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So the first step is to find something we can compare to and find out our own strengths, and how can we use that to defeat the big 4 armies. Eldar, Tau, Space Marines, and Demons. First what are we close to?

http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Frankie-Giampapa-1st-Overall-Scorched-Earth-GT-2016.pdf

This is a list that recently placed first for a space marine player. He has lots of rhinos and lots of gravitation guns. How he deals with with other armies is hits them with thing that just straight up ignore cover. He deals with D weapons by simply having too many low value targets that they all become high value and the d weapon can only kill one a turn. So it will probably try to kill his warlord, or shoot at his command squads. He deals with tau by drowning them in high strength ap1 shots, and he has a lot of objective takers. His weakness is he can't deal with air. So if a necron shows up with 6 croissant rolls on sticks, he will have a bad time.

So what is our strengths? We have cheaper power armor but we have toughness 3, but we have a 6+ invuln AND! we get a cooldown of preferred enemy on our troops. We can also have 3 special weapons for a 5 man squad. A combi a light and a heavy.

So lets look at efficiency. Obviously we dont have grav guns, but we can have heavy flamers on all of our troops. Our minimum size is now 5 and we can effectively have 3 special weapons a squad. BUT we are very short ranged. His units with 5 Marines a combi melta, a grav cannon and a rhino are 149 points.

We can take 5 sisters a combi-x a flamer/melta, and a heavy flamer in a immolater, for 150. We have 4 special weapons he has 2. But we are more susceptible we have toughness 3 he has toughness 4.

So we can effectively make as big of a tank wall as a marine player can being at a very similar point to efficiency per unit. We are less than his free-zorbacks but, we have no access to las, plas or grav without a combined arms.

So what are we up against at tournaments?
Eldar:
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Alex-Harrison-1st-Overall-LVO-2016.pdf

This is the list your hometown a**hole brings to the table. 30 warp spiders, a wraith knight, wind-riders as troops, and a d cannon with a warlock on a bike who's gotta go fast. and an inquisitor who's anti xenos because F you thats why.

So how do we deal with the wraith knight? Well we can have 9 immolators with various units so having a flood of targets means it will take him a while to take them out. He will probably pop our executioners from across the table. or if we put a celestine behind a defense line and make it our warlord, he will probably shoot her to bits and leave our tanks alone. We dont need to necessarily outgun it, but if we design our list around it we can do alright.

So what about the warp spiders? Well besides picking them up and trowing them across the room but still having them hop away from your hand while you miss horribly we have to look at what their weakness is. Combat. They are basic humans in power armor in combat. A unit of Seraphin with Saint celestine in them, they can be pretty powerful and smack them down to nothing before they hit and run away. "But wont they just get shot?" Now if you think to what I mentioned having the canoness behind the aegis with maybe a squad and making her our warlord, we make our opponent choose priorities, Celestine is tough and you have to wipe out the whole squad to get a kill point, to get slay the warlord might actually be better in their eyes. So it will help her take less fire. This is a fast hard hitting unit that can handle this. The issue with repentias for this job is they aren't fast enough to keep up with warp spiders without dying. In a vaccum repentias with a priest is better, but in the actual game, they will just get hop skip jumped and shot to pieces.


So what about the windriders? Well luckily we have a lot of templates, on everybody that just ignore cover. And we will want to be close to objectives with these templates, the only place that eldar wants to go. Theoretically we should organically deal with this threat because once they get close enough they just get toasted with some heavy flamers. Invisibility will be tough for us but if we can deal with the rest of his threats. having things with invisibility or fortune can just swing to our favor.

So the eldar matchup will be slightly in the eldar favor. We have ways we can deal with them, but overall eldar is just a very strong list. But given the right circumstances we can pull a win.

What about some marines?
This is the match up that will be even. We are almost effectively mirroring their set up with our current go, but marines can ground pound better than us, if we tech in some fliers, maybe the forgeworld one, or take a marine detatchment and add in a talon, we might stand a chance because as I said he has a hard time dealing with air efficiently. grav guns will rip us a new one on the ground, but if we can get in there and just kill them all, we might be able to pull it out of our asses.
Space marines: Even

Tau.

This is the one I think we may actually be at an advantage.

http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Jermey-Martino-1st-Overall-Omegacon-2016.pdf

This is a tau list. They run lots and lots of individual crisis suits so if you put a lot of fire into one, you can only kill one. They also run a lot of heavy long range fire, Two sky rays, two broad sides? A lot of our tanks are going down. Expect to be walking, and when we walk we get shot. And when we get shot we get tabled. Now we have a lot of ap 1, we can also just have a lot of bullets in general. But the tau will out shoot us. This is where we rely on The Celestine squad to start taking down their back line. If a broad side is punching it can be shooting. Same thing with crisis suits. If we can get in combat we will suffer less casualties and luckily a lot of our weapons are assault. If we survive the first two turns with enough of a board to still be in it, I truly believe we can win. If we get ripped a new one and just cant stay behind cover, we're screwed. So if they get close enough, we can melt right through their armor, but if they stay at an arms length, we will just get gunned down, its important to be aggressive and risky against this army, otherwise you are just going to be waiting to die.

We hold a minor advantage.


Demons

Pray. Pray to any god who listens, douse your dice in holy water, make sure you kept your sisters in a church over night. Make sure you're wearing your shirt made of hair and have a rosaries and a cross because they will mess you up.

http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Tyler-deVries-Midwest-Conquest-1st-Place.pdf

What do we notice? Hard hitting artillery, lots and lots and lots of summoning, and really sticky objective takers with nurglings and zombies, Typically, long range wins out here. you just shoot the sorcerers, you shoot fate weaver, they die and its good, no more summoning, but unfortunately we have short range. Even our exorcist only has 48", A vindicare assassin can only pop one a turn, and they can produce more than we can kill. This is where I would like a lot of discussion out there for but I honestly don't have a clue in the world against this one. At our local store not too many play this style of demons luckily though, but once again this is how to build a list against your average tournament, as every local meta is different.



So overall with just our codex its hard to beat the top 4 armies. But what do we need to do it?

Lets say we take lots of immolators. this gives us additional short ranged special weaponry to take on more enemies. The only issue is they might be worth more victory points in the end, but we need to get our small units of sisters where they're going or they will just become puddles on the ground from most armies.

2 executors is almost a given, its a good unit. Its random, but when it hits it hits like a freight train, when it misses its a sad day.

We should take an aegis line. This makes up for our lack of anti air, and helps with keeping us a live. The combo I've grown to love is a canoness with 5 retributors with 4 heavy bolters. This gives us some range, and if we place it strategically some supportive fire on objectives. But they will take a lot of fire, trust me, so dont get your hopes up with this unit, its meant to soak.

5 woman sister squads seems to be the way to go. Keeping them small keeps our points down so we can take more. and that will make us naturally tankier as we have mass numbers. Its up to the points whether or not we want 3 or 2 special weapons. I truly believe the light and combi weapons are musts, the heavy flamer is up to discression. Remember its great at taking down the wind riders. Beyond that it could wind up being useless if we arent close enough which when the average range of the other armies is 24, a 9 inch template may not be favorable.

Command squads are good now too, you can get 4 special weapons, and if we're taking a canoness we can take this. Most likely in an immolator, Now whats great is you can make them tank hunters or deep fryers, its all based on the battle field. Dominion squads are similar. We get scout with the dominion squads, like the entire space marine army gets.

I really dislike the Celestian squad, Paying two points a model for one extra attack isnt worth it for what we're going for, cheap spam, If they could have multiple special weapons I could see it, but beyond that I am not a fan.

And then of course, Saint celestine and varying size retinue is a must. So lets say a list looks something like this,


HQ

Canoness (warlord) - 75
-Book of saint lucas

Saint Celestine - 135

Sororitas Command Squad x5 - 175
-5x combi melta or straight melta
- Immolator, Multi Melta

Troops

Battle Sisters x5 - 150
-1 combi-melta, 1 melta, 1 heavy flamer
-1 Immolator, Heavy bolter


Battle Sisters x5 - 150
-1 combi-melta, 1 melta, 1 heavy flamer
-1 Immolator, Heavy bolter


Battle Sisters x5 - 150
-1 combi-melta, 1 melta, 1 heavy flamer
-1 Immolator, Heavy bolter


Battle Sisters x5 - 150
-1 combi-melta, 1 melta, 1 heavy flamer
-1 Immolator, Heavy bolter


Battle Sisters x5 - 150
-1 combi-melta, 1 melta, 1 heavy flamer
-1 Immolator, Heavy bolter


Fast Attack

Seraphim 6x - 105
- Melta bombs, Two hand flamers

Dominion Squad 5x - 165
4x Meltagun
1 Immolator Melta



Heavy Support

Exorcist 125

Exorcist 125

Retributor squad x5 -100
-4 heavy bolters


Aegis defense line with quad gun - 100

Total. 1850

20 melta weapons
9 heavy bolters
7 flame templates.


Now I am not a perfect person this is meant to set a baseline for discussion, I would love thoughts, opinions and ideas I may have left out because i very well could be missing something in the codex. Thank you!

We have a big thread over here in tactics, as well. (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/558526.page)

I think you're criminally under using Dominions. You could easily drop the canoness/command for a dom squad.

Also, if you're going to take HB rets, just take a Bastion.

Have you thought about Repressors?

 pretre wrote:
We have a big thread over here in tactics, as well. (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/558526.page)

I think you're criminally under using Dominions. You could easily drop the canoness/command for a dom squad.

Also, if you're going to take HB rets, just take a Bastion.

Have you thought about Repressors?

That was actually something I thought about 10 minuets later, and was just about to edit in you can drop down all the vehicles to rhinos and add in a dominion squad. or alternatively the sisters can walk and you can add in almost 2 or 3 squads. though that part isnt optimal.

You know what I honestly forgot about repressors, looking at them now I like them but i dont like them at this point value, 13 armor is nice but going back to those lists, the sheer amount of strength 8 and up is apocalyptic. There is so much of it that armor 13 is just a minor hindrance. It might just be worth it to take a rhino at 35 points less, and eventually add in one maybe 2 more units honestly.

I don't have to rules for the bastion in front of me but you could stick them in there then if they can get some type of anti air gun on there that might be good. The reason i like the retributors is they get rending. But! they can also all fire at the same thing in a bastion that gets hard. And a quad gun with rending is quite nice when wanting to make sure that flyer is dead. Its a good thought but unless it means the difference of one more unit I dont think its worth it. But this is just my opinion

edit: relooking at the bastion it might actually be worth it, but my only thing is I kinda like the aegis line because it gives our executioners a cover save, what do you think?

Just a comment on the windriders portion. Ignores cover is great, but they won't need to jink anyway. IIRC, heavy flamers are only AP4, unless the Sisters have something I don't know about. Windriders have 3+ armor saves.

Not to mention the fact that they'll just shoot you off the objective and then move to it anyway. 12 36" S6 shots from each squad.

Again, I don't know what sisters have, but I wouldn't bet on using template weapons to destroy eldar jetbikes that have quadruple the range.

BossJakadakk wrote:
Just a comment on the windriders portion. Ignores cover is great, but they won't need to jink anyway. IIRC, heavy flamers are only AP4, unless the Sisters have something I don't know about. Windriders have 3+ armor saves.

Not to mention the fact that they'll just shoot you off the objective and then move to it anyway. 12 36" S6 shots from each squad.

Again, I don't know what sisters have, but I wouldn't bet on using template weapons to destroy eldar jetbikes that have quadruple the range.

Thats very true for some reason I was thinking they had shorter range.

If you want a Sisters of Battle list to place in a large tournament, I would approach the end goal ("Getting a SOB list to place top tables in a GT") a little caddywompus.

In ITC events, the faction your list is identified with is based on the faction with the most points. So if you have two other factions, you can get away with a minimum of 617 points in Sisters (926 if you only use two factions). Then you can use the rest of the list to build the cheesiest thing you can possible think of. (And then try to figure out how to use the Sisters to support THAT army by minimizing its weaknesses or capitalizing on its strengths.)

 Jimsolo wrote:
If you want a Sisters of Battle list to place in a large tournament, I would approach the end goal ("Getting a SOB list to place top tables in a GT") a little caddywompus.

In ITC events, the faction your list is identified with is based on the faction with the most points. So if you have two other factions, you can get away with a minimum of 617 points in Sisters (926 if you only use two factions). Then you can use the rest of the list to build the cheesiest thing you can possible think of. (And then try to figure out how to use the Sisters to support THAT army by minimizing its weaknesses or capitalizing on its strengths.)

The whole idea of this was to try and take this codex and turn out sometjing that will work. Our weakness is range, so we can take tau they give us rsnge, but then we are tau with a few melta squads where we may as well take a rip tide.

A good advice I think would be to use condemnor boltguns. With the new faq they can mess up any psyker unit pretty badly I think, and with the guaranteed perils of the warp, you don`t have to worry against any kind of saves.

thatssoeffingcool wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
If you want a Sisters of Battle list to place in a large tournament, I would approach the end goal ("Getting a SOB list to place top tables in a GT") a little caddywompus.

In ITC events, the faction your list is identified with is based on the faction with the most points. So if you have two other factions, you can get away with a minimum of 617 points in Sisters (926 if you only use two factions). Then you can use the rest of the list to build the cheesiest thing you can possible think of. (And then try to figure out how to use the Sisters to support THAT army by minimizing its weaknesses or capitalizing on its strengths.)

The whole idea of this was to try and take this codex and turn out sometjing that will work. Our weakness is range, so we can take tau they give us rsnge, but then we are tau with a few melta squads where we may as well take a rip tide.

Lombardi wasn't one of the best coaches of all time because he ran the ball, threw the passes, and tackled the opposition himself.

The Sisters don't have the offensive firepower or defensive resilience to make top tables by themselves. (As a Dark Eldar player, I face a similar problem.)

If you take a 900 points of Tau and 950 points of Sisters, you aren't playing Tau, you're playing Sisters with Tau support. It just happens to be that the Tau are doing the bulk of the damage. (And let's be honest, probably taking the bulk of the firepower--most opponents will recognize the Tau as a greater threat, which means that the Sisters will live longer to use their own offensive capacity.)

Trying to make a bad army good (and let's put the cards on the table--along with Chaos Marines, and my beloved Dark Eldar, Sisters of Battle are a bad army) means you'll have to minimize their considerable weaknesses and maximize their scant strengths. The best way to do that is with allies.

If you're determined to run a full Sisters list with no allies, I don't know that you're going to be able to accomplish your goal.

Your list is good but it's kind of boring and hyper expensive $ wise. I've been rocking the SoB since 3rd edition and I love them. Right now they are better than they've been since the days of the Witchunters codex but still missing a few key elements. With a retooling of Faith and some point drops i truly believe they can be a top tier army.

I agree that you are under using Dominions and ignoring two of the very best units in 40k, Priests and Battle Conclaves. I'll type up my 2k list and post it for comparison to yours. It has zero anti air and less units but more staying power for holding objectives.

Sisters work well with SW, if you're looking for Drop Pods and CC.

2000 points SoB (give or take, going from memory)
HQ
Celestine
Canoness: MoO, Eviscerator (Warlord)
Priest: Eviscerator, Litanies of Faith
Priest: melta bomb
Priest: melta bomb
Command Squad: H. Bolter X 4
Conclave: Assassin X 4, Crusader X 4
-Rhino: Dozer

Elite
Skip

Troops
BSS x9: H. Flamer, Flamer, Vet W/P.Axe, Melta bomb
-Rhino: Dozer
BSS x9: Melta x2, Vet W/P.Axe, melta bomb
-Rhino: Dozer
BSS x5: Flamer, Melta

Fast Attack
Seraphim x8: Hand Flamer x4, Superior W/melta bomb
Dominions x5: Melta x4
-Immolator: Dozer, TL melta
Dominions x5: melta x2, flamer x2, combi melta
- -Immolator: Dozer, TL melta

Heavy
Exorcistozer (x3)

This list REALLY likes to go first. I've played it against drop pod grav spam, scatter laser warp spider spam, biker super friends, IG tank line, KDK hound spam, Razor Gladius spam, Knight spam, dreadnought drop pod spam, and broadside riptide spam. I won against everything but the Tau who tabled my by turn 3.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
In case it wasn't clear the Canoness and the priest with Litanies and Eviscerator go with the Conclave, the other two go in the 9 woman squads to make them Fearless and try for re rolls to saves in melee. Their job is to hold their position until the Seraphim or Conclave can come in and sort out their problems.

Sisters of Battle need some allies. And it fits with the fluff - SoB isn't an army with heavy artillery, tanks, logistics etc but a company of armed security guards. Very well armed and fanatic security guards, but still. They guard holy sites, are the Cardinals emergency force and solve difficult/secrative problems, they don't invade planets, lay year-long sieges or take on Whaaaags on their own. That is handled by the IG, PDF and Navy.

My suggestion is: Ally in the Inquisition. Fluffy, flexible and useful even in small doses. IQ have Inquisitors that can be tailored for all situations, the cheapest psykers in the game, murderous CC troops (assassins + crusaders + priest + grenade-equipped Inquisitor), plasma weapons, Jokaeros, very useful artifacts and Corteaz. 10 acrolytes with Storm Bolters, 1 Jokaero and 1 psyker is good, and can be really interesting depending on the dice roll. Chimeras with psybolts pumps out a lot of S6.

3 Servitors with Plasma Cannons, a Chimera with melta- and cc-equipped passengers and an Inquisitor with Psyocculum that joins any SoB squad will give your opponent many threats he has to counter, for a fairly low cost.

I would go with double CAD, your four BSS each get two flamers and get to ride in a MMImmo. 130 points for a twin linked MM and a squad that ignores cover will help saturate the target area and take the fire off your Dominion squads. With double CAD you can bring five units of Doms with a combi +4melta loadout all in rhino's. Unless you are using the new draft FAQ Immos dont have fire points. Walking Doms are dead, period.

This allows you to take a Canoness with a book in your first CAD, throw in a SB +four HB Ret squad and plop them in a bastion. Your second CAD you can go two different ways. Personally I prefer Celestine with a squad of ten Seraphim with two gingers bringing hand flamers. If you dont, drop Celestine for Uriah, grab Coteaz, give your Retributors a simulacrum and give your Retributors three AoF.

They wont be able to rend with Coteaz's "I've been expecting you" but they can still put out a lot of bolter shells if someone gets alpha drop happy. You still have enough points to give your Canoness a stormbolter and Rosarius and plop a laud hailer in the middle of your Dom group to ensure they get their AoF's off. Dunno what you would do with the remaining three points.

In recent discussions with other SoB players the Exorcists randomness was weighed against just more Dominions. I tried it, and I am coming around to it. If you want to go that route, drop Celestine and Seraphim from the first list, add in Uriah to give the Rets two AoF, give the bastion a quad gun for AA and bring a sixth combi +4 melta Dom squad in a rhino and you dont have to worry about those pesky three points.

I was just soooooo tempted to bring Sisters to the By Area Open. I should have. Would have been awesome. A lot was said in the op, so ill just say ive beaten War Convocation, Battle Company and A wraithknight army every time Ive faced it in 7E. Flying Daemons: way tougher because: no answer good enough. Ive beaten them with lucky shots to the face combined with the players inevitably greedy reaction to being able to unexpectedly charge something.

I havent faced the warp spider army(i own that army but have not fielded it since eeeearly 6th) so I dont know how that would go but I know HOW I'd appoach it.

I just think Formations are what's needed.

bribe everyone