SoB WD codex 'leaked'

[SMC]

You people have gone from ridiculous...to ludicrous...to ****ing plaid.

Sisters shouldn't do anything better than Marines. Except for maybe die.

[wittdooley]

They tend to run at I4 with AP1 bolters and a 3++ invulnerable save. Why do you ask?

Cause I don't know :-).

[Nabterayl]

18. Celestians are I3 and they took an unsaved wound. They cannot use Acts of faith on the opponent's turn (no I4 or S4 upon receiving a charge, or any other benefits), so keep that in mind as well.

True. To work it out a little differently, assuming we have ten tactical marines, including a sergeant with a powerfist, and a marine with a meltagun, facing ten standard celestians including a celestian superior with a power sword and a pistol (I'll assume for the moment they can't get eviscerators or power fist equivalents and that they get no gun upgrades, simply because we don't know what they are or what they'll cost) or nine command squad celestians including one sister with a power sword and pistol (I'll assume, as is usual for command squads, all models have limited access to CC upgrades) and a sister hospitaller, and assuming everybody makes their relevant faith tests:

Marines charge the celestians:
Vs. standard celestians, marines kill a total of 4.84 sisters and take 1.5 casualties in return.
Vs. command celestians, marines kill a total of 3.17 sisters and take 1.5 casualties in return.

Standard celestians charge the marines:
Celestians kill a total of 4.36 marines and take 1.69 casualties in return.

Command celestians charge the marines:
Celestians kill a total of 4.31 marines and take 1.19 casualties in return.

Old-Style celestians charge the marines, with the benefit of Divine Guidance:
Celestians kill a total of 2.61 marines and take 1.83 casualties in return.

Old-Style celestians charge the marines, with the benefit of Hand of the Emperor:
Celestians kill a total of 2.56 marines and take 1.83 casualties in return.

Old-Style celestians charge the marines, with the benefit of Hand of the Emperor and Divine Guidance:
Celestians kill a total of 3.44 marines and take 1.83 casualties in return.

Marines charge old-style celestians with the benefit of Hand of the Emperor, Divine Guidance, and Spirit of the Martyr:
Marines kill 3.94 celestians and take 1.08 casualties in return.

If the old-style celestians also have Spirit of the Martyr up, they would take only 1.28 casualties in return.

I'm seeing improvement pretty much all across the board. Is this what we might have wanted? Well, maybe not. But is it a nerf? Not that I can see. And I'm assuming here that (i) celestians have no hidden powerfist equivalent and (ii) celestians have no access to special weapon sisters, at least one of which is probably a bad assumption.

EDIT: Just for kicks, new-style regular celestians charging the marines with no acts of faith kill 3.28 marines and take 1.69 casualties in return. In other words, they do better than old-style celestians that expended a faith point, and almost as well as old-style celestians who expended two.

[silashand]

IMO the problem with that logic is that it discounts wargear access which all Marine armies possess in better numbers/quality than Sisters ever have. A couple power weapons in a normal Marine squad will make a mess of your numbers, yet in return the best the Sisters (of all varieties) have ever been able to do is the veteran with power-something. That was the purpose of them being able to Divine Guidance their attacks and bump their saves to invulnerable (it mitigates somewhat the Marines' greater number of power weapons, e.g. GH, GK, DC, etc.). Assuming access in the Sisters list does not change that means the new Sisters are significantly diminished compared to any Marine army, bordering on the non-competitive. I can't tell you the number of times if it hadn't been for the 3++ and occasional AP1/power weapon attacks I would have been absolutely slaughtered. Comparing non-upgraded Marines to standard Sisters is extremely inappropriate because it tries to show them as more powerful than they really are. While Marines will get loads of cool toys, the Sisters only ever had AoF to compensate and now that you take the useful ones away from them the difference is even more pronounced. So while your numbers may appear to show the Sisters on equal footing, the reality is far from it, barring some vast change in wargear access that we haven't seen yet of course.

Cheers, Gary

[DarkLink]

Ummm, Nab included a powerfist in the tactical squad, and only the sergeant has access to power weapons... And comparing a tactical squad to a GKSS unit is nonsensical.

[Lancel]

You people have gone from ridiculous...to ludicrous...to ****ing plaid.

Sisters shouldn't do anything better than Marines. Except for maybe die.

I take it, then, you are a proponent of the Power Armored Horde theory? I'm not sure it's something I'd want to see, but it is at least distinctive from Marines and I have a feeling that's where the army is going with this codex, basically a high-save, skilled shooter horde army OR "Guardsmen who had a different notion of armored support".

Assuming such an eventuality in the terms of points and such, I'm not such a fan of the idea. It would be a bit of a turn around for the army, from a relatively elite army specializing in anti-psyker to horde. Fluff-wise I'm sure someone is going to irritate me with "But Sisters always die in droves~". Bah, that's only ever been because the fluff has hated them for ten years and now people have that notion ingrained in their heads. Largely because they don't get fluff, just mentions in other people's books.

Secondly, there is some fluff this concept would seem to contradict. One codex (I think it was second edition) pegged the major orders as varying between something like 1000 to 5000 Battle Sisters, which is barely a few chapters of Space Marines, of which there is roughly a thousand of them, meanwhile the Major Orders Militant number exactly six. The Minor Orders didn't come about until 3rd edition, and most sources peg them at no more than a hundred or so Sisters generally, and while they're vague on how many of them exist, if we look at a horde approach then fluff-wise that horde army you just fielded, assuming you didn't paint them up as a Major Order, could likely be the entire order, and that opens a slight conundrum with how they restore numbers after a battle. Space Marines you can come up with excuses for: a Chapter is typically 1000 Battle Brothers, you don't field as many per battle, and "casualties" usually aren't due to all their implants. There isn't any such advantage to the Sisters to justify it except potentially ignoring those aspects of fluff or alternatively assuming a Sisters reorganization which massively increased recruitment into the Battle Sisters, maybe by dragging Sisters in from the Hospitaller, Famulous, and Dialogous (Ahem, Blood of Martyrs does say this happens. Normally a Battle Sister who can no longer fight due to age or injury gets transferred to one of the other groups of the Adepta Sororitas). None of this appears to have been added however. Of course, I suspect once we all read the fluff we'll see that numbers aren't addressed AT ALL, aside from 6 major Orders and numerous minor orders.

Thirdly, the cost will hurt all the more, in cold hard cash The Sisters were already the most expensive army to start in 40k, now they want to turn them into a horde army? I mean if people are really going to be expected to put down 90 Sisters, that's 30 blisters of the least expensive model you can get which would be over 500 USD. By the time the rest is counted up, this could reach legendary levels in army cost. Scary part is this just reminds me of my conspiracy theory that GW is doing this to get rid of their metal stock due to Finecast and might melt down all their other metal to make more Sisters to do it before they (finally) release plastic Sisters.

Not to say none of this is possible or permanent, even fluff-wise, but that's what I have to rant anyway. Rant close. Not an attack on SMC, just kinda got off on a tangent at the thought of horde Sisters. This is all rampant speculation and criticism assuming horde sisters actually happens, which it might still not. We'll find out next month (hopefully sooner, someone get that WD).

[silashand]

Ummm, Nab included a powerfist in the tactical squad, and only the sergeant has access to power weapons... And comparing a tactical squad to a GKSS unit is nonsensical.

As I specifically called out in my reply I was referring to troop choices in several marine armies such as Grey Hunters, Death Company, etc. including Strike Squads. Any troop choice in the game should in theory be comparable. If they are not then yet again the logic above falls apart. Comparing them to one non-optimized troop choice in the game, i.e. Tac Marines, is hardly a good means of analysis because your sample set is far too limited to be of any real use.

Cheers, Gary

[Nabterayl]

Any troop choice in the game should in theory be comparable. If they are not then yet again the logic above falls apart. Comparing them to one non-optimized troop choice in the game, i.e. Tac Marines, is hardly a good means of analysis because your sample set is far too limited to be of any real use.

I disagree that any troop choice in the game should be comparable. Besides the fact that troop choices need to be evaluated in the context of their army, there ought to be room for the force organization charts to reflect the fluff of an army, and not all troop choices are equal fluff-wise.

I had three points to make with the Celestian-tactical marine comparison. The first was that Celestians have increased in power, not decreased, in their assigned role as the storm troopers of the Orders Militant. The second was that the new Acts of Faith are worth using even when compared to the old Acts of Faith. The third was that a squad of sisters celestian can reasonably be expected to assault a squad of tactical space marines and win.

The reason the third is important is because I contend that a squad of celestians, when backed by the power of their faith, should be able to assault and convincingly defeat a squad of tactical space marines. I contend that any other result would be unfluffy. I don't think the fluff establishes that a squad of celestians, even when backed by their faith, should be able to assault and convincingly defeat an equal number of terminators, or vanguard veterans, or Grey Knights, or Grey Hunters.

Others may disagree with me on this particular point (evidently SMC does, for instance), but I'm sure we all agree that certain match-ups should go a certain way, even if we might disagree as to which match-ups those are. For instance, I suspect most of us would agree that a new Tau codex that allows a squad of ten fire warriors to assault and convincingly defeat a squad of tactical space marines has misrepresented the fluff of the fire caste, and we wouldn't be happy with that no matter what the cost of the fire warriors was.

I take it, then, you are a proponent of the Power Armored Horde theory? I'm not sure it's something I'd want to see, but it is at least distinctive from Marines and I have a feeling that's where the army is going with this codex, basically a high-save, skilled shooter horde army OR "Guardsmen who had a different notion of armored support".

Assuming such an eventuality in the terms of points and such, I'm not such a fan of the idea. It would be a bit of a turn around for the army, from a relatively elite army specializing in anti-psyker to horde. Fluff-wise I'm sure someone is going to irritate me with "But Sisters always die in droves~". Bah, that's only ever been because the fluff has hated them for ten years and now people have that notion ingrained in their heads. Largely because they don't get fluff, just mentions in other people's books.

Secondly, there is some fluff this concept would seem to contradict. One codex (I think it was second edition) pegged the major orders as varying between something like 1000 to 5000 Battle Sisters, which is barely a few chapters of Space Marines, of which there is roughly a thousand of them, meanwhile the Major Orders Militant number exactly six. The Minor Orders didn't come about until 3rd edition, and most sources peg them at no more than a hundred or so Sisters generally, and while they're vague on how many of them exist, if we look at a horde approach then fluff-wise that horde army you just fielded, assuming you didn't paint them up as a Major Order, could likely be the entire order, and that opens a slight conundrum with how they restore numbers after a battle. Space Marines you can come up with excuses for: a Chapter is typically 1000 Battle Brothers, you don't field as many per battle, and "casualties" usually aren't due to all their implants. There isn't any such advantage to the Sisters to justify it except potentially ignoring those aspects of fluff or alternatively assuming a Sisters reorganization which massively increased recruitment into the Battle Sisters, maybe by dragging Sisters in from the Hospitaller, Famulous, and Dialogous (Ahem, Blood of Martyrs does say this happens. Normally a Battle Sister who can no longer fight due to age or injury gets transferred to one of the other groups of the Adepta Sororitas). None of this appears to have been added however. Of course, I suspect once we all read the fluff we'll see that numbers aren't addressed AT ALL, aside from 6 major Orders and numerous minor orders.

Speaking for myself only, I'm a proponent of a horde of power armored storm troopers with faith powers. Not sure if that fits your Power Armored Horde definition or not. In response to your fluff rant, I've got the following reasons for proposing the PASTWFP horde as the "fluffy" version of the Orders Militant:

First, while it's true that the numbers of the Orders Militant have always been problematic, I don't think the answer to that conundrum can be that they're rarer than space marines. I don't see how the Orders Militant can simultaneously garrison important Ecclesiarchical sites (which I think we all agree they do) and form the spearheads of wars of faith (which I think we also all agree they do) if their total numbers are not very significantly upwards of one million. That either means that the Orders Majoris need to be retconned to be much larger than previously stated, or that there are many more Orders Minoris than there are space marine chapters, true, but I don't see a problem with either of those necessities.

Second, battle sisters have always been represented as sustaining significant casualties. I think the significance of that is not that battle sisters are poor soldiers, but rather that battle sisters are willing to sustain significant casualties. Space marines are famously shy about taking casualties. Sisters are willing to suck it up. I think that's a significant difference between the two forces, one that goes to the very core of why these two power-armored organizations deserve to be separate armies - and the only way I can see to represent that on the tabletop is for battle sisters to be significantly more numerous at a given points value than space marines, and thus significantly cheaper on a per-model basis.

Third, battle sisters have always been significantly cheaper on a per-model basis than space marines. In 3rd edition a basic battle sister cost 11 points. Grey Hunters cost 17 - almost 55% more. Tactical marines cost what, 15 points (37% more)? Even if the new codex merely exactly replicates the 3rd edition ratios, we should get battle sisters that cost somewhere around 9-12 points apiece. That moves them at least towards "horde" territory right there - the moreso in that some of their current point sinks, such as Rhinos and Immolators, are almost sure to get cheaper.

[SMC]

I don't have any objections to, say, Seraphim out assaulting a lowly Marine tactical squad. Now, a squad of Battle Sisters outshooting or outassaulting Tacticals...that would be a bit ridiculous in my opinion. Just my opinion.

[Nabterayl]

I don't have any objections to, say, Seraphim out assaulting a lowly Marine tactical squad. Now, a squad of Battle Sisters outshooting or outassaulting Tacticals...that would be a bit ridiculous in my opinion. Just my opinion.

That's fair. To clarify my opinion, I think that when a squad of battle sisters out-assaults a squad of tactical marines it should seem surprising and a little bit miraculous (even though no overt miracle occurred, such as the sisters' blows suddenly cleaving through power armor or each sister suddenly striking five men's worth of blows). That's why I think sisters without a relevant faith power should not out-shoot or out-assault a squad of tactical marines, and sisters with a relevant faith power should.

The fact that it causes a surprising outcome is how you know it's a faith power. If ten sisters can kill, say, ten guardsmen while taking 3 casualties, it isn't a miracle if they can do it while taking only 2 casualties. That kind of faith power would not have the right flavor; at that point, it simply becomes another power. The very fact that a highly trained professional soldier in Sororitas power armor with a Sororitas bolter should not be able to defeat a highly trained space marine in Astartes power armor with an Astartes bolter is where the miracle comes in.