Sisters in 6th Edition: Part 1

Well hello again JaRalloes and JaRettes it's time to mount up in our rhinos and explore the changes to the rules in 6th edition and how they affect Sisters of Battle. This is going to be an in-depth look at the changes to the 40k rules, that help or hinder our little sisters.

This first post will focus on things that apply to more than just 1 aspect of the SoBs army and can either be helpful or an interference.

General:

Power Axes: One of the issues before was sisters inability to get powerfists with their troops superiors...

...or really any superiors at all. 

It was a problem, since once charged sisters are stuck there with their good leadership and good armor saves not getting to shoot and eventually losing. You really are just hoping to break at the right time to allow a quick regroup and a good round of shooting whomever you were fighting. 

Now you can pay 10 points for what is essentially a powerfist for sisters with a power axe. 5 strength isn't 6 strength, but it's AP 2, and it's going to do some damage if you're getting charged...which is likely considering how fast everyone seems to be in this edition. And you might get lucky and make a good round of attacks and saves and win a round of combat.

Regrouping: Wow! People who aren't Space Mareens aren't babies anymore? Sweet! And everyone can rally at down to 25% and can do it at any distance to the enemy? And they can shoot? Wooooow! This really makes SoBs auto-rally ability and high leadership much better for them. Still losing combat and getting caught because of Initiative 3 is going to explode you but you at least have a quick solution to any kind of running sisters unit.

Wall of Death: Overwatch in general is great for sisters, more shooting for sisters is never a bad thing and flamers have always been pleantiful and cheap. Now sisters have got an even better reason to take flamers. d3 autohits is the only reliable way to hit someone with overwatch. And overwatch itself is a valuable asset, if not a bit unreliable. I've played about 10 games of 6th and only seen snap fire take away 2 charges. Both were against my squads with flamers and my opponent was charging into difficult terrain. Combi-Flamers might even be a good buy now, yeah they're 10 pts, but saving them for a good wall of death, or a really opportune 3 flamer attack is pretty useful. My new sisters superiors are getting Power Axes and Combi-Flamers, it's 20 points but if you put her in the right place you're probably going to get a shot off once a game (all you need) it's even more usefull to SoB squads that are going to be getting out of rhinos close to the enemy.

Rhinos: Whoooo boy. This isn't as good a buy anymore....you can't stop and assault out, you can only go up to 6 and shoot out the hatch and hull points make them vulnerable to fussilades of fire. But, for sisters the rhino is still a formidable thing to sit in. It can go up to 18" in one turn, and it's not going to matter to regular sisters that you can't assault. 

Oh! and now they're cheaper since you're not going to need Extra Armor anymore, just the basic box with sisters inside pointed twords the bad guys, nothing fancy.

Immolators: Before immolators were suicidal tanks that had suicidal squads of sisters with special weapons...This hasn't changed, the Immolators and Dominions lust for selfdestruction hasn't changed. However scouting still works the same and getting a melta laiden pile of stuff right into the opponents grille on turn one is pretty good still. And it seems like the new chart and damage table basically give your 3 melta shots (2 regular and 1 combi) a very good chance of putting down a vehicle in one volley. Penning a tank 3 times will usually destroy it, and each penetrating damage result is a 50% chance to put down the enemy tank in one-shot. However this tank is still 80+ points and has just as much chance to get glanced to death as a rhino.

Exploding Vehicles: Oh my god. This sucks. If there's one thing thats never been very forgiving for sisters is being inside a speeding  bomb. 

And now it's even worse!

The only result on the vehicle damage table that destroys a tank causes an explosion. It's 'just as likely' to destroy a tank as it was in 6th 1/6, but with AP1 2/6 and AP2 it's 3/6. But that's always an explosion.

That's really going to hurt your toughness 3 girls when they're ride blows up more often than not. This is a problem that also extends to destroying tanks...

What's the thing you're most likely to blow up a tank with in sisters? 

If you said melta guns... 

With premeasuring it's probably in your best interest (if possible) to position your girls at a safe distance before demolishing your targets.

Rapid Fire: Is better now that you can move and shoot up to 24" but most of your sisters aren't going to be far from their targets, and if they are they're usually not moving much. But any buff to Rapid Fire is good for SoBs.

Going to Ground: Oh my! This is a good one. You can only snap fire when you go to ground, which isnt' good...

..but you can still overwatch, and you can still fight normally in combat. So it might be in sisters best interest sometimes to hit the dirt to get a 3+ cover save (in ruins) if you're going to take some heavy fire before an assault. Especially if that assault's going to last a few rounds. It makes sisters in ruins with an objective quite hardballz, just hope they don't get sabatoged objectives lol.

FUCKING ALLIES: OMFG! OAFUHGA! Yes! Hi-Fives all around! 

Sisters are only BFFS with Guard...

...but do you need anymore than that? Guard have a lot of things Sisters really really need, like Long Range Anti-Tank Firepower, Flyers, Reserves Gimmicks, Big Hands to open Mayonaise Jars, and of course AV 14. They want to help you. 

Next time we'll be looking at individual units and perhaps even some army lists.

This weekend is our LGS's first official 6th edition Tournament I'll be taking...

...Kroot Mercs!* 

Wait! NO! 

Sisters, and guard as allies!

*If this army list was still legal I'd still be playing it :D

Necromorial Day Weekend

    Howdy out there folks of the nightmare-o-net. It's Frank from Just a Rhino again. Now recently we celebrated Memorial Day Weekend, and if your Memorial Day was anything like mine it was FRAKING HOT! And instead of standing in the hot evil sun next to a hot grill me and the LGS crew decided to beat the heat with some INTERIOR GAMING!
    Yeah inside is the good side. And for the special holiday weekend we started off our Necromunda Campaign! Necromunda as you may or may not know is the fast paced game of English ladies! 
No wait that's soccer....or lacrosse...




Quiditch?


    I don't know, anyway Necromunda is a 'gang' based skirmish game, pitting your crew of criminals against everyone else's, in a mad fight for creds, territory and YOUR LIVES! (OMFG!)Your gang is comprised of your gangboss a few 'Gangers' and the ubiquitous redshirts called 'jeuves' who are the 'pledges' of your gang, doing a lot of the dirty work to eventually become a full fledged gang member. After each battle wounded gangers recover (or die, or lose fingers, or legs, or eyes, or other crazy stuff) and your gang leans on some squares for enough food to refit their weapons and feed themselves. Any left over cash can be spent by the gangboss on new gang members, weapons, or special RARE items which cover everything from A Power Sword to a FRAKIN' PARACHUTE! Also each member of your gang levels up over time gaining new skills and stats which sometimes can get out of hand. 
    But the game is always a total blast. The learning time for the game is anywhere between 30 secs for avid 40k players to 30 mins for a lot of others. The game moves quickly with each side running, diving, shooting and hiding in the deteriorating bowels of the giant hive-spire. Sometimes games end prematurely when some cowardly (or smart) gangs hoof it after loosing a few of their boys. This mechanic is actually one of the saving graces of the game.

Your Gang Can Be Grrls Like This.

    After you 'lose' 25% or more of your gang your leader (if standing) must take a Leadership test or you automatically book it back to your own turf. This seems silly when games can end literally before they start (See Shootout followed by one side auto-running due to having no standing fighters) but most of the time it cuts the games down to just enough turns to be interesting and frantic, but not so long that you're looking at your watch. The book keeping for the game sometimes takes longer than the game, but I'd say half the game is leveling up your dudes and collecting extortion money and buying better gear for your boss. 


    Although I'm saving the best for last one of my other favorite bits about NecroFUNda is that theres' a lot of very cool missions included in the rule book, it really keeps things interesting after a few 'gang fights' in a row, there's even a special scenario for rescuing your captured gang members. But my favorite has got to be Shootout: a Wild West gunfight complete with walking straight at your enemy and seeing who goes for their guns first, and then all hell breaks loose. 
     I said I'd save the best for last, and I did: It's Free! The whole game book and Extra rules and junk are all on GW's website ready for your to download.  And if you're an avid 40k player or member of a local gaming club or store you've probably got enough terrain to mash together the tallest buildings you have into a pretty clustered and fun table. Obviously this game and all the other 'skirmish' based specialist games (Mordhiem, Gorkamorka, Blood Bowl) is best played using the Campaign rules and running your crew against at least 4 other players gangs. 



Bottom Line, Give it a Try. Grab some guardsmen and some cardboard buildings and Get Rich...

...Or Die Trying.

"Toxic Evil" Just Got a New Name

Evening/Morning/Equinox/Injury Time sports fans, Frank here to tell you a little bit about the pain and suffering of my human spirit! I'm sad and have a butt for a face! SAD FEELINGS!

...wait no, this isn't my "Pretend I'm Norm on his Live Journal" post...

Oh! Here it is!

That's right! Blood Bowl!

Ah, if there ever was an outlet for my Primal Rage (The Avatars), my artistic passion and my grand ability to roll all the wrong kinds of dice rolls (See Hanshin Tigers) it would be on the Fantastic Field of Blood Bowl. And since my little elves have been captured in a Time Spiral it's time to start a new team. And since I am really partial to Mutants, and Leagues and Extreme Thirst I decided no team would be better to begin than Chaos Pact!

My newest team the Toxic Evil-Pros! are a combination of the best mutants and renegades that there ever was! At least that's what I'd say about them in like...20 more games? Their definitely a development project, but the coolest thing about Chaos Pact is that you're allowed to make your players HOWEVER you want!

-You're whole team has access to almost every skill on the regs! (Except Agility skills which are doubles)

-You get 1 of each of a crew of racial positionals! 1 Goblin, 1 Dark Elf, and 1 Skaven. Though their stats would seem mediocre on their own rosters on Pact they have mutation access in addition to the normal skills they would have access to, making them a blank canvas for development.

-3 F@#$KIN BIG GUYS! AT ONCE!

Wow that sounds great! So let's get this 1,000 lbs crap show on the road!

First off let me say the first thing I could think of when trying to bring my creations to life (ALIVE!) is the original Chaos mutards The CHAOS ALL-STARS!

Remember when mutations didn't exist? Well the flippin' All-Stars had them then! WHAM!

Anyway the old Chaos All-Stars models are as famous as they are fantastically hard to find. Here's a picture of them for reference!

Frak yes! It does my heart to see a set of models that are older than me, but still way cooler than I'll ever be! So basically you got your big guys, 1 of each of your Multi-Racial Positionals, an of course some flipptards with mutations galore. It's awesome!

Now as much as i want to just make my own versions of this whole Iconic Team...I kind-of have had MUTANT FEVER! And now there's so many mutants I have planned that I literally gotta go with some of my new designs just because I really want to make them. But I'll be sticking in the neighborhood of the color scheme and some of my favorite Stars I'm going to rigga-remake.

First-Off A New one!

This here is Grim "Spike" Durfman his hideous face is made of a metal spore mine, with a cool fluffy lace color to keep his neck warm and stylish. His body is a plastic human blitzer. It's a very simple conversion but I kind of love him! You might also notice that my color scheme is actually Hot Pink and Turquoise while the original Stars are Red and Green. I actually always thought that the old ones were Pink and Green but I guess they undercoated them white and that red just got outta hand...into being awesome! So I decided to go with a cool hot pink and cool blue-green. I'm really liking it so far.

Next is another one of my creations!

This little 'demonette' is Fiercia Lowblow, just in case you thought that claw didn't mean business because she's in a metal bikini. I got this model from Reaper to use as a cheerleader and then cut one of her arms off and sculpted a new one, and added a chopped down dryad claw from WH:GFB.

Now here's some guys based right off the old models. The left guy is an ork biker boy torso with nob arms attached to the legs of a plastic human lineman, his chest face and awesome pompadore I sculpted on. To the right is a metal human thrower I fashioned a giant tentacle throwing arm onto, just like old Lewdgrip! He's got some paint but's not really even started.

My Dark Elf Renegade Hellena Murderson is a converted Malifaux figure, whom I sculpted extra arms onto, now she's like a little Spiral. Her paint is actually almost done just need to do a bit more highlighting in her pants and skin (Which is light purple) and she'll be ready to hit the pitch.

Another note on these is I'm using the NEW Citadel Paints line (Along with the old) and as far as things go I'm really liking some of the new Types of paints, like The green glaze I used on this last girls hair just really rules! The two colors I picked out were also new Layer Paints, Pink Horror (AWESOME NAME!) and Sotek Green, the green is washed with the new Shad Biel-Tan Green. All in all I'm loving the new paint line even though I only bought a few. The 2 things I'm still upset about with the new paints are:
They dry VERY quickly and,

FUCKING KIDDING ME!? The SAME LIDS!?

Come on!

I've gotten used to sneak attacking the thermal paint port on my paint pots to cause massive paint to get on my brush then I always have set up a giant pile of paint on my pallet that I'm not going to use. But I would have much preferred to not be a jack-ass thinking about secret space-plane missions when I'm putting paint brushes in paint.

And that's as good a note as any to leave on so...L8sk8ers

Norm will be posting a sweet post about our Grudge Match later this week, and I'll be doing lots more Toxic-Pro-Jam Pics all this week, including lots of designs for new mutants from my sketchbook. I might even have an old pro show up in my roster (WINK!).

Lets Get Ready to JaRBBL

The next grudge match is fast approaching. I know that Norm has been training his Blood Bowl team up, so I decided I would do a little secret training on my own...



For those of you wondering what the hell JaRBBL means, I'll clue you in. Just A Rhino Blood Bowl League! This is the Blood Bowl League I started at our local gaming store.

Strategy Thy Name Is: Blood Bowl

Hello out there JaR fans! It's been a long week over here at JaR but I'd just like to take a little time to introduce our newest game and Grudge Match III. For those of you who are not aware I love strategy games, on computers, on the tabletop in my own head. When ever I can find a good strategy game I'm sure to spend countless hours playing the game as well as pouring over articles or materials that go along with the game. I'm even more partial to strategy games with squares...Like X-Com, Disgea or one of my personal favorites BLOOD BOWL!

If you've never heard of BB then there's probably a deep forbidding hole in your soul that you've maybe tryed to fill with substance abuse but it won't close, that's were BB goes. And just incase you really haven't a clue what it's about then I'll give you a quick synopsis.

The Blood Bowl universion is the "same" as the Warhammer: A Game of Fantasy Battles universe. Except it's taken with a much more tongue in cheek theory on the background of the teams and technologies of the game. But basically each coach (that's you) chooses one of the 24 races available and creates a team of players from their rosters, like an army list each coach get's the same amount of gold to start their team so everyone starts out with the same strength teams (assumedly). After their teams are ready each coach's goal is to: "Get the Football in the Endzone." -John Madden. A feat that isn't as easy as Madden may have made it sound, the other team will surely try to stop you with all manner of techniques, from breaking the ever living sheet outta your bones with their fists, to using chainsaws and skeletons to take elimate your players. But if you survive all the werewolves and explosions the world has to throw at you and do manage to score the most touchdowns then you'll win the game! In a one off game this is the entire meaning of play, and it will usually feel pretty good, however like all other intensley deep strategy games, the true fun of blood bowl is to develope your team over the course of many games. And so instead of just reseting each time with a new team the survivors of each event get to level up, gain new skills or stats, you can hire additional support characters like wizards, doctors, barbers, assistant cheerleeders and so much more. At it's best Blood Bowl is an extremely deep and vast system of growth and play, you'll never play the same game twice and even if you stick to only 1 race your whole career there's still an almost infinite number of strategies and techniques you can learn to play with. Each team also usually has a distinct tactical advantage in some area: Hurting, Passing, Running, Dieing for example, but most teams can be tailored to support almost any style of play.

So BB is great and I love it, and Monty loves it to. And when we've spent the past week playing our little hearts out in one of the toughest Blood Bowl divisions in the world. The Black Box Division of Fumbbl. If you don't know Fumbbl is, well... it's like Blood Bowl online, actually it's exactly that. It's free to play, free to join, and there's 100s of games played each and everyday, and so many coaches you'll probably never play the same one twice. It's a pretty awesome community that Myself and Monty both are a part of and support. I'll put some links in at the bottom. But back to Monty and I's training. We're each Training up a team in the Black Box to fight against each other in our most heated Grudge Match ever, a game that we are both equally skilled in and both adore. We're each going to train our teams up to 1600 Team value, and then once we reach this goal we're going to construct our teams in Real Life form and pit them against each other in battle for the ages. We'll also doing some "Weekly Report" style blogs about our teams performances over the days and maybe some particular match updates that are rather thrilling. It's going to be E Plurbis Awesome! Don't miss it!

Fummbl

Monty's Team vs Kid's Team