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Tl;Dr I liked the 9th rules and don't have them now, the faction doesn't live up to bolter porn, give buffs.

Marine bolters, the same one in the hands of chaos marines and tac marines is 24" 2 shot s4 ap- d1. They are 2 shot no rapid fire due to bolter discipline being baked in, as marines were better with bolters in 9th.

Battle sisters need to be better, sister of battle as an army need some work, nobody is denying it. But ground it in some believable maths and scenarios other than "a sister isn't as good as an intercessor" because they're not supposed to be.

You're ignoring the special weapons, you're ignoring the miracle dice, you're ignoring the buff for taking wounds. Exactly as you're ignoring the (now nerfed) Oath of Moment and doctrines etc.

You're ignoring that a tac marine is a nearer comparison.

Others have done the hard work of pointing out the holes in the army and the rules, but you keep cycling back to either "a battle sister isn't awesome enough" or "check this fluff".

If you were arguing for a different army or detachment rule, a change to anti-big stuff options or a suggestion that allows them to play the missions better, people would be on board.

But you're not. You're just stating they're not amazing enough.

And in 9th my Synapse creatures had free transhuman (Leviathan), my ranged weapons had extra AP (Kronos) and I could give basically everything a 5++/4++.

Oh and Tyranid Warriors had 4 attacks S7 (which could be buffed to 8 or even 9) AP-2 D2 and heavy venom cannons were 3 attacks AP-3 D4 and wounded pretty much everything on at worst a 3+

Everyone lost a lot of rules from 9th to 10th, get over yourself.

Slipspace wrote:

I'm pretty sure your basic Sister has always been offensively equivalent to a Guardsman (sub-faction bonuses aside, at least) in close combat. So yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable here. Relatively speaking, nothing has changed.

in 2E they were slightly better than guardsmen offensively. WS3 and S3 with basic CCW, but I4 so they would win draws in close combat.

One interesting quirk of 2E was that you could use pistols in close combat, meaning a bolt pistol would give you S4 -1AP attacks, and probably explains why basic sisters didn't have pistols. Close combat weapon attacks would also be based on the abilities of the weapon, rather than being linked to the wielder. Suffice to say, a Veteran Sister superior, on the charge, with a power sword, would plough through guardsmen, and orks, and any other basic troops, and stood a reasonable chance at killing 1-2 basic marines on her own.

I would say I would love to see sisters go back to T4, since with the other quirks they had in 2E, despite being just nuns with guns, the way they were equipped gave them some severe weaknesses, despite their superior Toughness and save to standard humans, and they were never a match for marines. Marines had all round more consistent stats, and bolter drill, and 'shaken'.

Sisters weren't even the best bit about the 2E codex, that would be Frateris militia.

Because the Intercessor is the standard marine profile and the stat increases I put forward wouldn’t remotely make them as good as an Intercessor. It’s also a unit that costs the same and fulfils a similar role. Relatively cheap troop unit that kills trash and sits on objectives. So it’s a clear point of comparison instead of a legacy unit Games Workshop will likely retire in a few years.

Why should marines have got bolter discipline and shock assault baked into their profile but Sisters didn’t get Sacred Rites and Deny the Witch baked into their profile?

Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule. Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use. Versus a rule that gives you full reroll hit and wound on target priority in a game where killing that one tank or monster is really important. So, again, marines have the better rules. Also trading out on dice only makes sense if you’re plugging that into an army that either has high damage weapons (which nerfing melta hurts) or has access to lethal hits or dev wounds to allow exploding which Sisters have limited access to in their rules and squad size issues.

There’s a reason tacticals are on the way out. It’s lovely that GW tried to recreate the metal Sisters range in plastic. But the philosophy of having 2 decent guns and 8 ablative wounds is terrible. I’d rather have all decent guns or all flamers or all melta that really specialise on one thing. You get a mismatched squad that doesn’t do anything,

Sisters units aren’t durable enough to get advantage of that rule to get plus 1 to hit. Even if they do. Four sisters are not going to have the attacks and damage to do all that much. Again, that is a consolation prize for losing the game; not a powerful ability. I am certainly not getting free units that can deploy anywhere on the board with -1AP. The Devs clearly assumed damage was going down and thought “wow that means they’re ignoring 66 percent of damage and that these units will have multi turn combats chipping away at each other”. This was not accurate. Short of a Pintle storm bolter you aren’t getting much utility here.

Marines already got heavy on their guns to hit on 2. Giving them extra shots to represent accuracy is stupid. If we’re okay heaping rules onto marines to sell their faction fluff then how is it an issue that Sisters should have nice things? One faction has had absurd rules inflation and another has their third edition profile.

In order for miracle dice to be realy impactful and somehow balance the weak unit rules and bad weapon stats, the SoB would have to be costed in a such a way that the SoB player get a 4000pts army for 2000pts. It wouldn't be 50% cost on everything. Some "strong" SoB units, probably all vehicles and most elite, should probably cost the same, but the regular bolter sisters would have to cost like 1/3 or less of what they cost now. Then SoB would be some sort of hybrid between GSC and Eldar mechanic wise, and probably a good army. Trading your units for ability to use rules, that maybe have impact on other units, will never work other wise.

But as we , but maybe not GW, would rather want to avoid seeing 250-350 model SoB armies, the better way to fixing sisters is to fix their weapons and their rules. GW can give weapons rules of any kind they want. Give SoB "holy" melta that actualy work, unlike the regular one. Or tie it to the trinity, so SoB bolter/melta/flamers get some sort of a buff, if they hit something that was hit by other weapons from the trinity.

GW could give SoB intercessor stats tomorrow, even cost the like assault intercessors. And the army would still not function very well. Bar maybe repentia spam. A unit of 10 assault "SoB" with 10 eviscerators with buffs would, maybe turn the SoB in to some sort of WE without Angron army. Which would still be rather meh.

Karol wrote:
In order for miracle dice to be realy impactful and somehow balance the weak unit rules and bad weapon stats, the SoB would have to be costed in a such a way that the SoB player get a 4000pts army for 2000pts. It wouldn't be 50% cost on everything. Some "strong" SoB units, probably all vehicles and most elite, should probably cost the same, but the regular bolter sisters would have to cost like 1/3 or less of what they cost now. Then SoB would be some sort of hybrid between GSC and Eldar mechanic wise, and probably a good army. Trading your units for ability to use rules, that maybe have impact on other units, will never work other wise.

But as we , but maybe not GW, would rather want to avoid seeing 250-350 model SoB armies, the better way to fixing sisters is to fix their weapons and their rules. GW can give weapons rules of any kind they want. Give SoB "holy" melta that actualy work, unlike the regular one. Or tie it to the trinity, so SoB bolter/melta/flamers get some sort of a buff, if they hit something that was hit by other weapons from the trinity.

GW could give SoB intercessor stats tomorrow, even cost the like assault intercessors. And the army would still not function very well. Bar maybe repentia spam. A unit of 10 assault "SoB" with 10 eviscerators with buffs would, maybe turn the SoB in to some sort of WE without Angron army. Which would still be rather meh.

You realize that would be 40- points for a 10-Gal squad?
That is cheaper than IG Infantry Squad.
That's less than an eighth of your list for 60 3+ Save bodies, with OC 2 on each model.

And 30 points for a 10-Gal Noviate squad.
Less than half the price of an Infantry Squad.
180 points for 54 4+ save bodies and 6 more 3+ save, again with OC 2 each.

There are two different issues being discussed here:

One is whether SOB units have the correct melee effectiveness. I will agree that they are less effective in melee than they should be. Historically, a Battle Sister squad had the exact same stats as a Storm Trooper unit (aka Tempestus Scions) except the better Save. This made sense since both units were supposed to be among the best trained human infantry and graduates of the Schola Progenium. For that to be true today, Battle Sisters (and thus all SOB Infantry) need to gain an additional attack since Tempestus Scions have 2 attacks on their Close Combat Weapon and go up from there.

The broader question is how to make the Adepta Sororitas army effective. The problem there is bad synergy, bad leader rules, and a marked lack of sufficient, effective Anti-Tank firepower. The best strength in the entire army is 10 outside of the Paragon Warmace and Hunter Killer Missiles. The army is simply not equipped to deal with 10th Edition targets.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You realize that would be 40- points for a 10-Gal squad?
That is cheaper than IG Infantry Squad.
That's less than an eighth of your list for 60 3+ Save bodies, with OC 2 on each model.

And 30 points for a 10-Gal Noviate squad.
Less than half the price of an Infantry Squad.
180 points for 54 4+ save bodies and 6 more 3+ save, again with OC 2 each.

Yes, that is why I said that it would be bad for the game. the same GSC playing with 3000-3250pts pre changes were bad. I am strict talking about the viability of a mechanic, which in order to function requiers the opponent to kill units. This creates an additional layer of problems. W40k already has the problem that top armies can kill your counter or lynch pin units already. That is why a lot of armies run two or even three of something. Now for a faction that requiers units to die this means that they not only need to have good units, they also have to have good units left to use their special rules on. Having your units die and then be left with miracle dice to use on chaff, will not make the army work. Which means that in order for the type of tactic to function the SoB player would need to have 4-6 units, when others have 2-3. Now this is not precise math, maybe it is 3-5 units. But what matters is the fact that they need more units to use their rules. And the only way to get more units is points. And it doesn't matter how the points are delivered, if it is a respawn mechanic, summoning etc unimporant what is important is the fact the army need more models the the normal one. And that is just for the rule to kick in, in order for it to work vs various types of builds, they would need to have either units that counter everything or multiple specific hard counters to different armies. The last option would requier SoB to be even cheaper , because now they need multiple of times X units and the first option would just outright break the game with super efficient units followed by a ton of chaff. This is why my conclusion to this was that healthy way to fix SoB is changing their rule set and that of their weapons. There is also another option, but that won't happen in this edition, as codex seems to be very similar to the index from what we are seeing. The option would be to drop the miracle dice for dead units mechanics. Either make SoB rules free on build in to units , which more or less would be the same as giving them better rules or re write the faction from ground up. I think the second option is Impossible considering how GW writes their rules.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule.Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use.

But there's a 4/6 chance that I roll better than that.

ccs wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule.Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use.

But there's a 4/6 chance that I roll better than that.

Considering the lack of resiliance SoB units have that is only a theoretical number, because in practics, the opposing army, especialy a good one will kill or neutralise the SoB units that could be efficient while using the miracle dice. So it is turns in to something like 4/6 chance, but only when opponent fails to do what his army should be build to do over a span of 2-3 turns. That just doesn't happen unless someone build a bad army on purpose or plays a medium army in a bad way.

Karol wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Act of Faith is a mechanic that relies on my army dying to trade out on dice. Losing a tenth of your army for trading out one dice is a consolation prize not a powerful rule.Which has every chance of being a 1 or 2 that you can’t even use.

But there's a 4/6 chance that I roll better than that.

Considering the lack of resiliance SoB units have that is only a theoretical number, because in practics, the opposing army, especialy a good one will kill or neutralise the SoB units that could be efficient while using the miracle dice. So it is turns in to something like 4/6 chance, but only when opponent fails to do what his army should be build to do over a span of 2-3 turns. That just doesn't happen unless someone build a bad army on purpose or plays a medium army in a bad way.

You know that has nothing to do with the odds concerning wether or not I roll higher than a 2, right?

 Tyran wrote:
And in 9th my Synapse creatures had free transhuman (Leviathan), my ranged weapons had extra AP (Kronos) and I could give basically everything a 5++/4++.

Oh and Tyranid Warriors had 4 attacks S7 (which could be buffed to 8 or even 9) AP-2 D2 and heavy venom cannons were 3 attacks AP-3 D4 and wounded pretty much everything on at worst a 3+

Everyone lost a lot of rules from 9th to 10th, get over yourself.

But not everyone got rules to make an army that functions. tyranids have an army that functions in 10th. SoB for example, do not have an army that functions.


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ccs 811493 11595445 wrote:

You know that has nothing to do with the odds concerning wether or not I roll higher than a 2, right?

I think it has everything to do with it. With good armies can make you be unable to use your army rules, then the rules may as well not work. Knights in early 9th for example, had a ton of potential sources of damage. But because the game moved to being about both killing and scoring at the same time, and knights were meh at first and unable to do the first, all their rules, no matter what they were may as not have existed. And it shows in tournament results too. The really bad factions have close to 0 representation comparing to factions that are actualy played. Or to make it realy simple, the odds of rolling a die don't matter, if on avarge a good army will not let the SoB player to roll dice in a way that can impact the game in the favour of the SoB player.

Karol wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
And in 9th my Synapse creatures had free transhuman (Leviathan), my ranged weapons had extra AP (Kronos) and I could give basically everything a 5++/4++.

Oh and Tyranid Warriors had 4 attacks S7 (which could be buffed to 8 or even 9) AP-2 D2 and heavy venom cannons were 3 attacks AP-3 D4 and wounded pretty much everything on at worst a 3+

Everyone lost a lot of rules from 9th to 10th, get over yourself.

But not everyone got rules to make an army that functions. tyranids have an army that functions in 10th. SoB for example, do not have an army that functions.

Define functions please.

The detachment rule is gak, not going to disagree there. Sadly that isn't likely going to be fixed until the codex drops. On the bright side chances are you will get at least one somewhat functional detachment rule.

 alextroy wrote:
There are two different issues being discussed here:

One is whether SOB units have the correct melee effectiveness. I will agree that they are less effective in melee than they should be. Historically, a Battle Sister squad had the exact same stats as a Storm Trooper unit (aka Tempestus Scions) except the better Save. This made sense since both units were supposed to be among the best trained human infantry and graduates of the Schola Progenium. For that to be true today, Battle Sisters (and thus all SOB Infantry) need to gain an additional attack since Tempestus Scions have 2 attacks on their Close Combat Weapon and go up from there.

The broader question is how to make the Adepta Sororitas army effective. The problem there is bad synergy, bad leader rules, and a marked lack of sufficient, effective Anti-Tank firepower. The best strength in the entire army is 10 outside of the Paragon Warmace and Hunter Killer Missiles. The army is simply not equipped to deal with 10th Edition targets.

Wait, Scions have 2 attacks (there is not a single Guard player I play with)? And there are still people frothing at the mouth over the idea of giving Sisters that?

It's so interesting how adamantly opposed to the idea people are to giving Sisters WS3+ and 2 attacks. This still leaves them with less melee ability and less durability than intercessors or even TacMarines.

Scions/kasrkin have 2 ws 4+ attacks, which I don't think would break the bank here.

But it comes back to the why this is needed/a good idea. Does it fit with the faction and identity? Maybe? Does it help balance them out in any way? Not meaningfully. Is the inspiration simply "I want to be more like a space marine and/or see fluff XYZ where a sister punches some cultists!"? Quite likely.

Dudeface wrote:
Scions/kasrkin have 2 ws 4+ attacks, which I don't think would break the bank here.

But it comes back to the why this is needed/a good idea. Does it fit with the faction and identity? Maybe? Does it help balance them out in any way? Not meaningfully. Is the inspiration simply "I want to be more like a space marine and/or see fluff XYZ where a sister punches some cultists!"? Quite likely.

I assume its partly trying to resurrect Bloody Rose, which GW sort of made mandatory, then took away.

Quite clearly buffing Sister's melee on non-dedicated melee units will have negligible impact on anything. As DE sink to being possibly the worst faction in the game, let me tell you how impactful Kabalite melee is...

 Void__Dragon wrote:


Wait, Scions have 2 attacks (there is not a single Guard player I play with)? And there are still people frothing at the mouth over the idea of giving Sisters that?

It's so interesting how adamantly opposed to the idea people are to giving Sisters WS3+ and 2 attacks. This still leaves them with less melee ability and less durability than intercessors or even TacMarines.

it's not about being against it, its about recognizing that it wont have any impact anyway and that the problems with the faction are greater than "Basic sisters have no melee capabilities".

Oh, and pointing out that game balance shouldnt be dictated by cinematics/books.

GW could always go down the route of requiring fiction to match whats possible in the game...

leopard wrote:
GW could always go down the route of requiring fiction to match whats possible in the game...

You mean they don't already do that? All their fiction is already just pure toy commercial. "And the Primaris Intercessors(TM) shot their Auto Bolt Rifles(TM) at the Ork Boys(TM), doing three casualties and forcing a morale test..."

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


it's not about being against it, its about recognizing that it wont have any impact anyway and that the problems with the faction are greater than "Basic sisters have no melee capabilities".

Oh, and pointing out that game balance shouldnt be dictated by cinematics/books.

That is why I said that even if tomorrow GW gave sister the old marine stat line 4/4/1/1, the army would still be bad. SoB problems as an army isn't the fact, although it does not help, that they are str 4 and being 1 W 1T is no going to help sisters survive on a UK event table, because marines with double the wounds and armour of contempt die on those tables in droves. Maybe doubling of terrain would help, and by doubling I mean to get something close to an US infinty table, or at least what we call a US table. But that won't happen, because it would make any vehicle that is not a skimmer impossible to use.
And there is already problems with deploying and moving stuff like Land Raiders out of the deployment zone with less terrain.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

it's not about being against it, its about recognizing that it wont have any impact anyway

Being able to more effectively bully chaff off of objectives and flip them has an impact on overall strength.

and that the problems with the faction are greater than "Basic sisters have no melee capabilities".

So because the change would not single-handedly fix Sisters it is a bad change?

Oh, and pointing out that game balance shouldnt be dictated by cinematics/books.

This goes past being wrong and is arguably outright delusional.

Factions should be and already are balanced around their portrayal in the fluff. A Gretchen is a worthless little goblin whose sole quality is that there is a gigantic amount of them. The tabletop more or less adheres to this fluff portrayal. Shalaxi Helbane is portrayed as a supreme duelist capable tooling some of the most formidable fighters in the galaxy in melee combat and her rules as of right now certainly reflect that.

Fluff has always impacted unit balance. Howling Banshees are portrayed as extremely agile warriors who can cut up Space Marines in melee handily. The fact that they are rather bad at doing that atm is a shame, as is them being rather bad in general.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


This goes past being wrong and is arguably outright delusional.

Factions should be and already are balanced around their portrayal in the fluff. A Gretchen is a worthless little goblin whose sole quality is that there is a gigantic amount of them. The tabletop more or less adheres to this fluff portrayal. Shalaxi Helbane is portrayed as a supreme duelist capable tooling some of the most formidable fighters in the galaxy in melee combat and her rules as of right now certainly reflect that.

Fluff has always impacted unit balance. Howling Banshees are portrayed as extremely agile warriors who can cut up Space Marines in melee handily. The fact that they are rather bad at doing that atm is a shame, as is them being rather bad in general.

Abilities can be brought from the fluff. Powerlevel of these abilities should not.

So a typical Grot could be better than a Marine?

No. It’s totally fine for lore to inform power-points should be used to balance fluffy models.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So a typical Grot could be better than a Marine?

No. It’s totally fine for lore to inform power-points should be used to balance fluffy models.

feth no, everything is OP in the lore. If we try to emulate that on the tabletop, every unit is gonna kill every unit and we're gonna end up with the dullest game ever

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So a typical Grot could be better than a Marine?

No. It’s totally fine for lore to inform power-points should be used to balance fluffy models.

feth no, everything is OP in the lore.

If only there was some authority responsible for this. Some kind of overarching publisher of the fiction with control.

That entity could probably be blamed for cocking this all up, alas.

I despise how GW has done balancing for a while and concluded for a long time that the simple answer should just be changing and uncapping toughness across the board vs how it was actually done which was very silly. Marines should be Toughness 5 because Transhuman + Power armor, Scouts should be Toughness 4 because of only Transhuman, Sisters should also be Toughness 4 because power armor. However they shouldn't have a bump in WS, BS, or attacks because modern 40k is suffering from a terminal case of dice bloat cancer and everything should be going back to 1 whopping attack.

So. Sisters just went 8-0 and won a 291 player event. Does this reassure anyone?

Dudeface wrote:
So. Sisters just went 8-0 and won a 291 player event. Does this reassure anyone?

Not really.

The faction is much better than we gave it credit for in terms of win/loss ratio, but I watched those games. They did not look enjoyable for the sisters player. It's a lot of 'line one get mulched, line 2 get mulched, line 3 get mulched, cool I win on points.'

We're also bouyed up a little bit by the perception we're a bad army. The finals came down to Jack Harpster going for a home run play with Angron that didn't ultimately work out for him, and an absolutely brutal overwatch from Vahl and her suits. It looked like his plan was to run Angron up, murder an immolator, if he survived; kill something else next turn, if he didn't, rez him turn 2 or 3. I doubt that Jack, an accomplished Sisters player himself, had very many reps into the army and didn't necessarily realize how low the chance was that Angron would survive his run up AND he just didn't have the RNG on his side to get Angron back.

While our winrate is fine and the overall power of the faction is fine, it's just fine in a way that is deeply uninteresting. We're closer to 'MSU green tide' than we are to traditional Sisters gameplay.




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 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So a typical Grot could be better than a Marine?

No. It’s totally fine for lore to inform power-points should be used to balance fluffy models.

feth no, everything is OP in the lore.

If only there was some authority responsible for this. Some kind of overarching publisher of the fiction with control.

That entity could probably be blamed for cocking this all up, alas.

The Government?

Oh, you were talking about 40k. IRL it's the Government.

ERJAK wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
So. Sisters just went 8-0 and won a 291 player event. Does this reassure anyone?

Not really.

The faction is much better than we gave it credit for in terms of win/loss ratio, but I watched those games. They did not look enjoyable for the sisters player. It's a lot of 'line one get mulched, line 2 get mulched, line 3 get mulched, cool I win on points.'

We're also bouyed up a little bit by the perception we're a bad army. The finals came down to Jack Harpster going for a home run play with Angron that didn't ultimately work out for him, and an absolutely brutal overwatch from Vahl and her suits. It looked like his plan was to run Angron up, murder an immolator, if he survived; kill something else next turn, if he didn't, rez him turn 2 or 3. I doubt that Jack, an accomplished Sisters player himself, had very many reps into the army and didn't necessarily realize how low the chance was that Angron would survive his run up AND he just didn't have the RNG on his side to get Angron back.

While our winrate is fine and the overall power of the faction is fine, it's just fine in a way that is deeply uninteresting. We're closer to 'MSU green tide' than we are to traditional Sisters gameplay.

Isn't that fitting Sister's gameplay though? Dying in droves for the cause, getting a miracle that causes the enemy plan to fail, and the few survivors walking away from the battle ready to tell tales of divine intervention and martyrdom by their fellow sisters.