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How about FemWhaa!?

Rynner wrote:
Some take aways:

Horde sisters are really powerful but need allies to deal with knights or morty. However you need about 80-100 basic battle sister bodies plus a lot of storm bolters to play it. I think I might be one of the few people who actually have the models to play this.

I have 10 SB sisters that are sitting at my FLGS that just came in. "Enjoy blowing $100! Happy new year!" - GW

Only 10 more?! You gotta get those numbers up

Yeah, I hit 100 with every superior, every special and heavy weapon, and all my imagifers.

PuppetSoul wrote:
I have a plethora of Dreamforge conversions with a mixture of forgeworld, popgoesthemonkey, and GW addon bits.

I will not be fielding those.

This Dark Vengeance spam, with Beret-wearing Statuesque miniatures heads, is going to be dipped in pink paint, exposed skin will be green, with squad-specific berets, and fielded as a protest vote that will inevitably make it on camera at some point during LVO.

This seems like the exact opposite of what you want to do to effect meaningful change and I would hate to see it across the table. Also, if I was a TO, I would deny you using it as Sisters, since it is clearly SM models.


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Rynner wrote:
Semi off topic (I know) but every time I hear a podcaster who doesn't play sisters talk about how good they are I shudder.

My W** moment was when Mike Brandt called them fringe competitive on FTN or something.

Okay, not to be a jerk here, but...

If MVB or some of the players that actually play at the top tables think they are competitive and you don't, what do you know that they don't? "I play the army" Sure, but these guys know the game.

Rynner wrote:
Only 10 more?! You gotta get those numbers up

This will put me at over 30 storm bolter ladies.

Okay, not to be a jerk here, but...

If MVB or some of the players that actually play at the top tables think they are competitive and you don't, what do you know that they don't? "I play the army" Sure, but these guys know the game.

He said fringe competitive, not actually Competitive.

I agree that Pink Tide is a horrible nickname for the close-combat approach of using Bolters as clubs.

I prefer the tern 'Ard Grrlz instead.

ERJAK wrote:

Holy Trinity isn't...a great option. Or a good one. Mathematically it gives you about the same amount of extra damage output as a CP reroll at the cost of making the unit worse without spending CP on it. Melta doms are especially poor with HT. You'll be better off just brinigng 5 melta guns 95% of the time. Even HT on heavy flamer rets, which is absolutely its best use, gets you like 2 extra wounds against a 3+ save. Holy Trinity is pretty dead in the water because +1 to wound is a very small bonus and having melta+flamer+bolter all shooting at the same target is bad.

Our best option for offense is a castellan, or a crusader if you're on a points budget, or 3 Leman Russ tank commanders. Sisters only real strengths as an army at the moment are being deeply annoying to kill and stonewalling psychic powers.

Trinity is significantly better against t5+ targets and much better against t8+


After having played a few pseudo games, sisters aura stacking seems to be a way to go, and looks to be really good, if the rule of 3 didn't exist and you could take like 6 min squads of seraphim

pretre wrote:This seems like the exact opposite of what you want to do to effect meaningful change and I would hate to see it across the table. Also, if I was a TO, I would deny you using it as Sisters, since it is clearly SM models.

You're going to hate seeing The Pink Tide show up no matter what it looks like. I don't care if they award the dude The Golden Demon during your match, you're still going to be groaning as you roll blocks of 5 and 6 saves fifty times a turn.

Lanlaorn wrote:
Ok first, please stop trying to make "the Pink Tide" happen. It's not going to happen. No tournament organizers and few casual opponents will stand for it. It's a waste of our time to even discuss something obviously against the rules.

The Pink Tide is already a thing. Ignore The Passion for a moment and assume it doesn't exist: The Pink Tide is still an extremely effective gatekeeper list, because it's 150+ models that are all a minimum of 3+/4++ and are functionally immune to psychic and morale, and where 120 of them have objective secured.

Rynner wrote:

I tried out holy trinity on a dominion squad with 3x storm bolters, a melta gun, and a flamer. It cost 2 (well 3 cp to reroll the act of faith) to take out a chimera. It was a waste of resources and I probably won't build for this again.

My goto is increasingly, just tossing a combi flamer on my max foot squads of sisters, its cheap and cost me 1 faith, if it doesn't go off it isn't the end of the world. but if it does the extra wounds are pretty good.

 Grundz wrote:

Rynner wrote:

I tried out holy trinity on a dominion squad with 3x storm bolters, a melta gun, and a flamer. It cost 2 (well 3 cp to reroll the act of faith) to take out a chimera. It was a waste of resources and I probably won't build for this again.

My goto is increasingly, just tossing a combi flamer on my max foot squads of sisters, its cheap and cost me 1 faith, if it doesn't go off it isn't the end of the world. but if it does the extra wounds are pretty good.

You'd also have to give them a melta, which means you're down to 1 stormbolter in the squad.

Blessed Bolts puts out better numbers than Holy Trinity within 8" against anything T4 or lower, considerably better damage against Primaris equivalents, and lower damage against anything T5+.

Outside of 8", it does leagues better, and outside of 12" it does several orders of magnitude better.

Blessed Bolts on 3 stormbolter squad would give 12 S4 2AP D2 hits and 24 S4 hits.
Against GEQ that's ~19 models killed.
Against MEQ that's ~8 models killed.
Against T7 3+ that's ~5.2 wounds.
Against T8 3++ that's 2.64 wounds.

Holy Trinity on combi/melta/sb squad would give 31.5 S4 hits that wound +1, and 1 S8 AP4 D2d6p1 hit that wounds +1.
Against GEQ that's ~18 models killed.
Against MEQ that's ~6 models killed.
Against T7 3+ that's ~9 wounds.
Against T8 3++ that's ~4.41 wounds.

PuppetSoul wrote:

Against T8 3++ that's ~4.41 wounds.

This is the kicker
Its still 4.41 wounds against a warlord titan
I wouldn't mix a stormbolter into a trinity squad even though they are neat

blessed bolts may be better, but you can only use it once per turn, you need one or two squads capable of using trinity

 Grundz wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:

Against T8 3++ that's ~4.41 wounds.

This is the kicker
Its still 4.41 wounds against a warlord titan
I wouldn't mix a stormbolter into a trinity squad even though they are neat

blessed bolts may be better, but you can only use it once per turn, you need one or two squads capable of using trinity

The kicker is that they only have to keep their Knight 20" away from the girl with the flamer, or to be at least 6" behind a screen, and it prevents you from ever being able to use Holy Trinity.

In other words, the things which you will be able to use Holy Trinity on are either going to be infantry squads or things that are aggressively trying to get into melee with you.

You're right of course but that's a problem inherent in meltaguns, and unfortunately the only option the book has

PuppetSoul wrote:

pretre wrote:This seems like the exact opposite of what you want to do to effect meaningful change and I would hate to see it across the table. Also, if I was a TO, I would deny you using it as Sisters, since it is clearly SM models.

You're going to hate seeing THIS ARMY show up no matter what it looks like. I don't care if they award the dude The Golden Demon during your match, you're still going to be groaning as you roll blocks of 5 and 6 saves fifty times a turn..

I lose all the time to frustrating things but I feel a lot better about it if my opponent put some effort into their army. Garbage paint or conversions just to get the new hotness on the table as fast as possible will always leave a bad taste in an my mouth.

I have my first few games with the beta in a few days. Not sure what size I'll be getting to play. I also don't know the meta as well, though I'm assuming casual. I'm planning semi-casual lists.



And



I'm taking the Spearhead over a Supreme Command of tanks because I don't have three Russ, because it gives quite a bit anti-infantry fire power, letting my sister focus on bigger things. Trying the Fist over Wrath because I want to use the Heirloom battlecannon. Also, I want my LR to have the ability to hold objectives like troops.

 Mmmpi wrote:

I'm taking the Spearhead over a Supreme Command of tanks because I don't have three Russ, because it gives quite a bit anti-infantry fire power, letting my sister focus on bigger things. Trying the Fist over Wrath because I want to use the Heirloom battlecannon. Also, I want my LR to have the ability to hold objectives like troops.

As long as you're battleforged, the LRs have obsec, so they get it in everything except aux support or mixed-faction.

AFAIK Vigilus formations don't overwrite keywords, so they don't break battleforged.

I imagine after you've played with them a couple times, you will find your basic sisters overperforming for their point cost: that Sisters' infantry mulches other factions' infantry wholesale, overwhelming screens is weight of dice, and converting via Blessed Bolts to throw enough high quality shots to peel elites, but that they're not really good at anything else.

At that point my first recommendation will be to bring in Smashcaptains, as these give you an answer to knight-shaped problems, and it's easy to connect them if you clear the screens... a service Sisters have always been happy to provide, but with more gusto because they're also worth their weight in Catachans in melee now.

Thankfully knights aren't something I have to worry about in my area.

Was there an FAQ about Russes? The Codex only says they get it in spearheads.

PuppetSoul wrote:

The kicker is that they only have to keep their Knight 20" away from the girl with the flamer, or to be at least 6" behind a screen, and it prevents you from ever being able to use Holy Trinity.
In other words, the things which you will be able to use Holy Trinity on are either going to be infantry squads or things that are aggressively trying to get into melee with you.

The entire game can be broken down into "well they only have to ____" I mean, our entire army is based on short ranged weaponry and now, not being fast, all anyone ever needs to do is stay back out of range and lose on objectives, I'm fine with that.
Sure, in a perfect world where you don't ever fall back the first squad that is pathetically swinging at what charged them

You can stack up a dozen storm bolter squads when you can only use holy bolts 6 times a game, I'll be fine with one or two of them being trinity squads to force the "well they only have to" situation and help dictate the game.

 Grundz wrote:

The entire game can be broken down into "well they only have to ____" I mean, our entire army is based on short ranged weaponry and now, not being fast, all anyone ever needs to do is stay back out of range and lose on objectives, I'm fine with that.
Sure, in a perfect world where you don't ever fall back the first squad that is pathetically swinging at what charged them

You can stack up a dozen storm bolter squads when you can only use holy bolts 6 times a game, I'll be fine with one or two of them being trinity squads to force the "well they only have to" situation and help dictate the game.

The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Anything that ends the movement phase within 8" of an enemy model is probably going to be charging at it.

So you can't have a flamer on the end of a tendril that has plot armor, and then lose the two girls behind her: if they charge her and position two bases between her and the rest of her tendril, that entire tendril is basically deleted because you can't move, pile in or consolidate them because they can't re-establish coherency.

So what you'll probably end up doing is putting the stormbolters near the center, with the power axe wielding Superior as the one furthest from the center (but not more than 5 away from it), and then taking casualties as you please from the 10-girls off the ends so that the unit still functions and secures its objectives.

The stupid 6-character* deathstar forces you to play in a very mechanical way.

*Celestine, IB Canoness, Brazzer character, Uriah, Dialogus, Ebon Chalice character.


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 Mmmpi wrote:
Thankfully knights aren't something I have to worry about in my area.

So I hear we found water on Mars. Must be nice.

 Mmmpi wrote:

Was there an FAQ about Russes? The Codex only says they get it in spearheads.

Ah, you're right.

That makes me sad. I don't think I'd ever field anything besides a Brigade, Battalion or Supreme Command for IG. Good thing that I've also never fielded LRs, or I'dve played it wrong. =D

Now that TCs are reasonable, I picked up an Emperor's Fist box to run as Tallarn HQs, but I suppose they are not quite as viable as i had thought.

As I have posted in the past, many of my issues on this are more with 40k as a whole being less of a wargame than just a game. That is a personal opinion and not a denigration of the game or the fans of it! I would prefer to be able to be mono, and mono order since the mixing of detachments breaks my personal sense of immersion.

That being said, one thought I had on Acts of Faith, and this could be totally off the wall. Some wouldn't like it due to the randomness.

Many have said that they like the actual AoF process, its simply the Acts themselves that are too weak. Some don't like the binary on/off yes/no working on AoF, while some have said it fits in the prayer idea, and not knowing if your were prayers were going to be answered.

But I was thinking, if Acts of Faith were based on prayers and devotion, what if we borrowed the idea of critical hit tables from many wargames, and use it for AoF? So you would still use the Devotion Roll, but instead of it being a yes/no option it would be a roll on a table of varying results.. I am just brainstorming here but you could have a range of 0-8, with perhaps 1-4 being the baseline of what the current AoF does, a higher roll has a more powerful result, and a lower could be a null result or even, with a zero, an adverse result?

I could see various orders, Celestine and maybe an Exorcist giving a + to the die roll, and perhaps there could be some negative modifiers as well. Or add faith points to increase your modifier. Too many modifiers, and you would have to extend the table range, of course.

To me, that would feel more fluffy and prayer-like. But you could manage it as well, so hopefully it isnt too random. But it would be nice to have a chance at a true miracle, depending on your faith.

PuppetSoul wrote:

The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Anything that ends the movement phase within 8" of an enemy model is probably going to be charging at it.
So you can't have a flamer on the end of a tendril that has plot armor, and then lose the two girls behind her: if they charge her and position two bases between her and the rest of her tendril, that entire tendril is basically deleted because you can't move, pile in or consolidate them because they can't re-establish coherency.
So what you'll probably end up doing is putting the stormbolters near the center, with the power axe wielding Superior as the one furthest from the center (but not more than 5 away from it), and then taking casualties as you please from the 10-girls off the ends so that the unit still functions and secures its objectives.

I dont know where you got the full squad was being strung way out for some reason with the edge of the squad sitting in all of the auras.
We've established you're okay with not having a trinity squad and relying on bolters, its fine, enjoy.

PuppetSoul wrote:
The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Truth. I keep reading about people running sister's aura stars and pink tides, but I never play on a table where this would be remotely possible. Most tourney level tables have 1 or 2 LoS blocking pieces of terrain in the middle with a somewhat narrow corridor around them.

Do most people play on planet bowling ball?

 deviantduck wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:
The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Truth. I keep reading about people running sister's aura stars and pink tides, but I never play on a table where this would be remotely possible. Most tourney level tables have 1 or 2 LoS blocking pieces of terrain in the middle with a somewhat narrow corridor around them.

Do most people play on planet bowling ball?

Most people seem content with just stacking every bonus they can as high as they can, lining up and marching at one another

 Grundz wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:
The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Truth. I keep reading about people running sister's aura stars and pink tides, but I never play on a table where this would be remotely possible. Most tourney level tables have 1 or 2 LoS blocking pieces of terrain in the middle with a somewhat narrow corridor around them.

Do most people play on planet bowling ball?

Most people seem content with just stacking every bonus they can as high as they can, lining up and marching at one another

Woah! Lets not insult the west coast here too much! Reece might nerf our army even more!

Rynner wrote:

 Grundz wrote:

 deviantduck wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:
The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Truth. I keep reading about people running sister's aura stars and pink tides, but I never play on a table where this would be remotely possible. Most tourney level tables have 1 or 2 LoS blocking pieces of terrain in the middle with a somewhat narrow corridor around them.

Do most people play on planet bowling ball?

Most people seem content with just stacking every bonus they can as high as they can, lining up and marching at one another

Woah! Lets not insult the west coast here too much! Reece might nerf our army even more!

I know right?
My favorite was one of my locals fighting a minmaxed tyranid list on adepticon (iirc) stream with his weird "its so bad" off-meta list, they went on and on about how this was going to go.
They cut to another game on turn 3 when the bugs were being absolutely routed by the better player

 deviantduck wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:
The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Truth. I keep reading about people running sister's aura stars and pink tides, but I never play on a table where this would be remotely possible. Most tourney level tables have 1 or 2 LoS blocking pieces of terrain in the middle with a somewhat narrow corridor around them.

Do most people play on planet bowling ball?

It seems that the midwest/west ITC scenes play predominantly with the ITC terrain (FLG's stuff: what LVO will use), which are a bunch of buildings and whatnot that infantry can move through.

I've never actually seen one of those L-shaped monstrosities on a table out here other than at an FLGS trying to get a club kickstarted.

 pretre wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:
I have a plethora of Dreamforge conversions with a mixture of forgeworld, popgoesthemonkey, and GW addon bits.

I will not be fielding those.

This Dark Vengeance spam, with Beret-wearing Statuesque miniatures heads, is going to be dipped in pink paint, exposed skin will be green, with squad-specific berets, and fielded as a protest vote that will inevitably make it on camera at some point during LVO.

This seems like the exact opposite of what you want to do to effect meaningful change and I would hate to see it across the table. Also, if I was a TO, I would deny you using it as Sisters, since it is clearly SM models.


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Rynner wrote:
Semi off topic (I know) but every time I hear a podcaster who doesn't play sisters talk about how good they are I shudder.

My W** moment was when Mike Brandt called them fringe competitive on FTN or something.

Okay, not to be a jerk here, but...

If MVB or some of the players that actually play at the top tables think they are competitive and you don't, what do you know that they don't? "I play the army" Sure, but these guys know the game.

Top table players saying an army they haven't played is competitive isn't particularly meaningful, because people are often wrong about things. Especially when they're unfamiliar with them. Reece went on record saying Grey Knights were perfectly viable a couple of times after the codex dropped and has since had to retract that statement. Generally speaking, a good player who plays the army a lot will have a more useful opinion than a great player that doesn't. The Sisters of Battle codex is also one of the most misleading books in the game for people who are unfamiliar with the army. There are traps EVERYWHERE for new players to fall into that are actually EVEN more dangerous for GOOD players than BAD players.

+1 to hit on the whole army sounds amazing, for sisters it's kinda not. Fight twice sounds amazing, for sisters it's kinda not. 'A better version of run and shoot/charge' sounds amazing but for Sisters it's kinda not, a 4++ bubble sounds amazing but it's only pretty good, Holy trinity sounds useable but it's just to trick you into taking gak loadouts, martydom sounds good but ends up being a waste of CP, etc, etc, etc. The whole book is a pitfall trap for players that don't really know what Sisters of Battle do.

Secondly, Top Table players saying an army they haven't played is competitive isn't particularly meaningful because people are often not honest about things. People being recorded are much more likely to offer more optimistic takes on army rules than when they're reading through the book themselves or BSing with friends. This is ESPECIALLY true of anyone who happens to be on the playtest team. 'Fringe competitive' is an optimistic take at best, but is more likely to be damning with faint praise. If you listen closely you can tell when the top players genuinely think an army might be really good and when they're just trying not to crap on anyone's toes. Geoff Robinson and Petey Pob talked about the book a bit on Chapter Tactics and the entire time they're pausing and thinking very carefully about how they phrase things and qualifying their statements with stuff like 'well I wouldn't recommend it to a new player but...'. It's the exact type of tone people first talked about the Grey Knight book in. If they actually like a book they'll talk about all the combos they're excited to pull and how they just bought a whole army like people did when the CWE, Custodes, and Guard books dropped. No one who reviewed the book, even the people who were very positive about it, ever sounded excited.

Also, Rynner didn't you get like 11th at LVO last year with a majority Sisters list?


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 Grundz wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:

The real estate around your deathstar dictates how your army plays.

Anything that ends the movement phase within 8" of an enemy model is probably going to be charging at it.
So you can't have a flamer on the end of a tendril that has plot armor, and then lose the two girls behind her: if they charge her and position two bases between her and the rest of her tendril, that entire tendril is basically deleted because you can't move, pile in or consolidate them because they can't re-establish coherency.
So what you'll probably end up doing is putting the stormbolters near the center, with the power axe wielding Superior as the one furthest from the center (but not more than 5 away from it), and then taking casualties as you please from the 10-girls off the ends so that the unit still functions and secures its objectives.

I dont know where you got the full squad was being strung way out for some reason with the edge of the squad sitting in all of the auras.
We've established you're okay with not having a trinity squad and relying on bolters, its fine, enjoy.

Trinity is kind of gak. Even under ideal circumstances with a 15 girl squad with the right combination of Melta+Flamer for the target(2 melta 1 Flamer for Armor, 2 flamer 1 melta for hordes) it's pretty crap. You usually end up getting a pretty comparative boost out of not running a doofy setup and just using the CP for a reroll.


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 Grundz wrote:

PuppetSoul wrote:

Against T8 3++ that's ~4.41 wounds.

This is the kicker
Its still 4.41 wounds against a warlord titan
I wouldn't mix a stormbolter into a trinity squad even though they are neat

blessed bolts may be better, but you can only use it once per turn, you need one or two squads capable of using trinity

The numbers are wrong. That's shots, not hits. Even Divine guidance with a Canoness won't get you those numbers.

My numbers say 3.09 for CF/SB/M and 3.31 for double melta both for a 15 girl squad. This is a 1.4 damage increase over a CF/M/M squad with no Holy trinity and a 1.2 increase over a CM/M/M squad with no holy trinity.

Like I said in the previous post, even in a best case scenario where all your bolter girls are alive, it's still about as good as just using a CP reroll. If you lose 7 bolter girls, it's actually worse.

ERJAK wrote:


Its still 4.41 wounds against a warlord titan
I wouldn't mix a stormbolter into a trinity squad even though they are neat

blessed bolts may be better, but you can only use it once per turn, you need one or two squads capable of using trinity


The numbers are wrong. That's shots, not hits. Even Divine guidance with a Canoness won't get you those numbers.
My numbers say 3.09 for CF/SB/M and 3.31 for double melta both for a 15 girl squad. This is a 1.4 damage increase over a CF/M/M squad with no Holy trinity and a 1.2 increase over a CM/M/M squad with no holy trinity.

Please show me how you came to those numbers vs a T16 target