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.

"If a unit has disembarked from a Transport model, rules which allow that unit to be treated as though it has Remained Stationary have no effect."

Seems pretty clear-cut, but bafflingly dumb.

 bullyboy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
The Balance dataslate comes out and with it....drumroll please...ANOTHER NERF!

Just make all of our guns S1 and get it over with at this point.

Could you be any more dramatic? I guess at least you're playing the right faction to be a drama queen I suppose.

At least I'm not going into threads for armies I barely play to butt in. Do you seriously have nothing better to do?

Also, I'd like to point out that, as you can tell from the deluge of negative reactions from other sisters players, I am 100% correct in my assessment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dendarien wrote:
Yeah shroud is probably dead competitively. I think bloody rose or valorous heart is the way forward.

Honestly, Sisters are in a bad place competitively in general. With armies going up 100pts, no subfaction soup, changes to armorium cherubs and the argent shroud rules, it's bad times.

I'm looking at Goonhammer's tier list and honestly, I can't see how we don't end up in at least low tier three or even tier 4.

Tau and GSC both got good books, every variation of Eldar is getting a good book (with better miracle dice as the cherry on top), Necrons got...some amount of buffs. Looking at it, only Guard and pure CSM really look like favorable matchups anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:
Why the heck are units not considered to have Remained Stationary when they disembark? That makes no sense.

Honestly, the balance dataslate/FAQ nerfed us less than I was expecting (Bodyguard shenanigans continue for now), but the Armourium Cherub nerf makes no sense when they also doubled their cost.

Waitwaitwait, the not remaining stationary thing overrides the Argent Shroud ability? Usually army-specific things override the BRB rules (like AS units being able to count as stationary when firing even if they Advanced). Or was this in the Sisters FAQ and I just missed it somehow?

Also, RIP Armorium Cherubs, 2020-2022.

GW isn't consistent enough in their rules writing for things like 'army rules overwrite BRB rules' to be usable rules of thumb.

So yeah, argent shroud remain stationary isn't even really a rule anymore. Doesn't work out of reserves, doesn't work out of transports. You can still advance out from behind obscuring to be out of range to shoot anything important because our good guns top out at 24", but that's not a great consolation prize.

You know, for once, I think letting ERJAK throw salt around unmitigated is probably the right play Sling on, my friend!

This "balance" pass seems to be AT BEST a big nothing burger. Honestly, though, it comes off as a slap in the face of people who kinda wanted meaningful changes. I guess this is an exercise in "you get what you pay for".

Purifying Tempest wrote:
You know, for once, I think letting ERJAK throw salt around unmitigated is probably the right play Sling on, my friend!

This "balance" pass seems to be AT BEST a big nothing burger. Honestly, though, it comes off as a slap in the face of people who kinda wanted meaningful changes. I guess this is an exercise in "you get what you pay for".

The thing that has me so frustrated is how much better off WE specifically but the game in general would have been if they'd just done nothing.

Yup, I see nothing but lost options across the board. I don't think anything was particularly game-altering, but options are just being removed. You wanted to play meched up Argent Shroud? Well, that's akin to playing without a Conviction for a LARGE portion of the game. The change was just unnecessary.

So to quantify the changes Sisters players have had to endure over the past couple of weeks:

1) Rising costs on units performing well, and Dominions. Vahl, Sacresants, even Armorium Cherubs had an argument. Then there was Dominions, which... while good... they weren't THAT good. The nerf should have been aimed at Blessed Bolts, not Dominion squads.

2) Armorium Cherubs "clarified" to nerf them again. Effectively, you only ever bring 1 per squad. Rets are already a massive trade piece that your opponent cannot ignore once they come out. So this was literally paying the same price for half the effect.

3) Argent Shroud and the "counted as moving" when arriving on the table, regardless of their Conviction. Seems like a pointless nerf to a style of play that didn't really exist, and now will probably not even have a chance to really exist.

4) Order mixing is gone. I personally don't mind it, but I know this is a really big deal for people scraping to get every % point out of their list and still only making it to "Gatekeeper" status for our evil, pointy-eared overlords.

5) Thrown a bone with a slight reduction to the cost of our armor, which was already floating around LRBT cost... only to see the Guard's pet baby get a 2+ while still sporting more wounds and toughness. I would have honestly liked to see a pip of armor on our tanks more than a "slight" reduction in cost. Chipping is still a very real death with the high rate of fire, and Valorous Heart and 2+ vehicles may have been an interesting sight.

6) Still cannot get over how mind-numbingly bad the Dominion change was. They got hit in both points and PL (5 now for the squad). I may bring 1 squad now just to have access to Blessed Bolts, but I don't think the squad was exactly game-ending for the opponent and this just makes them a LOT less attractive.

So yeah, I can get why there's a lot of salt coming from Sisters' players, feels like GW has been poking this player base pretty consistently for about a month while turning a bit of a blind eye to other, larger, problems.

As bad as everything looks right now, I am still hoping for some kind of saving grace here. Maybe some new competitive playstyle will come out of this (other than Bloody Rose of course), or maybe the hits to some of the other books around us will keep us in the mid-tier at least.

I go back to a Tabletop Tactics video I saw months ago where they said something to the effect of "don't worry all the changes will make sense when you see the final product of all the books, it's just gonna be a while." I still don't know exactly what they meant or even if any of that is still remotely true, but maybe once every book is out (before the SM codex 2.0 hits) we will see some "nirvana" of "balance" we have never seen in 40k before.

Or hey maybe we will get added to the 2.0 codex factions and it won't just be marines! I know we are in for a tough time regardless, but I am going to stay positive because at least we are not the red headed stepchild of 40k anymore!

While I think ERJAK's complaints are often over-stated IMHO, he's also coming at the army from a competitive standpoint whereas I'm definitely more casual so I get the difference in opinion. That said, Sisters took a hit, no question. Just seeing the whithering firepower the latest codices can put out, it feels like Sisters are getting nerfed when they definitely do not need it, it's knee-capping our ability to keep up moreso than actually balancing anything (of course, if they wouldn't power-creep the game with every new release that wouldn't be a problem...).

All these nerfs are the real reason I'm shelving my Sisters for the time being. One of the nice things about having multiple armies is being able to switch to another one if the one you're playing gets hit with the nerf bat. I was probably going to switch anyway, as I've been missing my Dark Angels despite them being less good, but this seals it. The DA are probably stronger at this point!

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what die-hard Sisters players are able to come up with for the 2022 ITC season. It's gonna be an uphill battle for sure.

I think two variants of Sisters will emerge:

1. Bloody Rose good stuff - lots of combat characters, Vahl in a supreme command detachment maybe, Rhino full of novitiates/repentia and so on.

2. Valorous Heart mech sisters - the VH trait is really solid into a lot of Tau and Custodes damage. Even with the points increase I could see 30 sacresants just being a nightmare to remove.

ERJAK wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
The Balance dataslate comes out and with it....drumroll please...ANOTHER NERF!

Just make all of our guns S1 and get it over with at this point.

Could you be any more dramatic? I guess at least you're playing the right faction to be a drama queen I suppose.

At least I'm not going into threads for armies I barely play to butt in. Do you seriously have nothing better to do?

Also, I'd like to point out that, as you can tell from the deluge of negative reactions from other sisters players, I am 100% correct in my assessment.

wait, so that's worse than spamming literally every thread with your moaning how sisters are now "trash" or "garbage" constantly? I don't care if I play sisters once or twice or year, it's not up to you to gatekeep my presence here.
Multi order should never have been a thing (at least without a downside), so glad it makes people really make a choice (outside of playing with your buddies of course, then do whatever).
AS has been pretty much the go to alongside BR for the comp scene for awhile now, at least people will need to think more within the contents of the codex.
The Ret change, meh, give or take on that one, just no reason to buy a second one at this point.

I actually do agree with you that the points drop on the vehicles didn't go far enough, but I prefer to look for solutions, not just trash the army and go elsewhere.
Morvenn Vahl was going up in points, literally everyone knew that.
Dominions are an odd choice. Nerf the strat, not the unit.
Sacresants also are fine with the bump, but my concern is it will be unnecessary if the bodyguard rule gets addressed as people think it will.

I'm actually excited to see what people will come up with for sisters with all the changes in place, will b nice to see something other than AS/BR mix.

I'm hearing and agreeing with the reactions here, and they hit my preferred Order and unit (Dominions). I'm not sure about giving up on either, though. Assuming nice dense terrain with good variety, what about footslogging AS? Still using Dominions to sling other units into position? Or trading in the Rhino points to add meatshields? I'm imagining 20 AS Sisters with HotE surging forward trailing a Dogmata with Chatechism of Repugnance. It won't hit as hard as Blessed Bolts, but it still seems spicy.

Also, I'd love to hear more about our favorable matchups with new codices... I haven't looked much at Tau, Eldar, Nids changes.

 MacPhail wrote:
I'm hearing and agreeing with the reactions here, and they hit my preferred Order and unit (Dominions). I'm not sure about giving up on either, though. Assuming nice dense terrain with good variety, what about footslogging AS? Still using Dominions to sling other units into position? Or trading in the Rhino points to add meatshields? I'm imagining 20 AS Sisters with HotE surging forward trailing a Dogmata with Chatechism of Repugnance. It won't hit as hard as Blessed Bolts, but it still seems spicy.

Also, I'd love to hear more about our favorable matchups with new codices... I haven't looked much at Tau, Eldar, Nids changes.

I think the footslogging approach is much better with Valorous Heart than AS. Transports are also going to be key against Tau and all of their indirect fire.

I'm not planning on shelving the army by any means, but I would expect that in 3-6 months we'll be getting some sort of concession from GW when they realize they screwed up. :/

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:
I'm not planning on shelving the army by any means, but I would expect that in 3-6 months we'll be getting some sort of concession from GW when they realize they screwed up. :/

If they continue to roll out Order updates like they did with OoML, there will be small opportunities to adjust balance... a lot to hope for, I know, but look what Astartes chapters have grown into.

 MacPhail wrote:

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:
I'm not planning on shelving the army by any means, but I would expect that in 3-6 months we'll be getting some sort of concession from GW when they realize they screwed up. :/

If they continue to roll out Order updates like they did with OoML, there will be small opportunities to adjust balance... a lot to hope for, I know, but look what Astartes chapters have grown into.

That's what was bizarre with choosing BR to roll out with nachmund book. Most players were using BR to begin with, how about adding content for perhaps SR to give them a boost?

Quick question I thought off while driving and pondering over lists: can you still advance and shoot with Argent Shroud after disembarking from a transport? A quick look made this unclear to me and I don't have all the books at hand right now. It would reaaallly suck if the new FAQs also prevented this part of the AS order to function.

Us3Less wrote:
Quick question I thought off while driving and pondering over lists: can you still advance and shoot with Argent Shroud after disembarking from a transport? A quick look made this unclear to me and I don't have all the books at hand right now. It would reaaallly suck if the new FAQs also prevented this part of the AS order to function.

If they have assault weapons like meltaguns yea you can still advance and shoot out of a transport at -1 to hit lol.

From what I am reading to the core rules FAQ and from what I am seeing discussed on multiple forums the "counts as remaining stationary" part of the conviction for AS now no longer applies when they disembark from a transport. Therefore you pretty much have to footslog with AS to get the maximal use of their conviction. If I am mistaken on any of this I am sure I will be corrected, but from the core rules FAQ and what the forums have been discussing, the answer to your query is no as far as I can tell.

Things are unfortunate to say the least right now. Though Auspex Tactics still puts Sisters up near the top of Tier 2 in his recent army tier video, so he's optimistic about us at least!

 Dendarien wrote:
I think two variants of Sisters will emerge:

1. Bloody Rose good stuff - lots of combat characters, Vahl in a supreme command detachment maybe, Rhino full of novitiates/repentia and so on.

2. Valorous Heart mech sisters - the VH trait is really solid into a lot of Tau and Custodes damage. Even with the points increase I could see 30 sacresants just being a nightmare to remove.

Bloody rose doesn't have room to run Vahl, Imo. Mono-BR along with Mono-OoML were already cutting Vahl quite frequently before the nerfs. The thing is that BR has to play SO aggressively that her force multiplier abilities almost never have more than 1-2 units in range. Celestine is generally a better take because of how much forward pressure she can put out while also benefiting from cover/LoS blocking/Sacresanct lines.

Personally, after the point bumps and thanks to the 1 good BR strat we got, a murder canoness and Celestine seems like a better purchase to me than Vahl. And yes, that's with the 2 CP cost of being forced to bring a patrol to access the new strats because GW are stupid.

In reality though, most people building BR for competitive have dropped the named characters. Canoness, Palantine, potentially an inquisitor considering how good psychic interrogation is into Tau and Custodes.

 bullyboy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
The Balance dataslate comes out and with it....drumroll please...ANOTHER NERF!

Just make all of our guns S1 and get it over with at this point.

Could you be any more dramatic? I guess at least you're playing the right faction to be a drama queen I suppose.

At least I'm not going into threads for armies I barely play to butt in. Do you seriously have nothing better to do?

Also, I'd like to point out that, as you can tell from the deluge of negative reactions from other sisters players, I am 100% correct in my assessment.

wait, so that's worse than spamming literally every thread with your moaning how sisters are now "trash" or "garbage" constantly? I don't care if I play sisters once or twice or year, it's not up to you to gatekeep my presence here.
Multi order should never have been a thing (at least without a downside), so glad it makes people really make a choice (outside of playing with your buddies of course, then do whatever).
AS has been pretty much the go to alongside BR for the comp scene for awhile now, at least people will need to think more within the contents of the codex.
The Ret change, meh, give or take on that one, just no reason to buy a second one at this point.

I actually do agree with you that the points drop on the vehicles didn't go far enough, but I prefer to look for solutions, not just trash the army and go elsewhere.
Morvenn Vahl was going up in points, literally everyone knew that.
Dominions are an odd choice. Nerf the strat, not the unit.
Sacresants also are fine with the bump, but my concern is it will be unnecessary if the bodyguard rule gets addressed as people think it will.

I'm actually excited to see what people will come up with for sisters with all the changes in place, will b nice to see something other than AS/BR mix.

What do you mean 'actually make a choice?' There isn't a choice. There's a 'best' and an 'everything else', now. Whether it's VH or BR or OoML we won't know until probably after Adepticon, but the idea that there's NOW a choice when 3/4ths of all of your options have been removed is silly. Every single order was seen in at least one high placing sisters list previously. After the subfaction changes that drops to potentially 4, after the 'clarification' on remains as stationary, that drops it to 3. After the point nerfs to Sacresancts, Vahl, Dominions, and cherubs, that most likely drops to 2. Both OoML and VH win based on out-grinding their opponents and both are down almost 100pts of units. I would be very surprised to see both still do well.

The idea that you have to 'think more' when the choice has been boiled down to 'do I punch good(BR) or do I die slow(OoML,VH)?' is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the army, and the game as a whole functions.

Of course, even that's the most optimistic take. It assumes that after the changes to subfaction soup, the substantial points nerfs, and the changes to armorium cherubs, and the changes to remains stationary, that there still IS a reasonable competitive option within the Sisters of Battle army. There might not be. The actual choice might be what CSM, Guard, Khorne Daemon, and Ultramarine players have to make: Accept that you're going to lose most of your games against equal skill players or switch armies.That's the real choice this afforded us.

Yes, the Morvenn hit and even the Sacresanct hit were expected and even the Armorium cherub FAQ wasn't out of nowhere. But the other points increases were totally unnecessary and Dominions didn't need a nerf PERIOD. To the strat OR the unit. They weren't above the power curve at all. Oooh, a maybe chance to do six mortal wounds once in a while? How frightening. I'm sure Drukhari were shaking in their boots.

Changing the bodyguard rule is a whole complicated issue but basically, nerf the bodyguard rule, point drops to Sacresancts and all characters become necessary. Sisters of battle units are almost universally terrible statlines that rely on combining multiple overlapping rules to make them do anything. The more rules you take away, the more silly it looks to pay that much for t3.

Finally, this where familiarity with the army is important. If you'd been following the army, you'd know that there were dozens of very competitive builds using basically every combination of 5 out of the 6 Orders. Some of those got crept out as GW kept releasing more and more broken books, but that wasn't Sisters of Battle's fault. Now you have 2.5 mono order builds. Maybe. That's if 'what they come up with' isn't 'play a better army'.

I won't. I play Sisters and only Sisters. I have no interest in picking up a different army, which is part of why these totally unnecessary nerfs are so infuriating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GFdoubles wrote:

Us3Less wrote:
Quick question I thought off while driving and pondering over lists: can you still advance and shoot with Argent Shroud after disembarking from a transport? A quick look made this unclear to me and I don't have all the books at hand right now. It would reaaallly suck if the new FAQs also prevented this part of the AS order to function.

If they have assault weapons like meltaguns yea you can still advance and shoot out of a transport at -1 to hit lol.

From what I am reading to the core rules FAQ and from what I am seeing discussed on multiple forums the "counts as remaining stationary" part of the conviction for AS now no longer applies when they disembark from a transport. Therefore you pretty much have to footslog with AS to get the maximal use of their conviction. If I am mistaken on any of this I am sure I will be corrected, but from the core rules FAQ and what the forums have been discussing, the answer to your query is no as far as I can tell.

Things are unfortunate to say the least right now. Though Auspex Tactics still puts Sisters up near the top of Tier 2 in his recent army tier video, so he's optimistic about us at least!

On a positive note, Argent Shroud is so bad as a conviction now, it doesn't matter what the exact nuances of the rule is. Nobody's playing it anyway.

 bullyboy wrote:
Multi order should never have been a thing (at least without a downside), so glad it makes people really make a choice (outside of playing with your buddies of course, then do whatever).

Let's say you have 10 units that make up 2000 points. With the current subfaction lockdown, you have 6 choices to play them. Pick one of 6 orders. That's it. End of choices.

Before, when you could mix and max subfactions as the Emperor intended, you had roughly 210 combinations with those same 10 units.

But yea... we really have the opportunity to make a choice now!

Multi order like soup should always have been a thing because it gave you choices and pre game choices is where you can have complexity because there is no time limit on how much time you have to consider options and there were always opportunity costs - you never encountered 3 subfactions because CP costs were too high.

Now you have bad options and 3 serious options suicidal charge, survive on objectives and play the mission BR VH and OOML and frankly VH will underperformed compared to other factions and BR is win big/lose big. Reality is there will be far less list diversity.

Ok putting aside how grim our competitive outlook is at the moment.

What's the general consensus on buzzsaws vs flails for mortifiers or penitent engines?

In the last codex the answer was always flails but now I'm not sure. 10 attacks vs 5 but str 8 and ap -4 makes it a decision. I'm currently building a mortifier and the weapons look very difficult to magnetize.

Really it depends on your opponent's list now.

Against 1w infantry on the front line Flails if your hitting whatever behind them buzzsaw.

Comp wise I'm looking at 1 Penitent with buzzsaw and mostly that's to fill the 3rd slot in a brigade

On the other hand having them both the buzzsaw looks cooler and is definitely less fragile

U02dah4 wrote:
Really it depends on your opponent's list now.

Against 1w infantry on the front line Flails if your hitting whatever behind them buzzsaw.

Comp wise I'm looking at 1 Penitent with buzzsaw and mostly that's to fill the 3rd slot in a brigade

On the other hand having them both the buzzsaw looks cooler and is definitely less fragile

Flails kill 6 cultists, 4 CSM, 2 Intercessors, and does 2 damage to a rhino.

Buzzsaws kill 3.7 cultists, 3.7 CSM, 3.5 intercessors and does 6 damage to a rhino.

Against anything that doesn't have exactly 3+5++ and -1 Damage the buzzblades are generally the better take.

It's nit as simple as that as your cultist show 1w infantry also are better killed by Flails and they are common in lots of armies on the frontline ourselves, guard, tau and mechanicus

U02dah4 wrote:
It's nit as simple as that as your cultist show 1w infantry also are better killed by Flails and they are common in lots of armies on the frontline ourselves, guard, tau and mechanicus

I mean, yeah. It's up to you as the player to predict the meta you'll face AND use your units efficiently. If you're reasonably confident you can consistenly target 4+ or worse save 1W, infantry, things with 5+ or better invuls, -1 damage, etc, etc, etc, then the flails will perform better.

Same as if you put the buzzblades into rhinos. Buzzblades have a wider variety of effective targets, things flails are better against are generally popular picks (-1D, 5++ are very common statlines).

When I said 3+5++, -1 damage...that's basically the most common profile in the competitive metagame at the moment.

That said, you can run buzz-blades AND flails on the same model if you're willing to sacrifice 1 additional attack for the sake of flexibility.

That's almost always a worse choice as even vs optimal targets with 1 less attack your not gaining much

U02dah4 wrote:

That's almost always a worse choice as even vs optimal targets with 1 less attack your not gaining much

Now running mixed weapons across the UNIT can be fine.1 Double Buzzblades Mortie does enough damage against things like cultists to not be a huge sacrifice on an anchorite and do so much MORE damage against rhinos that they'll be extremely useful against non-ideal targets.

ERJAK wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:

That's almost always a worse choice as even vs optimal targets with 1 less attack your not gaining much

Now running mixed weapons across the UNIT can be fine.1 Double Buzzblades Mortie does enough damage against things like cultists to not be a huge sacrifice on an anchorite and do so much MORE damage against rhinos that they'll be extremely useful against non-ideal targets.

Just useing the earlier examples

Flails kill 6 cultists, Both 4.5 Buzzsaw 3.7

Flails kill 4CSM Buzzsaw 3CSM Both 3

Buzz saw 3.5 intercessors Both 2.6 flails 2

Buzzsaw 6 damage to rhino Both 4.5 Flails 2 damage to a rhino.

Flails or buzzsaws are always the best depending on target while Both makes only a small difference to the worst option in the grey area in the middle between the two weapons and significantly underperformed the best vs an optimised target

Your almost always better picking for your meta and targeting appropriately