Are SoB's that bad or are people just being sobs?

[dvs1]

So I've been looking at the 'new' SoB codex and i must say, it is a definite improvement from the old IMHO. I know ima get flamed for this but its pretty plain after a decent look through, there is a very 'competitive' army under all the fuss. Don't get me wrong, it would have been nice to get a real book with the whole shebang, but GW did a good job streamlining the faith system and reworking a 'new' army by fixing some old unit entries and costs.

New faith system good, you say?...Yes. It is now much easier to understand and use compared to the old rolling +/- unit strength. Now nearly any squad can be optimized to successfully cast their act of faith, if your willing to pay the points for the goodies ( similacrum imperialis, priest,etc) Most of the new acts of faith are surprisingly powerful. Rending retributors? Hell yes please! Be it mech'd up in an immolator with RENDING HFs or on the cheap with RENDING HBs, theses guys will find uses...assuming you can tear yourself away from the exorcists and the awesomeness that is penitent engines. With the canoness, you can play match up a little bit with her/her squads acts of faith to make some interesting combos. No longer do you just pile all the armies worth of faith into 1-2 combats, usually involving seraphim. Now it really is more of a army wide thing, so sad.=( You never need more than a few acts of faith a turn anyway, so the d6 faith a turn helps as its an 'infinite' supply of faith. If you're that worried about rolling 1's, just take uriah as he's a steal for what you get.

Exorcists were pretty good to begin with, so not nerfing them is almost as good as not leveling them up. Penitent engines look hella scarier now with up to 8 attacks each on the charge, coupled with unstoppable rampage. I'm guessing we'll be seeing plenty more of them now on. Even Repentia, with increased attacks and spirit of the martyr seem almost.. useful. Battle conclaves seem fun. What happens when you run a 9 man cult assassin unit lead by uriah, in a rhino? Dead marines happen =). Hell, just about dead anything happens.

Maybe basic sisters should've costed less, maybe not. In today's environment you are still getting 'about' your moneys worth with AoF, SoF, etc. Think of the increase the balance to the adjustments to seraphim, celestine, and HB retributors etc... You're still getting the arguably 'best' things about a marine (power armour, bolter, bs4 ) at less. Were you really gonna charge marines with nuns, expecting them to win?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, that this new 'codex' is not as bad as the interwebs make it out to be. My prediction is we're gonna see some really powerful lists coming out of this, and be crying cheese and OP in about a month. Keep in mind I do not consider this a 'new' 'dex, just a massive update to get them in line with 5th. Apologies extended if you owned an army of Arbites.... much like a gangrene amputation, this had to be done eventually.

[Lockark]

My friend who plays Sisters has the honest opinion that the new dex is pretty well at the same power level as the old one. It basically dose allot of the same things, but in new ways.

IMHO if more people were not complaining about it on message boards, and at their LGS's playing it? Well. We would start seeing alot of realy rock solid lists coming out of it.

But like you, expressing such a opinion here just gets you labeled a troll. IMHO it's best to not discuss tactics on message boards. Everyone is a "expert" and few of these "experts" even play the game regularly or even at LGS's were they fight a large variety of opponents.

You get the few guys who know what thier talking about but they seem few and far between. I always urge people to talk to their own local players over getting advice from the internet. They know the meta of the LGS, and uesly get games under their belt alot more regular then most fourm goers.

(On some forums I see guys who admit to not playing in over a year or two give tactical advice! Worse yet I also see many people who fall into the trap of not being able to recognize that the meta at your store is not the same as someone eals's store.)

[AbusePuppy]

The new faith system is simpler- which is a much-needed improvement- but does not scale at all with level and is completely random. Your 200pt Kill Team and 10,000pt Apocalypse force both get 1d6 faith per turn.

Most of the units, numbers-wise, are more or less okayish, but are pretty much in no way special, unique, or interesting. Basic SoBs are their ONLY troop choice and got notably worse compared to the last book- and not only worse but are quite mediocre when compared to existing troop choices, like Tactical Marines.

The lack of anything particularly unique in the codex is especially damning- essentially, there is no longer any reason to play the army, because they're just Girl Space Marines now. Ten-strong squads with two special weapons? Check. Rhino and (extremely bad) Razorback? Check. Elite-slot unit that can take more special weapons than usual? Check. Almost everything they had can be translated, one-for-one across to an existing Marine unit, except that they have worse stats and very few actual advantages.

Cruddance, almost certainly intentionally, took away the only useful things that the previous codex could do, made them extremely bad (just as he did with Carnifexes in the Tyranid codex) and gave SoB virtually nothing in return.

Most of the time, the internet is just big whiny babbies about things. However, in this instance they are actually correct- the new SoB codex is every bit as awful as the previous White Dwarf codices have been, and for no good reason.

As counterpoints to some of the things you mentioned:
-Basic SoBs are T3, which is a major disadvantage, and lack ATSKNF, also a critical weakness. It is these two things, not the reduced WS, S, I, etc, that make them worthless.

-Penitent Engines are still fairly expensive and extremely fragile and uncontrollable. They were dangerous in a fight before and are even more so now, but they'll never get there because they're AV11 Open-Topped units with Rage.

-Repentia are actually good now. 6++/FNP and their act of faith mean they stand pretty good chances of doing some damage to something if you can steal them a ride. DCA are better, though.

-Taking away Stormtroopers was unnecessary and pointless. Not only were they a natural for a second troop choice (seriously, they only have ONE troop choice now- that is all kinds of B.S.), it arbitrarily invalidates a large number of models people owned, since unlike GK there is absolutely nothing IST can be used for in the new codex. (GK, at least, have Henchmen squads.)

Sisters did desperately need an update, but they would've been better off without this. It's clearly a minimum-effort work from Cruddance who just rolled dice, got a few numbers, and then phoned it in to HQ.

[Sister Rosette Soulknyt]

Its not that we SoB players are being sobs, have you actually compared the 3rd ed codex to the WD codex?
If you had, you would see so much has changed, some for the better, most to the worse.

EG:
Dominion squads now have to be taken in size of 10 to get 4 special weapons, unlike before you could take 6 SoB and fit them in a Immotor.
Celestians still lack power weapons, compared to every new codex having access to them.
Immolators losing the ability to move 12" and still use its Heavy Flamer, it's now just a Razorback.
Wargear, so much important wargear has been removed, imagine cutting say half the SM wargear section out of there codex, and tell me how SM players feel.
Faith, you say it was confussing?? How, it was simple to use, for us anyway. And we had more of it, now regardless of army size we only get 1d6 now, spread that around say a 2,000 or 3,000 point army with say rolling a 3. Thats right imagine only having the chance to use Faith 3 times over the choice of 12+ or more units. How is that fair?

Only having one, yes one Troop choice, or only three SC's, or lack of anything stronger than Str 8 weapons. The excorsist still needs to roll 3 to hit, needs a 6 to Glance AV 14, and then needs to roll a 6 to get a wreck result.
There are good things i like, the Special Characters are better, but still need more to compare to other codexs. EG: GK=8, IG=11, BA=8, DE=8. SoB=3.
See what i mean.
Now i will play with the codex, but dont dismiss SoB as sobs because we can see and are not happy at all with getting a crummy WD codex over all other armies getting a codex, new plastic miniatures, new characters, new wargear, and lots of interesting new units.

[dvs1]

Apologies to any one offended by the title, really I just used it to get some responses.

I should've been more clear about my view of the WD SoB thingy. I see it more like an 5th ed update rather than a full blown new codex. Just like the BA before it, it doesn't offer new stuff, just takes some stuff away and added some tweaks to the rules here and there for clarity.

Old faith not confusing? Either had to roll above or below the units model count, meaning much of who could use what was very situational. What could be divined guidanced, would be hard to spirit of the matyr and so on. Now its a 5+ roll, with modifiers aplenty to help you out. Also, before you only had a set number of faith points equal to the amount of faithful units/ characters that had to last you ALL game. Now you get to to use acts every turn. You just can't pile them all down in one turn like before. However, you are correct in how it doesn't scales up to larger games fairly. Hopefully there will be a faq out soon to fix that since GW is getting better about those.

Losing all that wargear was to be expected. EVERY codex lost a ton of stuff transitioning from 3rd- 5th edition, except for maybe DE. Losing stormtroopers i concede was a loss. They should have at least given SoBs their frateris militia back ( even though they suck).

[eldargal]

At a competitive level I'm not sure much will really change, they had one or two vaiable builds before they will have one or two viable builds now. The worst thing about this codex for me is that it has stripped away, orn erfed) nearly everything that made the SoB unique. The Sarissa, blessed ammunition, most of their wargear in fact, Acts of Faith are near useless though the system itself isn't bad (apart from the scaling issue).

[dvs1]

People actually took things like the sarissa? Just kidding , it was a cool concept. I know they took a bunch away, but i see so many new combos in there to exploit. Oddly enough, i just purchased a decent sized SoB lot from ebay just cause it was super cheap and was gonna part it out and sell it, but now i'm gonna have to throw down with them to test my convictions. Space Nuns it is!

[eldargal]

No one ever took a sarissa. But a lot of people seemed to conver them and there was some nice art with them having sarissas attached.Their removal wasn't a big thing in terms of playing them, but it was stripping away a little part of what made them different.

[the jeske]

Just like the BA before it, it doesn't offer new stuff, just takes some stuff away and added some tweaks to the rules here and there for clarity.

wait wait wait wait wait... BAs went from spam minimax las/plas get max number of DC with powerfists/power weapons with 2 chappies or a libby/chappy to RAS being troops , FnP bubble , mefiston being mefiston , actualy good MM attack bikes . how was that not changing how the army works ? BAs pre WD dex never used RAS , never used specials or attack bikes . Even the DC that was run in both the 3ed and the WD dex worked in a different way .

[faolan]

It's not as bad as it could be. But Abusepuppy is wrong, it's not a Cruddance style muckup, it's a Jervis Golden Shower.