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Given that meltas and multi-meltas are now quite bad vs tanks, is there any possibility that the bolt weapons are a viable alternative?

By which I mean, storm bolters and heavy bolters for battle sisters, retributors, etc. My gut says they’re probably terrible but I figured I’d ask.

 ph34r wrote:
Given that meltas and multi-meltas are now quite bad vs tanks, is there any possibility that the bolt weapons are a viable alternative?

By which I mean, storm bolters and heavy bolters for battle sisters, retributors, etc. My gut says they’re probably terrible but I figured I’d ask.

HB are good on castigators. Basically because they're free. But 4 HB on a squad for 130 points and for 5 wounds in 3 toughness... Well I'd say it's pretty worthless. Bolt weapons against vehicles to wound on 6 without any re-rolls you can take a shot but I don't believe in that tactic. As antitank we have castigators and exorcist. Yeah they're not as good as it seems but you can also try armigers

 ph34r wrote:
Given that meltas and multi-meltas are now quite bad vs tanks, is there any possibility that the bolt weapons are a viable alternative?

By which I mean, storm bolters and heavy bolters for battle sisters, retributors, etc. My gut says they’re probably terrible but I figured I’d ask.

There's something to be said for building for countering the counter meta.

Meta is big stuff.

Counter meta is drowing the big stuff in expendable bodies.

We can't counter big stuff.

But we CAN build lists that will table endless swarm setups without much trouble.

So you just take as many Flamers and Heavy Flamers as possible and pray you go up against infantry skew for 3-5 games.

Big Points Changes for the Adepta Sorortas with the new MFM:
Average Points Change: -4%
Average Points Change (non-zero): -7%
Average Points Change (reductions only): -12%

Our two units with points increases are Crusaders (+25% to 25 per 2 models) and the Exorcist (+14% or 160 points).

The units with no points deductions are: a full squad of Acro-flaggents, Celestants Sacresants, Daemonifuge, Death Cult Assassins, Mortifiers, Penitent Engines, Seraphim, and Zephrim.

The last 1000 point list I made dropped 50 points.

For me 1st list i made dropped 95pts. The next 3 i was planning to try went down 175 to 185 pts O_o

Not sure having more stuff is going to help us when we still can't reliably kill anything big. At least the Towering changes will keep our units from being wiped out from across the map by Knights, and Desolation Squads have been sent to the bone zone and therefore don't get to just wipe out our squads for free anymore.

 alextroy wrote:
Big Points Changes for the Adepta Sorortas with the new MFM:
Average Points Change: -4%
Average Points Change (non-zero): -7%
Average Points Change (reductions only): -12%

Our two units with points increases are Crusaders (+25% to 25 per 2 models) and the Exorcist (+14% or 160 points).

The units with no points deductions are: a full squad of Acro-flaggents, Celestants Sacresants, Daemonifuge, Death Cult Assassins, Mortifiers, Penitent Engines, Seraphim, and Zephrim.

The last 1000 point list I made dropped 50 points.

Exorcist went down 10.

Don't forget, it was 170 after the indirect nerf.

I guess I missed adding that to my list building spreadsheet.

Arco-flagellants went down from 150 for 10 to 130 for 10. With 2 wounds and a 4+ shrug, they're deceptively durable. Definitely one of the better units in the index already prior to the points reduction.

So I have been seeing most post balance dataslate faction tier lists from the major 40k Youtuber community placing us at the very bottom lately. While I agree that point cuts alone are not enough to fix the faction especially when compared to the other help the factions lower than us received (however minimal it was), I still think we have some kind of play into most of the C tier armies and below at least. While we will give up assassinate and bring it down pretty regularly I still think our armor is good enough to be "spammed" with the points cuts or we just play massed infantry lists that just try to win through sheer board control. I am not saying we are winning any major GTs or anything, but I don't think we are truly the "worst faction" in the game right now.

How do others feel? Again, I concede we are probably one of the lowest tier factions especially from a purely competitive perspective, but I still think we are above a few other armies despite what the dataslate gave them.

I think armour is bad choice largely because there are other factions who do armour better especially once sm get there codex. I also don't like giving up two secondaries it just makes it easy for your opponent.

Board control I think is therefore the better strategy. But the strength of that strategy is going to be dependent on your opponent's list and anyone tabling you before turn 3 will win.

As for worse factions I'd go admech and imperial knights and that's only because knights were balanced even sub par in a competitive setting but got triple nerfed

I honestly haven't seen many people using fixed secondaries, so I really haven't had to build around them much this edition.

They are usually not as good so you probably won't unless you play into lists that give away both bring it down and assassinate. Either on its own is fine both and yout giving your opponent easy mode.

I'm playing Sisters - they'll be on easy mode no matter how I build the list.

U02dah4 wrote:
They are usually not as good so you probably won't unless you play into lists that give away both bring it down and assassinate. Either on its own is fine both and yout giving your opponent easy mode.

One of the best performing lists this last weekend was like 35pts of bring it down and 25pts of assassinate. So it's not impossible to win against someone who goes fixed, even with skew.

Not impossible but given the number of shooty lists your makeing it hard for yourself.

If you have one kill mission the opponent has to devote some resource to action or board control if they want fixed. If you have two they only need to shoot you off the table which plays nicely to eldar, tau, ik, ck, sm lists as they can effectively ignore secondary and just try and wipe you.

I get its difficult celestine is potentially worth 8 assasinate as is any character you divine intervention.

vahl and warsuits is 4 assasinate and 8 bring it down or if you devine intervention 8 assasinate and 10 bring it down.

U02dah4 wrote:
Not impossible but given the number of shooty lists your makeing it hard for yourself.

If you have one kill mission the opponent has to devote some resource to action or board control if they want fixed. If you have two they only need to shoot you off the table which plays nicely to eldar, tau, ik, ck, sm lists as they can effectively ignore secondary and just try and wipe you.

I get its difficult celestine is potentially worth 8 assasinate as is any character you divine intervention.

vahl and warsuits is 4 assasinate and 8 bring it down or if you devine intervention 8 assasinate and 10 bring it down.

All of which has been determined to be mostly irrelevant by every top placing Sisters list we've seen so far.

Truly, our non-jump infantry is so bad that most competitive players participating in tournament post points drop have decided that giving 40 relatively easy secondary points is worth not being forced to run battle sisters, more than 1 unit of sacresants, or novitiates.

Post point changed there really isn't the data and pre point chang the only data was that those lists were being played and conclusively not winning.

For me unless points changes get to silly levels it wont matter because half our units just don't really do anything.
Dominions got cheaper? They still have no damage output.
Retributers? Unless I can buy about 3 of them for the price of 1 that tank is still not going down...

So all I seem to be reading is a litany of complaints, pining for the past, & some wishlisting.

None of wich seems terribly helpful to running a SoB army in the present.

Do you guys have any advise?
Have you done/seen anything that worked?

Or have you just shelved your army while waiting for a random positive balance pass & someday the codex?

I find I always have at least 1 Exorcist, it is so valuable at forcing opponents to close in. Vahl and a squad of Paragon suits is auto-include, the amount of damage they do in shooting alone is bonkers! Junith giving a free CP every round means more Grenades, Tank Shock and Overwatch. More than makes up for her cost, -1 to hit to her squad makes her great to chill in the back with a split 5-sister squad to farm miracle dice and stick around.

Penitant Engines getting to advance, flame and charge is great. Haven't had much luck with Celestine and a Zephyrim squad, I think I will try Seraphim and see if that makes a difference.

Game-wise, my biggest weakness is being aggressive too early. Each time I try to charge up the board I open too much. A few little units (Daemonifuge, Penitant Engine, Seraphim) keep the opponent from honing in too hard, force them to get close and the counter-punch is good. Mass melta is pretty swingy, Immolators when ignored are pretty good damage dealers too. The bonus to wound rolls on disembarked models is pretty great, and can always jump back in and go again!

Haven't had too much luck with Repentia/Sacresants/Dominions/Retributors yet, going to see in my next game if a hospitaller/Junith/10Sacresant blob can be fun.

A game against big demons I got dumpstered, then I flipped the script on the next one (I have a feeling the deployment being longer helped me get more shooting in).

How have people found the Triumph? I was playing some narrative games so I haven't used it quite yet.

I haven't had enough playtesting yet but this is the current list I'm focussing on for a GT

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/811616.page#11592540

I agree we can't win by out shooting Armour therefore I feel the focus needs to be on flooding the mid board and controlling objectives and and passive scoring through clense/Deploy teleport Homers and part of that means preventing your opponent maxing there secondary's. The positive news is that with IK out the meta all Armour match ups should be slightly less frequent.

And to the early comment pt reductions can make all the difference to this strategy the more models I have the harder it is for my opponent to wipe me. I'm trying to wipe my opponent i'm only trying to survive long enough. If I can only survive till T2 my opponent has won by a mile T3 its a small loss T4 A small win and T5 a big win.

So sisters won it all in Tampa, eh?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/19/warhammer-40000-metawatch-sisters-of-battle-triumph-in-tampa/

Looks like a really wacky list. Armor heavy.

 deviantduck wrote:
So sisters won it all in Tampa, eh?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/19/warhammer-40000-metawatch-sisters-of-battle-triumph-in-tampa/

Looks like a really wacky list. Armor heavy.

Spoiler:

So, all of the Sisters lists that are doing well on paper are wacky. In response, I played a game today with one of the more experienced players in my area rocking Custodes (Which I was blind on), using a sort of hodge podge of what I'd seen in the other lists.

I had Junith+Imagifier+Melta BSS squad, Murder Palatine+Melta BSS squad, Immo with Split BSS squad, Celestine+Seraphim, Morvenn+Paragons, 10 Arcos in a Rhino, 2 Individual Morties, Rets in an Immo, Castigator, Exorcist.

He had a pretty standard Custodes list with 2 of the forgeworld tanks.

I ended up winning on points, but also shaving him down to just the two tanks left. Sites of Power, GW terrain layout 4, Hammer and Anvil.

Finer Points:

Morvenn and the Paragons: If used very carefully, punch absurdly above their weight. I never even charged with them and I was mulching through things. For 325pts they do an unbelievable amount of work. That said, I got was able to avoid letting them take damage for most of the game. They're still fragile so you need to know basically your first 3 movement phases with them on deployment.

Jun+Imagifier+Melta BSS. I 100% admit I was sleeping on battle sisters. The OC, extra miracle dice, and decent midrange damage output are way better than they look on paper. This unit wasn't particularly successful this game, but that was down to my poor movement, not the unit itself.

Palatine+Blade+Melta BSS. I massively underrated the palatine with blade. I wish she had 4 wounds so you could plasma her on purpose, but alas...anyway, her sword with the Blade of Saint Ellynor does decent damage on its own, combine that with rapturous blows and she was single handedly threatening (weakened) custodes units. I rolled REALLY poorly with her, too. If I had a little more luck, she would have been a monster.

Love immos at 115. I just wish I could combat squad 2 BSS units and still fit rets into them. The one with the BSS gave me backline objective holders, 5 victory points at the beginning of the game, and extra miracle dice every turn. I would probably take that combo every game.

Rets in an Immo. I fethed up their disembark and didn't get the rerolls and they still did good work. Not my favorite unit, but the only other thing that does what they do is Morvenn.

Arcos...hilarious. That FNP is so obnoxious. Ate TWENTY 2 damage attacks and had 2 live because they're so frustrating to get rid of. Damage was useless against Custodes, but I still loved having them on the board.

Morties were great for cleaning up assassins and other light backfield problems.

Celestine and Seraphim were good for objective control on the backline. I didn't use them the best I could have. Want more practice with them.

Castigator was nice for some longer range damage projection.

Exorcist is awesome.

What was most interesting for me was how much it played out like the battle of Cannae. He dove into the center of my lines, the center held, then I was able to killbox toward the middle. I was pushed into my own deployment zone for the first 2.5 turns, but had the tools to break his lines.

It feels like it shouldn't work, but it worked pretty well.

Well had my first sisters tourney of 8th at the weekend came 8th overall losing 2 games.

I played Cleanse and deploy teleport homers every round except vs CK when I swapped cleanse for bring it down. The main strategy was to flood the central objectives with bodies. The triumph and demonifuge were both awesome. I always held the two arcoflagellant squads in reserve along side one seraphim squad and demonifuge.

One game was lost to the purge (I scored 62 and lost on primary as he got kill more every turn) the other loss was to death guard on search and destroy the DG player went 1st and got on to the centre objective and by spamming -1to hit and WS/BS managed to hold it to win on primary (76 wasn't quite enough but it was a really close game). I absolutely massacred Chaos knights armiger spam (97-26) who just could not take any of the middle objectives with two comfortable wins vs marines (98 and hoard nids (96) who were just out tanked)

List was
Demonifuge
3 Imagifiers
3 Hospitallers
Celestine
Missionary (with shotgun)
Triumph of Saint Katherine

6 Battle sisters (Melta)

3 Novitiates (Flamer/CC)

3 Seraphim (5) (Flamer)

2 Arcoflagellants (10)

1 zephyrim (5)

1 Crusader (2)

Overall Celestine and the zephyrim didn't do anything that a 3rd arcoflagelant squad couldn't have done. So I will make that change that frees enough pts to swap the crusaders for Junith as the back line objective holder to give me CP for the grenade strat and the ability to come back from the dead and hold an objective one more turn vs inceptor type DS shooters, This leaves 10 pts for saintly example on the missionary as he was always one of the first characters to die.

Asside from that the only significant things were that at the start of the event I was using the old version of teleport homers by mistake and in one game I brought back the wrong character preventing me from teleport homering had I not made those mistakes I it would have placed me 7th on tiebreakers instead of 8th.

Overall really happy with the list and it was fun to play and I like that it shows you can do well despite not taking any of the vehicles

I wanted to come in and share my experiences with sisters here. I have played the following list 4 times now and won all 4 games. I played vs guard, world eaters, tyranids, and necrons.



I put the melta gun dominions into the immolators and leave the bolter girls as separate units. This gives the immolators scout 6" beginning of game (useful) and if I go first (which I have twice) they are able to really get up close, drop the meltas off, then thanks to the immolator ability for rerolling wound rolls those melta will do some serious work. Wounding on 5's sucks, wounding on 5's with full reroll.... thats money.

The castigators i alway take autocannons. Again thanks to twin linked i would rather have str 9 and normally 8 shots (i play them for the mid field) over the battle cannon. The chip damage these things can do adds up quick and obviously it also removes enemy infantry very quickly.

Exorcist hang back in own deployment zone. Small 5 man sister squads move around them for screening purposes. Crusaders hang out in my back corners for again screening and investigate signals if that comes up.

Finally Celestine and her girls deep strike when a target of opportunity appears or if my opponent is pushing through and one of my flanks need support.

I think sisters are fine at the moment, I think the issue is gw made the cc sister units much harder to get value from in an edition change that completely changed how we were running sisters. 9th edition we were using a lot of melee tricks to get the job done. 10th edition we need to go back to shooting and the melee stuff just isn't quite as good.

Yeah the only melee stuff that seems to be working (aside from action monkey Crusader/DCA units) is big bricks of Arco-Flagellants. Repentia, Sacresants, and to a certain extent Zephyrim are all taking a back seat. It's made it where I can't really play competitively with my current Sisters collection, as I lack the current meta goodstuff (I have no Castigators or Immolators and only one Exorcist, but plenty of Sacresants and Repentia).

Had a tournament over the weekend. Went 2-1 but didn't score well enough to place well.

Played

Palatine
Celestine
Movenn
Triumph
Paragons
Exorcist
Castigator
BSS
BSS
BSS
Immolator
Arcos
Rhino
Seraphim
Dialogus
Mortie
Mortie
Rhino
Crusader
Crusader
Crusader
Arcos
Arcos
Preacher

Game 1: Mixed Guard with a shadowsword. Couldn't really hurt the shadowsword, killed everything else. Guard Artillery gets absolutely shredded by Exorcist fire and can't afford to shoot back for fear of making it even stronger. Won the middle, won the game.

Game 2: Guard Parking Lot, terrible matchup for me. Still might have taken it if I hadn't failed both the Palatine AND Morvenn's squad charging on turn 2. Couldn't survive the sustained fire, couldn't shred the armor fast enough.

Game 3: Custode. Incredibly close until Morvenn landed 6 Dev wounds in one round and wiped a full squad.


Good: Exorcist, Palatine, Battle Sisters, Mortifiers, Junk Truck

Meh: Castigator, Paragons, Dialogus

Bad: Triumph, surprisingly.

I need a lot more practice with the army. I straight up didn't use my combis or Cherubs, didn't use my strats very often, didn't use the mission deck well, didn't really know the primaries, forgot twin linked on a BUNCH of guns. Wasn't great, but the army still played REALLY well. I want to try it again soon.

I MIGHT drop the Triumph and the Preacher for more anti-tank, but not sure yet. I also just might make it a Saintly Blessing missionary and attach it to one of the junk squads for 2d3+1 Miracle Dice if I save a CP for DI.

What are people equipping their Sisters Superior with? Power sword obviously, but then what gun?

Plasma pistol?
Inferno pistol?
Combi-weapon?

 ph34r wrote:
What are people equipping their Sisters Superior with? Power sword obviously, but then what gun?

Plasma pistol?
Inferno pistol?
Combi-weapon?

Condemnor boltgun exclusively for looks.