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Tyel wrote:
I think the bigger response is just "yes, surely Sisters are a Glass Cannon Army"? What do you think elite T3 models are going to be?

I think moving Genestealers to 2 wounds (and potentially a bunch of other elite approaching 20ish points infantry) is a good idea. Maybe it moves everyone towards being Marines. But if you keep boosting offense, you turn everyone into glass cannons (and the game into checkers).

Its also theoretically easier to balance. I.E. Genestealers get a 20 point offensive ability. Genestealers get a 20 point defensive ability. Genestealers cost 20 points.

Well I'd start by questioning your premise. 2 Wounds does not a glass cannon make. This edition was almost specifically to reduce offense, and continues a theme you've seen most apparently in their repeated attempts to "fix" vehicles. Assuming Genestealers cost 20 points (and Marines etc also stay relatively similar) - 2 wounds and 2*X quality Y attacks would be the right ballpark. The trick for GW is managing the "sweet spots". Given the sheer number of attacks/weapons across all the various factions many will concentrate in certain areas of preference. T3, T4, T8. 5+, 3+, Wound multiples of 2, 3, etc. - that's going to be a natural and somewhat desired outcome. The trick I'm getting at is managing the faction/units so they don't exactly fall into those sweet spots - the T5 3W Warrior/Terminator/suit/nob/whatever the T3 6W Ripper swarms,

Rather than Genestealers get a 20 point offensive ability, and an 8 point defensive ability. They presumably cost somewhere in the middle but GW aren't really sure, so quite easily get it wrong and produce OP/UP units.

Certain armies should perhaps be a bit more skewed - so you'd expect Eldar and say Sisters to be a bit more front forward while Necrons and Death Guard are tougher with less damage. But this should in turn somehow balance. I.E. Eldar do more damage - but DG are tough so take less. DG do lower damage - but Eldar are fragile so take more.

The problem is you tend to end up with movement being the issue (and forming another axis of value), and its very hard to make a "slow" army feel powerful without making it overpowered. Usually because there's a tipping point - you either have the movement you need during a game or you don't.

The bigger issue of all this unfortunately is basic Space Marines, who I think should be a relatively tanky but low damage army, buoyed up by reliability (via rerolls etc) and multi-function units. But GW have never really managed that, and usually want their poster boys, the angels of death, the tip of the spear, etc etc to be the best at everything. Which they tend to be for a while - until everyone else catches up, and once OP marines become both pillowfisted and fragile. And then the cycle starts over.

But we wait and see.

Some of that should be in here, but some of it should just be some armies are high off and high def - I'd make Marines the baseline - Medium Tanky, and Medium damage - then the Guard would individually be lower in both, but as an army more damaging and less tanky, Custodes/Knights would be more and more simply because of model/unit count not allowing much room there. Eldar and Nids could be either based on build and so on.

I'm not sure what the arguments about sisters are. They were never an "elite" army, they have always been sort of a middle ground where they're surprisingly numerous but still have some decent defenses. If AP is going down that's still how they'll look.

If there's a decent miracle mechanic then they'll likely also do well with the melta. It's easier than ever to deliver with reworked transports and if you can miracle then the strength gets less important.

novembermike wrote:
I'm not sure what the arguments about sisters are. They were never an "elite" army, they have always been sort of a middle ground where they're surprisingly numerous but still have some decent defenses. If AP is going down that's still how they'll look.

If there's a decent miracle mechanic then they'll likely also do well with the melta. It's easier than ever to deliver with reworked transports and if you can miracle then the strength gets less important.

When they first came out they were a relatively elite army. When they first came out flamers and meltas were both pretty good (flamers could light you on fire and cause followup "attacks" if it didn't outright kill you) and T3, 3+ was only 1 Toughness away from tops.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I hope that the reductions in AP across the board finally give us that middle ground between 2nd Ed/9th Ed, where too many things had save modifiers so a 3+ armour save was never really a 3+ armour save, and 3rd-7th Ed, where armour was an either/or situation, where you either had your full save, or no save at all.

One of my most enduring 40k memories was my surprise at seeing a Marine take a 3+ save in the first game of 3rd Ed I ever witnessed, my experience thus far having just been 2nd Ed where everyone and his dog's chew toy had at least a -1 Save Mod.

9th won't have that, as save mods are still a thing, but if basic small arms fire exchanged between infantry actually involves their full armour saves, I'd be happy with that.

Also changes the strategies/tactics around infantry weapons.

I fully agree with this.

Although one of my memories of early 3rd was watching my Deathwing get blown or slashed off the board by foes I didn’t really worry about in 2nd.

ahhh fond memory of 3rd. ripping terminators apart with my ork choppas reducing their save to 4+. making 85% of my 6+ save on my orc vehicles from that upgrade. burnas in choppa squads for extra power weapons.... fun times

novembermike wrote:
I'm not sure what the arguments about sisters are. They were never an "elite" army, they have always been sort of a middle ground where they're surprisingly numerous but still have some decent defenses. If AP is going down that's still how they'll look.

If there's a decent miracle mechanic then they'll likely also do well with the melta. It's easier than ever to deliver with reworked transports and if you can miracle then the strength gets less important.

Because theyre not a mid tier unit. An intercessor is a 2 wound and 2/3 attack character one thunder hammer away from being an independent character. They haven’t given every battle sister the same attack and wounds as a Canoness from third edition. Times have moved on.

Sisters of Battle troops are hideously overcosted for what they are. Which is why people go out of their way to take as few of them as possible with little five model units hiding out as objective tokens. Even within the army itself you can get Xephrim or Sacrosanct or Repentia for a very modest few extra points.

Guard with lasguns can put out far more dakka than a few boltguns yet cost a fraction. In 3rd, those boltguns would chew up T3 5 up armour infantry.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

novembermike wrote:
I'm not sure what the arguments about sisters are. They were never an "elite" army, they have always been sort of a middle ground where they're surprisingly numerous but still have some decent defenses. If AP is going down that's still how they'll look.

If there's a decent miracle mechanic then they'll likely also do well with the melta. It's easier than ever to deliver with reworked transports and if you can miracle then the strength gets less important.

Because theyre not a mid tier unit. An intercessor is a 2 wound and 2/3 attack character one thunder hammer away from being an independent character. They haven’t given every battle sister the same attack and wounds as a Canoness from third edition. Times have moved on.

Sisters of Battle troops are hideously overcosted for what they are. Which is why people go out of their way to take as few of them as possible with little five model units hiding out as objective tokens. Even within the army itself you can get Xephrim or Sacrosanct or Repentia for a very modest few extra points.

Guard with lasguns can put out far more dakka than a few boltguns yet cost a fraction. In 3rd, those boltguns would chew up T3 5 up armour infantry.

As much as I love Sisters, a basic battle sister is a liability currently. They used to be superior to marines because they weren't wasting points on stats they didn't use (who used to melee with tac marines?) but ever since a basic marine became two sisters of a battle glued together for 5 more PPM, the troop battle sister has become a major limiting factor for the army.

Isn't the basic sister to the SoB army the same as a marine basic infantry for a marine army? As in something that is run in minimal numbers, and would be run at zero. If only the SoB players could run just the good non troop stuff from the codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:


Because theyre not a mid tier unit. An intercessor is a 2 wound and 2/3 attack character one thunder hammer away from being an independent character. They haven’t given every battle sister the same attack and wounds as a Canoness from third edition. Times have moved on.

This means one of two things. Either mid tier is another word for bad. Because no one is running intercessor, especialy if they can avoid it. Or the other option, the bread and butter of SoB armies aren't SoB, something maybe not intuitial, but marines of all types know what it is, but all the Elite/HEAVY/FA options that make the army. Which makes the basic SoB a unit of paragons, repentia or the shield carrying ones, etc and always spamed and run in unit groups of 3 and combined with other units that do the same, also run in groups of 3. If a SoB player could run 6-12 units of repentia and 6-12 units of the shield ones, they would do it. Marines have done it for ages. Intercessors or tacticals, csm squads are tax. The SM armies are build around multitple bricks of possessed, terminators, 30 interceptors etc. Now is this fun? No. But if you want to have fun playing with a lot of troop units, you have to play custodes in w30k. Or an army that doesn't really care what it runs, because it rules have been optimised to function, no matter what the player does. Like for example WE or sometime ago Necrons.

Karol wrote:
Isn't the basic sister to the SoB army the same as a marine basic infantry for a marine army? As in something that is run in minimal numbers, and would be run at zero. If only the SoB players could run just the good non troop stuff from the codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:


Because theyre not a mid tier unit. An intercessor is a 2 wound and 2/3 attack character one thunder hammer away from being an independent character. They haven’t given every battle sister the same attack and wounds as a Canoness from third edition. Times have moved on.

This means one of two things. Either mid tier is another word for bad. Because no one is running intercessor, especialy if they can avoid it. Or the other option, the bread and butter of SoB armies aren't SoB, something maybe not intuitial, but marines of all types know what it is, but all the Elite/HEAVY/FA options that make the army. Which makes the basic SoB a unit of paragons, repentia or the shield carrying ones, etc and always spamed and run in unit groups of 3 and combined with other units that do the same, also run in groups of 3. If a SoB player could run 6-12 units of repentia and 6-12 units of the shield ones, they would do it. Marines have done it for ages. Intercessors or tacticals, csm squads are tax. The SM armies are build around multitple bricks of possessed, terminators, 30 interceptors etc. Now is this fun? No. But if you want to have fun playing with a lot of troop units, you have to play custodes in w30k. Or an army that doesn't really care what it runs, because it rules have been optimised to function, no matter what the player does. Like for example WE or sometime ago Necrons.

That’s a separate issue. The game as whole has never been able to balance troops against elite units. I am firmly of the view that every army should be built around its troop slots and I don’t like the five unit objective tokens. It’s incredibly silly and immersion breaking. You shouldn’t be able to double the number of objectives you control, force the opponent to waste shots overkilling your unit, for no extra points and no drawbacks. Frankly I think 5 man units shouldn’t be able to claim objectives, you get less objective points or suffer some massive morale penalties to stop the “I’ll get four units of five sisters randomly hiding out in buildings whilst the actual battle goes on”. Like, no, they should be holding the objective and fighting off units trying to secure it, not hiding whilst your actual army does the fighting.

But with Sisters the issue is a lot greater because

1) They should be the absolute core of the army. You can just about handwave an elite or tank heavy marine army as being some sort of strike force. Not really the case with Sisters. The army should encourage you to take blocks of 20 of them that form a core part of the force.

2) I am using the term mid tier sarcastically because your standard Sister of Battle was a mid tier unit back in 3rd edition. But that the gap between them and a marine has become far greater and isn’t reflected in points. You’re paying almost as much as intercessor for a unit that is worse in every regard and where the thing they used to be able to do like tank small arms fire on objectives or use bolters to kill T3 5 armour infantry doesn’t work anymore. They got worse, everybody got better and they’re still the same points.

3) Their elite units are stupidly cheap and many times better. You can still get a block of Intercessors and use strats to have them do a reasonable amount of damage to light tier infantry and park them on an objective. It’s not the most efficient or best bang for your buck; but it’s pretty solid. Whereas twenty sisters of Battle is a massive opportunity cost and you’re getting a really substandard unit that isn’t tough and can’t do all that much damage.

4) Because damage has went up they’ve pushed the army towards being a glass cannon. Sure retributors and Repentia hit like a truck. But this idea that it’s an all or nothing and you have to destroy the enemy in a single devastating attack or be cut down. That’s not Sisters of Battle. That’s Eldar. Sisters should be able to fight a battle of attrition using numbers in place of some of the better marine stat profiles. But individually they should still be able to be tough enough individually that you need to commit serious dakka to shift them. It shouldn’t be the case that you might as well take Repentia because you die anyway. Repentia should be a gamble.

When you do that. the one Army gets ultra cheap chaff units in powerful transports, scatter bikes or horde armies that will out perform elite armies point by point every time. While the marine player wonders, why he has to take 20-40pts per model bad troop options.

At best what it would achive is to make marine players unhappy, to such a degree that they start moving to HH. And being the main spender/buyer group in w40k, what do you think would happen, if their main money bringer stops buying models.

What you guys try to do, is to do things that are impossible to achive for many factions at 2000pts entry game. You try to make something balanced and "lore accurate", with no one idea what either of those things should be for each and all armies in the game. For some it includes the removal of some armies.

There for, if a task is impossible to achive, one should do that which is possible. Pre build armies by GW, tested within the same core rule system, against each other, with maybe a sprinkle of faction fantasy. Tau should have a "suit detachment" , DA should have a Deathwing one etc.

Ah and gambling in games in stupid, you want to flatten the curve and remove as many variables from the game as possible. A "gamble" style repentia unit is a unit that people will not play with, which means people will not buy it,because it ain't marines, only marines rebuy their armies on a edition or shorter schedul. And in the end GW cares the most about selling models and making models. If the game/units/faction sells enough, but it isn't balanced, lore accurate or even fun, they will not change it.

It took GW a WHOLE edition to notice that against armies like GK or 1ksons Abhore the Witch is a auto take secondary, that is always maxed out and unlike any other allows to double dip. And they "fixed" it 2-3 months pre new edition, where most games don't matter.

This is all nice speculation, but we don't know what a 10th Edition Battle Sister looks like. We don't know the Faction rule. We don't know anything at all.

We do know that AP is being toned down, so that will help our presumedly 3+ Sv be more effective. We have hints of what some of our equipment may look like (Bolters with 2 attacks, not Rapid Fire?), but the new datasheet paradigm means even that may be different for our units compared to others.

So how about we wait for the Adepta Sororitas Faction Focus before bemoaning our 10th Edition fate? Is that too much to ask?

I have a hard time agreeing with this.

It's 11/18 - 61% the cost of a marine. And the Artificier Storm Bolter is pretty damn great. I think most marine players would kill to have Sisters as their troop choice -- my presumption, in any case

Sister's army rule is probably going to be Shield of Faith.

Sister troops will 100% gain a bonus to the shield of faith, plus another bonus when on top of an objective.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Karol wrote:
Isn't the basic sister to the SoB army the same as a marine basic infantry for a marine army? As in something that is run in minimal numbers, and would be run at zero. If only the SoB players could run just the good non troop stuff from the codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:


Because theyre not a mid tier unit. An intercessor is a 2 wound and 2/3 attack character one thunder hammer away from being an independent character. They haven’t given every battle sister the same attack and wounds as a Canoness from third edition. Times have moved on.

This means one of two things. Either mid tier is another word for bad. Because no one is running intercessor, especialy if they can avoid it. Or the other option, the bread and butter of SoB armies aren't SoB, something maybe not intuitial, but marines of all types know what it is, but all the Elite/HEAVY/FA options that make the army. Which makes the basic SoB a unit of paragons, repentia or the shield carrying ones, etc and always spamed and run in unit groups of 3 and combined with other units that do the same, also run in groups of 3. If a SoB player could run 6-12 units of repentia and 6-12 units of the shield ones, they would do it. Marines have done it for ages. Intercessors or tacticals, csm squads are tax. The SM armies are build around multitple bricks of possessed, terminators, 30 interceptors etc. Now is this fun? No. But if you want to have fun playing with a lot of troop units, you have to play custodes in w30k. Or an army that doesn't really care what it runs, because it rules have been optimised to function, no matter what the player does. Like for example WE or sometime ago Necrons.

That’s a separate issue. The game as whole has never been able to balance troops against elite units. I am firmly of the view that every army should be built around its troop slots and I don’t like the five unit objective tokens. It’s incredibly silly and immersion breaking. You shouldn’t be able to double the number of objectives you control, force the opponent to waste shots overkilling your unit, for no extra points and no drawbacks. Frankly I think 5 man units shouldn’t be able to claim objectives, you get less objective points or suffer some massive morale penalties to stop the “I’ll get four units of five sisters randomly hiding out in buildings whilst the actual battle goes on”. Like, no, they should be holding the objective and fighting off units trying to secure it, not hiding whilst your actual army does the fighting.

But with Sisters the issue is a lot greater because

1) They should be the absolute core of the army. You can just about handwave an elite or tank heavy marine army as being some sort of strike force. Not really the case with Sisters. The army should encourage you to take blocks of 20 of them that form a core part of the force.

2) I am using the term mid tier sarcastically because your standard Sister of Battle was a mid tier unit back in 3rd edition. But that the gap between them and a marine has become far greater and isn’t reflected in points. You’re paying almost as much as intercessor for a unit that is worse in every regard and where the thing they used to be able to do like tank small arms fire on objectives or use bolters to kill T3 5 armour infantry doesn’t work anymore. They got worse, everybody got better and they’re still the same points.

3) Their elite units are stupidly cheap and many times better. You can still get a block of Intercessors and use strats to have them do a reasonable amount of damage to light tier infantry and park them on an objective. It’s not the most efficient or best bang for your buck; but it’s pretty solid. Whereas twenty sisters of Battle is a massive opportunity cost and you’re getting a really substandard unit that isn’t tough and can’t do all that much damage.

4) Because damage has went up they’ve pushed the army towards being a glass cannon. Sure retributors and Repentia hit like a truck. But this idea that it’s an all or nothing and you have to destroy the enemy in a single devastating attack or be cut down. That’s not Sisters of Battle. That’s Eldar. Sisters should be able to fight a battle of attrition using numbers in place of some of the better marine stat profiles. But individually they should still be able to be tough enough individually that you need to commit serious dakka to shift them. It shouldn’t be the case that you might as well take Repentia because you die anyway. Repentia should be a gamble.

I have a hard time agreeing with this.

It's 11/18 - 61% the cost of a marine. And the Artificier Storm Bolter is pretty damn great. I think most marine players would kill to have Sisters as their troop choice -- my presumption, in any case

Which isn’t even 2 to 1 for a model with half the wounds, half the attacks, 1 less WS, 1 less strength and 1 less toughness. The gun also has longer range and a pip of AP. In new edition they haven’t lost any of that and actually gained an attack. Is another boltgun worth that? I really don’t think it is.

An undercosted gun does not make the unit as a whole good or fun. That just means the rest of the unit are a tax and you would just end up taking Dominions if you really wanted to spam that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:
Sister's army rule is probably going to be Shield of Faith.

Sister troops will 100% gain a bonus to the shield of faith, plus another bonus when on top of an objective.

Well if it’s their 6 up invulnerable save that’s a bit limited and dependent on you buying other stuff to boost it if they even let you do that. You’re not very likely to pass it and it’s armour or invulnerable not both. So you’re only really getting this boost occasionally.

They’d have to make a move away from it being an invulnerable save to really move the durability of the unit if they were determined not to touch wounds or toughness. Like make it feel no pain or give them transhuman where you can only wound them past a certain.

Plus the special rule could also focus on the Act of Faith system and involve some sort of reroll or dice shenanigans as the army rule. In fact I reckon that’s much more likely given that was their main rule before and so integral to the faction last two editions.

Spoletta wrote:
Sister's army rule is probably going to be Shield of Faith.

Sister troops will 100% gain a bonus to the shield of faith, plus another bonus when on top of an objective.

I'd argue Acts of Faith over Shield of Faith, though it is possible we'll get both like Nids got both Synapse and Shadow of the Warp.

Acts of Faith literally are the mechanic that defines Sisters; when I am describing factions to people who don't play, I mention battlefield miracles every time I talk about sisters. I only mention Shield of Faith when I'm going into more detail.

Without AoF, Sisters are not Sisters.

Now, it is possible the each detachment will have a specific AoF it can do, which would make them detachment rules. If so, it will suck.
It's possible each unit will have a specific AoF it can do. If so, this will also suck.

Faith is so important to the concept of Sister (IMHO) that each unit having access to all uses of Faith is an important part of the army's identity and versatility. I don't want bespoke AoF for specific units or detachments, but since we're getting bespoke Psychic powers for specific units, it will not surprise me if GW go this way, though it will leave me disappointed.

Having an invulnerable save as an army-wide rule just seems dull and boring.

PenitentJake wrote:

Having an invulnerable save as an army-wide rule just seems dull and boring.

It's also contrary to the design intent of not having rules for things that don't need to be rules.

There's no point having a rule saying "All units in this army get a 6+ Invulnerable save". Just put a 6+ invulnerable save on each datasheet. Making it a separate rule to remember adds no value.

Shield of Faith as a 6++ would be pretty useless this edition. How many AP4/5 weapons will target Sisters to make it worth it?

More likely is the units that can make use of it just have an invulnerable and a different army rule takes over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Which isn’t even 2 to 1 for a model with half the wounds, half the attacks, 1 less WS, 1 less strength and 1 less toughness. The gun also has longer range and a pip of AP. In new edition they haven’t lost any of that and actually gained an attack. Is another boltgun worth that? I really don’t think it is.

An undercosted gun does not make the unit as a whole good or fun. That just means the rest of the unit are a tax and you would just end up taking Dominions if you really wanted to spam that.

I don't think the melee portion really comes into play all that much. Most actual marine troops on tables are objective sitters. Now it's possible this dynamic changes lots and people are getting use out of both profiles more frequently. They're not quite half points, but only take 50% more wounds from S3, 33% from S4 and 25% more from S6. That S3 is of fairly low concern, usually.

The new bolt rifle is down to 24", but has fancy abilities so a wash there, I guess.

 Asmodai wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

Having an invulnerable save as an army-wide rule just seems dull and boring.

It's also contrary to the design intent of not having rules for things that don't need to be rules.

There's no point having a rule saying "All units in this army get a 6+ Invulnerable save". Just put a 6+ invulnerable save on each datasheet. Making it a separate rule to remember adds no value.

Except for the ways to make it better. But I agree their rule is probably not the Invuln. They're lowering lethality from the offensive side - reducing shots, AP, and occasionally accuracy. I forsee an invuln for Battle Sisters who are on an objective as a bespoke rule on their unit entry - That seems to be a theme - inconic rule as bespoke on the iconic troop - or turned up to 11 - around objectives. I expect the faction ability to be some sort of Pick 1 use once per turn out of 3.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Marines are physically tougher than Sisters though, which is why they're T4/W2.

Terminators are still marines. They get T5 and bonus wounds from their armour. Same with Gravis. There’s no reason roughness should go up because of armour.

They're Marines in mini-Dreadnought armor. Its name is Tactical Dreadnought Armor. Adding extra T and a W for extra thick armor plating - like tanks have over speeders makes sense.

Breton wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Marines are physically tougher than Sisters though, which is why they're T4/W2.

Terminators are still marines. They get T5 and bonus wounds from their armour. Same with Gravis. There’s no reason roughness should go up because of armour.

They're Marines in mini-Dreadnought armor. Its name is Tactical Dreadnought Armor. Adding extra T and a W for extra thick armor plating - like tanks have over speeders makes sense.

Not until very recently.

Terminators always had marine profile with the assumption 2 up armour represented their armour. This has been heavily eroded because firepower has went up massively so you need to boost the profile to get closer to it. Boosting firepower whilst leaving Sisters of Battle with same profile they had in 3rd edition (less ap5) just means they’re much easily gunned down. Yet you’re still paying same points for them.

Either they make sisters very cheap and they become a horde unit or you increase the durability of the unit to justify that points cost as an actual mid tier unit. You shouldn’t be left thinking you may as well take Repentia because any shooting will kill you anyway.

It also doesn’t explain marines and Genestealers randomly getting two wounds for no reason and Orks becoming toughness 5.

Wounds were the untapped resource for reflecting a unit’s overall resilience.

Even going back to 2nd Ed, it was very rare for any non-character unit to have multiple wounds on its profile. And until 8th, GW never really changed that.

But now? A units relative resilience can be reflected by Toughness, Wounds, Save and Invulnerable Save. Which has opened the field up somewhat, especially now some weapons do multiple damage.

Have GW got that quite right? Doesn’t seem so, at least not from what I read on Dakka. But it is still for me a welcome development.

From a background centric point of view, it’s the difference between being difficult to inflict a telling wound on (T4, W1) and being difficult to inflict a telling wound on, and still being able to fight whilst missing an arm (T4 W2)

Hence I’m broadly happy with unenhanced human infantry remaining T3 W1, or T4 W1, with their resilience being expressed through superior armour (Sisters)

Changing the toughness of a battle sister to 4 would be fine with me.
A S3 T4 3+ 1W statline is different from a guardsmen S3 T3 5+ 1W, the Scion S3 T3 4+ 1W or a marine S4 T4 3+ 2W. It requires more diverse investments for a TAC list, which is always a good thing.

I'm not too fixed about toughness representing the human and save the actual armor, as a tough armor should be ... Tough. And properly represented in the toughness stat.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Marines are physically tougher than Sisters though, which is why they're T4/W2.

Terminators are still marines. They get T5 and bonus wounds from their armour. Same with Gravis. There’s no reason roughness should go up because of armour.

They're Marines in mini-Dreadnought armor. Its name is Tactical Dreadnought Armor. Adding extra T and a W for extra thick armor plating - like tanks have over speeders makes sense.

Not until very recently.

Terminators always had marine profile with the assumption 2 up armour represented their armour. This has been heavily eroded because firepower has went up massively so you need to boost the profile to get closer to it. Boosting firepower whilst leaving Sisters of Battle with same profile they had in 3rd edition (less ap5) just means they’re much easily gunned down. Yet you’re still paying same points for them.

Either they make sisters very cheap and they become a horde unit or you increase the durability of the unit to justify that points cost as an actual mid tier unit. You shouldn’t be left thinking you may as well take Repentia because any shooting will kill you anyway.

It also doesn’t explain marines and Genestealers randomly getting two wounds for no reason and Orks becoming toughness 5.

So how much do Sisters cost in 10th? How much are Terminators? Or those new Genestealers?

Lethality does seem to be coming down a decent amount, not up as you're claiming. Notably, there seems to be a reduction in the random -1AP weapons that were very prevalent in 9th edition. That's a big help to armies like Sisters with near-universal 3+ saves. It's entirely possible for Sisters to fit into that semi-elite niche between regular Guardsmen and SM even with their current stat line. We've also seen quite a few units get benefits when on objectives and Sisters may have something similar that helps boost them over their basic statline.

And as I've said before, many times, AoF will make or break Sisters. Without knowing how they work, we can't even begin to speculate on a Sister's value.

With the right AoF at the right time, I'll take a battle sister over any troops choice in the game.

If AoF are wimpy bespoke unit or detachment abilities that remove all choice, I'll just keep playing 9th.

Sisters of Battle Faction Focus Tomorrow! A good number of our questions should be answered soon.

 alextroy wrote:
Sisters of Battle Faction Focus Tomorrow! A good number of our questions should be answered soon.

hopefully they wont arbitrarily skip showing a troop unit like with the daemon article

Maybe GW thinks demons and SoB, should be played with minimal troops and maxed out "elite" and special units, which boxes cost coviniently for GW more then the regular troops.

There are AoS factions, that suffer from the syndrom of troops=bad, and the whole armies being based around spaming big kits or more expensive elite units and characters.

Karol wrote:
Maybe GW thinks demons and SoB, should be played with minimal troops and maxed out "elite" and special units, which boxes cost coviniently for GW more then the regular troops.

There are AoS factions, that suffer from the syndrom of troops=bad, and the whole armies being based around spaming big kits or more expensive elite units and characters.

Them not previewing a troop unit in the article isn't a ploy to sell big kits. Come on.

I don't think it is a ploy. Who knows, besides GW, what plans they have, how people should be playing a faction. But there is stuff like design limitation and existing in a game where stuff is decided with a d6, and not a d10 or d20. Some armies , marines for example, do gravitate to be very troop light.

and in AoS this is often the case, where a stormcast army would be , 2 sesons earlier, minimal ground troops and max dragons. Or blades of khorns be a bucket of characters and bloodthirsters with chaff. With stuff one would think be strong like blood warriors or StD warriors, being sometimes like marines in w40k, not really worth the points, where more elite versions of them exist.

This edition will be the true test at making troops interesting. So far the datasheets are enticing, but whether or not vehicles and other stuff still smother them is unknown.

I think after seeing the stats for GK termintors with a "smite" and some one psychic power that doesn't really do much, I will move on to playing even more AoS.

Could GW write interesting stuff ? Sure, but from the unit line ups they have shown, units of infantry don't have much rules layered on to them. Monsters, characters, tanks have more. GW can of course write and make everything. They could kill w40k tomorrow, if they wanted to. I just don't think that without a codex or sesonal detachments the game will be spicy enough to be fun to play. AND I REALLY hope they keep the town the same, something they never did in the past. I would suck to have marines, nids, custodes, DA etc come with 1-2 rules per unit, and then in then after 12 months get hit by units running around with double or triple the rules, with more impact then "and do a break test".