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

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.

Hello there! It has been a while! As Frank stated, summer trips and all that. This is actually concerning my particular journey across the pond to jolly ol' England. While I wouldn't admit it before, I was having a pretty bad losing streak with 40k before my trip. So bad in fact, that I vowed not to play again until 6th edition came out. So during my hiatus I left the country and went on a Spirit Journey to England to visit Warhammer World/GW HQ. I wanted to get inspired to play again and hopefully get some insider tips and tricks to get me revved up to play again. My first warhammer related visit was to this place:

 My first REAL Games Workshop store (Wakefield). Unfortunately it was closed by the time I got there so I snapped a quick picture before an employee came out from the back room. I quickly ran back to my friend's car and hid because I felt like a giant creeper taking a picture of a storefront after they were closed. The next day I went to the one in Leeds and proceeded to be followed around by the employees which was sort of odd because I just wanted to look around, not to have my ear talked off. Compared to our gaming store, the space was pretty small and only had three half size tables, the stock however was greater in number and much more varied than in our non-GW run store. In our store people also don't follow me around, they treat me like one of the guys (with more storage space... cleavage) which I like. I bought a model (Astorath the Grim if you're wondering) and the White Dwarf that came out that day (new fliers edition, it gave me something to read for the next couple days but this isn't a post about that...)

A couple of days later I went to the main event (well the main warhammer based event in this trip, I did a lot of other stuff in my two weeks): WARHAMMER WORLD! Frank asked if I went to business reception but I skipped that part...

This is the view from the front:

 A pretty epic way to start if you ask me. Anywho these fellas greet you as you walk in the front door.

 I felt it was necessary to sign the guestbook, I really should have mention JaR but I was too excited so I just put down the name of our gaming store instead.

 Then it was onto the hall of miniatures! Taking pictures in here was really hard due to clear shelving and lots of glass and lights and reflections so most of the pictures didn't really turn out. I must say this whole room was pretty impressive. I spent a good two or so hours wandering about and looking at everything. I must admit that I know there are a lot of space marine chapters, but I never realized just HOW MANY there really were until I saw half a wall just covered in different space marines... compared to basically half a wall for all the other 40k armies...

 Unsurprising for most of you is the fact that I'm only including pictures of the Blood Angels. This was after all MY spirit journey. I have other pictures of the other models as well, but since my army is Blood Angels it is what I've chosen to include. Seeing what their blood angels looked like reminded me why I chose a different color scheme. While they were well painted and looked nice and all that stuff, it just gets boring after a while. Seeing all the different armies gave me some ideas of what I wanted (or didn't want) to do with my guys aesthetically.

 After the hall of miniatures I continued on toward the gaming hall. But first I wanted to stare down the barrel of a space marine's bolter and see what I could see. I was told that if you did this then you'd see your life flash before your eyes, all I saw was black plaster... *shrug*

 I checked out the gaming hall (which was huge and pretty awesome) and got some ideas for table building and themes. My favorite table was an Egyptian inspired table (unfortunately after a couple pints you forget to take certain pictures... more on that soon). I was sad that I hadn't brought my army to play, but I didn't exactly have room to pack it in my carry-on.

 After a stroll around and a bit of observing it was time for Bugman's Pub and subsequently... DRINKING!

 I only had two pints (only one of the above was mine, the other was my friend Nate's, my second is below). I had some Troll Brew which was hoppy and yummy. I mostly just sat and took in the fact that I was in a different country at GW HQ and how awesome it would be to bring everyone from my local gaming store to come here. After my first pint I decided it would probably be wise to eat some chips (fries) with my second pint since Nate and I were going to walk to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem afterward for more beer.

 Before leaving I spent way too much money on gifts for Frank and took a couple pictures of the interior of Bugman's.

 Outside was another random space marine so I decided to help him hold up his gun since it looked heavy.

So the trip was pretty amazing all in all and as far as 6th edition is concerned, very well timed. I'm properly excited to start playing again and hopefully in the coming days you'll see an updated list for my Blood Angels and my thoughts and feelings on the rules! Frank pre-ordered the gamers edition and we're crossing our fingers that it may show up on our door early!

If you're wondering what took me so long to write this post (I got back about 3 weeks ago...) here is a hint of what I've been doing:

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Hello all, fancy seeing you here. I figured it was time for another post since no one else seems to have anything to talk about. I have a feeling that may change with more and more rumors pouring out about 6th edition and the fact that it may be coming out soon (within the next two months is our current guess at JaR. Frank says this month). Personally I don't know why we don't know when exactly it is coming out. Of course I could have missed some big chunk of news and they've announced the release date, but a cursory google search didn't give me concrete evidence and I'm really not invested enough in finding out to go further than that! MOVING ON.

Last night Frank and I played the first in our round of teaching games. When I was first learning how to play 40k, Frank would just tell me what I needed to roll and I'd roll it. I didn't know why, I just did it. This became a HUGE problem when I tried to play other people because I didn't know what to roll. Luckily the other people I have played so far have been willing to help me instead of trying to screw me over cause I'm new at playing.

So last night was a lesson in learning how to figure out what I need to roll in certain places (to hit, to wound, close combat rolls). We played a 500(ish) point list. It turned out in the end that both of our sets of math were wrong, I was under by 10 pts and he was over by 20pts. I'm not saying that is why things turned out as they did, but I don't want to give away the ending.

So my 500(ish) pt list went as follows:

Captain Becky
-Lightning claws x2 (because it takes a special kind of asshole to have just one lightning claw)
-Jump pack

10 Man assault squad
-2 flamers
-power weapon

Devastator Squad:
3 plasma cannons
storm bolter

So here was how I felt after I wrote my list and was thinking about my strategy



Here is how I felt when we actually started playing.



Let me explain WHY. Frank played sisters of battle because he needs an excuse to use them after amassing an unreasonable number of sisters. Anyway, I don't know enough about sisters to give you his exact list but here's what I remember: 31 sisters total (I think) 2 regular squads each with flamer/heavy flamer (10 sisters a piece), a squad of (forgive me if I butcher this) retributers? 10 ladies with big/long distance guns. And a lady with a power weapon, she was his HQ choice but I really wasn't paying attention because I was watching all my guys get killed. So I had 16 dudes in my army and he had 31… not very good odds just by counting bullets *sigh*

So we rolled, he deployed first and I stole his initiative (YEAH!) so I went first which didn't turn out to be as awesome as I'd hoped. I fired 3 plasma cannons into his big guns squad, basically if I had gotten it right I would have had 15 plasma cannon shots against them, due to terrible rolling and the evil scatter die I think I landed 3, and one wounded. That was my luck pretty much most of the game, I missed the rolls that mattered. I saved Captain Becky and a combat squad of 5 to come in later in the game. The other half of the assault squad came in and ended up hiding because there was no way they'd make it anywhere to shoot or fight.

Frank moved up a squad of regular gals to the middle of our shortened board and fired some shots off, I don't remember exact sequences of events for a while in this part of the game because I was distraught that my plan was failing so horribly and I was rolling like crap. Frank will attest to this and that I'm not just blaming my dice. ANYWAY, most of my assault squad got killed and the devastators were all blown up after not doing my much good (so much for crowd control).

At this point two things happened, 1- I resigned that I probably wasn't going to win this game, 2- Since I gave up on winning I was free to just send Captain Becky in to crush some souls.

So I dropped her and her combat squad with 2 flamers in behind the second squad of normal sisters. After a round of flamers to the face followed by being eaten alive by Cpt Becky and her crew (eventually) in close combat, Cpt Becky realized there was still one man left in the other squad of assault marines and he was taking on 10 sisters by himself. He lasted through about 3 rounds of close combat before he was killed.

Cpt Becky and her last remaining marine from her combat squad went to the middle of the board to attempt to clean up what that other marine had started, after all these were the only people really left. So it ended up being Cpt Becky alone surrounded by sisters and a boss lady, with Becky and the Boss Lady both down to having one wound left, it became a roll off. Time after time we both rolled one save (since we'd only wound each other once because we both suck at rolling), eventually Cpt Becky fell and Frank won.

So over all it was fun but it is reinforcing the fact that I'm not positive I want to be playing space marines of any sort any more. But we'll see how it turns out when we try a bigger list. So moral of the story is: Don't play Blood Angels in low point lists.

So as I was surfing the internet today for pictures for this post, I kept coming across these My Little Pony pictures with the ponies dressed up as various costumes, and I missing something completely? I remember seeing something about bronies the other day but I didn't think much of it… Any way here you go