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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Nobody complaining about boobplate is offended by the female form .

This, ENTIRELY this.

 Elemental wrote:

Going by what someone else said above, I don't think you'd have this argument popping up over and over and over if there were more female models in 40K as a whole--OK, Space Marines are of course their own thing, but is there any particular reason why AM, Mechanicus, Genestealer Cults, Chaos Cultists, etc all need to be overwhelmingly sausage parties? I can understand the worry that making the hyper-gothic pyromaniac zealot space nuns too sensibly designed eliminates their aesthetic appeal, but I can also understand the frustration at "Men can look like anything in this setting, but women must look attractive even at the expense of practicality." that you repeatedly see throughout geek media as a whole.

It's the sort of tension that's inevitable when one faction carries the majority of female representation in the setting. Having more unglamorous but recognisably female models in the range might ease the burden a bit?

Indeed. Well said.

Two things are guaranteed in any Sisters of Battle thread: boob plate arguments, and demands for close combat units. We've done the former, and now we seem to be getting into the latter.

We already have Repentia. 8th Edition has fixed their main flaw (low mobility on a fragile unit), so they're almost worth using now. If you want CC units use Repentia, or ally something in. Sisters don't really need more CC.

EDIT: Also the first game I played of 8th Ed had my Sisters punching out a load of Dire Avengers. Wacky Seraphim loadouts or Spess Mehren-style COmmand Squads of doom aren't required.

Just because we have Repentia doesn't mean they're all we need, nor that they're all that can fit in the faction.

In fourth edition I had a single basic battle sister tie up Abbadon for an entire game (combination of terrible rolling and cheesy acts of faith), that doesn't mean we couldn't use more variety.

 BBAP wrote:
Two things are guaranteed in any Sisters of Battle thread: boob plate arguments, and demands for close combat units. We've done the former, and now we seem to be getting into the latter.

We already have Repentia. 8th Edition has fixed their main flaw (low mobility on a fragile unit), so they're almost worth using now. If you want CC units use Repentia, or ally something in. Sisters don't really need more CC.

EDIT: Also the first game I played of 8th Ed had my Sisters punching out a load of Dire Avengers. Wacky Seraphim loadouts or Spess Mehren-style COmmand Squads of doom aren't required.

I'd see a shield-equipped group of Celestians as a defensive melee unit, to act as a bodyguard for force multiplying characters and to counter-attack enemy assault units. Repentia are more aggressive. I think a melee Celestian unit would work, and be a simple dual kit.

Hell, we have official art of Sisters wielding power-glaives. Having Celestians wield them as part of their bodyguard role would actually give Celestians a purpose.

 Melissia wrote:
Hell, we have official art of Sisters wielding power-glaives. Having Celestians wield them as part of their bodyguard role would actually give Celestians a purpose.

Yep. 'Just like the normal Sisters but slightly better' is not particularly interesting role.

I think it is kinda granted that existing units will get some new weapon options along with new units. It's the best way to get old Sister players to buy the new stuff, and then when they have some new stuff they might end up being tempted to replace all the metal with plastic.

This is one reason I liked the new Van Saar necromunda gang. You got ladies in there, and "They're female" isn't an attribute of the whole group - it's just in there for some variety in the models.

But again, the best way to convey this on a 1.5" tall model is..molded breast armor of some form. If you look at the head on that model, it would not convey "female" just by itself. You need to keep the proportions relatively the same because the arms need to be interchangeable.

it's definitely not overdone in my opinion, but it is there.

 Melissia wrote:
Just because we have Repentia doesn't mean they're all we need, nor that they're all that can fit in the faction.

In fourth edition I had a single basic battle sister tie up Abbadon for an entire game (combination of terrible rolling and cheesy acts of faith), that doesn't mean we couldn't use more variety.

The main problem I have with the variety argument is that I see no way to enact it without damaging the faction's appeal. It's totally subjective, but there it is. Part of the Sisters' appeal to me is that, beneath all the power armour and high-grade weaponry and vehicles, you don't have a superhuman monstrosity with a healing factor and redundant organs - you have a normal woman who runs on faith, courage, and training. No specially engineered physical advantages, just 100% organic badass-ery. That's what their T3 represents. Thing is, T3 sets a pretty hard limit on what a model can do in close combat (where damage comes thicker and faster than in the shooting phase) without some hardcore gimmicks to obviate its inherent fragility. All that in mind, what gimmicks could you give a Sororitas CC unit to obviate the suckitude of T3 without turning them into cheesy-ass comic book superheroines?

 Haighus wrote:
I'd see a shield-equipped group of Celestians as a defensive melee unit, to act as a bodyguard for force multiplying characters and to counter-attack enemy assault units. Repentia are more aggressive.

I actually don't mind this idea, provided I don't have to give up the Celestians' guns for the shields. Being able to sack for characters is nice, but if that's all they're capable of doing then I'll just use normal units instead and leave the Shieldmaidens on the shelf.


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 Melissia wrote:
Hell, we have official art of Sisters wielding power-glaives. Having Celestians wield them as part of their bodyguard role would actually give Celestians a purpose.

... that purpose being "stand here with this powerglaive and wait for something to happen". Am I going to buy a unit that just sits in the backfield waiting for something to happen? Considering the inherent point cost that comes with power armour, I'm going to say "no". If the idea is for them to take the glaives and go looking for trouble then we already have Repentia for that.

Well, first off, T3 ain't that bad. You get wounded on 3s by Marines, true, but it's only at S6 you get wounded on 2s, and with no more instadeath... It ain't so bad.

Second of all, give them a stronger invuln. Better armor. An extra wound, maybe, or a Parry rule.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Well, first off, T3 ain't that bad. You get wounded on 3s by Marines, true, but it's only at S6 you get wounded on 2s, and with no more instadeath... It ain't so bad.

Dunno about anyone else, but I don't really judge a unit's CC competence on its ability to scuffle with Tactical Marines. If it can't hang with the likes of Bloodletters or Genestealers it isn't a CC unit.

By that metric I suppose Repentia still suck.

Second of all, give them a stronger invuln. Better armor. An extra wound, maybe, or a Parry rule.

Parry rule wouldn't be so bad, I guess, but the rest of it just seems a little MEQ. Why would a regular person have 2 Wounds when a Spess Mehren only has 1? I understand they could do it as a game mechanic to make the unit better at close combat, but that's pretty gamey.

 BBAP wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Well, first off, T3 ain't that bad. You get wounded on 3s by Marines, true, but it's only at S6 you get wounded on 2s, and with no more instadeath... It ain't so bad.

Dunno about anyone else, but I don't really judge a unit's CC competence on its ability to scuffle with Tactical Marines. If it can't hang with the likes of Bloodletters or Genestealers it isn't a CC unit.

By that metric I suppose Repentia still suck.

Second of all, give them a stronger invuln. Better armor. An extra wound, maybe, or a Parry rule.

Parry rule wouldn't be so bad, I guess, but the rest of it just seems a little MEQ. Why would a regular person have 2 Wounds when a Spess Mehren only has 1? I understand they could do it as a game mechanic to make the unit better at close combat, but that's pretty gamey.

Yeah, I'd agree two wounds for non Characters would be a touch odd.

But why would better armor or invuln be bad?

 BBAP wrote:
Two things are guaranteed in any Sisters of Battle thread: boob plate arguments, and demands for close combat units. We've done the former, and now we seem to be getting into the latter.

We already have Repentia. 8th Edition has fixed their main flaw (low mobility on a fragile unit), so they're almost worth using now. If you want CC units use Repentia, or ally something in. Sisters don't really need more CC.

EDIT: Also the first game I played of 8th Ed had my Sisters punching out a load of Dire Avengers. Wacky Seraphim loadouts or Spess Mehren-style COmmand Squads of doom aren't required.

I seriously cant undertand players with the "EVERYTHING should remain the same. NOTHING NEW" mentality.
Wirh that mentality we would have the same factions and units that we had in rogue trader! With thst mentality we wouldnt have had all the cool dead guard characters, or the daemon engines, or the civilian genestealer cult vehicles, etc...

Im definately in the "dont give sisters more close combat options" camp. Thats what ministorums crusaders are for and repentia. Seriously, with crusaders having access to AoF theyre sisters in all but name and model. Repentia might be fragile and go down quick but that is an example of a model reflecting its fluff 110%. Not everything cool is a night unkillable murder machine.

That said, Celestians still need something to make them more than basic sisters+0.5.
I wouldnt mind seeing a shield option for Celestians but instead of a cc loadout, keep to their shooty theme and let them have a pistol. A squad of shield celestians armed with inferno/handflamee/bolt pistols sounds alright (and gets away from space marine territory).

IMO, Ecclesiarchy Freakshow is best option.

What I said - I don't like the idea of adding CC units to the Sisters roster.

What you heard:

 Galas wrote:
"EVERYTHING should remain the same. NOTHING NEW"

... do you see where you went wrong?

EDIT: I totally forgot about the Ecclesiarchy units. Use them if you want CC.

I assume he's also including my earlier concerns about new vehicle options potentially coming at the expense of existing "boring" options, while studiously ignoring the actual point being made.

 JNAProductions wrote:
But why would better armor or invuln be bad?

In 3rd/ 4th (and part of 5th) it was possible to give all Sisters a 3++ save through AoF (easier for smaller units than larger ones IIRC but in theory everyone could get it). Thanks to T3 you were still rolling the same number of saves, hence still failing the same number of saves, thus they weren't any better in combat. Also they were still S3 so not very killy.

2+ armour save would fix the problem, but it's a gamey solution in the same way as 2 Wounds would be. 2+ is relic armour, or Terminator armour - what explanation is there for a bunch of Sisters suddenly having such rare and powerful armour when currently only Celestine has access to it? Not even the Canoness gets it yet this random bunch of Celestians do? It's possible to create a satisfying lore answer, but I can't see how.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I assume he's also including my earlier concerns about new vehicle options potentially coming at the expense of existing "boring" options, while studiously ignoring the actual point being made.

Actually I wasnt. And sorry but nothing comes at the expense of anything. If GW wants a faction to have something, that faction will have it, even if they give it other new options. If then dont want, that faction will not have it even without other options. Adeptus Mechanicus would never have had rhinos, etc... Even without the dunecrawler being made.

I understand your points, but your vision is just wishful thinking about how GW should behave, not how they do things.

And about CC in sisters, I dont know how 1 cc unit is enough for a faction that has never shown to be afraid of meele. Internet communities shown a serius lack of imagination at the time of designing new units for factions (myself included). Im glad GW has shown that they know how to add new units to new factions, barring units in factions so bloated like centurions.

 Elemental wrote:

Going by what someone else said above, I don't think you'd have this argument popping up over and over and over if there were more female models in 40K as a whole--OK, Space Marines are of course their own thing, but is there any particular reason why AM, Mechanicus, Genestealer Cults, Chaos Cultists, etc all need to be overwhelmingly sausage parties?

Just to be clear:
- Astra militarum models are super old, so any recent push for female models hasn't hit them yet.
- Skitarii are split male/female you just can't tell normally.
- Genestealer cults should have had female models for sure.
- Chaos cultists barely had any effort put into them.

Then we have the Tau (a pretty recent update) with female heads for new units. There's also the Sisters of silence. Eldar of course, as well.
Nids, orks, necrons are irrelevant.
Which leaves marines, but that's a can of worms.

So I would say that the sausage fest is simply a holdover from previous releases that haven't been updated or a resource constraint. (presumably, the Orlock gang was supposed to have female sculpts but they couldn't get it right in enough time due to the release schedule). Oh, and Marines (all flavors) take a lot of release time.

So all in all, I would guess that mixed units will be the norm going forward. Honestly though, just making guard units mixed would almost solve the issue by itself since they're the basis for most human female conversions anyway.

 BBAP wrote:
We already have Repentia. 8th Edition has fixed their main flaw (low mobility on a fragile unit), so they're almost worth using now. If you want CC units use Repentia, or ally something in. Sisters don't really need more CC..

They haven't really gotten any faster (if you faith them forwards they lose their support units and it halves their already questionable output with the gimpviscerators). At best they hide in a rhino waiting for something with 2 wounds a model to charge.

New model wise though repentia without the chainsword, as per the old 3e image of them, would help with their fragility. Cheap bodies to soak wounds.

 Galas wrote:
And about CC in sisters, I dont know how 1 cc unit is enough for a faction that has never shown to be afraid of meele

They might not be afraid of it, but that doesn't alter the fact that melee is where Sisters go to die and always has been. THe reason for this is that they're Guardsmen in melee - Guardsmen in fancy armour, but still fundamentally Guardsmen. Fortunately this has never been a crippling flaw, because they're as effective in the shooting phase as they are ineffective in close combat. They have a varied toolset for dealing with almost anything an opponent can throw at them, and what few gaps there are - long-range high-power weapons and mobility that doesn't rely on vehicles - can't be fixed by adding CC units.

The only way a Sisters CC unit could work under the faction's current design is if it's loaded down with enough gimmicks to make it function, or it defies the faction's established paradigm in some way. Simply handing shields and CCWs to the S3 T3 models is not enough, and considering CC units won't fix Sisters' current weaknesses I just feel it's an exercise in pointless vandalism.

The other way they could do it is to fundamentally redesign the faction from the ground up. That's not something I'm particularly enthusiastic to see. GW have been doing rather well for the last 18 months, but it seems that whenever Sisters get an update it screws them over somehow. Maybe that'll change now they're an established part of the lore, but I'd still rather they just l;eave things as they are.

Internet communities shown a serius lack of imagination at the time of designing new units for factions (myself included).

Very much so, as evinced by the fact Sisters players have been crying out for CC units for the last 4 Editions of the game despite the fact they fix none of the SoB's weaknesses and are wholly unnecessary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:
They haven't really gotten any faster (if you faith them forwards they lose their support units and it halves their already questionable output with the gimpviscerators). At best they hide in a rhino waiting for something with 2 wounds a model to charge.

I'll confess, I hadn't really looked at the Repentia's unit card before I started posting here. I did so in response to this reply, and I take back whatever I said earlier. What the hell happened to their Eviscerators? Why have they been nerfed so hard? I mean they were starting from a low base, why bother making them worse?

Unfortunately its a design decision that GW appears to have made that close combat weapons that double strength mostly come with a -1 to hit, as to why the spacemarine and sisters evisorator have different profiles. Ask GW marine one is Sx2 ap-4 d3 damage to Sx2 ap-2 D2. But no wonder no one wants repentia as a unit, my sisters of silence are IMHO better and they aren't realy that competitive a choice.

 BBAP wrote:
I'll confess, I hadn't really looked at the Repentia's unit card before I started posting here. I did so in response to this reply, and I take back whatever I said earlier. What the hell happened to their Eviscerators? Why have they been nerfed so hard? I mean they were starting from a low base, why bother making them worse?

Eviscerators in general have been gimped pretty hard with the loss of their anti-vehicle rules - they are a poor mans thunderhammer in most cases. Possibly because they are a generic assault marine weapon now.

For the repentia specifically though I don't know. Death cultists with their knives actually do more damage to vehicles on the charge unless you are facing T8 or have stacked support characters onto the repentia (which fall out of range the moment the repentia use faith to move). The unit is also more fragile now than it's ever been and worse at fighting infantry due to reduced attacks and chance to hit.

It's not all bad. They don't hit last and there are worse units in the game. But both they and penitents are rather unspectacular.

The fundamental problem with Repentia remains that "a bunch of unaugmented humans on foot with no armour and no ranged weapons" is not a viable unit concept in this game and never has been. They might look cool in the art and fiction, but there isn't really any way of making them effective in the game without either giving them special rules that trample all over the basic concept (i.e. making them no longer feel in any way like unaugmented humans with no armour) or turning them into an ultra-cheap horde unit (which just destroys any emotional significance of their whole martyrdom deal).

I guess you could make them a unit of mini-characters with multiple wounds and attacks each and say that only the most badass and experienced of Sororitas are allowed to become Repentia. But if you're going to change the fluff that much to make them work in the game, I think you have to ask if it's worth keeping them at all.

Maybe it's time to retire Repentia to being a lore-exclusive unit like SM chapter serfs?

 Duskweaver wrote:
The fundamental problem with Repentia remains that "a bunch of unaugmented humans on foot with no armour and no ranged weapons" is not a viable unit concept in this game and never has been.

It has been done somewhat successfully - 3rd edition zealots. You just need a way to absorb damage and the zealots brought four cheap meatshields for every multi-attack evsicerator zealot.

Repentia have had everything else at various times - better weapons, more durability (feel no pain), more speed, protection from moral. They'd be a good candidate to trigger the moral stratagem too. But the unit has never managed to quite get its ducks all in a row and ultimately I think it does just come down to the lack of non-eviscerator models. Without cheap chaff each model is either too expensive for its unarmoured T3 profile or gimped down in line with a lower cost.

 Duskweaver wrote:
The fundamental problem with Repentia remains that "a bunch of unaugmented humans on foot with no armour and no ranged weapons" is not a viable unit concept in this game and never has been.

Like the last dude said, Repentia have had their uses at times. They've never been a competitive unit, but they could at least hurt people who didn't deal with them appropriately. Their problem prior to the nerfbat was mainly that they were easy to predict and even easier to deal with - they were too fragile to survive a turn being shot at *and* a turn of being hit first, and didn't have the mobility to avoid damage and arrive in a decent assault position unmolested.

Ultimately though, I guess I agree with what you're saying. I remember in 5th Edition, how everyone thought Haywire Wyches were the new hotness to deal with vehicles and everyone was trying desperately to make them work, though they never did. T3 stuff just can't take damage very well - power armour helps against shooting, where you're rolling a handful of saves here and there, but in CC where everyone has 2+ attacks each it just doesn't work without gimmicks or lore-breaking changes.

Maybe it's time to retire Repentia to being a lore-exclusive unit like SM chapter serfs?

This feels wrong to me. Every faction has fluffy units that exist solely to represent the lore and are never used in anger by players - which is fine, because narrative games are a thing that happens apparently, so it's not the worst idea to have units useful here and nowhere else.

Give them Deathblow and be done with it IMO.

 BBAP wrote:
Thing is, T3 sets a pretty hard limit on what a model can do in close combat (where damage comes thicker and faster than in the shooting phase) without some hardcore gimmicks to obviate its inherent fragility. All that in mind, what gimmicks could you give a Sororitas CC unit to obviate the suckitude of T3 without turning them into cheesy-ass comic book superheroines?

Point cost.
Or a 2+.
Or a good FnP.
Or just hit very hard.
Or any mixture of those.

 BBAP wrote:
2+ armour save would fix the problem, but it's a gamey solution in the same way as 2 Wounds would be. 2+ is relic armour, or Terminator armour - what explanation is there for a bunch of Sisters suddenly having such rare and powerful armour when currently only Celestine has access to it? Not even the Canoness gets it yet this random bunch of Celestians do? It's possible to create a satisfying lore answer, but I can't see how.

The wealthiest, most influential faction in the stuff, that routinely build absolutely insane vanity project just because? The one that collect tithes from almost every world in the galaxy? The only one that has usually multiple representatives among the High Lords?
How could they possibly gather the influence to get something like artificer armor?

Well, actually I can't think of a single reason why they can't…