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.

Here's a list for an upcoming tournament.  The majority of players are playing Space Marines.

HQ- Canoness- Blessed Weapon, Inferno Pistol, Book of St. Lucius, Cloak of St. Aspira, Litanies of Faith, Mantle of Ophelia

Elites- 10 Celestians- Flamer, Meltagun, Eviscerator

Troops- 1 VSS and 11 Sisters- Flamer, Meltagun, Power Weapon

Troops- 1 VSS and 11 Sisters- Flamer, Meltagun, Power Weapon

Fast Attack- 1 VSS and 9 Seraphim- Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol, Flamer, Inferno Pistol, Book of St. Lucius

Fast Attack- 1 VSS and 9 Seraphim- Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol, Flamer, Inferno Pistol, Book of St. Lucius

Heavy Support- 1 VSS and 9 Retributors- 4 Heavy Bolters

Heavy Support- Exorcist- Extra Armour

Heavy Support- Exorcist- Extra Armour

This list gives me 8 Faith Points with the "freebie" from the Litanies.  Model count is 65 with two tanks.  I know that the Meltagun/Heavy Flamer combo is popular, however, I do not own any Heavy Flamers.  Let me know what you think.  Cheers.

The first glarring problem I see with your list is the power weapons, SOBs have a hard time in hand to hand combat. with a weapon skill of 3. Your to hit is mediocore, but a strength of 3 it is hard to wound anything, especially space marines. Your better of giving a bolter to your VSS. I would rather have to extra 2 strength 4 in the shooting phase than one strength 3 attack in hand to hand. Especially when you could use Divine Guidance potentially. Second, eliminate the heavy Retributors. Wasted points, approx. 174 pts which could go to another exorcist. Third, eliminate the Celestines, once again wasted points. I would rather have another troop choice and points saved could get you BoSL in your seraphims. With the changes your could Eviserators on your VSS seraphims. You have no real way of dealing with skimmers. The inferno pistols would only give you glancing. In assaulting with eviserators, difficult to hit e. g. a 6 but 3 attacks. If you hit though you would get the + 2d6 penettration bonus. Pretty much guaranteed to carve up skimmers. I run both my seraphims with eviserators on my VSS seraphims. I played a campaign and on one turn I destroyed 2 predators front armor which will probably be the heavy vehicle of choice and i guarantee there will be speeders if the majority of people playing space marines. your HQ is perfect but you might consider putting a jetpack on your Canoness. She is great for soaking up punishment, e.g. Spirit of the Martyr. 2+ invuln. save. you can move her around to help in hand to hand with potential squads that will need help in hand to hand. Last GET HEAVY FLAMERS. Strength 5 no cover save attacks is your friend, and the combo with Divine Guidence. No cover and any 6 to wound is an AP 1, no armor save. This will devistate and marine squad. play to the strengths of SOB which is the shooting phase, 3+ to hit and with rapid fire your troops would get 18 shots off and any of the wounds could be an AP1. No other race can counter Faith Points. your weakness is hand to hand. You want to keep your enemies at approx. 18-24 inches where your bolters will excel. Another must is that every VSS must have a BoSL.

Awesome advice. That's the exact way to play sisters if you want to be competetive. 3 Excorcists make marines sphincters pucker. Heavy flamers can flat out own some armies with S5 AP4. Canoness with 2+ Martyr save I have seen stop whole assault armies before and the J-pack is needed so you can get her to exactly were she's needed. Inferno pistols are a wast IMO for the points you have to get very close to use them and typically get maybe one shot off before your engaged in CC.

Heavy Flamers shouldn't be hard to convert, add some extra tubing to the flamer models or a second flamer spout.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be purchasing Heavy Flamers one day but not in time for the tournament. My Canoness also has the the regular backpack. Unfortuantely no jumppack. I do have the St. Celestine model so I could run with two Canoness', substituting the Saint as a Canoness. As well due to WYSIWYG, I do not have VSS Seraphim with Eviscerators. Again, another model on the wish list but not in time for the tournament. An alternative to Eviscerators is equiping the VSS with Meltabombs.

I only have two Exorcists so replacing the Retributirs with a third Exorcist will not be happening.

I'll take away the power weapons and see how I can play with the extra points then. I have already equipped my Seraphim with the BoSL. I haven't played with Inferno Pistols on Seraphim for a while. I put them in my Seraphim squads for anti-tank. The Seraphim are able to get close enough to fire the Inferno's. I have lots of good experiences with Seraphim charging into combat.

I'll play around with the points in regards to changing the Celestians to a troops choice instead. I'm leaning towards keeping the Retributors. Due to my lack of tank presence the 36" range will be useful. Divine Guidance comes in handy with the Retributors.

Thanks for the input TTownTom and Lemartes.

Well, seeing as your are hampered by lack of models....Good luck.

The cannoess and celestians are a problem, slow manuevering. Drop one and get a rhino?

HQ- Canoness- Jump Pack, Blessed Weapon, Inferno Pistol, Book of St. Lucius, Cloak of St. Aspira, Litanies of Faith, Mantle of Ophelia

Troops- 1 VSS and 9 Sisters- Eviscerator, Flamer, Meltagun, BoSL

Troops- 1 VSS and 9 Sisters- Flamer, Meltagun, BoSL

Fast Attack- 1 VSS and 9 Seraphim- Flamer, Inferno Pistol, BoSL

Fast Attack- 1 VSS and 9 Seraphim- Flamer, Inferno Pistol, BoSL

Heavy Support- 1 VSS and 9 Retributors- 4 Heavy Bolters

Heavy Support- Exorcist- Extra Armour

Heavy Support- Exorcist- Extra Armour

I'm most likely going to stay with the list that I have above. That puts my model count to 51, two tanks, 7 faith points and one "free" faith point. I have over 200 points to play with still.

Here are some of the ideas I am playing around with. I can put a cheap Canoness to add two more faith points, put in another squad of ten Sisters and take some wargear out to try squeeze in a Rhino. Option two is forego the Canoness, put in a Rhino, and another squad of Sisters. Option three is forego the Rhino, put in a second Canoness and another squad of Sisters and have the leftover points go into more Sisters models.

I only have one rhino that I can put into my list, which means one troops choice, potentially two will be left in the dust of the Seraphim and mechanized Sisters. Let me know what you think.

Flamers on walking squads are futile, they won't fire often enough to matter. Replace them with meltaguns unless you go mounted. Mounted, heavy flamer/melta is godly, but on foot you're just too slow to do enough flaming.

Anyway, don't mechanize with just one rhino, no point to that. Either mechanize fully or don't, or you'll regret it. That said, I can't see this list doing well. Too slow, too fragile. Seraphim are not a good army backbone, they suffer too much from attrition if you try to make them carry the day. Trust me, I've tried it. If you're limited by your models, then fine. But my suggestion is to drop one Seraphim squad completely, get a 3rd SoB squad, and mount all three in rhinos, and arm them with heavy flamer/melta. If you do that, you'll turn an incredibly lackluster list into a fairly mean machine.

St. Celestine would be good to add into your list for an extra HQ. She soaks up points and if she dies she comes back. She's sick. Put her with the Seraphims.

If you are still adamant about getting some heavy bolters, put in an inquisitor as an HQ (122pts total) or an elite (97pts total) with 3 HB gun servitors. This gives you some more shots and then you can field an assassin. I would say either the vindicare or the callidus. The eversor gets shot up too quickly and usually dies outside of h2h and the cullexus is only good vs a heavily psychics.

I have to take exception to Celestine. She costs the same as an entire squad of Seraphim but is not nearly as useful. I don't think she's bad per se, but if you're going to a tournament you can't afford 1) the comp nerfing you'll get from using a hero and 2) the d6 faith point loss when she dies.