Advice requested

[Joukernaut]

Hello fellow sisters players.

 

In 2020 I started to collect a sisters army after getting a significant amount of old models from a friend. At the moment I have 1700 points painted and am growing ever more fond of the sisters and their ecclesiarchal friends.

But I ran into a problem on most of my games. Good to note that I play casual nearly all of my games.

I've played my best friends deathguard a couple of games and completely thrashed him every single time. I play my custom order as bloody rose because I lwanted something completely different from my other armies and I love the idea of a sea of sisters sprinting forward to zealously engage the enemy in close combat. The bloody rose Repentia are just too much for my friend to handle. He has no way to  interact with them and they completely wipe a unit of 10 plague marines on the charge. If hey opponent is not having fun, I'm not having fun, so I decided to work on my list to tone it down to have a more balanced game. I have got a couple ideas and I'd like some feedback on my ideas and would like to hear other ideas if you have them.

My first idea is to play a different order and just keep the repentias in the list, but unsupported by a priest. That way I can still play them, but if not bloody rose they will not nearly wreck as much face as they would otherwise. My eye fell on the sacred rose as I really like the miracle dice mechanic. This brings me to one of my questions about this order. Would it be beter to bring big lady squads for the enhanced overwatch and the exploding sixes mechanic, or would min squads with a multimelta and simulacrum be better to exploit having a lot of miracle dice to work with.

The other idea I have to fix balance is to reduce the number of Repentia in a squad and field three min squads. That way I can put all of them in reserve and use them as scalpels to pick on weaker units and kill them off. if rolling perfect with full support they could kill a maximum of 8 plague marines, so it would probably be a lot less frustrating for my friend. This would allow me to continue play my custom order with my favorite ruleset.

So, what do you guys think about my ideas and do you have any other ideas? All advice is welcome, thanks in advance.

 

*For reference I included the units that make up my painted army*

HQ

1 canoness

1 Missionary

TROOPS

2 15 woman holy trinity battle sisters squads Multimelta/flamer

8 Repentia and 9 reprentia

ELITES

1 5 woman zephyrim squad

1 dialogus

1 gemini superia

1 imagifier

FAST

1 5 woman delta dominion squad

1 5 woman delta seraphim squad

HEAVY

3 penitent engines

1 5 woman multimelta squad

EXTRA

1 rhino

1 10 man arco flagellant squad

 

 

 

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I'm far from an expert on sisters but I think your ideal of splitting the Repentia into smaller squads should be a good starting point. With smaller squads overwatch becomes more effective, its harder to fully buff them, and if they're coming out of reserves he can avoid the edges of the table.

 

As far as big sister squads, I've been working on a Our Martyred Lady force, who really benefit from bigger squads in general. I've found the big squads of battle sisters to be worse, even with the order bonus. That said I think it's cool having the bigger squads and it sounds like your looking to tone down your list so it is an option.

[Joukernaut]

Thanks for the advice! I do like big squads, so if you think they perform worse it might be a good option for me to tone the list down. I didn't really think of toning the list down on the battle sister squads since the Repentia have been doing the heavy lifting, but I suppose it's a very good option to bring the rest of the list down as well. Luckily I have an extra box of battle sisters coming. I was planning on doing a squad of celestials, but now I think I might make 3 sister squads of 15. It will take up a lot of points, looks cool and will hold me objectives. Until they are built and painted I'll try the middle of the road with squads of 10.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

Big sisters squad aren't horrible it's just small squads are better for completing actions, and with more squads you can spread out contest/claim more objectives. The bigger squads will be harder shift though and you have several units for actions so it may work better than I expect. I'm still pretty new to the fraction.

[march10k]

Um... bloody rose repentia isn't "casual."  It's brutally WAAC.  The rest of your list is pretty casual, though.  I think playing as an order other than bloody rose might take enough bite out of the repentia to solve your "friend not having fun" problem?

[Joukernaut]

I'm aware bloody rose repentia are great for their points. I wouldn't ever call a unit WAAC tbh. I think WAAC refers to the attitude someone plays their army. That said I hope you are right about changing orders. It would be good if I can play them without destroying my friend's fun in playing my army. Then again I do like what bloody rode does for the "casual part of my army". I guess I'll just have to try a different order to see what happens to the repentia and to the rest of my army.

 

And since yesterday I have a lot of other CC options coming my way to maybe tune the list to a level that is very playable. I already started by priming my entire backlog and painting some tanks. Hopefully that will give me some other fun options in list building as well.