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Martyrdom is a big deal.

Oh yeah. I use the heck out of it, I just don't stack my list to fuel it. I see some of the Dakka lists running Dialogi, I just never seem to have the points.

 MacPhail wrote:
Oh yeah. I use the heck out of it, I just don't stack my list to fuel it.

It's not really a build that lends itself to mech Sisters, but it's the way my footsloggers are built (provisionally at any rate) and frankly I have no idea how or why you'd even play foot Sisters without going for max CP and max AoFs. AoFs and constant shooting are the only two reasons to give up your primary source of mobility, so in my mind you kinda have to go for broke with them.

Even at that, it's not without issues, especially post-FAQ. You need max CP as well as max SoB Characters, but the 0-3 Canoness limit stymies your options for generating Command Points - I think 10 is the max for mono-Sisters unless you're bringing a Brigade, and that's just not enough to cover the Martyrdoms, six turns of Purity of Faith, plus whatever BRB Strats you might like to use.

Sacrificial lambs are hard to come by as well, and even when you've got them there's no guarantee an opponent will actually allow you to suicide them. Imagifers won't work because they're a useful source of secondary AoFs, Canonesses won't necessarily die unless the opponent makes at least a little effort to kill them, Hospitallers are pricey, and finally the Sister Dialogus model is too daft to consider fielding.

All things considered I don't think it's a viable list-building strategy for mono-Sisters post-FAQ, but if you're looking for a way around the loss of Dominion-spam then stuffing in a few more CP and Characters might help, especially since the BSSes aren't much less killy than SB Doms.

I seriously doubt that your opponent will pourposly kill one and only one of your characters per turn so that you can maximize martyrdom. they will avoid them, but eventually they will kill as many as they can in a single phase.
Overall, Sisters don’t need to stack all the cp’s and all the characters. By all means, give them bad choices to make (do I let this cheap, elite character camp this objective or do I let Celestine get an additional assault phase...), but the whole Act of Faith system is a net 3-9 cp per turn benefit! (Based on the cost of stratagems in other armies that allow extra phases of the game).
I agree though that a well equipped BSS is almost as killy as doms. With the changes to deepstriking on turn one, we don’t need as many units pushing out of our deployment zone on turn one anyway.

Taking 2-3 Diaglous works okay. I used to do it and depending on the list they have their place. The tricky thing is to time their deaths so it's in your favor. Once your opponent realizes why you have them very rarely will they actually try to kill them. If your playing ITC missions though they are a huge liability and imagifers are better.

 Anpu-adom wrote:
I seriously doubt that your opponent will pourposly kill one and only one of your characters per turn so that you can maximize martyrdom. they will avoid them, but eventually they will kill as many as they can in a single phase.
Overall, Sisters don’t need to stack all the cp’s and all the characters. By all means, give them bad choices to make (do I let this cheap, elite character camp this objective or do I let Celestine get an additional assault phase...), but the whole Act of Faith system is a net 3-9 cp per turn benefit! (Based on the cost of stratagems in other armies that allow extra phases of the game).
I agree though that a well equipped BSS is almost as killy as doms. With the changes to deepstriking on turn one, we don’t need as many units pushing out of our deployment zone on turn one anyway.

You throw them into the fights, when you footslug and have 90 bodies ont he table, but them in front, move and advance turn 1 or have them in front for turn 1 charges, if you put them in CC your opponent will either stay and fight to kill it, or fallback and dont shoot, if you are charging tanks, heavy teams, etc.. its funny, b.c they can either do nothing or kill it and let you get a free AoF.

My Canoness with the Relic sword has killed full units b.c of fear to kill her, due to having Celestine being able to attack again or my HB's shooting, etc..

This is if you are trying to max out AOF, if you take 3 of them you can have instead 8 Diaglous, thats 8 AoF you can get instead of 6 on average.

Edit: grammar

 MacPhail wrote:
I have three Stormbolter BSS units slated to take the field tomorrow with my Witchhunters list, and I'll see how aggressively I can play them into optimal range.

Even if they're no substitute for extra Dominions squads or don't merit an occasional AoF, these squads are so worth 51 points. All three of mine delivered: The right flank screened deep strikers and did heavy damage to a Stormboyz squad and a unit of Gretchin with a Runtherd. The left flank saw little action, but scored 2 of my 4 VPs. The third squad went up the middle in an Immolator with my BoA Canoness. They actually charged and wiped out a squad of Boyz in addition to their shooting casualties. Bullgryns and Scions did most of the heavy lifting, but Stormbolter BSS are excellent assets for the price.

 Anpu-adom wrote:
I seriously doubt that your opponent will pourposly kill one and only one of your characters per turn so that you can maximize martyrdom. they will avoid them, but eventually they will kill as many as they can in a single phase.

They will if you dash them all forwards so they can be targeted. Considering how your SoB Characters synergise with the rest of the army though you'll generally be keeping them behind the BSS anyway, and from there you can throw them forward at your leisure.

Lone Wolf Canoness builds are a little problematic here - they're carrying some killing power so you kinda want to chuck them out of the scrum to deal with whatever, but you need to do it carefully to avoid the above problem. I'm thinking about trying out a Dakka-Canoness (Boltgun & Combi-Melta or Stormbolter), partly because she's cheaper and partly because I'm less tempted to run her into the nearest CC unit, but can still put her front and centre to up her contribution/ expose her to Martyrdom.

Overall, Sisters don’t need to stack all the cp’s and all the characters. By all means, give them bad choices to make (do I let this cheap, elite character camp this objective or do I let Celestine get an additional assault phase...), but the whole Act of Faith system is a net 3-9 cp per turn benefit! (Based on the cost of stratagems in other armies that allow extra phases of the game).

See, I disagree here. Sisters have always killed things with a thousand cuts - their ability to degrade an opponent's army was hard-limited by the fact they suck in close combat and thus only get 5-7 phases per game to do any damage. AoFs provide a really neat fix to that issue from two directions - first, they let ytou get your army moving without needing a turn to footslog/ ride up and dismount, so you're more able to take advantage of the shooting phases you get as standard, and they also hand you extra shooting phases. The fact you can just take a load of Cadian Mortars or Dakkabots to reach out and touch things notwithstanding, AoFs are a crazy-awesome fix for the army and I dunno why you wouldn't want to get as many as you can.

Also my Canonesses don't camp. They run towards *your* campers and Eviscerate them.

 BBAP wrote:
Sisters have always killed things with a thousand cuts - their ability to degrade an opponent's army was hard-limited by the fact they suck in close combat and thus only get 5-7 phases per game to do any damage. AoFs provide a really neat fix to that issue from two directions - first, they let ytou get your army moving without needing a turn to footslog/ ride up and dismount, so you're more able to take advantage of the shooting phases you get as standard, and they also hand you extra shooting phases. The fact you can just take a load of Cadian Mortars or Dakkabots to reach out and touch things notwithstanding, AoFs are a crazy-awesome fix for the army and I dunno why you wouldn't want to get as many as you can.

I agree with everything here except the 'death by a thousand cuts' analogy. For all the reasons you've said, Sisters can issue powerful single strokes that change the game. A few squads of Dominions can turn a mechanized army into footsloggers in a single turn, two units of Seraphim can humble a Baneblade in the back corner of the table, and a wall of aura-enhanced heavy bolters can remove the big, resilient board control blob of infantry from the center of the table while your opponent blinks in disbelief.

Also my Canonesses don't camp. They run towards *your* campers and Eviscerate them.

One-and-one has worked really well for me. BoA/Inferno takes her aura to midfield and picks a fight, while Tenacious Survivor hides among the Retributers. I give up Slay the Warlord only about one game in five, and the forward Canoness always gets her points back. With the added impact of Martyrdom, there is a question as to who should be Warlord... I could trade a VP for a mid-game AoF.

 MacPhail wrote:
I agree with everything here except the 'death by a thousand cuts' analogy. For all the reasons you've said, Sisters can issue powerful single strokes that change the game. A few squads of Dominions can turn a mechanized army into footsloggers in a single turn, two units of Seraphim can humble a Baneblade in the back corner of the table, and a wall of aura-enhanced heavy bolters can remove the big, resilient board control blob of infantry from the center of the table while your opponent blinks in disbelief.

The big boltgun backwash Sisters put out has always had the potential to do some serious mischief, and is one of the main reasons the army remained mid to high tier for so many editions (and one of the reasons they remain a relatively good army in 8th because it works against all targets now), but IMHO it's generally best to assume anything you need to kill with them is going to require 4/5ths of your shooting phase or a couple turns of dedicated attention.

That's one of the reasons (besides familiarity) that I can't give up my Meltaguns; S8 D6 Damage with a low AP can take a nice big chunk out of anything and thus give your bolt weapons less work to do.

Anyone play against a good Tau list yet in 8th? I played against one Saturday. After deployment there was absolutely nothing I could do to him. The only way I could have changed the outcome would have been to sit on my table edge and hide.

Deployment was hammer and anvil. He got to deploy about his 12" line keeping him 36" away. There was a central piece of ruins in his deployment zone, and with ITCs can't shoot bottom floor of ruins rule, he was able to hide his 3 hqs, and 2x 10 squads of drones. he had a riptide on each side, and some broadsides. In front to screen was 6 squads of firewarriors. He was able to stretch out and deny any spot where anything could deep strike in. There wasn't a single spot in his DZ that wasn't 9" from one of his models. In addition, everything except 3 squads of fire warriors were within 6" of drones, and his HQs. From this setup, I had already lost. The only thing I would have the option of killing would be the firewarriors, and that's all i was able to do the entire game.

So, the way he had it setup, all the big shooters could LoS their wounds to the drones. So, i would need to kill of the drones first. But, i can't see or target the drones. So this means any big guns (melta, lascannons) you fire at the riptides get sent over to the drones and you waste a melta shot on a single drone. If you fire mass bolters on the riptides, you're shooting 5 to wound against a 2+ save with FNP. He was too far away due to the deployment for celestine or the seraphim to do anything turn 1. Same for my hammer captain.

Turn 1. He goes first. He focused all of the vehicles to death with the big guns, then the 2 ranks of fire warriors cleaned up anything getting out. My seraphim were very dead. He killed all the repressors that scouted up.
Turn 2. Celestine got close enough to assault, but 50% of his army gets to overwatch her on 5s. She died to overwatch. The hammer captain actually got to assault a riptide and tie up some broadsides. He kills my second wave of transports of BSS that we're burdened with.
Turn 3. Celestine is back and assaulting, dies a second time to overwatch. The Hammer captain was shot off the board. Everything else is also dead.
Turn 4. All I have left is scouts and the canoness hiding in a ruin holding points. He moves up.
Turn 5, They both die to SMS that can see everything.

Since after deployment we both knew the outcome, and he's a friend of mine, we were essentially both playing my army against his trying to come up with the best strategy to crack the nut. The terrain wasn't anything out of the ordinary. A different deployment and me going first could have played out differently, but i'm not sure how much. This is the first game of 8th where I had that same feeling playing against Eldar/Riptide wings of 7th.

Not so much fun.

You need LOS blockers or that's going to happen against big shooty armies.
I've played against Tau and yes, you have to kill the drones with big guns because he makes you, but after they are dead the big guys are taking hits.

That being said, hammer and anvil vs a shooty army is tough no matter what edition we're in.

There was a central piece of ruins in his deployment zone, and with ITCs can't shoot bottom floor of ruins rule

That's sounds stupid unless its a solid wall they can't shoot through either?

Was there much LOS blocking terrain or was it the standard bowling green with a few clumps of ruins tourney format?

There is a reason no tournament should be using Hammer and Anvil deployment. It horribly favors shooting armies

I hate ITC ground floor rules, you shouldnt play them unless you are practicing for ITC.

It sounds like everything was against you, Hammer and Anvil ITC ruins rules, Lack of Terrain, etc...

 Mr Morden wrote:

There was a central piece of ruins in his deployment zone, and with ITCs can't shoot bottom floor of ruins rule

That's sounds stupid unless its a solid wall they can't shoot through either?

Was there much LOS blocking terrain or was it the standard bowling green with a few clumps of ruins tourney format?

It's a LOS blocker for both sides on the first floor.

I haven't played against the new Tau. I was hoping to at this past weekend's RTT but none showed up. I did however really struggle vs a chaos gun line, going second, vs those mortal wound dreadnaught guns (the name escapes me).

It's going to be rough fighting gun lines for a while. The new FAQ gave a huge boost to them for the time being. If it becomes an issue I would recommended trying to ally in some guard for basilisks and wyverns.

If you can pop smoke vs BS 4+ armies helps a lot furthermore don't afraid to vanguard back, out of los. I know it really sucks but some time you just have to suck it up, realize you won't do much damage, and just play the mission. It's boring to really do nothing but pick up your models for a few turns while your opponent doesn't but if its a completive setting and it wins you the game, so be it.

Rynner wrote:
It's going to be rough fighting gun lines for a while. The new FAQ gave a huge boost to them for the time being. If it becomes an issue I would recommended trying to ally in some guard for basilisks and wyverns.

How does the new FAQ affect us against shooting armies? I understand others with their first turn DS, but it didn't really change much unless someone is hiding up on ruins and Celestine can't fit.

I had success against Tau in H&A pre faq. The Dom rush at least let you get close early. Now with 3 Doms max, everything looks like your experience.

Yay rule of 3?

The rule of 3. Although I never took more than 3 post points increase, it's not unreasonable that people did. It's a not that big of a stretch for a shooting army to kill or cripple 3x Repressors (if you go second) before they reach their target. However stopping 5-6? Thats way harder.

Rynner wrote:
The rule of 3. Although I never took more than 3 post points increase, it's not unreasonable that people did. It's a not that big of a stretch for a shooting army to kill or cripple 3x Repressors (if you go second) before they reach their target. However stopping 5-6? Thats way harder.

Repressors are DT and not affected by the rule of 3. Or you mean more than 3 doms in repressors?

If you go second, your repressors should be hidden. You should always deploy Dominions within scouting distance of a LOS blocker.

Yes Dominions. I don't know anyone who has taken Repressors without Dominions. You can't hide from Basilisks/Manticores, etc...

 pretre wrote:

Rynner wrote:
The rule of 3. Although I never took more than 3 post points increase, it's not unreasonable that people did. It's a not that big of a stretch for a shooting army to kill or cripple 3x Repressors (if you go second) before they reach their target. However stopping 5-6? Thats way harder.

Repressors are DT and not affected by the rule of 3. Or you mean more than 3 doms in repressors?

If you go second, your repressors should be hidden. You should always deploy Dominions within scouting distance of a LOS blocker.

1 - good luck hiding more than 1 repressor on any tournament table's terrain setup.
2 - if you hide your repressors you're completely eliminating the value of dominions and their scout moves. This just means that your repressors are beat up and still far away.

Everyday we're feeling the Index vs Codex disparity more and more.

Rynner wrote:
Yes Dominions. I don't know anyone who has taken Repressors without Dominions. You can't hide from Basilisks/Manticores, etc...

I take them for double BSS as well as Doms. Also, unless your opponent is taking all Basilisks/Mants, hiding still provides you with more protection than not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 deviantduck wrote:
1 - good luck hiding more than 1 repressor on any tournament table's terrain setup.
2 - if you hide your repressors you're completely eliminating the value of dominions and their scout moves. This just means that your repressors are beat up and still far away.

Everyday we're feeling the Index vs Codex disparity more and more.

Okay, I'm not sure where you play but tournaments have to provide good LOS blocking terrain or you're sunk whatever army you play.

That being said. You should be able to place your Repressors in such a way that your can either scout forward 12+d6 or hide within 12. This is pretty key to Dominion use and I've been doing it for years. At least with this edition, you can make the choice after seizing. I remember a time when that wasn't true.

 Ordana wrote:
There is a reason no tournament should be using Hammer and Anvil deployment. It horribly favors shooting armies

Which is a fantastic reason to use it at least once in a tourney.

I'm having alot of luck with the following post-FAQ:
Saint with her 2x homies
2x Cannoness

3x min squads of:
Plasma pistol/chainsword sarge
Flame thrower
storm bolter
All riding in immolators with multi-meltas

1x squad of backline holders, usually flame thowers in a represser

3x Medics

Min squad of melta dominions in Immolator with multi melta
Seraphim with hand flamers

Heavy bolter retributers with flamer immolator (It never sticks around, there in case I need to protect them round 1 alpha)
Exorcist

Those medics are way helpful. I find myself still liking immolators over the repressor. (They shoot better and cost less...) If the repressor had the 12" immolator turret then maybe I'd take it more, melta infantry just don't have the range or the toughness to duke it out long term in the game.

 pretre wrote:

Rynner wrote:
Yes Dominions. I don't know anyone who has taken Repressors without Dominions. You can't hide from Basilisks/Manticores, etc...

I take them for double BSS as well as Doms. Also, unless your opponent is taking all Basilisks/Mants, hiding still provides you with more protection than not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 deviantduck wrote:
1 - good luck hiding more than 1 repressor on any tournament table's terrain setup.
2 - if you hide your repressors you're completely eliminating the value of dominions and their scout moves. This just means that your repressors are beat up and still far away.

Everyday we're feeling the Index vs Codex disparity more and more.

Okay, I'm not sure where you play but tournaments have to provide good LOS blocking terrain or you're sunk whatever army you play.

That being said. You should be able to place your Repressors in such a way that your can either scout forward 12+d6 or hide within 12. This is pretty key to Dominion use and I've been doing it for years. At least with this edition, you can make the choice after seizing. I remember a time when that wasn't true.

Expect Adepticon didn't really have great LoS terrain and its one of the biggest events in the world.

Unless you start heavily investing in allies it's going to get harder and harder to win games with pure sisters. My current list is about 1008 points of sisters and 992 points of allies.

While I don't think the FAQ hurt us as much as other factions (I'm looking at you Tryainids) it certainly didn't do us any favors either.

Has doubling up BSS in Repressors worked for you? I've wanted to try it for awhile but I just haven't had a chance yet.

 sfshilo wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
There is a reason no tournament should be using Hammer and Anvil deployment. It horribly favors shooting armies

Which is a fantastic reason to use it at least once in a tourney.

Except everything in the game is balanced toward a 24" separated deployment, not 36".

 pretre wrote:

Rynner wrote:
Yes Dominions. I don't know anyone who has taken Repressors without Dominions. You can't hide from Basilisks/Manticores, etc...

I take them for double BSS as well as Doms. Also, unless your opponent is taking all Basilisks/Mants, hiding still provides you with more protection than not.

I've been running 1 repressor with 2x BSS, and 2 repressors with 1 melta dom, and 1 BSS (the BSS start outside of the transport, scout move up, then embark before it moves top of 1)

 sfshilo wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:
1 - good luck hiding more than 1 repressor on any tournament table's terrain setup.
2 - if you hide your repressors you're completely eliminating the value of dominions and their scout moves. This just means that your repressors are beat up and still far away.

Everyday we're feeling the Index vs Codex disparity more and more.

Okay, I'm not sure where you play but tournaments have to provide good LOS blocking terrain or you're sunk whatever army you play.

That being said. You should be able to place your Repressors in such a way that your can either scout forward 12+d6 or hide within 12. This is pretty key to Dominion use and I've been doing it for years. At least with this edition, you can make the choice after seizing. I remember a time when that wasn't true.

LVO has decent terrain, Adepticon was laughable sparse. This tourney had a couple tables you could hide repressors, but for the most part the central LOS blocking terrain couldn't hide more than 1 repressor.

Rynner wrote:
Expect Adepticon didn't really have great LoS terrain and its one of the biggest events in the world.

Unless you start heavily investing in allies it's going to get harder and harder to win games with pure sisters. My current list is about 1008 points of sisters and 992 points of allies.

While I don't think the FAQ hurt us as much as other factions (I'm looking at you Tryainids) it certainly didn't do us any favors either.

Has doubling up BSS in Repressors worked for you? I've wanted to try it for awhile but I just haven't had a chance yet.

Yeah Adepticon is kind of known as being on planet bowling ball.

BSS with Repressors works great.

 deviantduck wrote:
I've been running 1 repressor with 2x BSS, and 2 repressors with 1 melta dom, and 1 BSS (the BSS start outside of the transport, scout move up, then embark before it moves top of 1)

I know the FAQ rules allow this. It just makes no sense in my head that the FAQ allows a unit to move, embark, then move in the vehicle as well.

Post FAQ I am running Celestine and friends with four 5 strong BSS with 3 SB's doubled up in Repressors and three 5 strong Dom squads with a SB on the Superior and 4 meltaguns each in a Repressor. Outrider detachment requires a second Canoness to get two IF Seraphim squads on the table. One Canoness is camping with an Imagifer and HB Rets while the second is riding in a Repressor with another Imagifer and a SB Celestian squad.

Going second hasn't changed a lot, but I have been able to take advantage of the new embark rule to use the 2nd Imagifer to take a stab at giving an AoF to a Seraphim squad turn 1 then hop in and accompany the BSS and the rest up behind the Melta Doms. Small perk, but it does allow for 1st turn and even midfield midgame AoF shenannigans. Something at least.

What FAQ update are you guys looking at for embarking?