Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Yeah, definitely feeling that morale losses are really not as big a deal for Sisters.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Sim-Life wrote: I dunno. I felt morale losses more with Sisters than most of my other armies.
And I felt very little effect from morale with my sisters playtest game, using the 10-size squads (I was proxying guardsmen for sisters, as obviously I didn't have any of the new minis and the only old minis I hadn't sold off was a canoness and a retributor squad). Sisters just have so many ways of not caring about morale.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
BrianDavion wrote: On a practical mindset, GW's sisters box is clearly designed for ten man squads. you'll have to do some converting if you want 5 man squads.
Which is funny, considering they have a "Dominion+Celestian squad" product (i.e. one of the gazillion different products which are just a single Battle SistersSquad box with different store photos) in their webstore where only one of the two squads has a recognizable Superior.
Dark it was, and dire of form
the beast that laid them low
Hrothgar's sharpened frost-forged blade
to deal a fatal blow
he stalked and hunted day and night
and came upon it's lair
With sword and shield Hrothgar fought
and earned the name of slayer
BrianDavion wrote: On a practical mindset, GW's sisters box is clearly designed for ten man squads. you'll have to do some converting if you want 5 man squads.
Which is funny, considering they have a "Dominion+Celestian squad" product (i.e. one of the gazillion different products which are just a single Battle SistersSquad box with different store photos) in their webstore where only one of the two squads has a recognizable Superior.
Are there decorative parts in the kit that could be used to mark a Superior? Perhaps that would help. Also, putting a Combi-weapon on a model would immediately pick her out as the Superior. Of course, GW is probably wily enough to make sure any Superior-specific weapons will only fit on the Superior body.
My armies (re-counted and updated on 11/1/23, including modeled wargear options):
Dark Angels: ~15000 Astra Militarum: ~1200 | Adeptus Custodes: ~1900 | Imperial Knights: ~2000 | Sisters of Battle: ~3500 | Leagues of Votann: ~1200 | Tyranids: ~2600 | Stormcast Eternals: ~5000
Check out my P&M Blogs: ZergSmasher's P&M Blog | Imperial Knights blog | Board Games blog | Total models painted in 2023: 40 | Total models painted in 2024: 12 | Current main painting project: Dark Angels
Mr_Rose wrote: Who doesn’t love crazy mutant squawk-puppies? Eh? Nobody, that’s who.
BrianDavion wrote: On a practical mindset, GW's sisters box is clearly designed for ten man squads. you'll have to do some converting if you want 5 man squads.
Which is funny, considering they have a "Dominion+Celestian squad" product (i.e. one of the gazillion different products which are just a single Battle SistersSquad box with different store photos) in their webstore where only one of the two squads has a recognizable Superior.
Ain't there a chainsword in a scabbard as well as one in hand? That's two easy superiors long as you arm em with boltguns.
Also are the kits that hard to just cut the hand off one arm and stick it on another? I remember chaos marines being a challenge for similar reasons but ultimately doable. They can't be impossible to convert and modfiy a bit.
'I've played Guard for years, and the best piece of advice is to always utilize the Guard's best special rule: "we roll more dice than you" ' - stormleader
"Sector Imperialis: 25mm and 40mm Round Bases (40+20) 26€ (Including 32 skulls for basing) " GW design philosophy in a nutshell
BrianDavion wrote: On a practical mindset, GW's sisters box is clearly designed for ten man squads. you'll have to do some converting if you want 5 man squads.
Which is funny, considering they have a "Dominion+Celestian squad" product (i.e. one of the gazillion different products which are just a single Battle SistersSquad box with different store photos) in their webstore where only one of the two squads has a recognizable Superior.
Ain't there a chainsword in a scabbard as well as one in hand? That's two easy superiors long as you arm em with boltguns.
Also are the kits that hard to just cut the hand off one arm and stick it on another? I remember chaos marines being a challenge for similar reasons but ultimately doable. They can't be impossible to convert and modfiy a bit.
They don't really have arms. The robes are the pieces that would normally be their arms. It make fitting the alternate weapons tricky. 1 sculpt(the one running forward) is fairly easy to just slap a melta or Stormbolter onto. The two that would otherwise be heavy weapons are a significant conversion to give the specials too (largely because every single special has 2 hands on the grip and are right handed where the pointing finger and grenade are rather than being on the side that has the bolter weapon) The one with the cybernetic arm isn't too bad but will certainly take some finagling and green struff to equip with a melta/stormbolter.
Melissia wrote: I know people keep saying "do five girl squads with all of the special weapons for your mechanized sisters", but I feel like that's incredibly fragile of a force even by Sisters standards... been working on my list based on peoples' feedback, but not liking how it's turning out so far based on the recommendation of using five-member battle sister squads.
if you like the 10 sister squad go for it. maybe you've figured something others haven't. problem with a MSU 5 man sisters squad is you don't really have ANY ablative wounds.
you've got 1 sister superior, 2 special weapons sisters, a simiclium sister and a single regular sister. that's not a lot of loses before you start taking your valuable support options.
Honestly? The problem isn't min squad vs max squads. The problem is trying to do mechanized sisters. Immolators are trash, repressors have been nerfed 3 times now (loss of scount, CA point increase, FAQ that stopped them from being the best transport in the game), and rhinos are mostly 67 point coffins at this point.
Mech lists are largely dead. If you want to focus on battle sisters, Argent Shroud with the +1 run sacred rite on foot are your best bet.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/01/19 05:12:03
And you pay for it. Each lost wound is worth more points that way, meaning your enemy's rewarded for each kill far more than if you had ten sisters per squad. Sisters aren't Space Marines. They're more fragile, with their T3, even with the other things they have. As someone who plays both Marines and Sisters, that T4 makes a HUGE difference.
Given that the points paid for a storm bolter is less than what I pay when I'm sticking upgrades on my tanks to make up those last 15pts or so I don't think its that big an issue.
Storm bolters sure, but you see plenty of meltas and particularly combi-meltas around.
I agree that 2x storm bolters and nothing else is the way to go for 5 women squads, but anything more expensive (except maybe a single combi-melta on the superior, so you still got 4 meat-shields before she goes down) I'd definitely go for additional bodies, even for non-SB Dominion or Retributor squads (unless you stick them into a transport and run into capacity issues otherwise).
I'm just copy what I wrote on the subject in another thread:
Having 3 meltas in a squad of 5 seems like an easy way to bleed points when the other player only has to kill 2 bodies before he gets to kill squishy 23 and 24 point models.
Sure, at first glance "not losing models to morale" sounds pretty good, until you realize you are achieving that by getting your special weapons that cost at least two and half times as many points per model killed instead and having the squad wiped.
Well, unless you put them into a Rhino, but then you might as well take Celestians, Dominions or particularly Seraphim instead who give you more bang for your investment.
As far as Battle Sisters Squads with Melta are concerned, I'd either go with a single melta and a storm bolter in a squad of 5 or 2 melta+ combi and 4-5 extra bodies. Thanks to miracle dice, even having a single melta is a serious deterrent (you hit and wound? Insta 5 or 6 damage. Or you get charged by some monstrosity and you just use a miracle dice to get that 6 you need to hit during overwatch for some tasty damage), especially if they are spread throughout multiple squads. Or you go horde because Sisters have plenty of ways to minimize morale issues (a single missionary prevents 50% of all morale casualties AND hands out +1 Attack to the entire blob in addition to being dirt cheap and filling a HQ slot) and several Orders that favor that approach, have 2 melta + combi and 4-7 extra bodies to keep those special weapons worth 70 points alive and making a Simulacrum worthwhile (which in turn again makes the squad even more dangerous).
TL;DR: Sisters already have a high LD (you need to take 3+ losses before there is even a slim risk of losing another model), have a multitude of easy ways to buff LD or make morale losses a non-issue, which often also synergize really well with a horde playstyle (missionary giving +1A to all models in 6" AND halving all morale losses, in addition to being cheap and filling a HQ slot), with several orders also enouraging such a playstyle and bringing plenty of sisters infantry in bigger units along, such as Argent Shroud, Bloody Rose and Martyred Lady. Big units with meltas also enable better buffing and make them valuable miracle dice targets thanks to a simulacrum suddenly being worthwhile.
That's not to mention that having a chance to take a lot of morale-tests you cannot possibly fail (or have like a 8%/16% chance to lose one/two 9pt model(s)) is a valuable source to farm additional miracle dice every turn. And even if you lose like 7 models out of a 12 model unit in a single turn, you can easily use a low value miracle dice (especially a 1) to auto-pass, something other armies have to pay 2 CP for.
Thus the risk of morale losses is overrated for sisters as I'd argue , as has been shown with at least one tournament winning list having been posted here having 11-15 model sister squads.
The problem isn't morale losses, the problem is that every point you spend on ablative battle sisters is a point that can't go into something else. If you need to invest 45pts in purely ablative wounds, that's probably not the unit you should have been running in the first place. If you're running the extra battle sisters because you have a TON of battle sister bodies that overwhelm your opponent's anti-infantry capabilities, that's a different story. Those wounds aren't ablative, they're crucial to your strategy.
Build your units for what you intend to use them for. I build my melta BSS as minimum squads with double melta combi-melta simulacrum because 1. I only run 3 in a small argent shroud battalion I have largely for the extra CP. 2. I try to keep them out of LoS and under the radar until they have a chance to pounce on something and 3. I also use them as a distraction carnifex that for 93 points I can afford to lose if it protects my other units for a turn.
I played my second game with the Codex today. My first was a tough loss to Necrons with pure Valorous Heart. Today's matchup was Double Battalions of Valorous Heart and Bloody Rose vs. Primaris Ultramarines. I was up 7-2 after two turns with pretty solid board control and we were tight on time with other commitments... we called it and I'll take as a soft victory. The Sisters were strong in all phases of the game, which was nice. I may or may not get around to a full BatRep, but here are some general thoughts and the two lists. I'll also make a note at some point about Tactical Objective choices, which I think really helped me.
In no particular order: In general I was impressed with Bloody Rose. The +1S Imagifier and a Preacher are pretty key, and -1AP is useful. I ran two Exos instead of three and they still punched pretty hard. Agressors are no joke and merit a turn 1 Exorcist volley. Blessed Bolts may be an every turn stratagem. Canonesses hit hard for their points and I may run three of them all the time. Valorous Heart had staying power, especially with Prepared Positions.
2000 point - Covert Maneuvers (CA 19) - Vanguard Strike
A Bloody Rose Canoness with the Blessed Blade killed a Primaris Captain in one Fight phase
A unit of five Dominions with Stormbolters and Blessed Bolts killed a fresh unit of Intercessors
A Bloody Rose Canoness with Beneficence and a Penitent Engine killed a fresh unit of Intercessors
Celestine and a Penitent Engine did 18 Wounds to a Redemptor Dreadnought in a single phase
Two Exorcists killed a Predator in a single phase
Two Exorcists killed four of five Aggressors in a single phase
Five Aggressors killed five Seraphim and five Retributers in a single phase
Stratagems I used, some more than once:
Blessed Bolts
Deadly Descent
Desperate for Redemption
Devastating Refrain
BrianDavion wrote: On a practical mindset, GW's sisters box is clearly designed for ten man squads. you'll have to do some converting if you want 5 man squads.
Which is funny, considering they have a "Dominion+Celestian squad" product (i.e. one of the gazillion different products which are just a single Battle SistersSquad box with different store photos) in their webstore where only one of the two squads has a recognizable Superior.
A sister superior is OPTIONAL for Celestian squads, there's no reason you'd not give em one mechanicly, but they don't need one according to the rules. sicne they're all veterns and stuff
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
Yeah, it's a bit of an oddity that theirs is optional.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
I can't decide if Retributors are worth it or not.
I am starting to feel more and more than they are just a very expensive small squad that will be wiped out before they can accomplish much of anything.
If only they could deep strike with their heavy flamers.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/19 19:47:32
dan2026 wrote: I can't decide if Retributors are worth it or not.
I am starting to feel more and more than they are just a very expensive small squad that will be wiped out before they can accomplish much of anything.
If only they could deep strike with their heavy flamers.
I'm still not sure if I want ablative bodies on them or not. I have a hard time taking them over Exorcists but then the first time I used them I forgot about the armorium cherubs and the second time they fluffed their rolls so they haven't gotten a fair shake really. In fairness the second time they DID kill a maulerfiend in one round despite missing most of their shots.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/19 20:54:04
To be honest I don't see Retributors as being in danger of being focus fired on so much they get deleted turn one. Not when you have Exorcists, Penitent Engines, and so on.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Melissia wrote: To be honest I don't see Retributors as being in danger of being focus fired on so much they get deleted turn one. Not when you have Exorcists, Penitent Engines, and so on.
I might try a Hopitalier instead of extra Sisters. If they're VH/Cover then the 2+ save should keep them standing and the doctor should keep the odd one that falls standing.
Bought some retributors and a few boxes of sisters, going for 5 strong units of sisters with 2 SB in each to keep them cheap. Torn between making the retributors 4 MM or HB. I'm intending to use the trait where 6s to wound give an extra AP so think bolters en masse will do a bit of damage!
Rogerio134134 wrote: Bought some retributors and a few boxes of sisters, going for 5 strong units of sisters with 2 SB in each to keep them cheap. Torn between making the retributors 4 MM or HB. I'm intending to use the trait where 6s to wound give an extra AP so think bolters en masse will do a bit of damage!
Keep in mind even with 4 HB's it's just bit over 1 extra AP wound in average. Albeit better vs vehicles in a sense half your wounds are with extra AP but not good use of heavy bolters.
Really question is what you want to use retributions for. Anti infantry or anti tank? Presumably if you take HB retributions you will have 3 exorcists? As those 2 are main source of ranged AT and relying on just melta guns as anti tank is bit risky. 24" is already bit of a short range let alone 12"!
I don't think heavy bolters on Rets are really worth it as it stands. Sisters aren't hurting for anti-infantry guns. Also multi-meltas benefit far more from Storm Of Dominion than heavy bolters. I'd actually consider Heavy Flamers a better choice than heavy bolters when you take the strat into account.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/20 00:16:53
Rogerio134134 wrote: Bought some retributors and a few boxes of sisters, going for 5 strong units of sisters with 2 SB in each to keep them cheap. Torn between making the retributors 4 MM or HB. I'm intending to use the trait where 6s to wound give an extra AP so think bolters en masse will do a bit of damage!
I mean, you could 2 of each and 2 Cherubs and run them as a suicidal squad?
I'd also be careful of committing to heavily to one Sacred Rite. Their biggest advantage is flexibility
Sim-Life wrote: I don't think heavy bolters on Rets are really worth it as it stands. Sisters aren't hurting for anti-infantry guns. Also multi-meltas benefit far more from Storm Of Dominion than heavy bolters. I'd actually consider Heavy Flamers a better choice than heavy bolters when you take the strat into account.
Not using that strat saves you 2cp a turn though. Just because unit has stratagem doesn"t mean you have to use one. In all the times i have used lychguard i have used their stratagem once and that was for lols rather than because it was useful.
Rogerio134134 wrote: Bought some retributors and a few boxes of sisters, going for 5 strong units of sisters with 2 SB in each to keep them cheap. Torn between making the retributors 4 MM or HB. I'm intending to use the trait where 6s to wound give an extra AP so think bolters en masse will do a bit of damage!
I mean, you could 2 of each and 2 Cherubs and run them as a suicidal squad?
I'd also be careful of committing to heavily to one Sacred Rite. Their biggest advantage is flexibility
Building a list so that you can effectively pick a single sacred rite just seems like the best possible usage of them to me. Valorous Heart shooting heavy lists will gain A LOT from divine guidance, the same way pure argent shroud lists will LOVE+1 to run and pure Bloody Rose lists get a ton of value out of the passion.
Sim-Life wrote: I don't think heavy bolters on Rets are really worth it as it stands. Sisters aren't hurting for anti-infantry guns. Also multi-meltas benefit far more from Storm Of Dominion than heavy bolters. I'd actually consider Heavy Flamers a better choice than heavy bolters when you take the strat into account.
Not using that strat saves you 2cp a turn though. Just because unit has stratagem doesn"t mean you have to use one. In all the times i have used lychguard i have used their stratagem once and that was for lols rather than because it was useful.
Another thing to consider is that 4 heavy bolter retributors are 90 points for 12 shots and 2 heavy bolter mortifiers are 112 points for 12 shots while also being mortifiers.
dan2026 wrote: I can't decide if Retributors are worth it or not.
I am starting to feel more and more than they are just a very expensive small squad that will be wiped out before they can accomplish much of anything.
If only they could deep strike with their heavy flamers.
I'm still not sure if I want ablative bodies on them or not. I have a hard time taking them over Exorcists but then the first time I used them I forgot about the armorium cherubs and the second time they fluffed their rolls so they haven't gotten a fair shake really. In fairness the second time they DID kill a maulerfiend in one round despite missing most of their shots.
MM rets are one of the few units that REALLY benefit from ablative wounds. A valorous heart retributor squad with the 4++ is harder for most armies to shift than an exorcist is.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/01/20 06:12:28
ERJAK wrote: Another thing to consider is that 4 heavy bolter retributors are 90 points for 12 shots and 2 heavy bolter mortifiers are 112 points for 12 shots while also being mortifiers.
For valorous heart at least retributions will provide lot tougher platform tough. Mortifiers pop in soft breeze. 3+ ignoring -2 in cover meanwhile survives quite nicely.
ERJAK wrote: Another thing to consider is that 4 heavy bolter retributors are 90 points for 12 shots and 2 heavy bolter mortifiers are 112 points for 12 shots while also being mortifiers.
For valorous heart at least retributions will provide lot tougher platform tough. Mortifiers pop in soft breeze. 3+ ignoring -2 in cover meanwhile survives quite nicely.
I was considering some HB Rets, but I think scattering HBs into sisters squads that are sitting in back field is a better option.
I don't want basic squads sitting backfield with mostly 24" ranged weapons. They are there to push forward to deny easy access to backfield units and take objectives.
Having 1 heavy weapon means either sister squad is sitting down or heavy bolter is hitting on 4+.
Plus retributions can move and shoot without penalty. Even with range handy for getting LOS.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/20 10:09:58
Yeah, I wasn't thinking all squads. Just the couple that sit back and babysit backfield objectives/deny deepstrike. Forward squads are getting storm bolters and/or meltaguns.
~15000 Astra Militarum: 
~1200 | Adeptus Custodes: 
~2000 | Sisters of Battle: 
~1200 | Tyranids: 
