In defence of current AoF system

[Atrus]

Been thinking recently and we all know that we love our AoFs. Theyre amazing and probably the strongest and effective we've seen for a while.

Its our special thing, what makes us unique amongst all the other power armour armies that try to have us compared to (really no comparison- girls rule). What the one thing we frequently hear that we want?

Better scaling in larger games. Moar faith!

 

Mixed bag of love/hate relationships with the imagifier and its effectiveness as our only other source fir faith outside big C and martyrdom.

Theres a reason faith is so gosh darn sell your children- amazing. Its free phases.

 

Id like to look at AoF from a slightly different angle right now.

Other armies have access to free phases too. Free move/shoot/etc; however, these come at a price. What the most common price? CP.

Other armies are paying CP to do what we do naturally every single turn! What the cost of their stratagems that let them do this? 2CP? Some even 3CP but more often than not its 2CP.

 

Lets take that in mind and look at what we're getting.

Assuming a sisters army takes lady murderhobo and lets average this over a 6 turn (rare but bear with me) game, so the 2+ army faith fails once in the course of the game. Assuming lady murderhobo doesnt get killed from the game, youre looking at 11 AoF throughout the game.

That is 11 free phases. Even if other armies strats only cost 1CP, thats effectively 11 free CP for us. It is probably closer to 20 in reality. We havent got to imagifiers! 50/50 chance so again, lets say 3 times in a game in a perfect world. Theres another 3-6 free CP effect for us. Thats just with one imagifier.

In the course of a 6 turn game, maxed out faith sources (3x imagifier, Celestine and army), we're looking at the effect of 20-40CP. At zero cost to us. Even if a game lasts half as long, thats still a lot of CP.

 

Now think of it this way.

You rock up to a game and tell your opponent youve got a pool of maybe 20CP you get to spend each turn some 50/50 some very good chance and some straight up getting used. Think an opponent would let that fly?

 

Im all for Sisters being crazy OP. For opponents to groan in despair or scream in horror as a sisters army spells doom once they hit the table. After all this time Sisters deserve it.

But in this particular light; do we still cry for more AoF?

Good for thought.

[Slasher956]

Because with the exception of the army AoF they are all used within a small radius (6") of the source that generates it.   This means some times you have a unit you want to move /shoot but you cant because all your AoF generation is the otherside of the board.

 

You also have the limitation that our Vehicles cant use AoF yet all can use CP/Strats

 

Thirdly ... even with this extra sudo CP whats the Sisters win rate?  mine is about 60-70%... most of which is because people arent expecting me to shoot 3 times before the movement phase so havent calculated for it .

 

And lastly (but not least) is that a unit can only use 1 AoF a turn where as you can put strats on a unit every phase so it comes at a highter price.... moved that unit of seraphim in the movement phase but get a martyadom off in the combat phase when they are 3" away from a big monster/vehicle... cant shoot it

 

 

edit - I do however like the current system... I just wish that Imagnifiers & the saint werent such an auto include because of the AoF generation .... which is what I'd like to see when we talk about better scaling ie... 1 AoF per 500 points so in a 2K army I get 4 acts of faith... 1st unit I'd drop if that happened would be the Saint followed by on or 2 of the 3 Imagnifiers I take.

 

How many Pure Sisters army contain this: 

 

1 -2 Canoness

Saint

2 -3 Imags

3 Troops

1 or 2 Dominons

2 Exocists

[Montford]

My lists have all the components Slasher956 listed except that I run Retributors these days rather than Exocists. My win rate is the same as his (and with an Index army-- I love it!). 

 

I personally think the AoF system itself is just fine. What I would really like to see is Imagifiers getting their Act on a 3+ rather than a 4+, even if I pay more points for them . (and /or Hospitallers being able to heal as Apothacaries do)

 

Not being able to apply an AoF to the same Unit more than once per turn is a good limiting governor on the ability, because AoF is very powerful, so I'm OK with that. It would be nice (perhaps via a Strategum) to apply an AoF to a Vehicle.

 

Now seeing as we are getting a Beta Codex next month, and seeing what really cool things have been in the Codices for all the other armies this year, I think we will be very happy with what we are going to see-- at least that's what I'm hoping for, including improvements for Acts of Faith, be it via Strategum, new Characters, improvements on existing units (such as Imagifiers), or the addition of AoF to Vehicles. 

[dracpanzer]

I played against Scions last night and watched them do all kinds of things with orders I never get to do.  Each army gets there special rules.  AoF being Sisters is fine by me. 

[Beams]

AoF is sisters special ability. We don't get the insane reroll auras that spacemarines do (Reroll all failed hits for a Chapter Master, Reroll Ones to wound for Lts) nor do we get their MSU and Morale Mitigation abilities.

 

We don't get guards Order system, we don't get Scions deepstrike. We don't get power from pain, battle focus or WAAAAAGH.

 

Our armies special rule is AOF. And its pretty good, even if it only effects 1-5 units a turn.

[robofish7591]

I really like the current AoF system, I think it works pretty well until you start playing massive games.  I also expect to see a bunch of stratagems that allow you to make extra acts of faith in the beta rules, kind of like how we got martyrdom. 

[FallenSoldiers]

I mean, Ynarri getting soulburst is basically the same in terms of “free CP” and they have way more tricks than the sisters do. I agree AoF needs to scale better, maybe giving them as Detachment bonuses? I don’t think it’s OP to get maybe 3 reliable AoF per turn and then random ones from Imagifiers.

 

I played “the Castellan” list the other night and it was nice using AoF to make his Castellan have to rotate shields twice per turn if he doesn’t wanna get melta’d. They didn’t put many wounds through this way, but I was using AoFs as a “free” way to force my opponent to burn through more CP per turn.

[A.T.]

Now think of it this way.

You rock up to a game and tell your opponent youve got a pool of maybe 20CP you get to spend each turn some 50/50 some very good chance and some straight up getting used. Think an opponent would let that fly?

The particular line of thought falls down when your opponent finds that you spent 800pts for those 20CP, and that due to range restrictions there is frequently little you can do with them except shoot twice with a heavy bolter squad.

 

AoF is good though, just awkward due to being tied to imagifiers and beholden to coin flipping.

[Montford]

 

Now think of it this way.

You rock up to a game and tell your opponent youve got a pool of maybe 20CP you get to spend each turn some 50/50 some very good chance and some straight up getting used. Think an opponent would let that fly?

The particular line of thought falls down when your opponent finds that you spent 800pts for those 20CP, and that due to range restrictions there is frequently little you can do with them except shoot twice with a heavy bolter squad.

 

AoF is good though, just awkward due to being tied to imagifiers and beholden to coin flipping.

 

 

That may be, however I find it to be still very much worth it. Even getting a chance at a free volley from Heavy Bolters or Multi Meltas, or being able to move 24" in a single turn with Seraphim or Celestine is priceless.  Granted a more reliable Imagifier would be better, and I think a 3+ would not be game breaking in light of recent Codices, but much more than that would likely be overpowered IMHO. 

[Beams]

I dunno. I use Imagifiers every game and a 3+ at 40 pts would be auto include. Just being able to move twice is huge, much less shoot twice.

[CaptainMarsh]

The Sisters go into most games with a far more limited toolbox than their opponents do. Our weapons are not special and the Sisters are, model wise, solid but not exceptional. If AoF were worse the Army would have difficulties. If anything they need more effective ways of scaling AoF up to allow more uses of it.