As I write this it's a little under a week before The Great Unwashed (that's me, and probably the majority of you lot) get their grubby little mitts on the new Sisters of Battle set- and more importantly for the purposes of this piece, the Codex that comes with it. I'm not going to go into detail about all the various cool stuff in there since I don't have the book yet and will almost certainly get things wrong. If you really want to know all there is to know right now, or more accurately in about an hour's time, Guerrilla Miniature Games did a very detailed breakdown video that I'll link here:
...and welcome back. With all that out of the way, I'd like to talk about the good stuff, the bad stuff and the plain ugly stuff that's in the new book as I see it so far. Fortunately, I think the first bit will be the biggest.
The Good (now with extra mild rules-lawyering in italics)
Firstly, I think the way that GW have changed the core mechanics of the book is absolutely great. I mean really, really great. To paraphrase if you've not learned how the new Sisters work yet and didn't make it through that GMG video, which I appreciate is long, the new Act of Faith system revolves around Miracle Dice. You gain at least one per Battle Round (and usually more than one), roll it when you get it, and then keep it. The dice can then be used for most of the more common rolls in the game instead of (and, importantly, before) rolling the dice for it. So for example, to take one of my favourites right now, say a Knight Valiant takes violent offence at your Exorcist (as well it should, and we'll get to that) and blats it with its 10+d3 damage kebab-skewer of doom. All that stands between your organ (stop that sniggering at the back, Wilson) and annihilation is its 6++ save. However, if you have a 6 in your Miracle dice pool, you can spend it on the save to survive.
There are multiple reasons why this mechanic is really cool. It allows Sisters to do things that should be staggeringly unlikely with complete confidence- exactly what warriors motivated by absolute faith should be doing. Other examples might include landing a hit with a vehicle that is so damaged or affected by other modifiers that it needs a 6, auto-passing a critical Morale check with a 1, nailing a critical Advance to grab an objective, and more besides. What's possibly even more interesting, though, is the threat of a Miracle. For example, players will often throw lone Characters or transports into combat with a shooting unit to stop it firing next turn and/or murder it utterly. However, if that unit is packing a meltagun or multi-melta and there's a 6 sitting in the Sisters' Miracle pool, such an assault suddenly looks a hell of a lot more dangerous to attempt. I'd expect Sisters players to comment at appropriate times about all the things they could possibly do with an Act of Faith for the sheer deterrent value of it. Knowing that a D6 damage roll might get spiked to a 6 is very intimidating.
Things get even meaner when we look at the new, improved Exorcist, which is one of the most improved units in the book and a great showcase for advanced Miracle Dice use. The main change for the Exorcist is that its missiles are now Heavy 3d3 rather than Heavy D6, so the old average of 3 is now the minimum, the old maximum is the new average, and the new maximum is a terrifying 9. Each of these S8, Ap-3 missiles does D6 damage into the bargain. Now, as well as being very scary, this throws up an interesting situation and a possible head-scratcher of a rules question. Let's say I have several Miracle dice in my pool, and for the sake of argument that I have all the numbers 1-6 available. I get several wounding hits on a multi-wound model and it fails some saves- for the sake of this illustration lets say I get three wounding hits through and the target model has 8 wounds left.
Here's the interesting bit- the Damage rolls, which most players would usually roll together, actually take place one at a time. So I can roll the first 2D6 and see how much damage I inflict, then use whatever value is necessary from my Miracle dice pool on the last D6 roll to ensure that the target dies. In our example, if I utterly flub my first two rolls and score 2 damage, I can still get the kill by making the last roll a 6, whereas if I roll an average 7 I get to keep my dice since even a 1 on the last roll will secure the kill.
Now, the reason why I say there's a potential rules issue here is that strictly speaking, each attack should be resolved separately from start to finish, so each should roll to hit, then to wound, then to save, and then for damage before the next is resolved. If we're doing things this way, then I can't be sure which hit is the last one to score damage so I'm more likely to 'waste' a high number by using it as soon as it'll secure the kill. This is a very fringe rules question but I fully expect it to come up in the tournament scene.
There's still a lot more good stuff in the book even after Acts of Faith. The Sacred Rites, of which you can pick one or roll two (unless you roll a double) are very versatile, and of particular note is the one that adds 3 to the Sister's 1d6 Deny The Witch roll, making it suddenly far more capable of defending them. Whatever your army is trying to do, there's a Rite that will help at least a bit. There are also a ton of very useful and versatile Stratagems in there, including several that work with Miracle dice- a couple of standouts being Moment of Grace, which lets you burn Miracle dice to gain +1 per dice to a roll you've failed, and Miraculous Intervention which resurrects a Character at the end of the phase with wounds equal to the number of Miracle dice burned. These both build into the feel of the book, which is that an opponent can never be truly certain what's going to happen- even the most heavily outmatched Character might survive, the most incredibly improbable charge ever might be made, etc etc- and whether or not these things happen is under the control of the Sisters player.
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| Flags of our Sisters |
Finally, for reasons of brevity rather than because I've run out of stuff to talk about, there are the Order Traits. All of them are useful to varying degrees, but I'm personally particularly pleased that the Order of the Valorous Heart, who previously got merely a miserly 6+ wound-ignore save, now ignore AP -1 on shooting attacks, or AP -2 when under the effects of an Imagifier's 6" bubble. Anyone who's recently put infantry on a table against Marines knows why this is extremely welcome!
The Bad
So of course it's not all good news. The most glaring issue I have with the book is the fact that Dominions no longer confer their Vanguard pre-battle move to a transport they're embarked in. One one level this is understandable since it could be abused (eg by loading a Rhino with five Dominions and five Retributors with Heavy Flamers) but on the other it makes the ability far less likely to get used. There's also a very significant nerf to Shield of Faith in that the various auras that boost it now cannot affect vehicles, meaning the days of the 4++ Exorcist are over. Being able to do this was very, very powerful so whilst the loss is saddening, I think its understandable- and there are still ways to use Acts of Faith to mitigate at least some of the incoming damage.
There's also the fact that the <ORDER> keyword, which is neeeded to make a lot of abilities work, isn't universal through the Codex. Most importantly, the Hospitalier and Dialogus don't get it, meaning that Celestians (who need the <ORDER> keyword for their Bodyguard ability) can't protect them effectively from snipers. Given that both models are quite squishy and have some really useful abilities, they're going to spend a lot of time trying to hide behind things to at least force Eliminators to fire the less powerful version of their murder-bullets.
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| Help! Help! I'm being repressed! |
The Ugly
Ok, tin hats on, because here comes the proper grousing. The most notable and infuriating omission from the new book is once again the bloody Repressor. With its extra durability and ability to have passengers fire out of it*, the Repressor is/was a really useful tool in the Sisters armoury but has only ever been a Forge World model. The Exorcist started out the same way (though with a tube-shaped twin launcher rather than a massive organ**) but eventually made it to the mainstream, but the Repressor seems to have failed to do the same. It's always possible Forge World will update its rules- and as it stands, I think the model is still playable- but with Legends on the horizon its days seem distinctly numbered.
But that's not the most gear-grinding thing about the new Sisters range for me. Oh, not at all. No, that's reserved for this damn thing:
That, kids, is a Heavy Bolter. It's stuck to the hull of the new Immolator model (and the new Exorcist) like some sort of nasty little pimple. Let's not beat about the bush here***- this gun is on the model for the express and sole reason of making people's existing models obsolete. No, GW apologist at the back, it's not a massive buff to the tank to add a mediocre compulsory gun to it. I hate that this thing is there, and I hate that my much-loved older models are now going to have to have janky pintle-mounts or sponsons added to them to make them Codex-compliant.
There are a couple of other annoyances in this category, like the fact that any HQ sister other than a Canoness is still MIA (they're called Palatines, GW, they used to be in there!) and that the Canoness herself has lost a lot of options and still can't take a damn jump pack- I guess the Geminae were the only two Canonesses in the galaxy to have one****
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| Damn you, Cruddace! |
The Other Bit
Yeah, so sorry for the minor bout of Nerd Rage there. I'd just like to end on a positive note, because believe me I am incredibly excited to try out the new Codex. I'd also like to extend my thanks to the good folks at Wyldstorm Games for securing me my copy of the new set. Hopefully my poor ravaged body will survive carrying all those old metal Sisters around until the rest of the new plastics hit..
*not to mention hilarious and occasionally-effective dozer-blade assaults.
**I warned you once, Wilson.
***Though said bush is almost certainly on fire, so maybe we should.
****Saying that, given their profiles maybe having one also makes you incompetent. That, or being repeatedly resurrected.
