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A.T. wrote:
1) Inverse ninja rule - the more sisters you have, the less powerful they are. A single unit of allied sisters have almost twice the firepower of the same squad in an sisters army.

They have the same firepower in either case if you use the AoF to shoot them twice.

I'm not sure I buy the Inverse Ninja thing. With an all-Sisters list your AoF is diluted across the entire army, rather than being used by a single squad every turn - but by the same token it's diluted across the whole army instead of being used by a single squad every turn. If you have one unit of allied Sisters I know what the AoF is going to do every turn. If you have a whole army it's easy to position your units so any one of half a dozen can make best use of the extra action. It's not less powerful - it's more tactical.

2) It's 40pts for a coin-flip, so statistically you are paying 80pts to shoot twice with... what, an 85pt unit of retributors?

I'm not sure what relevance the squad's point cost has here.

What's actually happening is you're paying 40pts for a 50% extra shot to perform 1 extra action per turn, every turn, across a 5-turn game. You're not going to land it every turn - but if you did, how beardy would that be? You already get one extra action on a 2+, you can't expect to pay peanuts for more, and should expect to pay *something* towards even the chance at more.

3) En-mass it becomes a coin flip to see if your army will be weak or strong in any given turn with no element of tactics or strategy involved.

If the army's so weak that they require a gimmick to function then the army is badly designed. I haven't played much with my Sisters in 8th, but I honestly don't think that's the case. The Imagifer gives your already-capable troopers a shot at an extra-extra action - i6t's a coin flip, but given the prize for a win you have to expect to pay for it, and to be restricted in how you can use it.

4) The imagifiers and timing are somewhat detached from the army - they can't keep up with a unit that uses faith to move, they don't function when disembarking in a commonly mechanised faction, they can't join either of the fast attack units effectively, they are extremely localised to the point of being a squad upgrade rather than an army upgrade, and so on.

I mean, this all sounds fine to me. It's fine that they can't power units of Seraphim across the field, and that they can't be used on a turn which they disembark from a transport. The latter is a tactical thing, while the former seems like an attempt to prevent Seraphim becoming backfield workhorses powered by Faith.

 BBAP wrote:
I'm not sure I buy the Inverse Ninja thing. With an all-Sisters list your AoF is diluted across the entire army, rather than being used by a single squad every turn

1) Exactly.
You ally in a single retributor squad it shoots twice a turn
You have a sisters army with three of the same retributor squads and one of them shoots twice per turn. Possibly, unless you are using your single army-wide faith ability on any of a dozen other units.
Ergo inverse ninja - the more sisters units you have, the worse the performance of the average unit in your army.

I'm not sure what relevance the squad's point cost has here.

2) You are paying 80 points to double the firepower of an 80 point squad. Instead of buying another identical 80 point squad.

This kind of ties into the sisters other more expensive choices either being poor (melta rets), or unsuitable for imagifiers (seraphim), unable to join with them effectively (doms), unable to stay with them effectively (repentia), unable to use them at all (exorcists)... well you see the point.

If you were buying extra army-wide faith rolls at 40pts a pop that would be one thing, but the imagifiers are basically unusable outside of slow moving foot units and a chance at throwing an extra first turn seraphim squad forwards. They can't even be used to throw repentia up field because the squad would outrange its support characters.

If the army's so weak that they require a gimmick to function then the army is badly designed.

3) Flipping coins for such a large shift in capability is poor design regardless.
And the imagifiers don't generally "give your already-capable troopers a shot at an extra-extra action" - they give a specific single heavy bolter retributor squad a chance at an extra shot because that's their practical usage past turn 1.
Well, that and getting themselves killed to trigger off a martyrdom strategy.

I mean, this all sounds fine to me.

I refer you to answers 1, 2, and 3.

ERJAK wrote:

 dracpanzer wrote:
Looking at making AoF scale somewhat better, perhaps a return of the Simulacrum Imperialis as a squad upgrade? Each squad with a Simulacrum has a chance to generate an AoF that only the unit itself can use on a 6+? Put it at perhaps a 10 point upgrade?

Seraphim and Celestians as Veteran units that have a deeper faith than their junior Sisters could grant a bonus of +1 to all rolls to gain an AoF within 6". Celestians could carry a Simulacrum themselves but I agree that jp troops carrying a holy relic around seems a bit off.

Though opening up the options for wargear to the Imagifer would be a nice addition to our character ranks. Either that or have the Palatine and Canoness provide the same +1 bonus to gain an AoF for having deeper faith that would allow units that otherwise wouldn't be able to roll for an AoF to do so.

I wouldn't mind some kind of squad upgrade that contributed to AoFs but I hate the randomness factor.

Acts of Faith are so pivotal and so powerful that trying to balance them with randomness will just end up being frustrating and unfun for both players. 'Ope, all 6 of my dominions squads rolled 6s this turn, hope you didn't like anything that was within 12" of them very much because it's dead now.'

Maybe something like if you have X number of banners on the field you get an extra 2+

Maybe Simulacra Banners adds a cumulative +1 chance for the army to gain an additional AoF. Limited perhaps by detachment or just overall to a 2+ chance (with 5 Simulacra) and only usable by one of the units that has a Simulacra. It would allow the AoF to go with the squads as they move about the table. It wouldn't interfere with Dominions vanguard moves being a squad upgrade and a yahtzee of 6's wouldn't make it the most powerful army in the game.

I like it by detachment a bit more, and it puts a price tag on it rather than just giving out free AoF's. I'd be open to doing away with the army wide AoF on a 2+ for free and changing it to each SoB detachment being able to purchase squad upgrade Simulacra to build up that detachments chance at an AoF only available to the units within that detachment with the Simulacra upgrade.

A.T. wrote:
1) Exactly.
You ally in a single retributor squad it shoots twice a turn
You have a sisters army with three of the same retributor squads and one of them shoots twice per turn. Possibly, unless you are using your single army-wide faith ability on any of a dozen other units.
Ergo inverse ninja - the more sisters units you have, the worse the performance of the average unit in your army.

This seems like such a strange perspective to me. Your squad shoots twice per turn in either case, but it's somehow less valuable and powerful because you're not limited to how you use the AoF with a full-SoB army, is that what you're saying? You're still acting twice with a squad in the same turn. Your army is still much more able to affect the game than it would be if it couldn't do that - and because you don't need to use the AoF on your single Sisters unit you can do so in far less predictable ways.

I just can't see the validity of the Inverse Ninja thing here. I get that the AoF doesn't scale, but I don't see that that's a flaw.

This kind of ties into the sisters other more expensive choices either being poor (melta rets), or unsuitable for imagifiers (seraphim), unable to join with them effectively (doms), unable to stay with them effectively (repentia), unable to use them at all (exorcists)... well you see the point.

If you were buying extra army-wide faith rolls at 40pts a pop that would be one thing, but the imagifiers are basically unusable outside of slow moving foot units and a chance at throwing an extra first turn seraphim squad forwards. They can't even be used to throw repentia up field because the squad would outrange its support characters.

So why not use the Imagifers to boss your back-line and save the 2+ for the Seraphim or Dominions? Maybe that's what they were designed to do? I dunno.

Also, I can see a synergy between Imagifers and Melta Rets now. I love the models, but the role they're best suited to (midfield anchor/ firepower multiplier for your faster units) requires speed they just couldn't generate in the days of no shooting Heavies on the move. That's no longer an issue; you could probably get them into a commanding position on turn two or three (or potentially turn one, even).

3) Flipping coins for such a large shift in capability is poor design regardless.
And the imagifiers don't generally "give your already-capable troopers a shot at an extra-extra action" - they give a specific single heavy bolter retributor squad a chance at an extra shot because that's their practical usage past turn 1.

They do if you deploy them to do that - which seems a fine idea to me. Putting them in a transport cuts down their useful life and makes the return on your 40pts worse, but it's still a coin-flip to get an extra-extra action.

Well, that and getting themselves killed to trigger off a martyrdom strategy.

So that's two uses. It no longer gives the same returns it used to in C:WH (unless I'm doing Strategems wrong - they're once per game, right?) but it's still an extra 2+ for the cost of 1 CP.

 BBAP wrote:
I just can't see the validity of the Inverse Ninja thing here. I get that the AoF doesn't scale, but I don't see that that's a flaw.

Because the cost and capabilities of the army factor faith in - or not, either way a special rule that doesn't scale with the units in the army cannot be balanced against the army.

Consider faith as a 1 point excess you pay on every single SoB model. You take 5 as allies and you get a dozen heavy bolter shots a turn for 5 points, you take 100 as an army and you get the same dozen heavy bolter shots but they now cost you 100 points a turn.

So why not use the Imagifers to boss your back-line

Because I have enough heavy bolter models to field the second squad instead.
And because i'd like a unit as iconic as the imagifier to be more relevant to the army than a marginal efficiency vs reliability choice for a single unit with a single weapon choice.

AoF are basically sisters Strategems before they existed as such. Turn all AoF into Strategems, make them cheap, and allow SoB to get CP 'refunds' on a die roll, influenced by Celestine/Imagifers/Canoness/Seraphim/Martyrdom. Limits the frequency of AoF (only one unit is double shooting, only one is double running, etc) but the SoB have staying power thanks to CP refunds and units dying to give back CP.

Give Sisters Orders appropriate traits to make up for the difference.

 John Prins wrote:
AoF are basically sisters Strategems before they existed as such. Turn all AoF into Strategems, make them cheap, and allow SoB to get CP 'refunds' on a die roll, influenced by Celestine/Imagifers/Canoness/Seraphim/Martyrdom. Limits the frequency of AoF (only one unit is double shooting, only one is double running, etc) but the SoB have staying power thanks to CP refunds and units dying to give back CP.

Give Sisters Orders appropriate traits to make up for the difference.

I'd say they're way closer to Guard orders than Stratagems. They fit a lot of the same categories of extra movement, extra shooting, etc. In that sense I think the AoFs themselves could stay much as they are, with their frequency, reliability, and scalability being the main issues at this point.

I thought the CA stratagems were very good in terms of fluffiness, effectiveness, and balance. I hope to see more in a similar vein. If the designers recycle some 7th ed. detachment bonuses as stratagems as we've seen before, we might find ourselves in a very good place. Seraphim get a buff when they drop, squads with the Holy Trinity get to select from three shooting profiles, etc. Those were all Apocalypse formations then, but I feel like most of those benefits are appropriate for matched play in 8th.

 John Prins wrote:
AoF are basically sisters Strategems before they existed as such. Turn all AoF into Strategems, make them cheap, and allow SoB to get CP 'refunds' on a die roll

Could work, though ~6 acts in a game before refunds could squeeze the army somewhat on faith and other stratagems.

A thought along the same lines would be to buy up the faith/turn in the same way as relics - an upfront spend to get 1/2/3 acts a turn.

A.T. wrote:
Because the cost and capabilities of the army factor faith in - or not, either way a special rule that doesn't scale with the units in the army cannot be balanced against the army.

Maybe it's balanced against the army and it's the use by allied Sisters that's too powerful. Seems equally feasible to me - or at least it would if I didn't suspect 8th Edition was balanced around soup armies.

Either way I don't think it's currently imbalanced in any major way, certainly not to the extent that the mechanic requires renovation.

Consider faith as a 1 point excess you pay on every single SoB model. You take 5 as allies and you get a dozen heavy bolter shots a turn for 5 points, you take 100 as an army and you get the same dozen heavy bolter shots but they now cost you 100 points a turn.

This is pure economics, though. The economics are less efficient in an all-Sisters army, but the effect on the tabletop is not reduced - and is in fact expanded in a tactical sense. I find it hard to get worked up about the former while the latter remains the case.

Because I have enough heavy bolter models to field the second squad instead.

An Imagifer isn't a substitute for a second squad, though. That's why she's cheaper than one, hence easier to squeeze into an army. A second squad doesn't allow you to shoot and scoot (and shoot again) in a single turn.

And because i'd like a unit as iconic as the imagifier to be more relevant to the army than a marginal efficiency vs reliability choice for a single unit with a single weapon choice.

I wouldn't say Imagifers were iconic. I knew they existed - and have seen a few beautifully executed models - but had never seen them used in anger prior to 8th Edition.

A.T. wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
I'm not sure I buy the Inverse Ninja thing. With an all-Sisters list your AoF is diluted across the entire army, rather than being used by a single squad every turn

1) Exactly.
You ally in a single retributor squad it shoots twice a turn
You have a sisters army with three of the same retributor squads and one of them shoots twice per turn. Possibly, unless you are using your single army-wide faith ability on any of a dozen other units.
Ergo inverse ninja - the more sisters units you have, the worse the performance of the average unit in your army.

I'm not sure what relevance the squad's point cost has here.

2) You are paying 80 points to double the firepower of an 80 point squad. Instead of buying another identical 80 point squad.

This kind of ties into the sisters other more expensive choices either being poor (melta rets), or unsuitable for imagifiers (seraphim), unable to join with them effectively (doms), unable to stay with them effectively (repentia), unable to use them at all (exorcists)... well you see the point.

If you were buying extra army-wide faith rolls at 40pts a pop that would be one thing, but the imagifiers are basically unusable outside of slow moving foot units and a chance at throwing an extra first turn seraphim squad forwards. They can't even be used to throw repentia up field because the squad would outrange its support characters.

If the army's so weak that they require a gimmick to function then the army is badly designed.

3) Flipping coins for such a large shift in capability is poor design regardless.
And the imagifiers don't generally "give your already-capable troopers a shot at an extra-extra action" - they give a specific single heavy bolter retributor squad a chance at an extra shot because that's their practical usage past turn 1.
Well, that and getting themselves killed to trigger off a martyrdom strategy.

I mean, this all sounds fine to me.

I refer you to answers 1, 2, and 3.

It's not quite double. With 2 4+ you have a 75% chance of success and you also risk wasting AoFs if they only have 1 squad of rets to go after.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:

A.T. wrote:
Because the cost and capabilities of the army factor faith in - or not, either way a special rule that doesn't scale with the units in the army cannot be balanced against the army.

Maybe it's balanced against the army and it's the use by allied Sisters that's too powerful. Seems equally feasible to me - or at least it would if I didn't suspect 8th Edition was balanced around soup armies.

Either way I don't think it's currently imbalanced in any major way, certainly not to the extent that the mechanic requires renovation.

Consider faith as a 1 point excess you pay on every single SoB model. You take 5 as allies and you get a dozen heavy bolter shots a turn for 5 points, you take 100 as an army and you get the same dozen heavy bolter shots but they now cost you 100 points a turn.

This is pure economics, though. The economics are less efficient in an all-Sisters army, but the effect on the tabletop is not reduced - and is in fact expanded in a tactical sense. I find it hard to get worked up about the former while the latter remains the case.

Because I have enough heavy bolter models to field the second squad instead.

An Imagifer isn't a substitute for a second squad, though. That's why she's cheaper than one, hence easier to squeeze into an army. A second squad doesn't allow you to shoot and scoot (and shoot again) in a single turn.

And because i'd like a unit as iconic as the imagifier to be more relevant to the army than a marginal efficiency vs reliability choice for a single unit with a single weapon choice.

I wouldn't say Imagifers were iconic. I knew they existed - and have seen a few beautifully executed models - but had never seen them used in anger prior to 8th Edition.

The imagifier is ABSOLUTELY a substitute for a second squad of rets. I just recently rebuilt my adepticon list with an imagifier and 1 unit of rets instead of just 2 squads for this exact reason. The only purpose the imagifier serves is to give AoFs to retributors, and if you find that your list has a hard time utilizing the second squad of rets, but needs to have the possibility of putting out 2 squads worth of shots, BAM, imagifier. Buying an imagifier is just buying half a squad rets, only not as good because you don't get to decide when they shoot.

Also, if you're shooting AND scooting, you're using AoFs wrong and if you're scooting with retributors, you're playing retributors wrong.

Balancing an army based on how allies might use it is the cheapest cop-out I've ever heard btw. GW hasn't balanced anything this edition with allies in mind (at least the first time around) why would they start with us? Plus, it's not that hard to make extra AoF generators too expensive for other armies to get enough utility out of. The trick is making it so that the AoF generator is still useful to SoB, which the imagifier is not unless you bring retributors.

Sisters need new ways to generate Acts of Faith down field. Whether that means speedboosting imagifiers, deepstriking imagifiers, giving more table wide AoF triggers, or something else is up to the designers, but 1+Celestine is not going to be enough if they want us to be able to hold our own in an 'all codex' world.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 John Prins wrote:
AoF are basically sisters Strategems before they existed as such. Turn all AoF into Strategems, make them cheap, and allow SoB to get CP 'refunds' on a die roll, influenced by Celestine/Imagifers/Canoness/Seraphim/Martyrdom. Limits the frequency of AoF (only one unit is double shooting, only one is double running, etc) but the SoB have staying power thanks to CP refunds and units dying to give back CP.

Give Sisters Orders appropriate traits to make up for the difference.

This would be a straight nerf and is a terrible idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MacPhail wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
AoF are basically sisters Strategems before they existed as such. Turn all AoF into Strategems, make them cheap, and allow SoB to get CP 'refunds' on a die roll, influenced by Celestine/Imagifers/Canoness/Seraphim/Martyrdom. Limits the frequency of AoF (only one unit is double shooting, only one is double running, etc) but the SoB have staying power thanks to CP refunds and units dying to give back CP.

Give Sisters Orders appropriate traits to make up for the difference.

I'd say they're way closer to Guard orders than Stratagems. They fit a lot of the same categories of extra movement, extra shooting, etc. In that sense I think the AoFs themselves could stay much as they are, with their frequency, reliability, and scalability being the main issues at this point.

I thought the CA stratagems were very good in terms of fluffiness, effectiveness, and balance. I hope to see more in a similar vein. If the designers recycle some 7th ed. detachment bonuses as stratagems as we've seen before, we might find ourselves in a very good place. Seraphim get a buff when they drop, squads with the Holy Trinity get to select from three shooting profiles, etc. Those were all Apocalypse formations then, but I feel like most of those benefits are appropriate for matched play in 8th.

Giving seraphim a buff when they drop wouldn't work anymore. Seraphim have 6" and 8" range guns and have to drop 9" away. There is no possible stat buff you could give them besides 4" increased range on shooting weapons, that would make deepstriking them a good idea.

The trouble we have is that Sisters have been shoehorned into a particular army design because their line hasn't been properly updated in so long. Things like the Imagifiers and Mistresses SHOULD be attached to squads as squad upgrades, not individual characters that provide aura buffs, because that's where they came from. They came from an edition where they /were/ attached to those squads or purchased as squad upgrades.

GW's boner to create lots of little 'combo characters' that give auras is a little unwieldy with certain other things. The Dark Eldar suffer much the same, where their minimum squad sizes are 5 and 10, which is also the same size as their main unit transports, the Venom and Raider. That means accompanying leaders and characters need to footslog or have their own transports carrying JUST THEM to function.

Both the Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle need a minor adjustment to get rid of these oversights. For the Drukhari, increasing transport sizes to 6 and 11 would fix their problem. For the Sisters of Battle, turning the Imagifiers and Mistresses into a squad upgrade would solve a lot of the issue.

The Imagifiers would then be able to keep up with the squad they are bought as an upgrade for, and I'd be happy to pay 40 points for an upgrade that maybe doesn't have a bolter, but can at least keep up with the Battle Sisters or Celestians they were assigned to. Perhaps you can still keep their ability to buff /other/ units to give you that flexibility, but they are effectively part of the unit they are bought for.

That would solve a lot of the issue right there.

I'd say the main thing Sister need in the AOF arena is additional units that allow for chances at AOF. Here is just a few possible ideas that would make sense besides Celestine and the Imaginer:
* The Canoness. The one holding that scroll or book so that she can chant out the blessed words of the Emperor.
* Celestans: The most experienced Sisters in the army. Perhaps they should be capable of generating an Act of Faith for themselves.
* Seraphim: The beacons of the faith who drive their fellow sisters to perform at their best.

ERJAK wrote:
The imagifier is ABSOLUTELY a substitute for a second squad of rets.

It's not. A second squad of Rets is a second squad of Rets. An Imagifer is a means to give your Rets (or whoever) a shot at AoFs.

Also, if you're shooting AND scooting, you're using AoFs wrong and if you're scooting with retributors, you're playing retributors wrong.

If you're not redeploying your Heavies in response to game developments then you're doing Heavies wrong. They're not a mobility unit, so you're not taking them to have them shuffling around every game. Thing is, now that moving costs Heavies -1 to hit instead of a turn of shooting it's no longer such a bad idea.

Balancing an army based on how allies might use it is the cheapest cop-out I've ever heard btw. GW hasn't balanced anything this edition with allies in mind (at least the first time around) why would they start with us?

That's not the argument I made - in fact I said the opposite - although they might start with us because the Sisters have historically been an Ally faction that was awesome by accident.

Sisters need new ways to generate Acts of Faith down field. Whether that means speedboosting imagifiers, deepstriking imagifiers, giving more table wide AoF triggers, or something else is up to the designers, but 1+Celestine is not going to be enough if they want us to be able to hold our own in an 'all codex' world.

They don't "need" that. It'd be nice if they got it, sure, but they don't need it.

ERJAK wrote:

Giving seraphim a buff when they drop wouldn't work anymore. Seraphim have 6" and 8" range guns and have to drop 9" away. There is no possible stat buff you could give them besides 4" increased range on shooting weapons, that would make deepstriking them a good idea.

I was thinking more along the lines of the GSC Cult Ambush table, which has a few ways to enhance their arrival, especially with an HQ nearby.

Brain dump:
One idea could be the AoF phase take place during the Psychic Phase. Then you have more meaningful opportunities for Imagifers to be useful in different ways. It would then make Seraphim worthwhile to drop in, then move on a 2+. You could also disembark units from transports and then use AoF. However, I still like one 2+ army wide AoF per detachment.

In most of my lists I run 2x rets and 2x imagifers. I've done the math a lot and had a lot of internal struggle/debate. End result, the 80 points of imagifers greatly outweigh the extra 87 points of Retributors. In addition to the shooting they can heal the ret units. Being in the backfield, there's not a lot of high RoF weapons being thrown back at the Rets. Usually a lascannon or 2. They pick off a Ret, you can bring it right back. Do that once and they tend to stop shooting at them. You can always use a CP to re-roll the 4+ if the shots are really pivotal. Imagifers are great for a late game objective grab. If both Ret squads are dead, the imagifers can stand out in the middle of the open and most of the time your opponent can't target them. I'll just go ahead and set this box of bones on an objective. How's the war going at your end ladies?

Giving Imagifers jump packs is dumb.
Giving Canonesses jump packs is necessary.

I could see upping the imagifer AoF range to 12", 18" or 24" being viable. After all, It's still a 4+ coin flip. Then turn 1 they could assist your front line ladies without changing anything else in the rules.
Every idea I think of pertaining to AoF I think would be best left as a stratagem. For instance, 1 CP increase a unit's AoF by 1 until the end of the phase. Stack it with Celestine and you've got some re-rollable 4++ seraphim. That could be invaluable to weather a shooting phase in turn 1.

We need a reason to take troops. Less points? Special rules? Troop buffing stratagems? Come on GW. Flesh it out.

That's all for now...

Can we all just agree that AoF function perfectly well as it is, and the tweaks we're asking for are purely wishlisting to increase the power of an already capable army?

 deviantduck wrote:
Brain dump:
One idea could be the AoF phase take place during the Psychic Phase. Then you have more meaningful opportunities for Imagifers to be useful in different ways. It would then make Seraphim worthwhile to drop in, then move on a 2+. You could also disembark units from transports and then use AoF. However, I still like one 2+ army wide AoF per detachment.

In most of my lists I run 2x rets and 2x imagifers. I've done the math a lot and had a lot of internal struggle/debate. End result, the 80 points of imagifers greatly outweigh the extra 87 points of Retributors. In addition to the shooting they can heal the ret units. Being in the backfield, there's not a lot of high RoF weapons being thrown back at the Rets. Usually a lascannon or 2. They pick off a Ret, you can bring it right back. Do that once and they tend to stop shooting at them. You can always use a CP to re-roll the 4+ if the shots are really pivotal. Imagifers are great for a late game objective grab. If both Ret squads are dead, the imagifers can stand out in the middle of the open and most of the time your opponent can't target them. I'll just go ahead and set this box of bones on an objective. How's the war going at your end ladies?

Giving Imagifers jump packs is dumb.
Giving Canonesses jump packs is necessary.

I could see upping the imagifer AoF range to 12", 18" or 24" being viable. After all, It's still a 4+ coin flip. Then turn 1 they could assist your front line ladies without changing anything else in the rules.
Every idea I think of pertaining to AoF I think would be best left as a stratagem. For instance, 1 CP increase a unit's AoF by 1 until the end of the phase. Stack it with Celestine and you've got some re-rollable 4++ seraphim. That could be invaluable to weather a shooting phase in turn 1.

We need a reason to take troops. Less points? Special rules? Troop buffing stratagems? Come on GW. Flesh it out.

That's all for now...

Yeah, 2 imagifiers outweigh 1 squad of rets(slightly) but that was never the issue. The issue was without that squad of rets(and rets aren't super fantastic to begin with, good but not great) the imagifier is totally worthless. You can't splash an imagifier into a dominion or seraphim list, they're too random and too slow, and not worth the extra points. The 12" range would be functionally the same as a jumppack, so cool.

Also, if you move AoFs to the psychic phase as is, that's a ridiculous power boost. Oh, I get to move my dominions into melta range, shoot, and then shoot again with no penalty? Thank you very much! AoFs work BECAUSE they're at the start of the turn. Letting us move first would break seraphim AND dominions(while leaving retributors actually worse off.)

And increasing 1 units SoF by 1 would be nice, but doesn't really work that well with the inherently MSU nature of SoB. You'd protect what...146pts of seraphim? maybe? If you were running ten? I think more ambitiously. I'd like to see a strategem for 4 or 5 CP that increases the entire army's SoF by 2 for a single phase(usable once per game). Stonewall alpha AND beta strike lists at the cost of almost every other stratagem for the rest of the game? Sounds fair to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:
Can we all just agree that AoF function perfectly well as it is, and the tweaks we're asking for are purely wishlisting to increase the power of an already capable army?

We could if it were true, but it's not so we can't. There are things in the AoF system that just don't work quite right(imagifiers) and there just aren't enough in the army for any infantry based list to thrive. As it stands now, the more sisters infantry you have, the less useful acts of faith get. If you focus all your 1 AoF per turn into a unit of 10 seraphim with maxed out pistols, it ends up being unfairly more efficient than trying to spread out 2 maybe 3 aofs(if you shelled out the 160pts for the 4 imagifiers you'd need for 2 extra per turn to be statistically likely) amongst multiple troop squads, retributors, etc. Fix imagifiers, add 1 more way to AoF isolated units and THEN it would function perfectly fine.

ERJAK wrote:
Also, if you move AoFs to the psychic phase as is, that's a ridiculous power boost. Oh, I get to move my dominions into melta range, shoot, and then shoot again with no penalty? Thank you very much! AoFs work BECAUSE they're at the start of the turn. Letting us move first would break seraphim AND dominions(while leaving retributors actually worse off.)

Well.. You can already do that after turn 1. Move within Melta range turn 1. Start of next turn you can AoF at melta range. All it would change is you could theoretically do it top of 1.

After my seraphim die I often find myself going, Oh, hey, other units can use my 2+ AoF. How novel.

I also hope there's a lot of stratagems revolving around the holy trinity. Such as 2 CP reroll all missed bolter shots, etc. (tweak as necessary for balance)

 deviantduck wrote:

In most of my lists I run 2x rets and 2x imagifers. I've done the math a lot and had a lot of internal struggle/debate. End result, the 80 points of imagifers greatly outweigh the extra 87 points of Retributors. In addition to the shooting they can heal the ret units. Being in the backfield, there's not a lot of high RoF weapons being thrown back at the Rets. Usually a lascannon or 2. They pick off a Ret, you can bring it right back. Do that once and they tend to stop shooting at them. You can always use a CP to re-roll the 4+ if the shots are really pivotal. Imagifers are great for a late game objective grab. If both Ret squads are dead, the imagifers can stand out in the middle of the open and most of the time your opponent can't target them. I'll just go ahead and set this box of bones on an objective. How's the war going at your end ladies?

I've also been using my Imagifiers to hold off for a turn on buffing Rets and instead use their Turn 1 AoF to fling a wall of Inferno Seraphim across the table in lieu of Vanguard Dominions. Then they spend the rest of the game cranking out the HB volume fire.

 BBAP wrote:
Can we all just agree that AoF function perfectly well as it is

No.

 BBAP wrote:
Can we all just agree that AoF function perfectly well as it is, and the tweaks we're asking for are purely wishlisting to increase the power of an already capable army?

Except some of us are saying "Make Acts of Faith not as strong, but more available across the army". So, you know, it's more powerful to take a Sisters' ARMY than a single Sisters' unit in a patrol alongside any other Imperium army.

This is AWESOME. The last several pages has been a rational back and forth discussion over how the new codex can best correct the most glaring deficiency in the current Sisters rules set - The Inverse Ninja AoF system.

So..... Boob plate?






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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
Can we all just agree that AoF function perfectly well as it is

No.

Not just no but Hell No.

The current rules make Sisters an excellent choice for a soup list but a poor choice for an army.

I have one unit of Sisters in a soup list. Because of Sisters special rules that unit gets one Act of Faith each turn on a 2+. The other units in the soup army get to take full advantage of their special rules every turn as well.

I have an all-Sisters army with eight units of infantry. Those 8 units must share ONE Act of Faith each turn on a 2+. No other special rules.

It doesn't scale.

I'm sure I saw someone mention it before, but I don't recall a discussion for or against the idea. What about one 2+ act of faith per Sisters detachment, each usable only by Sisters in the associated detachment? It scales based on the size of the army decently,without becoming super cheap and easy to get. Clever killing by your opponent reduces the number of acts you've got available per turn, but also lets you try and force them to kill Characters for the off turn act of vengeance.

It discourages the larger battalion detachments, but sisters as they are now just want the fast attack one for the most part anyway.

ERJAK wrote:
We could if it were true, but it's not so we can't. There are things in the AoF system that just don't work quite right(imagifiers)

Imagifers don't function as you'd like them to, but just because she can't fly and only grants a full five turns of AoF coin flips if she's outside a transport, doesn't mean she's useless. I wouldn't mind paying 40pts for a few throws at some extra shooting for my Dominions or extra movement for my BSS - in fact I might just do that. Saves painting up more Immolators.

Things aren't broken just because they don't function like you want them to. What you're asking for is an upgrade, not a fix.

there just aren't enough in the army for any infantry based list to thrive.

I mean, I get more AoFs with my Sisters than I do with my Daemons or GSC, wether or not I take an Imagifer. How many AoFs do you want?

As it stands now, the more sisters infantry you have, the less useful acts of faith get.

I've been hearing that for 3 pages now and remain unconvinced.

If you focus all your 1 AoF per turn into a unit of 10 seraphim with maxed out pistols, it ends up being unfairly more efficient than trying to spread out 2 maybe 3 aofs(if you shelled out the 160pts for the 4 imagifiers you'd need for 2 extra per turn to be statistically likely) amongst multiple troop squads, retributors, etc

If you're taking 1 unit of Seraphim as an Allied Detachment then your AoF is only affecting one squad in your army every turn. It'll be the same squad every turn, so if I want to deny you the advantage of AoFs I will kill that one squad and now your "efficiency" is worthless because nobody else can use the AoF.

If you're taking a full army of 8 Sisters squads then your AoF is only affecting one squad in your army every turn, but it'll be one of 8 squads and there's no way for an opponent to control where or how you use it. It's up to you to make sure it is used decisively, as it was meant to be.

The idea that "efficiency" can be modelled with a crude division - in this case number of AoFs divided by number of eligible units - is almost always facile, because crude division is an arithmetical operation that can't take into account a lot of the important subtleties and nuances involved in whatever you're trying to model. You can't boil these factors out; they need to be considered if you want to talk about how efficient things are, and more especially if your proposed solution is just stuffing the numerator to decrease the "inefficiency".

In this case, I think stuffing the numerator with ever increasing numbers of bonus actions will simply break the army. Let's say they make Imagifers more reliable. At a stroke that solves Sisters' long-standing problem of slowness outside vehicles, so the first thing I'd do is dump all my transports and use my Imagifers to shunt my Sisters around, then use the extra points to buy more Sisters. Would it work? I dunno - new To Wound and AP mechanics have upped the survivability of T3 5+ gribble-hordes against shooting, so I can only imagine they'd do likewise for a T3 3+ horde with boltguns, bolt pistols and Melta weapons. Would it be broken? Again, I dunno. How many Sisters can you fit in an army if you're paying a 40pt tax per squad instead of 85-110pts for an Immo/ Repressor (which also limit the max size of your squads with their transport capacity)?

It'd be awkward to make it work what with the limited range of the Imagifer, but I reckon it could be done, and if it were done it'd be beardy.

Fix imagifiers, add 1 more way to AoF isolated units and THEN it would function perfectly fine.

It functions fine now. You want upgrades, not fixes.

 BBAP wrote:

there just aren't enough in the army for any infantry based list to thrive.

I mean, I get more AoFs with my Sisters than I do with my Daemons or GSC, wether or not I take an Imagifer. How many AoFs do you want?

True, you do get more AoFs with Sisters than with Daemons or GSC - but you also get more Cult Ambush with your GSC than your SoB or Daemons, and more summoning options with your Daemons than the GSC or SoB. Different armies have different special rules. What's your point?

 BBAP wrote:

Fix imagifiers, add 1 more way to AoF isolated units and THEN it would function perfectly fine.

It functions fine now. You want upgrades, not fixes.

What people appear to want is a signature special rule that scales with the number of units in the army that can benefit from it. Whether this means weakening AoF so this can happy is something people don't seem to have reached a consensus on yet. If it does get scalable, I think a "Units can only be affected by one AoF a turn." addition to the mechanic seems reasonable at first glance (if it isn't already there - can't find my copy of Index Imperium 2 at present).

I don't have all the books to hand, but I can't - off the top of my head - think of another faction whose core special ability does not affect more units the larger the army is.

Grey Knights, to a lesser extent, because Psychic Focus.

And yes, you have a max of one AoF on any given unit per turn.

 BBAP wrote:

The idea that "efficiency" can be modelled with a crude division - in this case number of AoFs divided by number of eligible units - is almost always facile, because crude division is an arithmetical operation that can't take into account a lot of the important subtleties and nuances involved in whatever you're trying to model. You can't boil these factors out; they need to be considered if you want to talk about how efficient things are, and more especially if your proposed solution is just stuffing the numerator to decrease the "inefficiency".

Let’s try this again.

Consider two identical factions. They have the same units, same options, same costs, but one difference: their faction bonus.

Faction A’s bonus gives them a 10% increase in firepower. I don’t care how this is achieved, so let’s just say they have the rule ‘For every 10 shots fired by this army, fire an 11th shot for free.’

Faction B’s bonus gives one unit per army a 100% increase in firepower. Say, ‘Each turn, pick one unit. That unit shoots twice this turn.’

At tiny points values, where each side can only field a single 10-model unit, Faction B is going to wipe the floor with Faction A. They have 20 shots per turn to Faction A’s 11 shots per turn. Faction B’s faction bonus is ten times stronger than Faction B’s.

At a points value high enough to field ten units of ten models each, the two Factions are balanced. They go about it slightly differently, but each puts out 110 shots. Faction B can better concentrate their firepower but equally Faction A exerts more firepower over the whole board.

At arbitrarily large points values, say Legion strength of 10,000 units of 10 models each, Faction A puts out 110,000 shots per turn to Faction B’s 100,010 shots. Faction A’s bonus is a thousand times as powerful as Faction B’s.

If you still can’t see the issue then... we’ll, you’re beyond what I can help you with. That’s as clearly as I can put the Reverse Ninja problem of only having a set number of AoFs rather than a number that scales with army size.

 Dysartes wrote:
True, you do get more AoFs with Sisters than with Daemons or GSC - but you also get more Cult Ambush with your GSC than your SoB or Daemons, and more summoning options with your Daemons than the GSC or SoB. Different armies have different special rules. What's your point?

That infantry-based armies don't need ever increasing numbers of free actions to thrive. Daemons and GSC might not be the best example considering neither is "thriving" at the moment for different reasons - but they'd be doing much better if I got to make a free move with them on a 2+ every turn. I'd trade Summoning and Cult Ambush for that no problem at all.

What people appear to want is a signature special rule that scales with the number of units in the army that can benefit from it.

What people want is more free moves every turn. I don't blame them, because I also want more free moves every turn - but I have the self awareness to recognise that I want more free moves every turn because it makes my army exceptionally powerful.

The idea of scaling the number of free moves I get every turn is just a limp-wristed attempt to "balance" the addition of more free moves every turn. In my mind the only way to balance more free moves every turn is with a massive HQ tax and the loss of other special rules, as is the case with Ynnari armies, so you can't have 100 Sisters running around at 1250pts making free moves every turn and ripping up everything with their 6++ and mini-DTW on every fething unit in the army.

At the very, very least your army should lose Shield of Faith and be forced to take Celestine if you want more 2+ AoFs every turn, and even that wouldn't be a huge trade-off because Celestine is awesome and most people are taking her anyway.

Whether this means weakening AoF so this can happy is something people don't seem to have reached a consensus on yet.

You're the first person I've seen make this argument - and if we're going to water down AoFs in order to get more of them then why bother changing them at all? Why not keep the awesome AoFs we have at the moment and just leave them at one per army per turn on a 2+?

If it does get scalable, I think a "Units can only be affected by one AoF a turn." addition to the mechanic seems reasonable at first glance

At first glance maybe. Apply this "balance" to three squads and you'll see why it's unreasonable.

If you're stuck I'll give you a hint; all three squads can shoot twice each turn with only one AoF apiece. Jiminy jillickers, that's kinda cheesy, isn't it? How do we balance that, Radioactive Man?! "Well, you just restrict the number of AoFs available to the army every turn!", right? Okay - how many AoFs per turn is reasonable? Two? So two of my squads can shoot twice every turn - which would be 48 HB shots from two units of Rets, or alternatively 72 bolter shots plus quadruple shots from whatever specials my two 10-strong Sisters squads are carrying. Nice - I'll take it!

Then people start whining that Sisters are rinsing everything off the table with their uber-fast quickdraw powers, and we all decide one 2+ punt per turn is enough.

Alternatively we make AoFs suck so their impact on the game is reduced. No thanks.

I don't have all the books to hand, but I can't - off the top of my head - think of another faction whose core special ability does not affect more units the larger the army is.

The Acts of Faith special rule already affects more units the larger your army gets, in the same way Cult Ambush does (and Summoning doesn't). The only difference is you don't get more free moves the larger your army gets - and you shouldn't, because free moves are powerful and having too many of them is borked.

JNAProductions wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
Can we all just agree that AoF function perfectly well as it is, and the tweaks we're asking for are purely wishlisting to increase the power of an already capable army?

Except some of us are saying "Make Acts of Faith not as strong, but more available across the army". So, you know, it's more powerful to take a Sisters' ARMY than a single Sisters' unit in a patrol alongside any other Imperium army.

BBAP wrote:[

Whether this means weakening AoF so this can happy is something people don't seem to have reached a consensus on yet.

You're the first person I've seen make this argument - and if we're going to water down AoFs in order to get more of them then why bother changing them at all? Why not keep the awesome AoFs we have at the moment and just leave them at one per army per turn on a 2+?

No. They're not the first one to make that argument.

kombatwombat wrote:
Let’s try this again.

Consider two identical factions. They have the same units, same options, same costs, but one difference: their faction bonus.

Faction A’s bonus gives them a 10% increase in firepower. I don’t care how this is achieved, so let’s just say they have the rule ‘For every 10 shots fired by this army, fire an 11th shot for free.’

Faction B’s bonus gives one unit per army a 100% increase in firepower. Say, ‘Each turn, pick one unit. That unit shoots twice this turn.’

At tiny points values, where each side can only field a single 10-model unit, Faction B is going to wipe the floor with Faction A. They have 20 shots per turn to Faction A’s 11 shots per turn. Faction B’s faction bonus is ten times stronger than Faction B’s.

At a points value high enough to field ten units of ten models each, the two Factions are balanced. They go about it slightly differently, but each puts out 110 shots. Faction B can better concentrate their firepower but equally Faction A exerts more firepower over the whole board.

At arbitrarily large points values, say Legion strength of 10,000 units of 10 models each, Faction A puts out 110,000 shots per turn to Faction B’s 100,010 shots. Faction A’s bonus is a thousand times as powerful as Faction B’s.

If you still can’t see the issue then... we’ll, you’re beyond what I can help you with. That’s as clearly as I can put the Reverse Ninja problem of only having a set number of AoFs rather than a number that scales with army size.

This makes the complaint a little clearer - but at the end of the day it's still "AoF divided by number of units equals quotient too small for my liking". The impact of the single free move is reduced at arbitrarily high points values, but so is the impact of everything. At the end of the day you're still getting an extra free move. I'll trade you my Summoning for that no problem at all. Hell, you can have all of my God-specific bonuses too.


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 JNAProductions wrote:
Except some of us are saying "Make Acts of Faith not as strong, but more available across the army". So, you know, it's more powerful to take a Sisters' ARMY than a single Sisters' unit in a patrol alongside any other Imperium army.

Right - so basically "give me more free moves every turn".

EDIT: Wait, no - you're not saying that, you're saying "give me sucky special rules I can use more often"? What's the point of making that change?

BBAP wrote:

Whether this means weakening AoF so this can happy is something people don't seem to have reached a consensus on yet.

You're the first person I've seen make this argument - and if we're going to water down AoFs in order to get more of them then why bother changing them at all? Why not keep the awesome AoFs we have at the moment and just leave them at one per army per turn on a 2+?

No. They're not the first one to make that argument.

So more than one person would like suckier special rules they can use more often than awesome special rules they can only use sparingly? Fair enough. I guess.