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 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

For luxury entertainment, it's generally more complicated. For every 'Velma was successful because of hatewatching' there's at least 1 'I just can't watch him because he's so negative all the time!'.

people generally like to watch something that makes them feel positive about their hobby purchases, If I just spend 250 bucks on Leviathen for the tyranid minis I, as a person, proably don't want to hear "TYRANIDS ARE GARBAGE ALL THESE MODELS SUCK!"

They want to feel energy for their hobby, no one wants to spend 15 minutes listening to someone telling them the game they're investing in was a waste of money

I don't know. I think if I'd spent $250 on something that would ultimately be a bit of a lemon, I'd rather somebody tell me and make me feel a little stupid than toil futilely with my purchase, probably spend some more money to make it better, and ultimately give it all up eventually anyways.

On a related note, I hate that Goonhammer titled its articles on the various indices as "reviews". Those weren't reviews, they were puff pieces. I'm not trusting anything they say again.

Amusingly, Goonhammer’s Ad Mech review has now been followed up by a (much longer) more accurate one saying how awful that index is

Goonhammer have largely been GW hype men for years, possibly due to Wings being the main competitive 40k writer and he seems pathologically incapable of doing anything but accentuating the positive and being mindlessly optimistic. Like him pretending ninth wasn't the giant shitshow it was. Thankfully one of the other guys had the balls to bring up how ninth didn't deserve to be thought of so positively when game warping balance issues and problem factions were allowed to exist in those states for literally six months or more at a time.

and GW cant even let have 1 decent unit in the Exorcist.. nerfed up to 170 points with a 30 point increase.

It’s bad.

1) Space Marines got shock assault and bolter discipline integrated into their profile for free. Sisters didn’t get sacred rites or their anti psyker resistance added.

2) Sisters cost far too much relative to marines. A T3 1W model is not worth 11 points when for a handful of extra points you can get a 2W 4A Chaos Legionary with better WS. You want movie marines, you pay the points for them.

3) Some squads retributors with worse guns, half the wounds and lower toughness cost more than their marine equivalents.

4) Sisters don’t have reliable anti tank because melta took a huge hit.

5) Squad sizes don’t line up with how you want to play them. This should be a horde army which you use characters to buff. No point doing that on a 10 woman squad.

I put this down to two things.

People really want marines to be better than Sisters of Battle but refuse to believe they should also be cheaper in terms of points. Sisters have always been at that mid point between a Guardsman and a Marine; so there they shall remain. Yeah, that was before stuff like Gaunts and Genecult could regenerate their units for free. Before marines could have five attacks.

All this “they just need bloody rose” is silly. They need to go back to drawing board fundamentally. Is this a horde army in power armour in which case it should be cheap with huge squads for you to buff. Or, you boost the profile to actually be at the midpoint between a marine and a guardsmen.

Like if your rulebook says Sisters of Battle are famed for their durability because they wear power armour and every single commentator says their units die to a stray breeze then something ain’t right with the rules. This should not be a sneaky objective army that plays the mission. This should be a very blunt and loud army that is about overpowering the enemy. So the rules don’t reflect their lore, theme or models at all.

 Mythantor wrote:
and GW cant even let have 1 decent unit in the Exorcist.. nerfed up to 170 points with a 30 point increase.

'It doesn't matter that Retributors are flaming garbage! Just use Exocists guys!'

Aging like a fine vinegar.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Like if your rulebook says Sisters of Battle are famed for their durability because they wear power armour and every single commentator says their units die to a stray breeze then something ain’t right with the rules. This should not be a sneaky objective army that plays the mission. This should be a very blunt and loud army that is about overpowering the enemy. So the rules don’t reflect their lore, theme or models at all.

Feel and fun is for loyalist Astartes, apparently.

I don't think that "people" want sister to cost more then marines for weaker units of the same type. They just don't care about armies they don't play. That is a general trait of w40k players. There are very few real "hates" as far as various faction or entire community goes.

And SoB, like any faction which is based on its models/units being dead, has to be a swarm. Either that or the base rules for SoB shouldn't be based around the idea of their units being dead. Votan have the same problem, and they also are costed like an elite army.

Sisters are going to be S and T 3 with 3+ armour and BS3. That is between a marine and a guardsman, not much to play with there.
If they’re not going to be a horde army, then “miracles” and “faith” abilities need to go a lot further. Sister meltas need to have a way to increase the ability to wound a target more frequently . Flamers need to hit harder. Even their bolters should have an ability to be boosted for more AP. The army shouldn’t be a blunt instrument, but require synergy with characters to improve their efficiency. There should also be more defensive buffs.

 bullyboy wrote:
Sisters are going to be S and T 3 with 3+ armour and BS3. That is between a marine and a guardsman, not much to play with there.
If they’re not going to be a horde army, then “miracles” and “faith” abilities need to go a lot further. Sister meltas need to have a way to increase the ability to wound a target more frequently . Flamers need to hit harder. Even their bolters should have an ability to be boosted for more AP. The army shouldn’t be a blunt instrument, but require synergy with characters to improve their efficiency. There should also be more defensive buffs.

We already had the edition where special rules to compensate for the profile and points being bad. What should have happened is that like Shock Assault and Bolter discipline being brought into the profile Sisters should have got their profile boosted.

For me there’s two options:

1) Your normal sister of battle gets WS3 plus, 2 attacks and 2 wounds. No change in points.

So those extra points for the Intercessor get you your strength, toughness and the better gun. You’re even still rocking an extra attack over the Sister. The extra wound, exactly in line with Terminator and Aggressor armour is because they are wearing armour. I don’t think that does anything to break the game and they’d still be dying to D2 guns. But it means ten sisters are actually a reasonable amount of wounds and attacks.

2) They become 7 points per model and you can take them in blocks of 20. I do not care if they die at that point.

Now I think option 1 is by far the most consistent with lore. They are the marine lite faction and it just reflects that what a marine is has changed since 3rd edition and the Sisters profile should reflect this inflation.

Like I’d much rather see the profile and points change around durability than something silly like giving every Sister devastating hits to represent mini acts of faith or something like that.

I don't think 2 wounds for sisters feels right.

I think buffing Melta is the way to go to make sisters feel better. Would the Melta rules be better if rather then apply to damage the melta rule buffed the strength of the attack in close? so at range of 9 a Multi Melta was 2 Str 11 d6 damage attacks, instead of 2 str 9 d6+2 attacks?

BrianDavion wrote:
I don't think 2 wounds for sisters feels right.

I think buffing Melta is the way to go to make sisters feel better. Would the Melta rules be better if rather then apply to damage the melta rule buffed the strength of the attack in close? so at range of 9 a Multi Melta was 2 Str 11 d6 damage attacks, instead of 2 str 9 d6+2 attacks?

Marines having 2 wounds and 3 attacks also doesn’t feel right. You can’t inflate the profile of several armies, leave Sisters in same place and be surprised when they can’t compete. Marines got two wounds purely to buff survivability because people felt they were dying too easily to represent these power armoured soldiers. This is exactly the same reason Sisters should get 2 wounds. They die far too easily. In third, what you had to worry about a tactical squad with a plasma gun and missile launcher shooting you. Where AP wasn’t degrading.

Melta is an issue but I think the base statline needs a serious rethink. Lore says it’s a durable army because they wear power armour and that’s not well represented by the rules.

There’s this really bad underlying sentiment that they should be vastly worse than marines. Even though the lore, Dawn of Fire for example, has them killing Chaos Space Marines and holding their own. Not one marine has the output of half a squad of battle sisters or random initiate has more attacks than a Canoness.

Main example. Celestine. This character is meant to be a Living Saint and an Avatar of the God Emperor. In the Lore she goes toe to toe with Abaddon. Kills a Daemon Prince like it’s nothing. Who in the Gathering Storm is depicted as a central figure. Despite that, she basically is your Canoness with jump pack in terms of statline. Cute number of attacks and damage with a neat ability to bring back one or two models. Completely goes against the depiction of the character in lore and would easily be chewed up by a Chaos Lord never mind a Daemon Prince. That’s a clear example of applying a faction power tier system even when it contradicts the lore. Generic Chaos Lord should not have a vastly better profile than Celestine (Canoness with jump pack).

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
Sisters are going to be S and T 3 with 3+ armour and BS3. That is between a marine and a guardsman, not much to play with there.
If they’re not going to be a horde army, then “miracles” and “faith” abilities need to go a lot further. Sister meltas need to have a way to increase the ability to wound a target more frequently . Flamers need to hit harder. Even their bolters should have an ability to be boosted for more AP. The army shouldn’t be a blunt instrument, but require synergy with characters to improve their efficiency. There should also be more defensive buffs.

We already had the edition where special rules to compensate for the profile and points being bad. What should have happened is that like Shock Assault and Bolter discipline being brought into the profile Sisters should have got their profile boosted.

For me there’s two options:

1) Your normal sister of battle gets WS3 plus, 2 attacks and 2 wounds. No change in points.

So those extra points for the Intercessor get you your strength, toughness and the better gun. You’re even still rocking an extra attack over the Sister. The extra wound, exactly in line with Terminator and Aggressor armour is because they are wearing armour. I don’t think that does anything to break the game and they’d still be dying to D2 guns. But it means ten sisters are actually a reasonable amount of wounds and attacks.

2) They become 7 points per model and you can take them in blocks of 20. I do not care if they die at that point.

Now I think option 1 is by far the most consistent with lore. They are the marine lite faction and it just reflects that what a marine is has changed since 3rd edition and the Sisters profile should reflect this inflation.

Like I’d much rather see the profile and points change around durability than something silly like giving every Sister devastating hits to represent mini acts of faith or something like that.

No. No to both of these. Sister are not Lite Marines. They are Elite Humans. And their stat block covers that, mostly. However, their points values do not.

I can easily look at a Battle Sister Squad next to a Tactical Squad and see that 10 BBS Sisters are really close to 5 Tactical Marines. The problem is that 10 Battle Sisters 110 points while 10 Tactical Marines are 175 points. Those Sisters either need their Statblock improved or their points dropped to around 90 points. Not, I'm a Marine with S 3 and T 3 improved, but improved in a way that makes sense for the points values.

For example, Sisters are renowned for the Holy Trinity of Bolter, Melta, and Flamer. However only the Storm Bolter and Flamers have better than standard rules. Buff the other Bolters and all the Meltas to reflect how good the Sisters are with their chosen weapons.

Give them back some limited Psychic Defense. A 6+ FNP against Psychic Mortal Wounds would be great, but I guess that would clog up the datasheets.

BrianDavion wrote:
I don't think 2 wounds for sisters feels right.

I think buffing Melta is the way to go to make sisters feel better. Would the Melta rules be better if rather then apply to damage the melta rule buffed the strength of the attack in close? so at range of 9 a Multi Melta was 2 Str 11 d6 damage attacks, instead of 2 str 9 d6+2 attacks?

Pretty sure that math's out to be basically identical. Also, trying to improve melta by improving the 9" melta range bonus is definitely going in the wrong direction. Sisters of Battle are never going to survive long enough to get that close.

The problem with the army right now is not actually anti-tank. The complete lack of Anti-tank is the symptom of the larger problem of this Index which is: None of the datasheets actually DO anything.

Hallowed Martyrs isn't totally defunct, but it's definitely in the bottom third of all army abilities.

Sacresants, Dominions, Battle Sister Squads, and Novitiates could have no guns and no CQC weapons and honestly wouldn't function much differently. They exist to sit on objectives and hopefully be annoying to remove.

Most of the Buff Characters just aren't worth it. Their combat stats are awful, their buffs don't really line up with the units they can attach too and even when they do, a percentage increase on a bad unit is always going to be meager.

Retributors, Castigators, Exorcists, Repentia, Immolators, and ArcoFlags have the POTENTIAL to do damage, but all have some glaring flaw that makes then dogwater in practice (No AP, not enough shots, Overpriced, weak to overwatch, hits on 4s, wounds on 5s, mid or bad special rules.)

Zephyrim and Paragons rely on their associated special character to be worth the plastic they're printed on, which means you're pretty much locked to one unit of each.

Exorcists, Penitent Engines, and Mortifiers are all decent at their jobs but A. They're overpriced (especially after the indirect fire nerfs.) and B. Pengines and Mortifiers are victory point pinatas thanks to bring it down.

The only unit I would say is objectively very good are Seraphim, and even they could drop 10-20pts.

@alextroy

I think they might play around with one or more of the USR like sustained hits or lethal hits as they synergise with the AoF rule. I think that’s what they’ll do but IMO it won’t address the durability issue.

Like one of their Sacred Rites was essentially Sustained Hits. There’s no reason they couldn’t have put that on the profile. Clearly there was a memo saying the armies damage output needed to go down. This has over corrected and has ignored that Sisters armies were relying on “I kill you before you shoot or hit me back so durability less important”. Bringing back attrition by dropping DPS suddenly makes that lack of staying power matter because you can’t work around it.

I’ll put this another way. Ignoring WS and S. An intercessor has 3 attacks. That is triple the attacks of a battle sister. Yet that Sister is near enough 2/3 the cost. They’re absurdly outclassed by marines.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I’ll put this another way. Ignoring WS and S. An intercessor has 3 attacks. That is triple the attacks of a battle sister. Yet that Sister is near enough 2/3 the cost. They’re absurdly outclassed by marines.

No disagreement on this, however 5 Intercessors are nearly as expensive as 10 Battle Sisters (95 to 110 points). 5 Intercessors being able to outfight 10 Battle Sisters isn't a problem if the BS shooting was enough to outshoot the Intercessors and they were a bit closer to the same cost.

And I have no problem with that. Sisters have never been able to outfight Marines, even in 3.5/4th when Sisters were 11 points and Marines were 13-15ish. We had been able to outshoot Marines on an even points basis, but I don't think so today. We need that back.

BrianDavion wrote:
I don't think 2 wounds for sisters feels right.

Why, they are supposed to be comicbook peak human style aka actually superhuman Faith witches according to the lore, and would be actually between guardsmen and Space Marines(which was the whole point of Sisters) with that simple change?

BrianDavion wrote:
I think buffing Melta is the way to go to make sisters feel better. Would the Melta rules be better if rather then apply to damage the melta rule buffed the strength of the attack in close? so at range of 9 a Multi Melta was 2 Str 11 d6 damage attacks, instead of 2 str 9 d6+2 attacks?

That wouldn't even fix the Multi-Melta, much less the whole Melta-profile, and the least the Sisters army(especially not now after GW's attempt to change Sisters from blatantly bad to hot garbage).

gunchar wrote:
Why, they are supposed to be comicbook peak human style aka actually superhuman Faith witches according to the lore, and would be actually between guardsmen and Space Marines(which was the whole point of Sisters) with that simple change?

They're not gene-crafted super-humans. Marines getting 2 wounds to separate them from the "chaff" of humanity makes far more sense than Sisters getting it.

Sisters at W2 feels wrong, they are basic humans with above average equipment. Their superiority should be represented by a better save, better weaponry and miracles, possibly by an easily accessible FNP. It's just a matter of enabling and pricing that package accordingly.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

gunchar wrote:
Why, they are supposed to be comicbook peak human style aka actually superhuman Faith witches according to the lore, and would be actually between guardsmen and Space Marines(which was the whole point of Sisters) with that simple change?

They're not gene-crafted super-humans. Marines getting 2 wounds to separate them from the "chaff" of humanity makes far more sense than Sisters getting it.

Exactly. This is also the problem with comparing them to Intercessors. SM got their stats buffed to differentiate them from the various baseline humans around. If you then buff Sisters as well, you're essentially just inflating stats, not differentiating them.

I think something for Sisters that utilises the Holy Trinity of weapons is the way to go, but it would have to be something that's always "on" not from a strat and ideally not tied to being led by a specific character. If you had something that applied to all the power-armoured Sisters units that represented that it would go a long way to making them unique and solving their current problems.

A Holy Trinity detachment ability then. I could see it.

I may have already said it in this thread, but I am curious to see what the dex will do for us.

I don't want Sisters at 2 W - maybe go to T4 but...not sure about that.

I like the idea of doubling down on the holy trinity and defence against psykers

These are rgular humans why would thy have t4 2 wounds? And if thy got that then what should skitarii have? As they are actual cyborgs? What about orks? If sister went 2 wounds almost everything else would need to also.

Boosykes wrote:
These are rgular humans why would thy have t4 2 wounds? And if thy got that then what should skitarii have? As they are actual cyborgs? What about orks? If sister went 2 wounds almost everything else would need to also.

Which inevitably leads to... 3 wound marines.

To be fair (and I'm not accusing you in this thread in particular) - when I pointed out and complained about the total lack of verisimilitude of having Abaddon at T5 and Guilliman at T9, I was shouted down and told "they're all just levers to pull!"

So IDK... if Abaddon and an Ork Boy can be equally tough, and Genestealers can have 2Ws (which is weird and only for lever-pulling purposes), then Sisters can also deviate from their long-held statline for balance purposes. The genie is out of the bottle.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
To be fair (and I'm not accusing you in this thread in particular) - when I pointed out and complained about the total lack of verisimilitude of having Abaddon at T5 and Guilliman at T9, I was shouted down and told "they're all just levers to pull!"

So IDK... if Abaddon and an Ork Boy can be equally tough, and Genestealers can have 2Ws (which is weird and only for lever-pulling purposes), then Sisters can also deviate from their long-held statline for balance purposes. The genie is out of the bottle.

Abby and Roboute shouldn't be the same durability. Now, should Abby be tougher to some extent? Absolutely. Should he be T9? Absolutely not.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
To be fair (and I'm not accusing you in this thread in particular) - when I pointed out and complained about the total lack of verisimilitude of having Abaddon at T5 and Guilliman at T9, I was shouted down and told "they're all just levers to pull!"

So IDK... if Abaddon and an Ork Boy can be equally tough, and Genestealers can have 2Ws (which is weird and only for lever-pulling purposes), then Sisters can also deviate from their long-held statline for balance purposes. The genie is out of the bottle.

Single model units need higher toughness to be able to survive a game where no rules prevent you from shooting them straight away. That's why the shirtless beastboss on squigosaur is T10 while Ghazgkhull Thrakka is T6.

It's not Abaddon whose toughness is too low, Gulliman merely has an artificially inflated toughness so it actually takes more effort to kill him than a few suicidal meltas or a single plane, there is no fluff reasoning behind it.

Necron Warriors looking on at this discussion of 2W or T4 Battle Sisters, of all things...

 Jidmah wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
To be fair (and I'm not accusing you in this thread in particular) - when I pointed out and complained about the total lack of verisimilitude of having Abaddon at T5 and Guilliman at T9, I was shouted down and told "they're all just levers to pull!"

So IDK... if Abaddon and an Ork Boy can be equally tough, and Genestealers can have 2Ws (which is weird and only for lever-pulling purposes), then Sisters can also deviate from their long-held statline for balance purposes. The genie is out of the bottle.

Single model units need higher toughness to be able to survive a game where no rules prevent you from shooting them straight away. That's why the shirtless beastboss on squigosaur is T10 while Ghazgkhull Thrakka is T6.

It's not Abaddon whose toughness is too low, Gulliman merely has an artificially inflated toughness so it actually takes more effort to kill him than a few suicidal meltas or a single plane, there is no fluff reasoning behind it.

Right, so the paradigm is that if Sisters need to be 2W for balance reasons, so be it. Of course, I agree that this would cause all sorts of other cascading issues, but that's a separate topic.

they probably shouldn't be 2W, but rather for what a sister costs now, the SoB player should get like 1.5 sister or 1.75 sister.

That a multi meltas should have been anti vehicle +4. Even if they were suppose to be that only for SoB. Assuming mandatory 10 man squads, no extra bodies on retributors etc.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Right, so the paradigm is that if Sisters need to be 2W for balance reasons, so be it. Of course, I agree that this would cause all sorts of other cascading issues, but that's a separate topic.

Not really, the paradigm is that Abaddon and Thrakka feel sufficiently durable with their relatively low toughess as part of a bodyguard units, while squigboss, daemon princes and loyalist primarchs do not.

An extra wound would change their interaction with the game to something completely different. T4 sisters with some other durability ability like FNP or an invul added on top? Sure, why not.
Dedicated anti-infantry weapons being inefficient at killing them and overcharging plasma to kill a basic sister? Nope.