules I'd say they allow you to target a unit with the CHARACTER keyword even if it's not the closest unit. But as the 'Celestine' unit consists of the Saint Celestine and 1-2 Geminae Superia models, I'm pretty sure you can still allocate wounds to your models as you wish (other than wounded first). In close combat as well your opponent could target the 'Celestine' unit but you could still allocate to the Geminae.

Hospitaller is a good idea but I don't see it happening in practice, especially at the END of the movement phase. She's just not fast enough to keep up with Celestine or you'd have to waste a turn moving Celestine closer to her. I don't think it would work as a tactic, but certainly an opportunistic heal or resurrection of a Geminae would be pretty cool.

As an aside, I'm loving the discussion happening with this edition in that there seem to be a lot less 'auto-includes', 'must-takes' and 'optimum/most efficient' load-outs for squads and characters. Almost everything seems perfectly viable and each with its pros and cons. Storm Bolters vs. Flamers is a great example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the subject of this 'rerolls occur BEFORE modifiers' business, I've noticed that makes the Seraphim's Angelic Visage less useful with Celestine's buff:

On your first invul roll you'd have to still reroll the 5s as the reroll triggers before the +1 comes in. Kinda sucks.

I think it's worth to take 2 geminae. Because even if we lost Celestine completely because she was dead one time before, if there is geminae in field, we can return Celestine by AoF.

Yeah she will return with only 1 wound, but I'm sure it's sufficient to slay one more enemy unit except Tau that will kill her by overwatch.

Geminae's auto removal rule by Celestine's death is only applied when she died by failure of resurrection roll.

That's...freaking genius. If you do end up in that situation, use your 2+ AoF to revive Celestine and then as it's still at the start of your turn, use Celestine's AoF on another unit within 6". I love it!

Healing Tears then activates at the start of the movement phase. So if you are down to a one wound Geminae you can revive Celestine on 1 wound and the other Geminae. Those will be some delicious tears from the opposite side of the table!

(EDIT: Reworded as you can't AoF the same unit twice)

Actually... I don't think there's anything stopping you from reviving Celestine after you've lost her any number of times as long as you still have one of the Geminae, but you can't heal her the same turn due to the the limitation that each unit can only use one AoF per turn even if you use more than one.

This might be the case where a hospitaler would be really useful.

Mavnas wrote:
Actually... I don't think there's anything stopping you from reviving Celestine after you've lost her any number of times as long as you still have one of the Geminae...

Sure, if you ignore the first three words in Miraculous Intervention: "Once per game"

 deviantduck wrote:

Mavnas wrote:
Actually... I don't think there's anything stopping you from reviving Celestine after you've lost her any number of times as long as you still have one of the Geminae...

Sure, if you ignore the first three words in Miraculous Intervention: "Once per game"

No, they are saying if the Gems are up, you use Spirit AoF to revive Celestine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It'd be rare to have C down when the G's are up, but that is still pure awesome. Thanks for the find!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hospitaller could do the same thing, if you could get the gems back in range.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mavnas wrote:
Actually... I don't think there's anything stopping you from reviving Celestine after you've lost her any number of times as long as you still have one of the Geminae, but you can't heal her the same turn due to the the limitation that each unit can only use one AoF per turn even if you use more than one.

This might be the case where a hospitaler would be really useful.

Can't heal her the same turn as what?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, Hospitaller has to heal first in the unit, then revive if there's no one to heal, so she's a lot more limited. 3" range too.

 pretre wrote:
It'd be rare to have C down when the G's are up, but that is still pure awesome. Thanks for the find!

It's actually not possible at all. If Celestine dies and fail the Miraculous Intervention all remaning Geminae are removed from play. And Miraculous Intervention happens immediately when she loses her last wound, not at the start of the next turn like it used to be.

[EDIT] Nevermind I got what you're talking about. Celestine dies a first time, got back with MI, then dies again, this time the geminae are not automatically removed from play then we can rez her using other means...

 RabbitMaster wrote:
It's actually not possible at all. If Celestine dies and fail the Miraculous Intervention all remaning Geminae are removed from play. And Miraculous Intervention happens immediately when she loses her last wound, not at the start of the next turn like it used to be.

Yeah, but only the first time. If she dies, comes back and then dies again, you can revive her with the Act of Faith if one of her bodyguards is still alive.

Yeah that's what I just figured out (was editing my previous reply ^^)

 pretre wrote:

Can't heal her the same turn as what?

No unit can use two AoFs per turn. So you can't both revive Celestine and heal her up the same turn unless you use a combination of AoF and Hospitaler. (But you can revive her then move her to where she can get heals/be behind other units)

Mavnas wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Can't heal her the same turn as what?

No unit can use two AoFs per turn. So you can't both revive Celestine and heal her up the same turn unless you use a combination of AoF and Hospitaler. (But you can revive her then move her to where she can get heals/be behind other units)

Oh I gotcha.

I think it's a wording loophole/omission that will be FAQd when they address the 'not unique' issue. It says 'Once per game if she loses her last wound, Roll a D6..." I'm pretty sure they're going to make that read "Once per game, the first time Celestine loses her last wound" or "Once per game, If Celestine loses her last wound, immediately Roll a D6 or remove her from play". I don't think there will be an option to have her die and not roll the D6 to wait to use it later.

I'm also not a fan of that she immediately has to get up in the same spot. So squad 1 and 2 kill her, then squad 3 and 4 keep shooting at her when she stands up. Or, if she dies first before the twins, then you can't redeploy her elsewhere, she's anchored in the same spot next to the Geminae.

Forcing her to use MI the first time she dies doesn't stop an AOF for the second time.

 deviantduck wrote:
I think it's a wording loophole/omission that will be FAQd when they address the 'not unique' issue. It says 'Once per game if she loses her last wound, Roll a D6..." I'm pretty sure they're going to make that read "Once per game, the first time Celestine loses her last wound" or "Once per game, If Celestine loses her last wound, immediately Roll a D6 or remove her from play". I don't think there will be an option to have her die and not roll the D6 to wait to use it later.

I didn't suggest that,

What I suggested was this:

- Celestine dies
- Miraculous Intervention kicks in, reviving her
- Celestine dies again, but one of her bodyguards is still alive
- Miraculous Intervention does nothing (because she's already died once)
- Use the Act of Faith to revive her, as her bodyguard is still alive (and thus you can bring back a member of their unit)

 deviantduck wrote:

I'm also not a fan of that she immediately has to get up in the same spot. So squad 1 and 2 kill her, then squad 3 and 4 keep shooting at her when she stands up. Or, if she dies first before the twins, then you can't redeploy her elsewhere, she's anchored in the same spot next to the Geminae.

Yeah, that's really irritating. I don't see why she couldn't get up at the beginning of your turn.

At least she absorbed a lot of firepower then.

She likely won't be targetable in the first two turns because of the character keyword. If by turn 3-4-5 she absorbs nearly a whole army worth of firepower it's totally worth it. Gives a lot of room for the rest of your army to do stuff.

 deviantduck wrote:
I think it's a wording loophole/omission that will be FAQd when they address the 'not unique' issue. It says 'Once per game if she loses her last wound, Roll a D6..." I'm pretty sure they're going to make that read "Once per game, the first time Celestine loses her last wound" or "Once per game, If Celestine loses her last wound, immediately Roll a D6 or remove her from play". I don't think there will be an option to have her die and not roll the D6 to wait to use it later.

I'm also not a fan of that she immediately has to get up in the same spot. So squad 1 and 2 kill her, then squad 3 and 4 keep shooting at her when she stands up. Or, if she dies first before the twins, then you can't redeploy her elsewhere, she's anchored in the same spot next to the Geminae.

Yeah, she's suffered some pretty massive survivability nerfs between that, the fact that she doesn't get her high WS to make it hard to hit her, things doing more than one damage, things that 2+ used to laugh at being converted into AP -1 or -2 making her saves worse, and no longer being able to put her in a unit and LOS! things around if she gets low on HP. The Character thing helps, except eventually she has to charge forward to do the melee thing and then things kind of break down unless your opponent's long-range firepower is neutralized first at which point she can make a mess out of a flank.

Honestly, I don't think she's that good anymore, but I've only ever played one game where Celestine wasn't my HQ, so...

For the Celestine Hospitaller trick it's worth noting that your remaning Geminae on the field will need to be UNWOUNDED. The wording of the HEALER ability is such that you can only resurrect a model in a unit if you are unable to heal D3 wounds on a wounded model.

Spirit of the Martyr however lets you choose between healing and resurrecting.

We're uncovering some quality stuff here. There was talk of starting a new thread a couple pages back, any interest in doing this and collating the info either in the OP or in a Google Doc or something?

Mavnas wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:
I think it's a wording loophole/omission that will be FAQd when they address the 'not unique' issue. It says 'Once per game if she loses her last wound, Roll a D6..." I'm pretty sure they're going to make that read "Once per game, the first time Celestine loses her last wound" or "Once per game, If Celestine loses her last wound, immediately Roll a D6 or remove her from play". I don't think there will be an option to have her die and not roll the D6 to wait to use it later.

I'm also not a fan of that she immediately has to get up in the same spot. So squad 1 and 2 kill her, then squad 3 and 4 keep shooting at her when she stands up. Or, if she dies first before the twins, then you can't redeploy her elsewhere, she's anchored in the same spot next to the Geminae.

Yeah, she's suffered some pretty massive survivability nerfs between that, the fact that she doesn't get her high WS to make it hard to hit her, things doing more than one damage, things that 2+ used to laugh at being converted into AP -1 or -2 making her saves worse, and no longer being able to put her in a unit and LOS! things around if she gets low on HP. The Character thing helps, except eventually she has to charge forward to do the melee thing and then things kind of break down unless your opponent's long-range firepower is neutralized first at which point she can make a mess out of a flank.

Honestly, I don't think she's that good anymore, but I've only ever played one game where Celestine wasn't my HQ, so...

I can't agree with you. Even though her surviability is nerfed, her mobility is increased ridiculously now. Her attack range is now 24+2d6 in turn 1 if you use AoF for her moving. Remember that her ability for resurrection was AoF in 7th addition. This is horribly huge buff.

In fact, I can't agree that her surviability is nerfed that much. I didn't play Celestine ver.'gathering storm' in 7th edition, so I remember the Celestine which only multi laser could make her instant death. In that time, Celesine was 135pt, only 15 cheaper from now. If we consider that S was only 5 in that time, it's not even worth to compare. Also, she couldn't even scratch the 2+ armor units. But even that time, Celestine was one of the greatest HQ in this game.

Her mobility is only better on early turns. Previously she could hit and run for an extra 3d6 move. Oh... and now she can be shot more since the enemy can just fall back (I feel that was a really dumb change) and she doesn't swing first as much.

What Warlord trait is everyone thinking for her?

All three seem like perfectly viable choices - though as we tend to favour MSU I'd probably only use the leadership buff if I was running her with 10 Seraphim.

The 6+ 'FNP' one - if you are hit by a multi-damage weapon do you roll once for everything or once per damage/wound? Reads like the latter.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rubenite wrote:
What Warlord trait is everyone thinking for her?

All three seem like perfectly viable choices - though as we tend to favour MSU I'd probably only use the leadership buff if I was running her with 10 Seraphim.

The 6+ 'FNP' one - if you are hit by a multi-damage weapon do you roll once for everything or once per damage/wound? Reads like the latter.

You roll the 6 for each and I would take that one every time, but that's because I tend to use her as a wrecking ball more than a scalpel. I also am still not 100% sold on seraphim, especially with how wonky the 5++ rerollable is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mavnas wrote:
Her mobility is only better on early turns. Previously she could hit and run for an extra 3d6 move. Oh... and now she can be shot more since the enemy can just fall back (I feel that was a really dumb change) and she doesn't swing first as much.

The new pile in system more than makes up for the fall back thing. If you couldn't fall back out of combat orks and nids would totally eliminate shooting armies from the game by themselves. Celestine should be drawing 2-4 units into combat against a dedicated shooting army.

As for hit and run for extra movement, average on 3d6 is 11ish isn't it? That's less than she moves with AoF anyway, even if she doesn't advance, which if she did advance would give her a movement band of 13-18 instead of 1-18. That's even ignoring things like you having way more control over AoF movement, being able to move on your turn, not having to worry about accidentally killing the squad and being forced to consolidate instead, the fact that most of the time you either were perfectly comfortable in the combat you were in or were just trying to escape it and wasn't much concerned with general mobility, etc.

Mavnas wrote:
Her mobility is only better on early turns. Previously she could hit and run for an extra 3d6 move. Oh... and now she can be shot more since the enemy can just fall back (I feel that was a really dumb change) and she doesn't swing first as much.

I'm not good at English that much, and I hope my word is not offensive to you. But what do you want to 150pt model? She is a 2+ 4++ jump pack model who can resurrect in 2+, give nice buff to around units, and hit 6 S7 -3AP D2 Attack with 2+ hit roll. And I didn't count free AoF she gives. Is there any model who is apparent better than her around 150pt?

ERJAK wrote:

As for hit and run for extra movement, average on 3d6 is 11ish isn't it? That's less than she moves with AoF anyway, even if she doesn't advance, which if she did advance would give her a movement band of 13-18 instead of 1-18. That's even ignoring things like you having way more control over AoF movement, being able to move on your turn, not having to worry about accidentally killing the squad and being forced to consolidate instead, the fact that most of the time you either were perfectly comfortable in the combat you were in or were just trying to escape it and wasn't much concerned with general mobility, etc.

Sure, but it's also at the cost of doing anything else with your AoF, whereas Hit and Run was free before, and you'd always do it at the end of the enemy fight phase (otherwise he'd mostly just charge you again) after he couldn't spend time shooting you.

I'm not good at English that much, and I hope my word is not offensive to you. But what do you want to 150pt model? She is a 2+ 4++ jump pack model who can resurrect in 2+, give nice buff to around units, and hit 6 S7 -3AP D2 Attack with 2+ hit roll. And I didn't count free AoF she gives. Is there any model who is apparent better than her around 150pt?

Are you really ever going to take her without the Geminae though? So she might as well be 250. And is she really going to charge forward by herself where the enemy can focus all his long range firepower on her?

Are you really ever going to take her without the Geminae though? So she might as well be 250.

Why not? If you think Geminae doesn't work for 50 pt, you can do it. Geminae is just option. I saw people who said they will run Celestine without Geminae or just 1 in this thread.

What are you saying now can't deny the fact that Celestine is one of the best model around 150pt

. And is she really going to charge forward by herself where the enemy can focus all his long range firepower on her?

I can't understand. You have seraphim, rhino, immolator or any other ally who can move with her. And even if she move by herself, she is jump pack model who can move 24 in 1 turn, don't you use any BLOS building at all?

jim300 wrote:

Are you really ever going to take her without the Geminae though? So she might as well be 250.

Why not? If you think Geminae doesn't work for 50 pt, you can do it. Geminae is just option. I saw people who said they will run Celestine without Geminae or just 1 in this thread.

What are you saying now can't deny the fact that Celestine is one of the best model around 150pt

. And is she really going to charge forward by herself where the enemy can focus all his long range firepower on her?

I can't understand. You have seraphim, rhino, immolator or any other ally who can move with her. And even if she move by herself, she is jump pack model who can move 24 in 1 turn, don't you use any BLOS building at all?

My point is that she needs support to do her thing, so looking at her price tag is misleading, and while her attacks look impressive, let's look at what happens on average if she charges... say a Tactical squad (assume she's you warlord and has +1 attack on the charge).

She get 35/6 hits of which 35/9 wound, 3.24 are unsaved. The twins get 4 hits of which 4/3 wound and a little over 1 wounds. So on average she doesn't even wipe out a min sized tactical squad. They can then fall back and she's shootable. In previous editions, she would also not wipe them out, but she'd be safe from shooting and probably would finish them off just in time for your next turn. Granted, she would do the same thing to a T5 2W version of the same unit, which is a bit more impressive.

We don't really have other units that want to be in melee (Aside from DCAs, Crusaders, etc. but those look pretty terrible now that you can't put them together into a single unit with stacking priest buffs, I think). I mean, she's probably better than the old 135pt. version (although that version could never be removed in a single turn unless you failed her AoF and that version could make a mess of the enemy backfield relatively safely by remaining locked in combat until the end of the opponent's turn), but the more recent version combined with 7th ed rules, I think made her role much better. Now she's in an odd place being a melee-heavy unit that wants to give aura buffs to a bunch of units that probably don't want to be in melee.

In terms of survivability, she herself can take an average of 4.8 Lascannon hits now, then get up and take 4.8 more. The most recent version from the last edition could take 12 per life. This applies to any other weapon that does d6. So while it's true that she's now tougher than the old 135 point version, we did briefly have a really hard to remove version of Celestine.

Mavnas wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

As for hit and run for extra movement, average on 3d6 is 11ish isn't it? That's less than she moves with AoF anyway, even if she doesn't advance, which if she did advance would give her a movement band of 13-18 instead of 1-18. That's even ignoring things like you having way more control over AoF movement, being able to move on your turn, not having to worry about accidentally killing the squad and being forced to consolidate instead, the fact that most of the time you either were perfectly comfortable in the combat you were in or were just trying to escape it and wasn't much concerned with general mobility, etc.

Sure, but it's also at the cost of doing anything else with your AoF, whereas Hit and Run was free before, and you'd always do it at the end of the enemy fight phase (otherwise he'd mostly just charge you again) after he couldn't spend time shooting you.

I'm not good at English that much, and I hope my word is not offensive to you. But what do you want to 150pt model? She is a 2+ 4++ jump pack model who can resurrect in 2+, give nice buff to around units, and hit 6 S7 -3AP D2 Attack with 2+ hit roll. And I didn't count free AoF she gives. Is there any model who is apparent better than her around 150pt?

Are you really ever going to take her without the Geminae though? So she might as well be 250. And is she really going to charge forward by herself where the enemy can focus all his long range firepower on her?

Yeah, you absolutely will, know why? Same reason you did it before when she was 200 and even at 135.

Because people HATE shooting at her and the better the player the more they hate it. Every shot into her feels like a complete waste of time for your opponent. He has to rip through 11 wounds of 2+/3+ 4++ to drop her (that's more damage than plenty of tanks can take btw) and all that means is that she comes back with a free deepstrike somewhere else on the board and, oh look now her bodyguards are back from her own AoF.

Shooting at Celestine has always been so incredibly frustrating that I can't tell you how many times people have just ignored her until she's chewing away at their lines. Even when she was 135pts and died to a stiff breeze I ran her unescorted all the time. I even took her to a major GT with no squad to join and she managed to win me 2 games by herself (one was because of how tiny her old model was and LOS but still).

Celestine is easily the best unit in our book and is arguably the best model in the game at all 3 possible point levels and while she has taken a hit in terms of survivability compared to her 200pt 'I will be the last model left on the board I don't care what you brought' form; her offense, mobility, and support capabilities have gone through the roof. There's a reason pretty much every playtester who's talked about sisters considers her an auto include even though the majority of the book got anywhere from slightly better (repentia) to WAY better (pengines, HB rets).

Also 4.8 Lascannon hits is 7 lascannon shots which is 266pts and doesn't count the gemini.

ERJAK wrote:

You roll the 6 for each and I would take that one every time, but that's because I tend to use her as a wrecking ball more than a scalpel. I also am still not 100% sold on seraphim, especially with how wonky the 5++ rerollable is.

Beacon of faith adds one to the invulnerable save, rather than the invulnerable save ROLL, so it isn't actually affected by the re-rolls before modifiers rule since it's not actually modifying the die roll.