hopes, dreams, and fears for sisters in 8th

[Gen.Steiner]

Well, all I can say is that I'm looking forwards to this ruleset and using Sisters with it.

The only minor issue is going to be the Command Squad - I think I'll just run it as an MSU Celestian Squad (Superior, multi-melta, flamer, 2 bolters) and stick my Canoness in it. My army is pretty mechanised; so finding space for a Hospitaller and Dialogus is probably going to be next to impossible unless I expand and get some BSS on foot.

Otherwise at the moment it's looking like:

HQ1: Living Saint
HQ2: Canoness
E1: Imagifer
E2: Imagifer
E3: 5 strong Celestians with MM and flamer
E4: 10 strong Celestians with HF, flamer, combi-flamer
E5: Repentia Superior
E6: 9 strong Repentia
T1: 10 strong BSS with 2 meltas, combi-melta
T2: 10 strong BSS with 2 storm bolters, storm bolter
FA1: 5 strong Seraphim with hand flamers (going to try to bump this up to 10)
FA2: 5 strong Dominons with meltas and combi-melta
HS1: Exorcist
HS2: 5 strong Retributors with heavy bolters, bolter
Transports:
Immolator with heavy flamers (for Canoness and MSU Celestians)
Immolator with mutli-meltas (for Dominions)
Immolator with heavy bolters (for Retributors)
4 Rhinos (for Celestians, BSSs, and Repentia)
 

Lots of Elites. Not sure what detachment(s) to use as yet. I want to add more Seraphim; at least another 5 but ideally another 14 so I can give my second Seraphim Superior a unit to lead!

[Commander Dawnstar]

Right now that's looking pretty much perfect for a Vanguard Detachment, at least until you add more Seraphim. If you were to add another unit of Troops you could field it in a Battalion Detachment (extra Seraphim included) and claim another two Command Points.

[Servant of Dante]

Looks like i need to try some list building :D

[Commander Dawnstar]

So here's a rules question:

 

The Act of Faith from the Acts of Faith army ability, the Imagifier's Simulcrum Imperialis ability and Celestine's Saintly Blessings ability all activate at the start of the turn. Do you have to declare all of their targets simultaneously or is each rule resolved individually?

 

Edit: Actually do you just roll the relevant die for the army rule and Imagifiers and then choose who uses Acts based on the results?

[Servant of Dante]

Well, they all say "at the beginning of the turn" so shouldn't you get to pick the order in which to resolve them?

 

I think I would pick 1 to resolve, resolve it entirely, then move on to the next one. But I may be superimposing the way rules work in other games onto 40K :P (so if you have Celestine and 1 Simulacrum, you choose one of your 3 AoF chances, roll for it (if applicable) then if sucessful, choose a unit and do the AoF, and only then pick another AoF to roll for. I believe this is consistent with how IG orders worked in 7th.)

[Atrus]

Id say roll each one first just to speed things up. Eg: rolling the 2+ it works, rolling these two imagifiers, that one pass that one fail. Okay, the 2+ I'll use on this squad they're gonna double tap *resolve* the imagifier one I'll use on the squad on the left by it they're gonna heal *resolve*

 

Or something along those lines. Short version roll to determine how many points you got to work with.

I suppose you could roll and resolve each one individually as you go but I don't see too much difference myself.

[Servant of Dante]

There is a rules difference. Rolling for all of them first gives you more information to work with. As a player, I'd prefer to roll for all of them first, since it lets you make more informed decisions, but I'm not sure on the RAW on this one (and I'm not sure how much I care, to be honest).

[Daimhin]

So here's a rules question:

 

The Act of Faith from the Acts of Faith army ability, the Imagifier's Simulcrum Imperialis ability and Celestine's Saintly Blessings ability all activate at the start of the turn. Do you have to declare all of their targets simultaneously or is each rule resolved individually?

 

Edit: Actually do you just roll the relevant die for the army rule and Imagifiers and then choose who uses Acts based on the results?

 

I'm going to wait until I have the books in my hand to make a call on this one.

[Noeh]

The book doesn't clarify at all. I looked at it yesterday. As far as I'm going to play it..I'm just going to roll for them all, then dish them out, declare what all is going to happen, and then perform all of them in a row. Just because I feel like all the actions there are happening at the same time. So blowing up a raider THEN shooting the people that get out doesn't make sense to me.

[Commander Dawnstar]

As I edited in, I think I actually got this one totally wrong. It's very clear that the Imagifier's rule has you roll the 4+ before you have to declare a target unit or Act, and while the wording is a little bit different it seems very likely that the Acts of Faith army ability works in the same way. You could argue that there's a bit of ambiguity with Celestine - does she have to declare before the others as there's no dice roll? - but Imagifiers and the army rule seem to come down to rolling the relevant number of dice together and then declaring targets and Acts based on those results.

[Daimhin]

Reading the leaks it seem to me to be:

 

Roll --> perform act

Roll --> perform act

Roll --> perform act

 

Rather than: 

 

Roll, roll, roll, perform act, perform act, perform act.

 

The reason I read it as this is the (successful) roll then says "immediately perform act". If you then roll for another Imagifier before resolving then you are not "immediately" performing the act. 

 

All Act rolls (and Celestine's auto) state "at the beginning of the turn". Usually in GW games if you have multiple things that all say "at the beginning of the turn" then the person who's turn it is choses what order they resolve them in. I would assume that rule holds, but I haven't read the full rulebook.

[Noeh]

In the rulebook, the individual entries about giving acts of faith for the different units are all you get. There's nowhere that explains it more than that. Games Workshop is absolutely terrible at wording a lot of the time and never explain further.

[Servant of Dante]

Reading the leaks it seem to me to be:

 

Roll --> perform act

Roll --> perform act

Roll --> perform act

 

Rather than: 

 

Roll, roll, roll, perform act, perform act, perform act.

 

The reason I read it as this is the (successful) roll then says "immediately perform act". If you then roll for another Imagifier before resolving then you are not "immediately" performing the act. 

 

All Act rolls (and Celestine's auto) state "at the beginning of the turn". Usually in GW games if you have multiple things that all say "at the beginning of the turn" then the person who's turn it is choses what order they resolve them in. I would assume that rule holds, but I haven't read the full rulebook.

This is essentially how I was thinking about it. It follows the literal verbiage of the rules, as far as I can tell.

[Commander Dawnstar]

This is probably just me overthinking things and managing to complicate something that's actually pretty straightforward. Sorry, guys.

[Noeh]

I still stick to the "everything is happening at once" for each phase rule. It's supposed to be a fluid battle. So rolling and performing them one at a time makes no sense to me. Plus the thought of "BOOM FOUR UNITS OF FAITH!" feels more sisters-fluffy to me. Plus one at a time would let you do silly things like kill a transport with one unit, shoot that bailed out with the next, then kill a character that they were guarding with another...and that just gives me flashbacks to all the times my repressor was 1 shotted turn 1 before I could move.

Side note and off topic, I just realized I can actually now bring a whole squad of distraction wolves at no penalty...I can be thematic again without having to take a bunch of units I don't want. Plus Fenrisian Wolves actually seem really useful now. Celestine charges in to distract a couple squads, but now I can have cheap wolves do the same to keep fire from my girls while they get close.

[Servant of Dante]

I still stick to the "everything is happening at once" for each phase rule. It's supposed to be a fluid battle. So rolling and performing them one at a time makes no sense to me. Plus the thought of "BOOM FOUR UNITS OF FAITH!" feels more sisters-fluffy to me. Plus one at a time would let you do silly things like kill a transport with one unit, shoot that bailed out with the next, then kill a character that they were guarding with another...and that just gives me flashbacks to all the times my repressor was 1 shotted turn 1 before I could move.

The only issue is, that's not how the rules are worded, that would be like shooting the boltguns in one unit, then the turret on an immolator, then going back and firing the first unit's meltagun, at least in my mind.

 

To be fair, the wording is kinda ambigulous, but it does say immediately and there's absolutely nothing that lets you resolve the actions simultaneously. Everything in this game happens one after another. You shoot a transport to death, and another squad can shoot the people that were inside. Same with AoFs, the way I see it.

[Noeh]

I don't disagree on that. The rules seem to point towards doing the actions right away. It just doesn't make any sense in my head. I played a lot of DnD and the battles, while they could last for 30 minutes or more game wise, would only really be like 5 minutes. Every round being several seconds. That's how I view a battle in 40k.
To me, if you shoot a transport to death then shoot the guys inside, it sounds like your army literally stood there and waited for the transport to explode then were taking a smoke break until the people inside walked out. Rounds the way I see them would have all the girls trying to win the battle rather than waiting around constantly.

If that makes any sense to people. I do get that rules =/= fluff, it's just a personal bugbear.

[Servant of Dante]

shooting the people that were in a transport has nothing to do with fluff, and everything to do with abstraction. Game turns are a lot more than 5 seconds. Your movement is 6" because the people are taking a couple steps, checking their flanks, looking behind them, then moving up to the next bump they can hypothetically hide behind along their movement path (at least that's how the 3E book describes it). It's not like all the shooting in a turn happens exactly at once.

 

Of course, the "shooting people who where in a transport" is a bit gamey, but shooting at the beginning of the turn using an AoF even more gamey timing. Not to mention the back and forth method of having units fight in close combat "they hit us first because my other squad over their attacked"

[Noeh]

Oh I know. Like I said, it's just how it all plays out in my head and is probably due to DnD mechanics. I like to see the battle as one big fluid thing of shooting and stabbing.

[sedibear]

At a charity game-a-thon right now and one of the guys enough in all the leaked rules so he and I just sat down and had a quick game. He only had a handful of models so we did a 280 pt game of us and 2 troop (Though I took an imagifiers cuz).

He had space marines.

Captain with combi grav and relic blade; 2x 5 man tac squads 1 with missile launcher 1 with plasma gun.

I had coanoness with inferno pistol and eviscerator; 2x 7 girl sister squads 1 with heavy flamer 1 with meltagun; and imagifier.

 

We played on a crazy infinity table so lots of terrain.

 

Just did a plain kill each other game just to learn. It was fun. Once the rules are memorized, this game is going to go really smooth.

The heavy flamer is amazing, lowering that marine save makes a big difference. Command Points are handy, he used one to refill an inbo save that saved his captain from melta death.

He locked me in close combat most the time so it was an uphill struggle. It was nifty to use faith to get extra pistol shots in, but good armour makes things rough for them.

 

Faith. Holy crap. Amazeballs. The movement one was a big favourite on for me as with all the terrain it let mobility be very tactical. I never got into a position to utilise the double tap as he charged me before I could do it. But that movement, dang, end of movement phase first turn I was pretty much in his deployment zone (rolled crazy good for advance).

 

Imagifier...yeah....5 turns.....2 activations....wasn't happy with that. That said, seeing these AoF in action. They're bloody good. As much as I'd like to see a better than 50% chance of them going off. When they do, they are a big advantage.

 

Overall I'm happy. Looking forward to doing more optimised lists in larger games.

 

And to finish off. Canonness took down the captain in combat. Go girl.

 

I suspected as much about the AoFs. Thanks for the report! I believe I'll be able to play over the weekend, too, I'll report my findings as well.

[taikishi]

Don't forget, if you take Immolators, that the Immolation Flamer is assault 2d6 so you can advance with the Immolator, torch something up to 12" away, then next turn disembark the squad inside and do whatever you need to with both the squad and the immo.

 

Return of the Easy Bake Oven?

[Aqui]

Don't forget, if you take Immolators, that the Immolation Flamer is assault 2d6 so you can advance with the Immolator, torch something up to 12" away, then next turn disembark the squad inside and do whatever you need to with both the squad and the immo.

 

Return of the Easy Bake Oven?

Sounds more like a Heretic Barbeque to be honest, but I like the sound of it in any case! :lol:

[Drider]

24+d6 inch threat range with 2d6 s5 ap-1 auto hits. it's certainly nice on paper. Remember though that disembarks happen before the transport moves. So with assault weapons say melta guns, you're looking at the squad having a threat range of 21+d6 inch threat range, best case scenario.

[taikishi]

Drider -- don't forget Flamer or Melta-minions inside an Immolator. Pre-game advance 12+1d6, unload the 'minions, advance them since assault weapons can move and fire, advance the Immolator. And if you buy the idea that the Celestine/Imagifier AoF working on your Immolators (I don't but moot RAW), if they're in range after vanguarding you can:

 

Vanguard the Immo 12+1d6

Use the appropriate AoF to move it again 12+1d6

Dump your payload before the movement phase begins if in range of stuff

Move the immolator during the movement phase for 12+1d6

Advance your Dominions 6+1d6

Torch some tasty heretics

 

It's combo-womboy, but if it works that's a 48+3d6" threat range and a 36-42+1d6" threat range on turn one with a unit we've always considered a bit of a suicide squad in 7th.

[Drider]

Are you sure you can advance in a vanguard move and Hand of the Emperor? I know the AoF doesn't exclude it but it just seems a little... broken.