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Anyone have any luck running a few dialogus just to die and give an act of faith in opponents turn? Looking st putting 2 into my list

I would give it a try... but then I'd need a pair of dialogus models... and I'd need to look at a pair of dialogus models... and I'd need to touch a pair of dialogus models.

No, definitely something I'm not prepared to do.

 Anpu-adom wrote:
I would give it a try... but then I'd need a pair of dialogus models... and I'd need to look at a pair of dialogus models... and I'd need to touch a pair of dialogus models.

No, definitely something I'm not prepared to do.

Nor I... the GW one is horrendous. I'm currently using a couple of old witch hunter henchman models. One is the warrior acolyte with the book and flame staff, the other is hoisting big mechanical scrolls. I figure anyone who looks like they're reading or speaking fits the bill. Brothers Dialogus instead of Sisters, looking more Ministorum than Sororitas. I'll try for a pic later.

IVIOOSE wrote:
Anyone have any luck running a few dialogus just to die and give an act of faith in opponents turn? Looking st putting 2 into my list

What would they do if the don't die?

You're not buying 20 points for an AoF 1/game, you're paying 20 points for an AoF you probably won't be able to collect on until turn 3 or 4 that your opponent decides when you get [IE: you will get it when you least need it]. If the Dialogi don't die, was the points well spent, or would you rather have something else for the cost?

 MacPhail wrote:

 Anpu-adom wrote:
I would give it a try... but then I'd need a pair of dialogus models... and I'd need to look at a pair of dialogus models... and I'd need to touch a pair of dialogus models.

No, definitely something I'm not prepared to do.

Nor I... the GW one is horrendous. I'm currently using a couple of old witch hunter henchman models. One is the warrior acolyte with the book and flame staff, the other is hoisting big mechanical scrolls. I figure anyone who looks like they're reading or speaking fits the bill. Brothers Dialogus instead of Sisters, looking more Ministorum than Sororitas. I'll try for a pic later.

They look better than repentia. I think the problem is the mechanical eyes and the sprinklerheaded staff.

You can very easily charge a dialogus into almost anything and it will die giving you the ability to use a act of faith. It’s not really that hard

But if you are charging with it, then you don't get the Act of Faith in your opponents turn.
A better use would be as a sacrificial charger ahead of something that you don't want to get shot up. Throw her in a rhino with a priest and some Death Cult Assasins? But then again, they won't benefit from her martyrdom. Perhaps with the aforementioned Repentia?

As for looks, the GW one comes down to the head for me. Mix Velma with the Mouth of Sauron... no good.

I remember reading in a couple of novels that the dialogus frequently wear very nice clothing, both to fit in with the nobles they're proselytizing to, and to impress the lower classes. Frequently they also have access to things like personal forcefields, armored cloth, ect. So, in theory any model of a woman in an evening gown would work.

As for them reliably dying, I plan on using mine as annoyingly as possible. Run them into combat by themselves to tie up shooting, block charges, ect. Just generally get in the way of things.

You do get an act of faith in opponents turn with the new stratagem in CA not sure why you don’t think so. Charge her and die then spend a cp and at end of phase you can use an act of faith in a 2+ during opponents turn. Makes for interesting things

I'm pretty sure you get the AoF at the end of whatever phase the character dies in, regardless of whose turn it is.

Anyway, here's what I'm using currently... so much better than the stock model IMO. I should point out that they were painted and based by Captain Brown of these forums, not be me, and acquired by trade. I had planned to strip and repaint them, but I really love the way they look and can't bring myself to do it. They both blend nicely with my fledgling Inquisition force (red and black) and stand out sharply among my Sisters (green and white). If I need more, I have plenty of arm-holding-book bits to work from.

I am decidedly not sold on this Dialogus idea. It requires immense cooperation from the enemy to get an AoF a turn or two after I really had an actual use for one.

Basically, I don't think the AoF to be gained from martyrdom on dialogi will contribute to the determination of the victor.

I dunno. Get a shooty unit in optimal firing ramge of something. Shoot normally which could do some damage. Charge in dialogi who will most likely die, have same shooty squad shoot their target again. Worst case scenario the dialogus survives and the target either has to fall back to free up or try to kill her in shoot/assault which might save the shooty unit from being shot at/assaulted. Either way, you can have a single squad firing 3 times.

Can you imagine this with retributors or any sizeable squad with some bells and whistles?

have people found the gemini help or just a wast of points? i know its nice being able to move her around the board and not get tied to a spot if one of them lives when celistine dies. also for ITC missions and celistine giving up kingslayer has anyone used gemini to help mitigate that?

 MacPhail wrote:
I'm pretty sure you get the AoF at the end of whatever phase the character dies in, regardless of whose turn it is.

Anyway, here's what I'm using currently... so much better than the stock model IMO. I should point out that they were painted and based by Captain Brown of these forums, not be me, and acquired by trade. I had planned to strip and repaint them, but I really love the way they look and can't bring myself to do it. They both blend nicely with my fledgling Inquisition force (red and black) and stand out sharply among my Sisters (green and white). If I need more, I have plenty of arm-holding-book bits to work from.

Spoiler:

MacPhail,

Never thought I would see those models again. The acolyte with the torch was never finished.

Cheers,

CB

IVIOOSE wrote:
have people found the gemini help or just a wast of points? i know its nice being able to move her around the board and not get tied to a spot if one of them lives when celistine dies. also for ITC missions and celistine giving up kingslayer has anyone used gemini to help mitigate that?

The consensus is that two Gemini are good in a pure sisters list, but if you are running soup or just adding her as a detachment, then you want to have only 1.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
I dunno. Get a shooty unit in optimal firing ramge of something. Shoot normally which could do some damage. Charge in dialogi who will most likely die, have same shooty squad shoot their target again. Worst case scenario the dialogus survives and the target either has to fall back to free up or try to kill her in shoot/assault which might save the shooty unit from being shot at/assaulted. Either way, you can have a single squad firing 3 times.

Can you imagine this with retributors or any sizeable squad with some bells and whistles?

Under that logic, an Imagifier is more efficient since she'd grant 3 times the additional shooting over a 6 turn game for twice the price, and she doesn't have to die for it, and still has the option to die to get one for sure. And as is probably apparent, I think Imagifiers are terrible.


The thing with the Dialgous suicide charge is that it won't add anything strategically valuable for the cost. The enemy doesn't have any incentive to kill her, and she doesn't do anything if she doesn't die. She's also not fast enough to kill herself. In any condition, by the time she dies, the enemy will have had plenty of opportunity to destroy the striking arm of our force, and will probably have had to in order to get to her. She's not going to be able to turn defeat into victory.



As I see it, the stratagem has 2 functions:
1: When Celestine dies for good, use the strategem to give myself an added punch that turn, to keep up my momentum or break the enemy's.
2: When the backfield gets ganked by a deep-strike, I get a counter-blow from my Canoness, allowing me to either come back to deal with the deep strikers or redouble my offensive to push through to victory, as the situation requires.

Building my list around it's existence seems like a waste of effort.



Also, it honestly isn't that efficient. An Imperial Guard Platoon Commander, for 20 points without additional CP cost, can issue an order every turn to an IG squad, which is 5+ times the effectiveness. Even accounting for the fact that Orders are less powerful than Acts of Faith, a Dialogus just doesn't compare. And Platoon Commanders are decidedly inefficient and honestly terrible.

i found the diaglous to be most useful when riding inside vehicles. when they kill it and you roll that 1 for getting out i just kill her and then use it to shoot the unit that got out if they did not kill them or something else in the army to re-position or shoot

The lack of incentive to shoot her is the entire point. Fir a mere 15 points, youve got a sacrificial unit that has the possibility for martyrdom.

Say youve got even just a BSS squad kitted out with special weapons in an immolator or even a rhino with a few extra bodies.
Trundle on up beside some high value target, fire away at it. If it doesnt go down, throw the cheap martyr at it and most likely finish it off with more shooting with martyrdom.

It is very situational, but also a nasty little trick to pull out on a pinch.
Think of her less as a unit and more of a 15pt upgrade to a unit that can help larger squads in morale and potentially throw a wildcard spanner in an opponents plans.

The sacrificial lamb in a non Dom transport is one way. I am more fond of camping them on my backfield objectives. Either she claims an objective when I beed her too, denies it for my opponent, or they shoot her and I get a free (cp at least) AoF.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

As I see it, the stratagem has 2 functions:
1: When Celestine dies for good, use the strategem to give myself an added punch that turn, to keep up my momentum or break the enemy's.
2: When the backfield gets ganked by a deep-strike, I get a counter-blow from my Canoness, allowing me to either come back to deal with the deep strikers or redouble my offensive to push through to victory, as the situation requires.

Building my list around it's existence seems like a waste of effort.

A possible third function... the stragem may add to the value of an Imagifier by giving her an extra AoF on the way off the board. And a possible fourth would be as the ablative wound in a transport when you know it will be destroyed.

I think the strat should be treated as a bonus rather than something you go out of your way for. Picking up excess characters is just giving away kill points and if your playing ITC, giving away an easy secondary as well.

IVIOOSE wrote:i found the diaglous to be most useful when riding inside vehicles. when they kill it and you roll that 1 for getting out i just kill her and then use it to shoot the unit that got out if they did not kill them or something else in the army to re-position or shoot

They block Vanguard, so that doesn't really work.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:The lack of incentive to shoot her is the entire point. Fir a mere 15 points, youve got a sacrificial unit that has the possibility for martyrdom.

Say youve got even just a BSS squad kitted out with special weapons in an immolator or even a rhino with a few extra bodies.
Trundle on up beside some high value target, fire away at it. If it doesnt go down, throw the cheap martyr at it and most likely finish it off with more shooting with martyrdom.

It is very situational, but also a nasty little trick to pull out on a pinch.
Think of her less as a unit and more of a 15pt upgrade to a unit that can help larger squads in morale and potentially throw a wildcard spanner in an opponents plans.

"Nasty" and "Spanner" are not things I would use to describe the effect. Perhaps "mildly inconvenient" would be more apt. As I said, by the time the Dialogus gets her chance to die, you're either winning fairly considerably or the enemy has had the opportunity to ensure that you can't win.

Also worth mention, if a squad of BSS with 2 special weapons could kill the target in two shooting attacks on turn 2, then a squad of Dominions could have done it with 1 shooting attack on turn 1.

Also, fielding larger squads seems to me like a waste of points and effort. You're introducing vulnerability and decreasing flexibility and power for no added gain. Second, fielding any more than 3 BSS seems to me to also be a waste of resources. 3 gets you up to 7 CP, but beyond that I could take Dominions or Retributors to do whatever they're going to be doing better. I'd hesitate to even say the 3 for the 3 CP is even worthwhile, 5 CP seems to cover all I need them for just fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Drider wrote:
I think the strat should be treated as a bonus rather than something you go out of your way for. Picking up excess characters is just giving away kill points and if your playing ITC, giving away an easy secondary as well.

Precisely. It's a nice strategem, but building towards it seems like building in weakness into the list.

If St.C dies for good, then you can trigger it to get a solid hit in with Divine Guidance on a Dominions unit so you don't lose momentum, or to try to blunt the enemy's momentum, since it takes a lot for them to kill St.C and you can punish them for the effort the invested in doing so.
If the enemy drops in your backfield and mauls your Rets, then the Canoness there can counter-charge and die, giving you a chance to use Hand of the Emperor to bring back your Seraphim or a Dominions squad to deal with the deep-strikers, or Divine Guidance to redouble your offensive and destroy their army core while the units they dropped in are too far away to help.



It's not something I would plan around.

Changing the topic slightly....

What are your experiences with regard to game length? Have your games gone all the way through to 5th or 6th game turn?

With mine I have found that most games are decided by 4th turn. Even though I don’t hold to the belief that alpha striking ensures victory (in most cases), I do believe the harder you punch / counter-punch those first two turns the more likely you’ll be victorious. That may sound obvious, but is why I don’t hold back or try to make strategies out of Martyrdom etc to occur.
It is also why I try to get to grips with my opponent turn 1 with ALL my forces and don’t leave anything on objectives. If I have any to spare end-game and the game is close then I’ll route them to objectives.

With SoB? No, turn 3 and its basically done. Tho i play hyper aggressive with them.

My Harlequins always last turn 5+. Tyranids turns 4-5. Its just my SoB that are very fast games.

My turn one i have 90% my army on them lol.

Oh no, not a thing to build around, but if touve got some points left over and no idea where to put them, it is a thought.

Ive found games last around 3 turn on average turn 4 is usually cleaning up. 5 if the dice gods are unkind to both players.

Amishprn86 wrote:With SoB? No, turn 3 and its basically done. Tho i play hyper aggressive with them.

My Harlequins always last turn 5+. Tyranids turns 4-5. Its just my SoB that are very fast games.

My turn one i have 90% my army on them lol.

Yeah, my games are over on turn 3.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:Oh no, not a thing to build around, but if touve got some points left over and no idea where to put them, it is a thought.

Ive found games last around 3 turn on average turn 4 is usually cleaning up. 5 if the dice gods are unkind to both players.

Considering that it costs a CP too, I'd pass on it. 15 points would be better spent on Storm Bolters for tanks.


As a rule, I think buying single model units that do nothing useful is basically being a detriment to the force, since it costs a deployment drop. Going first immensely improves our performance.

Man, I never go first. I can't remember the last time. There's just so many drops, and then the dice abandon me, or I get seized on. Since I can't win on an alpha strike, I win on objectives and being annoyingly hard to table, and I do it about half the time.

Definitely hearing what people are saying about the Dialogus. Good food for thought.

When I go first, I don't think I have had a game last past the third turn.

Going second, I scout move my Doms out of LOS, range or otherwise (terrain dictates). So the games can last a bit longer. I have had one game go through turn 7. It was against Death Guard, I ignored Mortarion early on while killing everything else, in the end I just couldn't kill Morti, and we couldn't fail the roll for a next turn.

As for Martyrdom, I think its just a nice buff for the characters we have always taken. The Canoness and Imagifer. More and more I think they should allow Repentia to trigger it if and when the dex rolls around. If any model in the army should be trying to get Martyred its the Repentia.

 dracpanzer wrote:
When I go first, I don't think I have had a game last past the third turn.

Going second, I scout move my Doms out of LOS, range or otherwise (terrain dictates). So the games can last a bit longer. I have had one game go through turn 7. It was against Death Guard, I ignored Mortarion early on while killing everything else, in the end I just couldn't kill Morti, and we couldn't fail the roll for a next turn.

As for Martyrdom, I think its just a nice buff for the characters we have always taken. The Canoness and Imagifer. More and more I think they should allow Repentia to trigger it if and when the dex rolls around. If any model in the army should be trying to get Martyred its the Repentia.

Where I scout depends on the army I'm facing. Almost always at least 3 units are scouting forward, since that's what's required to outright deny the drop zone.

So 2 questions for tactical guidance for all of us-

1. Now that the number of drops isn’t as critical for going first as it used to be, how many drops is everyone dropping on average and how does it compare to your opponents?

In my 2k list I run about 750 points of Guard, so I have 15 drops (sometimes 16) and I tend to have a few more drops than most of my opponents. However, I have learned how to minimize my footprint so I don’t mind going second.

2. Assuming you are running Celestine and vanguard Immos / Repressors, are you setting up to take advantage of Celestine’s +1 invuln aura, and if so how?

For me, I tend to set up Celestine in cover on a flank close to my deployment line with 2 Scout Sentinels or a Guard squad behind her. I’ll set up my 6 Vanguard Repressors closer to the center and my target of attack but close enough to Celestine that If I don’t go first they can all vanguard to within 6” of Celestine and in some form of cover or behind a feature.
If I do go first then it’s all out attack for them.

 davidgr33n wrote:
So 2 questions for tactical guidance for all of us-

1. Now that the number of drops isn’t as critical for going first as it used to be, how many drops is everyone dropping on average and how does it compare to your opponents?

In my 2k list I run about 750 points of Guard, so I have 15 drops (sometimes 16) and I tend to have a few more drops than most of my opponents. However, I have learned how to minimize my footprint so I don’t mind going second.

2. Assuming you are running Celestine and vanguard Immos / Repressors, are you setting up to take advantage of Celestine’s +1 invuln aura, and if so how?

For me, I tend to set up Celestine in cover on a flank close to my deployment line with 2 Scout Sentinels or a Guard squad behind her. I’ll set up my 6 Vanguard Repressors closer to the center and my target of attack but close enough to Celestine that If I don’t go first they can all vanguard to within 6” of Celestine and in some form of cover or behind a feature.
If I do go first then it’s all out attack for them.

Very, because the +1 still adds quite a bit towards going first. I keep everyone packed into tanks and try to keep count between 6 and 9. Space Marine armies don't have a whole lot of drops, so I try my best to have fewer than they do.

Not really. I set everything up dead center right on the deployment line, so everyone is within her bubble, but that's mostly to keep my opponent guessing. During the Vanguard move, everyone disperses towards optimal targets. Usually some will be near St.C, but not really there for her aura, more to kill the enemy things.