SoB WD codex 'leaked'

[silashand]

They downgraded a few stats and increased a few others.

Actually no, they usually don't change stats.

And I have been playing this army for almost 15 years. I think I am perfectly capable of seeing a nerf when it happens to them, playing games with the new rules or not.

Besides: no new units and (apparently) no new models means how many people are going to pick up Sisters as a new army that is still all metal, or worse, Finecrap? It's already hard to get people to buy all metal armies. Now you just insured no one probably will. If you think Sisters/WH armies were scarce before, they'll be downright extinct if even existing players don't feel like they are worth playing.

Cheers, Gary

[chicop76]

Have you seen the points? I didn't know if there was a leak of them floating about.

Would it make a difference if all the Sister was say, 10 points?

Sisters are cheap to begin with. That's 1 point cheaper then before, that doen't make up destroying the faith system.

[Melissia]

Lowering the Celestians / Seraphim initiative to 3 essentially removes those units as effective assault units.

Imagine a full assault marine squad assaulting a full Tactical Marine squad. Now imagine if the Assault Marine squad was I3 instead of I4. The result is drastically different.

Have you seen the points? I didn't know if there was a leak of them floating about.

Would it make a difference if all the Sister was say, 10 points?

Why would a one point decrease make anything better?

[silashand]

Sisters are cheap to begin with. That's 1 point cheaper then before, that doen't make up destroying the faith system.

Amen. Plus no one has noted that we no longer have any ability to negate psychic powers, something that has been a hallmark of the Sisters since their inception (only the BRBv3 version lacked any and the Design Team rectified that after complaints from Sisters players). Really GW? You take away/nerf probably the two most significant elements of the army's character (faith and hatred of/immunity to psykers) and you give them what in return? IMO abso-effing-lutely nothing.

[w7west]

It looks pretty bad but there are a few things to point out:

Rending heavy bolters

Haha everything else suck though. I was about to start a sisters army too, I was really excited about using a cool old codex since they took away my old de dex.

Looks like I will be keeping my money... wtf is this garbage?

[Melissia]

Rending heavy bolters

Not as impressive as it sounds. On average, 12 shots. 8 hits. 1 rending hit. So the result on average from a full retributor squad is ONE armor ignoring hit, ONE hit which gains a buff to armor penetration. For what? 11+d3 penetation? It still probably won't even penetrate a predator, and it'll never mind a leman russ. The reason rending is good in close combat is because said hits are made against rear armor. Even AP1 on battle sisters is better, because with 20 shots you get on average 2 armor ignoring hits, without the having the delusion that the unit's bolters might be useful against vehicles.

[JxKxR]

Amen. Plus no one has noted that we no longer have any ability to negate psychic powers, something that has been a hallmark of the Sisters since their inception (only the BRBv3 version lacked any and the Design Team rectified that after complaints from Sisters players). Really GW? You take away/nerf probably the two most significant elements of the army's character (faith and hatred of/immunity to psykers) and you give them what in return? IMO abso-effing-lutely nothing.

In my opinion you have hit the nail on the head! I haven't read many stories with the sisters in it but the ones I have they are phsycic voids. Like in a thousand sons the physkers get near them and don't feel anything.
I had been thinking I would make a little sisters force but not at all now. I doubt I will even buy the white dwarf's. I was really hopeing the sisters would get the dark eldar treatment with new bad *** rules and most importantly NEW MODELS!!! If they don't have new models who really cares?

[Lancel]

Yeah, we've seen the whole bestiary. This was definitely a rush job without much (if any) play testing. Heck, the Tyranid VS Sister battle report next issue may very well BE the play test. :P It doesn't breed a lot of confidence when they picked possibly the most underpowered 5th edition codex to battle report against.

I hadn't even realize the scaling with size, but that is true, the Sisters will be even worse off in Apocalypse. These faith powers are nowhere as good as what we had before, and often those faith powers were the only thing that enabled the Sisters to win ever before. You could argue that yes, now we don't have to worry about squad sizes to use abilities, but that really didn't matter because we tailored the squad sizes anyway to fit what we wanted them to do, so we didn't have to worry much about random die rolls. Now in fairness the squads will start with a 4+ to succeed with their Sister Superior, and will pretty quickly get a 3+ to succeed once they take a casualty, but there's still the d6 roll just to see how many acts of faith you can actually make that turn, where before we just had points and we could rely on them being there.

The faith powers themselves just don't scale up to what once was had, especially with the complete loss of such staples as Spirit of the Martyr and the restriction of Light of the Emperor and Divine Guidance to a single squad each. The key loss, however, is flexibility. We did frequently tailor squad sizes to use the faith powers they most needed (small squads for Spirit of the Martyr, large squads for Divine Guidance), but the difference is we could design the squad that way ourselves, and now the role is forced on us much more considerably, with very little flexibility in how we use that squad. Wargear options may fix that, but I am skeptical, as it could take some considerable options to return that same level of flexibility in the army.

Divine Guidance, as an aside, was actually not typically used on Retributors because Heavy Bolters are pretty powerful in their own right. It was more often used on squads with mass flamers and rapid fire boltguns to score tons of hits and therefore many chances to get a rend result. Retributors didn't get it because 12 shots is a lot less than 20, so the only time it was worth it is if the Retributor squad was at close range, and that's supposed to only happen when things go wrong, because really, you're supposed to shoot at things from 24-36", not from <12" with a Heavy Bolter squad. The extra 4 shots you'd get over a 10-sister Battle Sister squad just isn't worth the points. It sounds awesome, but isn't actually. I might see using it on AV 10-12 though for the extra armor penetration, but that's not a sure thing.

At least the Canoness is Stubborn, but that's just another example of something we could previously apply universally being suddenly restricted to a single unit.

Addendum: I am a bit saddened to see the psychic save thing go away, but they do have an army wide 6++ to make up for it.

[Aegis]

Well... This is terribly disappointing. Unless we see an amazing hail mary move in the second half of these rules, I got one last game with my Sisters to play, and then they are getting packed up...

Think I will try Tau...

[wittdooley]

The bytching about faith points boggles my mind.

How often SHOULD their prayers be answered? I'm sorry, I thought they were supposed to be at least a semi rare thing.

I thought they were sitting at 13 points, TBH.

Basically the gist of what I'm readin here is that GW would have been better off NOT releasing a WD codex and allowing people to complain simply until the full one--which i'm sure will have all new units, etc-- was ready? Is that bout right?