Sisters of Battle 8th Edition Tactica

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**Creeping Dementia**

No changes to any of my SoB lists I've been working on. The CP boosts for brigades/battalions is nice.

My Dark Eldar lists need a bit of work though due to the deep strike/first turn changes though.

The hit to soup lists I imagine is hard for some players, but probably the best move for the overall health of the game. I was thinking about adding inquisitors/SoS/Assassin's to future SoB lists though to get that nostalgic WitchHunter codex feel, so might be rethinking all that.

**Breng77**

Hurts bit but not too bad really on my list mostly fewer dominions, but BSS can replace some and still do ok.

**Anpu-adom**

I was already running a Brigade and an Outrider, so my list doesn't change much. I'll end up swapping one of the Dominion squads for a BSS.
Going from 7 CP to 9 is a nice bump.

**KestrelM1**

Creeping Dementia wrote:
The hit to soup lists I imagine is hard for some players, but probably the best move for the overall health of the game. I was thinking about adding inquisitors/SoS/Assassin's to future SoB lists though to get that nostalgic WitchHunter codex feel, so might be rethinking all that.

No need to re-think it, a Battalion of Sisters plus a Vanguard of SoS plus a Supreme Command of Inquisition is still a legal battle-forged army. I play Sisters + Militarum Tempestus + Inquisition and none of my lists need to change due to this errata. You can still mix-and-match factions, they just have to each be in their own Detachment.

**pretre**

Amishprn86 wrote:
RIP my SOB list, 6 HB Ret and 6 SB Doms as my normal, i literally just bought plastic SoS models to convert for it too.

Literally just going to shelve them for now.

Why shelve them? Just go to a Brigade. Brigades are sexy now.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Anpu-adom wrote:
I was already running a Brigade and an Outrider, so my list doesn't change much. I'll end up swapping one of the Dominion squads for a BSS.
Going from 7 CP to 9 is a nice bump.

You mean Battalion and Outrider? I was trying to figure out how you got the points for a Brig and Out.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

deviantduck wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
deviantduck wrote:
Well my list just got blasted in the pooper. I can only take 3 of my 6 dominions and I can't take my 2 xiphons without an HQ and troop tax.

How about you guys?

My mono-Sororitas foot brigade is in exactly the same place, FWIW. But I feel your pain.
So while my xiphons were in the mail they went up 40 pts a piece, and while i'm in the middle of painting them they now have a detachment tax.

Get another one and field an Air wing.

**KestrelM1**

pretre wrote:
Why shelve them? Just go to a Brigade. Brigades are sexy now.

Because you can no longer have more than 3 Retributor or 3 Dominion squads in a single army list. At 2000 points you are limited to 3 copies of a datasheet if it isn't Troops or Dedicated Transport. This unfortunately does hit sisters fairly hard, as we don't have nearly as many options per slot as most other armies.

**Anpu-adom**

Petre,
Like the new thumbnail.
Yeah, sorry. I'm at work and trying to remember the right names for the things. Battalion and Outrider are the right terms.

**deviantduck**

pretre wrote:
Get another one and field an Air wing.

I thought about it. I thought "alright, I finally have an excuse to buy an Arvus Lighter." But, alas, it's IG, not SM... As is my ASF. and 3x Xiphons at 720 pts is a great deal! Sign me up.

I think I can squeeze the rest of my sisters into 1 detachment and take 2 at -1 CP each, but that's brutal.

**BBAP**

I'm a bit annoyed that I typed out all that asparagus about Flyrant spam armies on the last page and it's all moot now. On the upside, Flyrant spam armies are no longer an issue (although I still think Celestine trades badly with Flyrants).

**ERJAK**

BBAP wrote:
ERJAK wrote:
The thing you missed is that the Flyrant also aren't usually going to have toxin sacs and they only have 4 attacks. Even hitting on 2s wounding on 2s rerolling they'll only kill 1 gemini per combat phase on average.

They have 5 attacks - 4 with the Monstrous melee weapons and one with the Prehensile Tail. The 2x Monstrous Scything Talons aren't mega-impressive, but can be swapped for Monstrous Rending Claws (which *are* impressive) for free - which is silly, because RRTW should not be free for a WS2+ AP-3 S6 spammable model. Toxin Sacs cost about 3pts (maybe 4, I can't recall off-hand) - they only function on a wound roll of 6, but your Flyrant is WS2+ (lots of hits) and has RRTW (extra chances to fish up a 6, more economical against T4+ than T3 but still has a chance to change 1s into 6s), so it's a reasonable investment.

On top of that each of those attacks deals D3 damage. The attacks listed on the Flyrant's profile don't give a proper estimation of how much damage these things can do against multi-wound characters - without Toxin Sacs every failed save has a 2 in 3 shot of killing a Geminae outright, and with the Sacs it's very slightly higher. That 4++ is a big roll, and you're going to be rolling it a lot given the Flyrant is WS2+ S6 with RRTW. Even supposing you chip 11 wounds off the thing it never goes below WS4+ S6 with RRTW... they really are very nasty.

Then there's the Leviathan 6+++ and Catalyst. Don't get me started on that nonsense.

Netlist Flyrant lists don't have 3+ flyrants, they have 6+ flyrants.

At 2000pts they do - but my point stands firmer the more Flyrants you put on the table. I'm unlikely to miss one Flyrant out of 3, and I'm certainly not going to miss 1 out of 7, especially not if it's going to trap a model as nasty and versatile as Celestine.

The average Netlist flyrant list is 6-7 flyrants, 3-5 Mawlocs, Bunch of spores(which are absolutely awful for celestine to deal with), bunch of rippers, which celestine can't go solo roam after because the mucolid spores and smite will do enough mortal wounds to pulp her pretty much per turn, which means they don't have juicier targets. If you kill every troop and spore in the army without dying, you'll be maybe 50pts in the black. That's how little they spend on not killing you. Mawlocs are largely irrelevant (3-5 don't have enough wounds put together to survive being that close to sisters with no invul)after they pop up and there just isn't anything else in the list.

Mucolids can't charge on the turn they arrive - they have to drop more than 12" away from everything and can't move once they land. By contrast, Celestine And Friends can murder a min-squad of Ripper bases in a single turn and be gone before the fat bloaters get anywhere near them.

Personally though I wouldn't be using Mucolids to threaten Celestine. I'd rather save them for stuff that's not going to get back up on a 2+.

I'm not keen on this idea of units "making their points back" either. The effect dead models have on your opponent's ability to win the game is far more important than how much of a unit's cost I "recoup" in killing them. Mucolids are a good example, ironically enough - sitting them in cover 11" from a flag might discourage people from trying to cap it. They might not kill anything, or indeed even move, so they haven't "made their points back", and if the opponent kills them you're left "in the red" - but they likely took much more than they cost in order to remove them from play, so that's okay by me.

Literally every single unit in the army that has any kind of rend is going to killing hive tyrants

This is one of the other reasons you don't want Flyrants locked in CC with Celestine (unless you're a Nids player) - because if they are, you can't Melta them, and you have far more high-AP shooting attacks than you do melee attacks.

except for the turn the mawlocs pop up. The bolters and stormbolters are going to be going after the rippers and mucolids and basically all you'll be doing is praying to last longer than them. Celestine really has nowhere else to go but after the most isolated flyrant, a mawloc, or face first into a hilarious barrage of mortal wounds.

Maybe the corner where all the Mucolids have arrived is a bad place to be - but if you've convinced your opponent to drop a bunch of his 3"-ass Mucolids in a corner in order to protect some Rippers then I'd call that a win, right? If he expends them all to try and stop Celestine tearing his ObSec a new one, and she gets back up on a 2+... also win, I think.

That said, it's more efficient for her to be killing Mawlocs, but there will only be 1-2 turns of that. They die pretty quick. And you'll probably be out of units to...be alive with around turn 3 unless you're really mulching through.

Mawlocs do die pretty quick to everything Sisters bring to the table - Flyrants, on the other hand, don't die quickly at all. Your shooting is going to be under an enormous amount of pressure just with trying to fend off the Flyrants - why ask them to kill the trash as well? Just let Celestine do it, instead of having her duel a Flyrant for 3 turns and potentially lose to it.

Just for completeness sake, I'm looking at winning Nids list from 2 different GTs and Adepticon and they're all almost exactly the same. The only change you ever see is doing 6 flyrants for a biovore and more rippers or 5 flyrants for a several biovores and more rippers.

The "Matt Root Netlist Experience" includes Toxin Sacs and Monstrous Rending Claws everywhere. One of his Flyrants has some kind of relic too (the dude I played had a Norn Crown, which seems like an immense waste of time in a Flyrant spam army, but hey). Other than that... yeah. In lists with Biovorse then Celestine is probably going to want to be killing Biovores as well as Mawlocs - but in no case can I ever see it being a good idea to have her fighting Flyrants.

I'm not going to go through all of this to explain exactly where your thinking is wrong, because frankly I don't have time in my day, I'll just hit the high points.

If you don't kill the mawlocs, they'll charge and you can't shoot, celestine takes 2 turns to kill one, plus I already said it's more efficient to go after mawlocs so you're just repeating MY point. I never once said 'the best thing for celestine is to charge flyrants!' I said 'it's not a terrible thing to charge flyrants because of how weak most of the other options are.'

Yes, all of that stuff you said about their attack profile is included(except the tail, missed that one) in my 'they kill 1 gemini on average', including the tail, you're looking at 2 dead gemini, you're giving stats without doing the math on it AND ignoring that they'll wound degrade at the end of the second turn they fight celestine on average.

Mucolid spores don't drop, they start on the table so you have enough units to drop all the flyrants and mawlocs. They bubblewrap the objective campers so when celestine flies out there they explode on her. And, oh no, the 200pts they spent on mucolids isn't actively killing the 3 models that are left after two turns of flyrant shooting, what a nightmare. /s Also, even if you do kill the rippers, it won't affect them much.

list like this have 3 biovores max, might be worth the 2 turns it'll take to reach them, but probably not.

There are 6 flyrants, Celestine boxing out 1 isn't going to mean you're suddenly hurting for targets.

The biggest thing you're missing though, is time. You are not going to have a lot of time before they do enough damage to kill everything. If you don't neuter the flyrant shooting early your entire army is going to be dead by turn 3.

**Rynner**

My current list doesn't really change that much however it does force me to make the changes I was leading toward anyway.

**MacPhail**

So, the FAQ will force us away from multiple Repressors with double Dominions in each. Do we run single Dominions in order to continue to Vanguard all the Repressors up the table, or do we put the odd Dominion in an Immolator and make a Repressor of doubled up BSS with max meltas or max stormbolters instead? What's better about a Repressor... getting it up close quickly, or loading it with specials?

**dracpanzer**

MacPhail wrote:
So, the FAQ will force us away from multiple Repressors with double Dominions in each. Do we run single Dominions in order to continue to Vanguard all the Repressors up the table, or do we put the odd Dominion in an Immolator and make a Repressor of doubled up BSS with max meltas or max stormbolters instead? What's better about a Repressor... getting it up close quickly, or loading it with specials?

Repressors still keep your girls in the fight, but Vanguard is now wasted on anything but MeltaDoms. Paired with InfSeraphim running AoF to try and get some kind of Alpha going.

Sisters get beat over the head for a rule aimed at Flyrant spam... At least we have a barfton of Elites right?

My SB Doms will get bumped out into double BSS riding in Repressors just now with ablative bolter girls.

Not a fan.

**Giantwalkingchair**

This FAQ has affected me exactly zero. Wait. I lie. Now i get more CP for my battalions and brigades.
Quite happy with this outcome myself. My condolences to those players (not just sisters) who got hit with the rule of 3.

Edit: oops. Wait. Now i need to scratch build myself one of those psyker assassins so i can run a proper vanguard of assassins in my old school witch hunter list.

**Creeping Dementia**

If you think about it, because our Alpha Strike never relied on deep strike, rather on AoF Seraphim/Celestine and Scouting Dominions, we are one of the few armies left that can actually put together a turn one Alpha. Sure we can't run quite as many Dominions anymore (in matched play), but overall when compared to what the FAQ means to other armies I think we came out ahead.

**pretre**

KestrelM1 wrote:
pretre wrote:
Why shelve them? Just go to a Brigade. Brigades are sexy now.

Because you can no longer have more than 3 Retributor or 3 Dominion squads in a single army list. At 2000 points you are limited to 3 copies of a datasheet if it isn't Troops or Dedicated Transport. This unfortunately does hit sisters fairly hard, as we don't have nearly as many options per slot as most other armies.

I know what it says. And my response to the three limit is: Oh no? I didn't run more than three of any in my current list so it doesn't hit me. I mean, I made some theoretical all dominion and ret lists but never ran them after they added ob sec.

As for not having as many options... Welcome to the last 20 yaars.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

BBAP wrote:
I'm a bit annoyed that I typed out all that asparagus about Flyrant spam armies on the last page

Ditto.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Anpu-adom wrote:
Petre,
Like the new thumbnail.
Yeah, sorry. I'm at work and trying to remember the right names for the things. Battalion and Outrider are the right terms.

No worries.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

dracpanzer wrote:
MacPhail wrote:
So, the FAQ will force us away from multiple Repressors with double Dominions in each. Do we run single Dominions in order to continue to Vanguard all the Repressors up the table, or do we put the odd Dominion in an Immolator and make a Repressor of doubled up BSS with max meltas or max stormbolters instead? What's better about a Repressor... getting it up close quickly, or loading it with specials?

Repressors still keep your girls in the fight, but Vanguard is now wasted on anything but MeltaDoms. Paired with InfSeraphim running AoF to try and get some kind of Alpha going.

Sisters get beat over the head for a rule aimed at Flyrant spam... At least we have a barfton of Elites right?

My SB Doms will get bumped out into double BSS riding in Repressors just now with ablative bolter girls.

Not a fan.

Single Dominions in Repressors are still the way to go. And now you have enough SB BSS for a Brigade.

**Rynner**

You could still run immolator spam. It might be more viable than before.

**Anpu-adom**

I want to see what your Brigade looks like, Pretre.

**Unit1126PLL**

My brigade is way better now.

I have to check when Imagifiers roll for their acts of faith, but if it's out of a phase, it'll be hilarious to CP re-roll them now that my brigade has 15 (!) CP!

**pretre**

Anpu-adom wrote:
I want to see what your Brigade looks like, Pretre.

I used to have one more rhino and 3 Imagifers but I swapped one Imag/One rhino for 2 Dia and 1 Culexus because I ran into two 2K Sons in 5 games last event.

Spoiler:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Unit1126PLL wrote:
My brigade is way better now.

I have to check when Imagifiers roll for their acts of faith, but if it's out of a phase, it'll be hilarious to CP re-roll them now that my brigade has 15 (!) CP!

I think you'll still want to save them for Martyrdom and CP rerolls on important stuff, but that's me. And it is 'at the start of each of your turns.'

**MacPhail**

I don't know that chasing CP is as important now... with the boost and the fact that we have fewer strategems to spend them on, I feel like Battalion plus whatever can deliver in a way it didn't used to.

**deviantduck**

I really don't want to say this because I know Unit is going to squeal in delight, but I may replace my 2x Xiphons with a Shadowsword. Has anyone had any luck running SoB with a baneblade variant?

**Unit1126PLL**

deviantduck wrote:
I really don't want to say this because I know Unit is going to squeal in delight, but I may replace my 2x Xiphons with a Shadowsword. Has anyone had any luck running SoB with a baneblade variant?

I'm fairly certain that Katherine does, with success.

As for my Sororitas, there's evidence that Acts of Faith aren't rolled for "in a phase" and so you can re-roll the dice. With the CP buffs that my foot sororitas are getting, this means that Imagifiers now have a 75% chance of giving me an AOF, because I can re-roll all of the 3 4+s and still have more CP than I did before. Plus Celestine's and the basic army's and that's 5 Acts of Faith.

**deviantduck**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
deviantduck wrote:
I really don't want to say this because I know Unit is going to squeal in delight, but I may replace my 2x Xiphons with a Shadowsword. Has anyone had any luck running SoB with a baneblade variant?

I'm fairly certain that Katherine does, with success.

As for my Sororitas, there's evidence that Acts of Faith aren't rolled for "in a phase" and so you can re-roll the dice. With the CP buffs that my foot sororitas are getting, this means that Imagifiers now have a 75% chance of giving me an AOF, because I can re-roll all of the 3 4+s and still have more CP than I did before. Plus Celestine's and the basic army's and that's 5 Acts of Faith.

I'm eager to see how this ^^^ debate in YMDC flushes out.

Also, prior to the FAQ I thought about using my imagifers as following.
Dominion squad in Repressor
BSS on foot at edge of deployment zone and within 6" of imagifer.
Vanguard move up repressor 12".
Use imagifer to run BSS up 6".
Movement phase, move BSS up to repressor embark.
Repressor moves.
Repressor now has 1 dom 1 bss at midfield.

It takes a bit of the bite out of my Retributors on turn 1, but can still get units downfield in mixed company.

**dracpanzer**

Can the vehicle move if the cargo moved before embarking?

**deviantduck**

Let me know if I'm wrong, but I think the only restriction for movement is on units that disembark. They have to disembark before the transport moves. The transport itself can move however it wants when it wants.

**Spectral Ceramite**

I have 6k metal SOB (2k painted so I will have to change maybe) unpainted and my biggest question atm is if I keep mounting them on 32mms? I have stopped and are doing other armies... but with the release of SOB in 2019 will they be 28s or 32s? Sigh all my SOB are now on hold. Silver lining is I sold 5k+ points worth of painted SOB before they said where releasing plastic

**pretre**

We don't know, but best guess is 32mm. And that's a fair amount of SOB.

**Anpu-adom**

I don't know... I'm painting my metal sisters (Only about 800 points, but I don't have any vehicles) and I'll worry about bases and vehicles next year.

**Spectral Ceramite**

Im gunna be more safe than sorry and paint up everything else I have about SoB next year. I just pack them all away nicely so will be there this time next year

. Now to my Necromunda terrain and warbands.