Topic: a couple questions for SoB

[Allegiant Thorn]

1) can i attach a preacher to a battle conclave or cannoness's command squad?

2) Why the eff did they take away the blessed weapon and jump pack options for my cannoness?!

3) is anyone that was winning a lot with the old codex builds now losing more with the new WDcodex?  I know its pretty bland, but is it really hard to work with?

I'm going to be playing Sisters for the first time without the old codex soon, wanted to hear people's experiences.  It does seem like some of the sisters are not as potent, while others seem to have maybe gotten a little boost.

[small_furry_spider]

1) can i attach a preacher to a battle conclave or cannoness's command squad?

Yes, the preacher is an IC, and there appear to be no restrictions that would prevent this any more.

2) Why the eff did they take away the blessed weapon and jump pack options for my cannoness?!

They hate you and all other witch hunters sisters of battle players. Not the kind of light weight hate for someone who murders your pets and burns your house down, this is a hatred that wants to ruin your life and that of everyone you know for ever- hatred that would make a dwarf proud. Note: This is a truely multipurpose answer that can be used to explain most of changes to the codex

3) is anyone that was winning a lot with the old codex builds now losing more with the new WDcodex?  I know its pretty bland, but is it really hard to work with?

The codex can be very effective if you limit yourself to certain choices (not truely top tier, but not bad at all). Nearly every effective list will have the following:
Uriah Jacobus with a battle conclave consisting of death cult assassins and a few crusaders in a rhino
3x dominion squads in multimelta immolators (2 melta guns, maybe a combi melta as well)
2-3x Exorcists
2-3x squad of battle sisters in a rhino.

The battle conclave will go through anything it hits (4 death cults and 2 crusaders will kill ~10 MEQs on the charge, and the majority of these at I6), outflanking dominions will do horrific damage, exorcists are still good.... and you just try to keep your overpriced and not very good troops alive for as long as possible.

I'm going to be playing Sisters for the first time without the old codex soon, wanted to hear people's experiences.  It does seem like some of the sisters are not as potent, while others seem to have maybe gotten a little boost.

[Allegiant Thorn]

thanks for the answers!  Although "vanilla", I can see some use to the current codex.  I just hope, for fun sake, they release a "real" and more fulfilling codex soon.

[Zilverscale]

Just be sure not to charge through any terrain or cover as the conclave does NOT have frags!

[Ollieb]

That is why I run my Battle Conclave with Uriah, 4X DCAs, 3X Crusaders and 2X AFs.  Allows me to spread the wounds out in case I have to assault through cover and can keep more DCAs alive.

[Locarno]

Why the eff did they take away the blessed weapon and jump pack options for my cannoness?!

Because no model exists. This is why in the white dwarf blood angels (the last equivalent), you lost the ability to (for example) put a techmarine on a bike.

is anyone that was winning a lot with the old codex builds now losing more with the new WDcodex?  I know its pretty bland, but is it really hard to work with?

Harder. Not impossible, but harder. The two big points to dislike are the loss of Divine Guidance on battle squads and the removal of the Book of St Lucius.

The former still exists, and (at least for retributors) is now way, way better. Being 'proper' rending, it means a heavy bolter squad can now hurt anything you choose to shoot them at, up to and including the land raider (although avoid that if you can), which combined with the scarily cheap price of the squad, makes them a heavy support option worth considering instead of yet-another-bloody-exorcist. Equally, Dominions and Seraphim have their own versions which are frankly as good.

The loss of stubborn hurts most. Accept now that unless you have characters supporting the fight, you cannot rely on a squad to hold - but also can't rely on them to run. That can lead to the worst situation where a unit is charged and holds for one turn - denying you the chance to shoot back.

Battle conclaves see a lot of good press as they are the only real answer to this; Celestians and seraphim are okay but I would say need to get a shooting round in before charging to really pull their weight in combat, which you can't with an ongoing fight, whilst repentia and penitent engines, whilst lethal, are uncontrollable and won't stay back to be used a counterattack - they'll be running off down the board trying to get killed. That said, a canoness and celestians or seraphim and clestine can make a right mess of something like ork boyz if they do get the drop on them. Give the latter one faith-enhanced shooting phrase at point blank range, even against a full mob, and the subsequent assault is little more than a mopping-up exercise.

Battle squads are the weak link. Their job is to be the scoring unit. Light of the emperor isn't great but it doesn't matter because you can only reliably support a use of 2-3 faith points a turn  - treat any others you get as a welcome bonus. They still aren't bad, just not as good as they were. Don't get overconfident with them. You can no longer pull up, jump out of the rhino and fire one volley of rapid fire and expect to severly murderize a marine squad. You probably need to treat them more like guard veterans or aspect warriors - tool them up to do one job (melta/melta/combimelta, flamer/flamer/combiflamer or heavy bolter/stormbolter/stormbolter/extra troops) and accept that you will loose them if they're forced to fight outside their area of expertise.

[small_furry_spider]

Why the eff did they take away the blessed weapon and jump pack options for my cannoness?!

Because no model exists. This is why in the white dwarf blood angels (the last equivalent), you lost the ability to (for example) put a techmarine on a bike.

it's a reasonable suggestion, but if that is the reason, why can the cannoness still take an eviscerator and combi- plasma when no models for these are available?

Yes, faith is a bit rubbish. I use it in the following order: rally fleeing sisters (quite common now), retributors, dominions, battle sisters shooting so it rarely gets past the dominion stage. By the end of the game, I may have virtually nothing worth spending faith on.

I personally would not bother shooting a landraider with retributors as you can only glance, and a single glance will take slightly more than 2 turns shooting. However, retributors are certainly quite good, their main drawback is they are not exorcists...

[Locarno]

Eviscerator - the canoness kit includes one. It's not as chunky as the repentia one, but the kit includes a double-bladed, hand-and-half chainsword, if I remember.

Combi-weapon. This is more of a throw-in, but there is a sister superior model which blatantly has a combi-unspecified. (it's actually an old auxiliary grenade launcher, I think).

Plus, if you want a flying canoness, you can take celestine, even if you don't call her that.

I personally would not bother shooting a landraider with retributors as you can only glance, and a single glance will take slightly more than 2 turns shooting.

I wouldn't for preference shoot at a land raider unless I had no other target. That wasn't what I was suggesting. But the point of retributors is that with divine guidance, they can now hurt anything, meaning there is always something worth shooting at with them. They can kill anything from hordes to monsters to heavy infanty up to and including medium tanks pretty reliably, and in extremis can hurt a land raider from outside meltagun range.

Also, an exorcist also takes a couple of turns fire to glance a landraider; average 3.5 shots, 2.3 hits, 0.4 glances. Granted, it's an AP1 glancing hit, but it's still only glancing and the exorcist isn't half as flexible when it comes to stuff like crowd control.

Yes, faith is a bit rubbish. I use it in the following order: rally fleeing sisters (quite common now), retributors, dominions, battle sisters shooting so it rarely gets past the dominion stage. By the end of the game, I may have virtually nothing worth spending faith on.

Rallying fleeing sisters is no more common than it was; stubborn never helped against morale checks from gunfire, and a unit breaking and running from combat with only I3 is generally caught and killed. Light of the emperor isn't that good but as noted it's the bottom of the priority pile to be used. Faith is nasty, just accept that you can only reliably use your veterans; acts of faith, and the novices only get it occasionally, as opposed to the army getting more faith points than bolter clips, which kind of spoils the whole 'miraculous' thing.

I'd agree you may not be able to spend 6 points of faith towards the end of the game but I'd be surprised if there's genuinely nothing to spend any on. Of course, you mentioned that you use Jacobus and a conclave for close quarters, and he both increases your expected faith pool and doesn't drawn on it himself.

[small_furry_spider]

Eviscerator - the canoness kit includes one. It's not as chunky as the repentia one, but the kit includes a double-bladed, hand-and-half chainsword, if I remember.

Now this I did not know- I don't think I have ever seen the model with that option (a fair chunk of my metal sisters were bought from ebay to save money)

Combi-weapon. This is more of a throw-in, but there is a sister superior model which blatantly has a combi-unspecified. (it's actually an old auxiliary grenade launcher, I think).

this seems a bit tenuous IMHO. Most probably they did not think clearly about it and made a bit of a mess, like the rest of the codex.

Plus, if you want a flying canoness, you can take celestine, even if you don't call her that.

who is fantastic, her only downside being she can't hurt tanks.

Also, an exorcist also takes a couple of turns fire to glance a landraider; average 3.5 shots, 2.3 hits, 0.4 glances. Granted, it's an AP1 glancing hit, but it's still only glancing and the exorcist isn't half as flexible when it comes to stuff like crowd control.

However, the exorcist can move and fire, allowing 6 turns firing even on dawn of war, has longer range,is immune to basic weapons (which is useful when the rest of your army is mechanised), and does not need to roll 4+ to fire effectively against tanks. I have a squad of retributors but I am still weighing up whether to keep them in or not.

Yes, faith is a bit rubbish. I use it in the following order: rally fleeing sisters (quite common now), retributors, dominions, battle sisters shooting so it rarely gets past the dominion stage. By the end of the game, I may have virtually nothing worth spending faith on.

Rallying fleeing sisters is no more common than it was; stubborn never helped against morale checks from gunfire, and a unit breaking and running from combat with only I3 is generally caught and killed.

How I used to play involved concentrated divine guidance on a section of the enemy line, so return fire was minimised, and the book could make mulitple squads Ld10. Overall I seem to take more tests now and have opponents who use things like psyker battle squads.

[Abuk]

Combi-weapon. This is more of a throw-in, but there is a sister superior model which blatantly has a combi-unspecified. (it's actually an old auxiliary grenade launcher, I think).

this seems a bit tenuous IMHO. Most probably they did not think clearly about it and made a bit of a mess, like the rest of the codex.

You're talking about the Canones model that dates back to the 2nd ed.
Don't know why but she's no longer available from the GW website..

[Locarno]

Now this I did not know- I don't think I have ever seen the model with that option

Here you go:

You're talking about the Canones model that dates back to the 2nd ed.
Don't know why but she's no longer available from the GW website..

No, actually I mean this one - check the combi-barrel under the bolter:

[Tarrin the Space Marine]

That's a veteran sister.

The canniness mini had a hply symbol and a combinflamer

[Abuk]

You're right, sir.