Monday, March 30, 2009

Played a few games of Warhammer Fantasy warbands today with a new dwarf player. He is just starting out, and it was good to demo some of the rules and make situations where he would get introduced to different things. Another young kid sat and watched us play and I fielded his questions too. They both seemed to enjoy themselves, and that's always great. As an added bonus the young bystander was so taken by my little demos that he has completely changed his mind about GW games (a former Privateer Press snob, those guys are worse than Apple!) and will be starting up a Wood Elf army.

Not much to show on the rhino, as I played instead of painting today.

My list for the tournament will most likely be my normal list for 1000 point Sisters of Battle.

Cannoness
Jump Pack, Cloak of St. Aspira, Blessed Weapon, Plasma Pistol

10 Battle Sisters
Veteran Superior, Plasma Pistol, Flamer, Heavy Flamer
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

10 Battle Sisters
Veteran Superior, Plasma Pistol, Flamer, Heavy Flamer
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

5 Seraphim
Veteran Superior, Plasma Pistol, Evicerator, 2 Twin Flame Pistols

6 Retributors
4 Heavy Bolters

Exorcist
Extra Armor

I think 5 Faith should be plenty. The games will indeed be played on a 4x4 board, which is weird. I think my flame weapons combined with rhinos at that short distance will make quick work of any troop I come across (they usually do).

For those who actually play SoBs you will notice a distinct lack of Celestians or Books of St. Lucius. I hate them. There, I said it. I consider both of those things the two worst things in the entire Codex. Now granted Repentia (and other options) suck something fierce, but it is obvious. Celestians and those Books on the other hand are sneaky points wasters, hence my dislike. They plague new lists like, well, the plague. I speak out against them wherever I can like a crusader....sorry got carried away for a second, but hopefully you now understand the depth of my loathing.

I will start out with the one main reason that they both fall under.

What type of army are you playing? Sisters of Battle are a shooty force. Granted they shoot people from right in front of their face, but they still shoot. At no point should your sisters ever ever EVER be in assault. The only exception to this is Seraphim, and then only when the time is right, as they are still better at shooting than assault.

What do Celestains do better than normal Sisters? They hit on 3+ in close combat. Where should your sisters not be? You guessed it, in close combat. Hitting on 3s doesn't matter when you are S3 T3 and only have 1 attack on profile. So in the end you are paying 2 extra points per model for a unit that can't score.

Books of St. Lucius are often just as useless. When 5th edition came out there was tons of hype about them in the Sisters community, and there still is. With combat now lowering your leadership for how much you lost by having stubborn 9 is pretty awesome, right? Yeah, it would be, if you wanted to be in combat in the first place. I tried them out for a tournament and took them back out the next day. This is something I see with a lot of gamers. They look at something and think "Wow, in this situation X would be awesome." They don't think to ask "How often will that come up?" All these players keep talking about how Celestians and Books will be awesome in case you get assaulted. Truth be told I almost NEVER get assaulted if I don't want to. Even in mid-level tournament play against armies like orks, even when I am blasting away at people in flamer range. In a foot slogging force (I will talk about their effectiveness in a later post) those Books might be more helpful.

5 comments:

  1. Just found out my roommate had a nice Which Hunter codex lying around so I could actually look your stuff up and see how you made your list.

    Overall I think you have a great looking armylist it's well balanced and nice set-up. good amount of flamers to burn out anything incover or large numbers of models against Horde armies.

    After readying your codex I also found this combanation:

    Immolater
    w. Heavy Bolters and Blessed ammunition: for only 70 points? now I don't want to sound like a smart ass but woulnd't that be a nice addition to this army? I know you allready have a lot of flamers and that you could probably do without it but I can't help seeing the look on a guys face when your role up with 2 of those puppies and start blasting away at his 4+ armour save guys hiding in a 3+ building. would be great agiant armies like Eldar, IG, tyranids and orks.

    But I guess Bang for Buck the retributors will serve you better in the smaller games at the tournament.

    After readying the armoury entries of celestiens and the book of St. Lucius aI totally agree that for a sister army those to things seem utterly useless in the mechanised world of 5th edition.

    When is that tournament by the way?

    Cheers CJ

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  2. The tourney is on April 25th.

    The Immolator is another one of those sneaky points wasters. With its very low armor and only 3 shots it gets killed easily and doesn't kill a whole lot. Some people use them as transports, I used to do this myself for my old Dominion squad(which I don't use anymore because of 5th making them sub-par compared to normal Sisters). I found out, however, that the extra points you pay aren't worth it. The 4 sisters you lose because of capacity do more damage than the gun.

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  3. I guess that makes a lot of sense. like I said I don't play the army but it was something that just drew my attention. But yeah 3 shots at 70 points isn't that great.

    How ever I was contemplating something. is it true that smoke launcher generate a 4+ cover save now a days? If so I might be seriously worth it to take blessed ammunition on the Exorcist? It would mean you could take away that nice save they get I don't know if it work like that but it sounds like a lot of fun.

    What do you think?

    Cheers CJ

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  4. Blessed Ammunition only works on Storm Bolters and Heavy Bolters.

    Smoke Launchers do indeed give 4+ cover....for most armies. If I were to ally my Daemonhunters with my Witch Hunters, for example, the WH would get a 4+ cover, but the DH would reduce all hits to glancing. Very confusing.

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  5. aah ok so no coversave ignoring exorcist missiles. That's a pitty sounded like a cool plan.

    whoo that would be a insainly annoying army. Yeah I poped smoke. aaah I failed my cover ave, a well still only a glancing hit anyways. No wonder that deamonhunter landraiders are so Insainly powerfull. Even if you get passed it's armour value the chance of killing it is insainly low. only AP1 weapons would stand a chance because they would still get the -2 for glancing but +1 for Ap 1 so on a 6 the could still Kill them.

    Cheers CJ

    ReplyDelete