1850 Sisters field test (apocalypse battle)

[Totally_Sweet]

Last night me and three friends tried our hand at apocalypse. It would be two teams of two @1850pts per person (3700 per team) determined randomly. Four rolls of a d20 later the teams were:

 

Team 1: Sisters of Battle (me), Tyranids

Team 2: Blood Angels, Salamanders

 

Not sure on the specifics, but:

The Tyranids had without number gaunts, deep striking broodlord+genestealers, a hive tyrant, and four carnafex (the shooty kind), among some other things.

The Blood Angels had 2 tac squads in rhinos with melta+pf, 8 jet pack DC, Dante+fully pimped out honor guard+Corbullo, a 10 man RAS, a 6 man pimped out VAS, and 4 MM bikes, might be missing something else.

The Salamanders had a MotF, 3 las+missile dreads, and (lol) 6 drop pods with 3 ironclad dreads, 2 10man tacs, and an HQ squad with librarian and like 5 power weapons.

 

So me and the Tyranids got to face off against 6 dreadnoughts+SM HQ assault squad teamed up with the Death Company copy-pasted four times (8DC, 6VAS, 10RAS, HQx2+HG all have about the same heinous killing power - and they fly).

 

My list was as follows:

Witch Hunters

8 Faith Points (:D)

 

HQ:

1x Canoness w/ Bolter, Book. (put in troop #1)

1x DH Inquisitor w/ Psycannon

3x Heavy Bolter Dudes

1x Mystic

1x Acolyte w/ Artificer Armor

 

ELITE:

1x DH Callidus Assassin

 

FAST ATTACK:

6x Dominion Sisters: 1 Vet w/ Bolt Pistol&ccw, Book. 4x Melta Sister, 1x Sister, Frag Grenades.

1x Immolator

6x Dominion Sisters: 1 Vet w/ Bolt Pistol&ccw, Book. 4x Melta Sister, 1x Sister, Frag Grenades.

1x Immolator

 

HEAVY:

2x Exorcist

 

TROOPS:

1x Vet w/ Bolter. 15x Sister.

1x Vet w/ Bolter, Book. 15x Sister.

1x Vet w/ Bolter, Book. 15x Sister.

1x Vet w/ Bolter, Book. 15x Sister.

 

My army's philosophy on Witch Hunters is:

There are a lot of flavorful units that are over-costed (Living Saint, Karamazov, Seraphim) and/or have weird downsides even though they are already weak/expensive (Arcos, Priests, Repentia, Penitent Engines). Also, a good amount of stuff suffers from 'new edition making old codex rules worse' syndrome (Death-Cult Assassins, Seraphim, WH transport costs).

However, you have a very aggressively costed girl with BS4, power armor, and rending bolters: take advantage of it! So I figured over 60 would be sweet. Big squads for auto-passing the rending miracle, and no rhinos cuz that many girls can't fit. Also, 3 wh rhinos with no upgrades is about as much as 15 sisters, another entire troop!

 

 

Not-a-complete-Battle-Report-but-Interesting-Things-That-Happened-and-How-My-List-Fared: (I might be off on some things, I didn't take notes)

 

(Our opponents went first - this is apocalypse and the number of turns we agreed on playing is TWO)

1st turn, 3 drop pods, 2 with ironclad dreads and 1 with HQ squad landed one inch from Sister Troop squad #2, surrounding it and killing all but two in the subsequent shooting phase.

All the lasgun dreads, melta bikes, both tac squads that drove up and got out, and big guns tried to kill the Hive Tryant, 'fexes, and synapse guys. The tyrant make four 6+ invul saves in a row, thus earning it the nickname "Save Tyrant" for the remainder of the game.

The Death Company, Honor Guard, RAS killed a million gaunts.

Missiles fly to my Inquisitor squad, hitting twice. One wound on Acolyte, one on Inquisitor which acolyte leaps in front of. Makes both 2+ saves.

 

(Now our 1st turn)

Immolator's drove up, Dominion Sisters got out, and proceeded to melt bikes and flame 5 tac marines to death. Save Tyrant cleaned up the rest in melee.

The 6man VAS went down to miracle-backed rending bolters from Troop1 and Heavy Bolters from the Inquisitor.

A lasgun dread in cover lost both weapons and got immobalized from a salvo of Exorcist missiles.

Sisters Troop 3 marched up to double-tap range and rending-bolter miracle'd 8 of the 10 RAS to death.

Without Number gaunts came from table edge and tied up the 2 ironclad dreads in melee.

My 2 Sisters assault 5 tac marines to tar pit them. Marines cause 2 wounds, I save. I cause 1, they save. A sissy-fight ensues.

 

(Opponent's 2nd turn)

Two drop pods with tac squads land on the two semi-out-of-the-way uncontested objectives.

Dante, Corbullo, Honor Guard, 2 RAS all multi-assault Sister troop 3 and a 'fex. They pound 12 sisters into the ground, leaving two, and fail to so much as scratch the Carnafex. We lose combat by 11, Book of St. Lucius means the 3 girls shrug and stick around. Fearless means the 'fex dies from how great fearless is in multi-assaults.

Death Company multi assaults Sister Troop 4 and a 'fex, Hay, I've seen this before. All but two girls die, they read the Book of St. Lucius and decide that running away is lame. Carnafex, being fearless, dies (fearless is awesome).

5 Deep Striking RAS punch a hole in my Exorcist B) While, nearby, the Salamandar HQ, MotF, Retinue squad breaks a bunch of genestealers over their knees.

2 Sisters vs 5 marines continues: They cause 3 wounds I save. I cause 0 wounds. The G-rated melee.

 

(Our 2nd turn - Final Game Turn)

I drive Immolator 1 to contest the drop pod objective (vehicles contest in apoc).

Callidus Assassin appears next to the 6ish remaining BA tac marines and kills them all.

Without Number gaunts came from table edge and tied up the 2 ironclad dreads in melee.

2 Sisters vs 5 marines continues: they cause 3 wounds: noo! I fail 2 saves, one on each; the girls finally die.

A pie-plate 'fex scatters a large blast on top of Dante, Corbullo, my 3 sisters, Honor Guard, 2 bikes, and 2 RAS. hits all. I lose a sister and a good amount of wounds land. Bodies fly everywhere.

2 Sisters of Battle vs Dante, Corb, Honor Guard, RAS: 14 wounds land on two sisters, 6 of which are power weapons. I pass 13 saves, having made them invul with a miracle. 1 girl dies. wow.

Genestealers deepstrike next to the other drop pod objective like my opponent and I had planned. Sweet, as it stands, we've won the game, as my Inquisitor is sitting on an objective and all 3 other ones are contested.

Genestealers assault the 10 tac marines near the drop pod cuz he feels like it. Loses combat by one and rolls double 6s on leadership, runs away, objective no longer contested, the game is a tie.

T_T

 

Thoughts on performance:

Next time I won't stand so close to fearless monstrous creatures. That was an error on our part :S (PS: fearless is great, guys)

6s to wound becoming AP1 every single shooting phase is awesome (I was never even close to running out of Faith Points).

Sisters of Battle are natural tarpits in assaults, and the invulnerable miracle just makes it sweeter.

Immolators are amazing. tl-heavy flamer that can fire after 12" should not be underestimated.

Nor should the 8 meltaguns getting out and cooking high toughness/vehicular models in short order.

3 Heavy Bolters and a Psycannon with acolyte tricks is just the kind of longer range higher strength fire that my army needs. Plus, it allows an assassin, and I'm a sucker for A Word In Your Ear and Polymorphine.

All in all I'm very happy with how things turned out and I don't know if I'd change a thing for my list next time!

 

PS: It was fun.

[jeffersonian000]

Good Batrep, a lot seemed to happen in only 2 turns. The only point that seemed odd to me was the excellent performance of the Callidus versus Marines. How did she kill a BA Tac squad in one turn? She needs 5+ to wound the Marines, 4+ to hit them in CC with another 4+ to wound, and she only gets 5 attacks from a charge including the 1 at the end of the phase if she's still alive. Seems weird that she didn't die after only killing two Marines (an average outcome).

 

SJ

[Totally_Sweet]

Thanks!

 

As for the callidus:

Her flamer took care of a few and also she hits on a 3+ due to 5 WS and wounds on a 4+ due to str 4. No saves on flamer or sword woo!

[jeffersonian000]

What I found odd was that in CC at WS5 vs WS4 she needs 4+ to hit, at S4 vs T4 she needs 4+ to wound, and she only has 5 attacks when she charges. And her Neural Shredder is S8 vs Ld, which in this case is S8 vs Ld8 which is again 4+ to wound. Given all those 4+'s, it's just hard for me to credit that she could take out 10 MEQ's in one turn.

 

On average, her template should cover 5, wound 2, then she charges 8 of them with 4 attacks, 2 should hit, 1 should wound, leaving 7 angry Blood Angels with 8+ S4 attacks hitting her on 4+, wounding on 4+. If 4 hit, 2 wound, and one gets saved, a Callidus would then get her 5th attack (Poisoned Blades) which has a 50% chance of hitting, a 50% chance of wounding, and 66.6% chance of being saved (armour saves apply as its not a power weapon attack). Even if she survives and the Marines loss two to No Retreat wounds, they should still number 6 to 1 at the end of one phase of combat.

 

I'm just say'n ...

 

SJ

[Totally_Sweet]

Callidus Assassin appears next to the 6ish remaining BA tac marines and kills them all.

 

There were 5 or 6 BA marines, not 10! haha, that'd be one for the recordbooks!

Got three with the flamer and the rest in cc. Also, WS5 vs WS4 hits on a 3+ unless I did it wrong.

 

In that same game I shot four meltaguns into tactical marines and rolled four 1s to wound so crazier things have happened.

[jeffersonian000]

That makes sense, now.

 

SJ

[The Magical Mr. Mephisto]

That tact squad the Callidus ate up had three guys left by the assault phase. The squad that piled out of the immolater pumped some MG fire into whatever there numbers were (6 I believe) before and killed, I think two. Her flamer killed 1, I think. Then she scored exactly 3 C'tan phase sword wounds with her five attacks and wiped out the remaining three. One less wound, and I'd have given her some ID chin music with a PF.

 

For the record... I wasn't running Corbulo =(, just a sanguinary priest upgrade for the HG that in the end put one more RAS back on the board (making his points back by 5 oddly enough). I can't pick too many nits with the army breakdowns as I wasn't taking notes on the game either, and could probably recall less of the SoB breakdown were I asked to.

 

The MVP in my opinion was totally the Hive Tyrant. That damn save tyrant took shots from 4/6 of the metla's in my army, and another 38 bolter shots with it... not a single wound... aarrrrgh. (Yeah, I even scored 5, necessary 6s to wound on the bolter. He made all five of those saves, but that's to be expected. In the end he took the bulk of my army's shooting, tied up a tactical marine squad, and lived to be one of the things to contest one of our objectives. I can feel comforted knowing he took a few PF shots in CC at least. Then those sister's learned from the save tyrant and made their 13 invuln saves, though that was negligible since they existed just to help destroy the 'fex marching a little too close to them.

 

It was my first apoc battle too, and had a difficult time setting up and the whole "you go to time limit" thing is always uncool to me. There's no way of telling who would have won if it had went to 6 turns. Overall it was great fun, though, it should've been a loss for my team. I can't fault our tyranid playing friend for attacking a squad he should've easily crushed at the end there. I'd have done the same if it were my DC outflanking their way into existence. In the end it was the tyranid player's ability to roll sixes that tied the game. Sixes on 4, 6+ invuln saves and double 6's on a moral save for genestealers. (Hey, I forgive 'em... they were just trying to show the Hive tyrant they could roll 6's too.)

[Melissia]

Woah, that is one awesome hive tyrant right there.

[The Magical Mr. Mephisto]

Our Tyranid friend has some interesting luck to say the least.

[Justicar Valius]

ahh if ur a sucker for word in your ear you should try the apocylpse formation with 2-6 callidus assasins in which you get 2 move 1 thing per assasin or 6" per assasin. Also you get to pick the facing of the units. I will demonstrate its amazingness with a story:

 

2 callidus turn chaos baneblade and stompa around so rear armour shows. Baneblade gets blown up by landraiders and stompa blows up courtesy of vindicator line breaker squadron and takes out half a green tide. Me and teammates laugh. We destroy almost half of their stuff in the first turn. Owned because they made mistakes because they panicked about their super heavies.

[WarriorFish]

You don't get to choose the facing of the unit, your opponent does. It says this quite clearly in the rules for "A word in your ear".

[Inquisitor Fox]

You don't get to choose the facing of the unit, your opponent does. It says this quite clearly in the rules for "A word in your ear".

He's referring to the Apocalypse formation which has an enhanced version due to the special rules of having multiple assassins. This formation is available on GW's website for free download and use. Check it out, quite nifty!

[WarriorFish]

You know, I knew Apocalypse was pretty crazy but I didn't realise it was THAT crazy. Terrifying indeed!