Lord Hanaur

its a special edition codex. I am assuming the normal codex will be "less cool" but entirely functional without the painted Sisters or whatever. The new models are larger than the old ones, that's for sure. The special weapons specifically look incredibly awesome, and might be worth getting. I'm thinking that if Celestians become usable, then people might buy new models to have significantly;y differentiated models. The Penitent Engines are so bad that giving them a new model really inspires me to hope they spent an equal amount of care onthe actual rules. I mean how could they have gotten any worse? Perhaps there will be a certain order of zealots that features all the "crazy" models and will give them more speed, which would be a big deal for them. Either speed oooooor some Stratagems to make them go off like its the fourth of July. Maybe 10" flamers on them. That'd be sweet. REMEMBER that the original fluff for them was as tomb Guardians and the like. So in that role, perhaps they could let them get a heroic intervention type of ability. Frontline guardians? Perhaps suddenly they are better hiding near the front lines and then coming tothe rescue of their sisterhood when attacked?

oh muhgad, ohmuhgad, oh muhgad, ohmuhgad, oh muhgad, ohmuhgad, oh muhgad, ohmuhgad, oh muhgad, ohmuhgad,

Im an audial learner mostly but yeah i need to absorb this. Gotta study

... I... Wait... So there are two lists right? the one for the main chapters, and then a list you can take two from for "invented" chapters. And you can only do one or the other right? What I read you as saying is that an Ultramarine player has two DEFINED Chapter Tactics? He can't just pick one. He has to take the ones UltraMarines have, yes? And then if I want to SAY I'm a Successor Chapter of UltraMarines, what happens? I get a "main" UltraMarine one, plus one I choose? I'm really sorry. Between the convo I had with him and my admittedly VERY brief time wit hthe books, I have to admit IM struggling with this. But I need to know it.

Objective missions = da' best. Tis true.

Edit'd the entirely solicit'd last post of "reviews". Forgot a few things in there so I added them where appropriate.

I mean sure! https://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-state-of-sisters-of-battle.html

SOME THINGS TO NOTE: The sun sets. After 52 games running my Sisters of Battle list in its current iteration, I am ready to step into new shoes. I was 42-6 and had already declared that by popular demand I would take on the challenge of playing Grey Knights (the local players literally voted on the choice of army, don’t blame me). But before I did, I decided to make one last push with them in the event Saturday. 4th in the world as pure Sisters of Battle is pretty cool, but I thought it would be neat if I could exceed that before the switch. This was to be a FOUR round single day tournament. So if you like endurance tests, this was one. RARELY have I been to one that was like that. I have run a couple of them though! Interesting and important note: This tournament required you to concede the choice of deploying first and going first to the player with the lower ITC standing! Further, it required you to let them disallow one deployment zone FIRST and then you could also. That was a very different twist, but interesting. Just a huge advantage. As I was the highest ranked player, I was REQUIRED to concede this to EVERY opponent I faced all day. Oofta. Tough to do, knowing that your opponent gets to pick who goes first EVERY GAME, before you even start. Lol. Game 1 It’s always better when you go to events and get to play people you have never played before. On one hand, you don’t know their army, their tendencies nor their particular list as well as you normally would. On the other hand, it’s exactly what you hope for, to get better. In this case he was playing a mostly Primaris Space Wolf list, with a powerful dreadnought (Forge World I think) and Predators, plus a Venerable Dread. Seem to be seeing more Dreadnoughts in general lately, especially the damnable Forge World variety. He got first turn, and used it to try and destroy my Exorcist, and put 6 wounds on it, while his other units positioned. I responded by trying to use the terrain to force his Heavies to move in order to hit me. As it was, that round could have gone much worse for me than it did, but the Emperor protects and the Shield of Faith is a thing. This also allowed me to Kill his Venerable, and the Tacticals who were blockading and advancing in front of it. From there, the dominoes began to fall as I continually used my movements to avoid the worst of his shooting while inflicting my own jabs. Celestine was able to Drive down the middle and take out his Buffmaster 3,000, and inflict wounds on the units trying to advance up the middle on me. The big boom got dropped when his Primaris advanced, in order to take more objectives than me, but they got too close and the Arco-Flagellents murdered them to a man, on my right flank. After return fire and desperate attempts to kill Celestine (but she rose again) the jig was up, and the Arco-Flagellnets rained destruction on them again, with Celestine finishing off the character corps. The Space Wolves quickly fell after that, unable to recover from sustained Exorcist fire and the invasion of their back lines. The Sisters took relatively little in the way of casualties. Sisters of Battle Victory 40-0 Game 2 The price of success is facing what could be a very tough army. I faced Bobby and his Orks. He had rumbled over his previous opponent with his huge number of Smasha Guns and Lootaz, coupled with his hordes of orks. I have never seen so many of those guns played (There must have been TWELVE of those things), but when he reminded me of how they work I had a feeling this was going to be bloody. I wasn’t wrong. We played on the pointy Hammer and Anvil, so his range was a real advantage. Other than the Exorcists I have no range to speak of. I began by swinging what I could left, to use the shadow of the LOS blocker to save me from the lions share of his shooting. Celestine shot into the building to claim the central objective. The Exorcist Battle Tanks were able to kill 2 of his Smasha Guns which was a good start ,but left one with one wound left, a little bittersweet. His response didn’t really come as a shock. Lootaz killed all but one of Teal Squad, and some Smasha Guns put serious damage on Green Squad as well, while the rest of the guns focused on the tanks as LOS allowed. His Orks got dropped on Celestines head, and crushed all but three of Pink Squad, while locking up Yellow Squad with the pile in and consolidation. In all, 33 Sisters of Battle died turn one with Celestine! He had a 40 ork blob knocking on the doors and he had blasted a hole in me. My response had to be strong or this was going to be a short fight. The Missionry and Arco-Flagellents broke from cover while the remnants of Pink Squad as well as the locked up Yellow squad dropped back from combat. Green Squad limped to the safety of the Arco-Flagellents previous hiding spot at full tilt to avoid annihilation. The Teal Squad survivor who held through sheer Faith, ran to cover but forward to help block off more Deep Strikes. The Seraphim leaped forward as well, concealing themselves from shooting and preparing their assault while creating a bigger halo to avoid the future Deep Strikes. This plan worked. The Canoness’s Heroic intervention the round before plus Celestines Heavy Flamer and a few bolt pistols etc… shaved some of the 40 man ork squad down to 28 and and then the Arco-Flagellents absolutely demolished the entire ork mob. The Seraphim murdered the warboss who was buffing them, with Fusion pistols. My only regret was forgetting to move Celestine but as it turned out she was left alone holding the center objective when the blood began turning the ground into a quagmire. Turns out, 40 orks can put out a lot of blood. The answering blow was telling. 3 Smashaguns were downed by the Exorcists! The response was brutal from the Loota. Total overkill on the unit of offending Seraphim who killed their bozz, but there were no other targets other than the Exorcists and Celestine! So the SmashaGunz and the Vigilus BigMek gunner (warlord) tried to do work on them, but didn’t manage to entirely kill an Exorcist in that volley. They would live to regret it. No one could get enough shots on Celestine to kill her but she was wounded and had to heal on her turn. Another ork mob showed up to threaten the Seraphim on my right. I had spread out expertly, they really could only do that, and then failed their charge on the remnant of that squad (he shot them enough to make it a longer charge). On Celesintes next turn, she healed and then she charged and fought twice through sheer force of Faith, killing not one but four clustered characters after Heavy Flaming one near to death. The Exorcists continued to finish off Smashaguns, killing three more, all that were in range in fact. Seraphim leaped forward and murdered the Warlord Bigmek, while the Seraphim that escaped the ork mobs wrath flew at miximum speed away to cover on wings of Faith. The orks were in the open… The orks pursued and tried to make it to a meaningful target but it was just too far. The compensation they got for their efforts was for the Arco-Flagellents to fly forward and kill the entire mob…again! Warlord gone, Smashaguns smashed, most characters murdered and Lootaz with only a couple of choices as to targets, he made a half hearted effort to kill an Exorcist, did, and then capitulated. There just was no coming back. Outside of a few orks, a few smashaguns and the Lootaz (who really only had one target of note) there really wasn’t much left and no way to project force. The lootas were soon to be tied up and dying in droves. 31-8 Sisters of Battle Victory Game 3 This game was against Logan, one of the 5 people to have beaten my list, so I was very intrigued to see what he would bring. True to his previous form, he brought Space Wolves and a mean, mean list FILLED with Forge World shenanigans. His army was essentially the diametric opposite of the Orks: an artillery battery of 3 Scorpius Launchers and three Something-or-other Quad launcher thingees that were super easy to hide. He could and DID fit all of it behind one building which largely blocked my LOS. He then had a unit of 7 and unit of 6 Wulfen (always brutal) plus Grimnar to empower his serious artillery barrages, a Jumppack Lieutenant, a Chaplain Dread that couldn’t be shot, and some Marines for show and blocking (along with his little two man crews for the Quad Launchers). His plan was to basically delete a squad a round, for six rounds (comfortably as unseen as poissible), while his Wulfen ate anything that dared to stray closer to his Artillery. The terrain setup was awesome for this since he had a great piece of terrain to hide behind. Apparently this plan worked like a charm because he ended up taking 2nd place ANDd blasting most of his opponents straight off planet earth. I seized. I advanced with everything and got pretty far away from his menacing Wulfen up the middle, which I had carefully measured from to begin the game to make sure they were 25" away or more. In our first engagement I had not done this and it was very very much to my detriment. This gave me lots of leeway to avoid them for at least an extra round. I then killed a Scorpius with two of the Exorcist Battle Tanks by zooming them up the right board edge to get better LOS (at the expense of accuracy but so what, they were paper weights if I had not). Then the Vessel of the Emperors Will took care of the movement penalties for me. I bracketed a second Scorpius as well. On his turn he did exactly as his army is designed to. He deleted an entire Squad even despite his losses, and started closing in with his Wulfen albeit they had a longer trip to make it than they had hoped because as aforementioned, I had swung WAY far to my right. I then deleted the second and third Scorpius as well as a Quad Launcher, by moving tanks yet again to get line of sight. The Sisters had formed a fence with Pink Squad. The first of his Wulfen units crashed into it and the Seraphim that were there. It held well thanks to the blessings of Celestine and the Warlord. The Sisters behind them then shifter positions left and with Flamer, bolters and Meltaguns, the Holy Trinity, they destroyed the 6 man Wulfen Squad after it did severe damage to their sisters in Teal Squad (could have been worse). The seven man squad was quite unscathed however and we disengaged from it to avoid immediate annihilation. At this stage it was clear that the enemy plan was foiled. Objectives were falling too easily to me and the Seraphim reserves were taking Recon points as well as advancing on the enemy positions, eventually taking one of their objectives from them with Fusion guns. Thisforced a Lieutenant to desperately try to re-establish that beachhead and dying in the end for his efforts. At the end of the day the Seraphim, and the Exorcist tanks, spelled doom for the Chaplain and every other model there. I tabled the entire army. 35-11 Sisters of Battle Victory Game 4 I played Michael, a guy who’s been to the top table recently and was here again. He has a Drago Paladinstar list that is really tough to kill, which pumps out very serious levels of accurate Dakka much like some Death Guard Terminator lists are designed to do. I have played him before, and he has an apothecary and a flag wielding Ancient who gives out free attacks. Accompanying him were the perfunctory baby-Carrier Grand Master and then the 3 cool Venerable Dreadnoughts he likes to use to bring the long range can opening fun to the party, including one that is Forge World (I mean…why not I guess…). Sprinkle with the three strike Squads and…GO! He made me go first, knowing he’d be be-bopping around and teleporting to objectives anyways as he saw fit, and all his stuff was hidden from me, so I had like no shots. All I could do was literally move… But movement can be a weapon too. I spread out taking up as much space as I couple to the left of center. His Paladin Star was sort of limited to the far left side of the board if it wanted choice shots, and the Bonus Point objective I took over in round 2 convinced him he couldn’t keep allowing that either. So in he jumped, and his Dread Knight Gated over to help (after failing to in round one). Yellow Squad disappeared in a puff of smoke. Ouch. I did get the bonus point though! I dropped my Seraphim in to the right, far enough away to frustrate any charge attempts over the terrain I was behind. Since the Dreadnoughts couldn’t see me, or make a reasonable charge, they didn’t venture out of their cover, using Astral Aim to fire at my tanks like the cowards they were. Meaning they put 6 wounds on an Exorcist with just one shot! The response was 11 wounds to his Dread Knight, while my ENTIRE ARMY basically ran to the right and into buildings or behind cover. We had no interest in being gunned down by the Paladin star or giving up points. This touched off a race. Draigo, the Apothecary and the Ancient chased down my Exorcists and little Purple Squad(one of my Engineers) to my lower left while they fought a fighting retreat. Purple Squad would eventually fall. The rest of the Paladins tried to catch up to my fleeing units and kill Celestine (which they did, though she rose again) and took the bonus objective from me. The entire army spent the rest of the game running to my right (except the Missionary and Arco-Flagellents of course) and the Seraphim killed all his Dreadnoughts over the course of two turns. Celestine EVENTUALLY got there to help and BAAAAARELY managed to kill 5 Grey Knights with 30 combined attacks over the last two rounds. I rolled like garbage the whole game really, but I was smart enough not to let him have his day in court with those GK’s on my Sisters! His pursuit of my Purple Squad and Exorcists ended with him JUST in range of my Arco-Flagellents (engineers). They had to make an improbable 12 Inch charge (needed 11 on the dice, got it with re-roll) that finally killed Drago. Drago had taken endless Exorcist shots, but my rolling and his rolling combined to make me look like an idiot. The Arco-Flagellents did the job though. One can argue with many things but 33 STR 5 -1 AP attacks (re-rolling misses) isn’t one of them. At games end, I had fired exactly ZERO shots at his Paladin Star, had killed only 15 Strike Squad members, plus the three Dreadnoughts and the DreadKnight… But… 30-19 Sisters of Battle Victory. AFTERMATH: So at the end of the day, the Sisters of Battle prevailed, winning the tournament outright. It was a really great way to cap off what has been a seriously fun run, with a codex that is oh so in need of its newer self. Lol. The Index was a better codex in most Sisters players opinions! But I always have loved a challenge, and it’s kind of my passion to find UNORTHODOXY and go for it. I’ll still add to this, if I do play some Sisters games, but expect to see much more from me about Grey Knights (and I am sure, a bumpy ride given its equally distressed state right now). As a side note, the victory did make me the number 2 pure Adepta Sororitas player in z world! also best on the west coast. Hooray! That felt pretty good also, for however long that lasts. 46-6

Honestly I didn't understand it. He explained it to me, sort of but honestly, I found the explanation more confusing as he went on. It has to do with essentially trying to get the benefits of both Whits Scars AND some other faction. But damned if I can coherently explain what it was all about. I left the conversation more confused than when i started. I like to think I'm pretty good at reading the rules, but I couldnt really understand the issue here. But it has to do with some stupid wording that one "could" misread in the area where it talks about Chapter Tactics. Sounds like gaming the system to me but I can't explain it any better right now. I don't have the book and was just borrowing it at the time we had the talk..

My advice always is not to make hopeful leap with rules. Always ends in tears. The new book,which i borrowed briefly looked like it creates some questions in regardto astral claws. There is ambiguity here as to how to apply all this to them,according to Jason, whose quite good w them.

Imagine the participation levels if people didn't feel that way. I think it's important for you to note though that an ITC event isn't actually required to use ITC missions. The ITC genius is that they allow TO's the freedom to run events the way they want to. Groupthinkers just never break out of that "gotta' do it the groupthink way" mentality. As long as the rules are the same for everyone at an event however, the results are what they are and are legit. The Ambassadorial Grand Tournament is an example. It uses all custom missions. The participants receive the coveted ITC points they normally would get for going, but they get a more classic "40K-like" experience. Throw a stone in any direction and you can hit someone who will bitch about something, and I'm sure there's people who avoid the Ambassadorial Grand Tournament because its NOT using the ITC missions, as surely as you would avoid it if they used them. At the end of the day, though, as long as everyone had a good time, a lot of this is just academic philosophizing and choosing a hill to stand on. I think variety is really fun though. Obviously I do! Oddly there was a lot less resistance to the ITC missions when they included elements of both Maelstrom and set objectives. When they went to the alternative scoring they have now, it met more resistance from some people. The Secondaries were the big change, but collectively it all changed so much about the lists and the game play.

The meta is deeply affected by the missions. Deeply. It's why I sometimes throw a normal book mission into the tournaments. It also affects the game play. Frankly you find yourself doing things that you would not do. An example was that I played a "regular" mission the other day with a guy, and I moved my Purple Squad from cover, to attack. Obviously you want as much weight of fire as possible. In an ITC game i never would have exposed them or fired them the entire game because they are one of my Engineers. It seems entirely absurd to keep an entire unit hidden and never firing in a war game. But that's what Purple squad normally does. Another strange oddity: In the ITC format, I threw my unit of Arco-Flagellents into an enemy unit that was essentially down to nothing simply because I needed "killed 1", knowing I would not survive the next round, but forced to do it by circumstance. In a real game, and in a real fight for that matter, I would have bided my time for a better target or perhaps have simply planned ahead to get to those sweet sweet objectives. Yet another strange thing is that Sisters of Battle have one good unit. Everything else is esentially suspect or average but they have one reall;y good one: Celestine. Yet in the new "meta" she is considered suspect because of the fact that she gives up Kingslayer so easily and reliably. So in ITC, people have not given up on her, but they definitely seem bothered by her and many have stopped taking her, relying on a Canoness and the indomitable Belief Warlord Trait. Most have stopped taking the bodyguards. In a REAL 40K game, no one would say a bad word about her, ever. In ITC circles she's a liability. Hard to argue that. The conventional wisdom being that "if shes lucky she kills something and then gives up 4 points immediately." The list goes on. I prefer normal 40K games. They feel much more like a normal battle, and most war games play similarly to 40K in the sense that they are trying to ACCOMPLISH something with the attack. Progressive scoring is not very progressive. It makes alpha strikes ridiculously important. An end game is not a thing in progressive scoring. It encourages the munchkinlike building of first turn brutality that made them institute the Tactical Reserves limitation in the first place. Even WITH that rule, it has shifted the units we take to the types that can most easily affect casualties, in large numbers, turn one, even if it means losing a bunch of stuff. Because we cannot ever make up ground with progressive scoring. Not ever. Once you've "missed out on some points" you are never going to be able to recover from that. Sound "progressive" to you? In a game where you can play the long game to win, you feel much more like a General. In a game where you simply must throw every asset at the walls and hope to break them down quickly, not so much. I play ITC missions, competitively, and at a high level. But that doesn't really require me to prefer it, and I basically don't. As a TO and as a competitive player, there really isn't another pool to play in, so I splash around and do have fun. I think it would be MORE fun if more TO's included normal book missions in their ITC events though. I think some of them don't know they are free to do so, or something? Could be.

Once more unto the breech, ladies. This time against air mobile Space Wolves!!! Facebook Pic/ Battle Report link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/185402052000929/permalink/525021578038973/

Another fight to the death! Battle Report to follow. This time against the dreaded Astra Militarum. 9 pieces of armor, and a whole lot of it artillery against T3 Sisters and their 3 tank buddies. What can one Sister do against such Dakka? Facebook pic/Battle report link 1: https://www.facebook.com/groups/185402052000929/permalink/523149911559473/ Facebook pic/batreport link 2: https://www.facebook.com/groups/185402052000929/permalink/523235164884281/

Have fun.

Played Quadrant deployment, against Orks, using The Scouring as our mission. A LOT of Orks! He had the usual Da’ Jump, Green Tide, Tellyporta plan to overwhelm me while his Lootaz (I never killed a single loota) blazed away at me from the rear, Grots to protect them. One wrinkle was he had a Deffrolla tank with Nobz in it and a Warboss + Painboy. So that was cool. Hadn’t seen it done before. I deployed a little more scattered than usual in anticipation of the need to cut off his charges. It was the Scouring mission, and the 4-point objective was not in either of our deployment zones, so I knew it would be a scramble to get over there so I stuck an Exorcist and the Arco-Flagellents on the right flank to try and maybe capture it later, while the rest of the force was FAR to the left. Seraphim in reserve (Please God, Please help me remember to deploy them). 1 He won the roll and chose to make me go first, so that he could gank and squat on objectives. Adroit decision. Because he was so threat forward, I decided to dump everything I had into his foremost ork squad and pray I could kill it all without letting it Green Tide on me. I moved the tanks to cut off deep strikes and poured every Exorcist and bolter into the squad, using the Vessel of the Emperor Stratagem to add sharply to my accuracy and with the Canoness among them… Good times. The result was that he lost 18 of his 25 orks to the fusillade but more critically he was too far from his Warboss to maintain order and the unit exploded. This was quite a blow, as he otherwise could have resurrected that entire squad and brought them in to support his efforts. On his turn, everything advanced as fast as their ork legs would take them. One blob streaked towards the 4 point objective in the far northeast quadrant along with some characters, while another Ork unit surged forward and another Banded together to form a 40 man Ork Squad, which then was JUMPED right in front of my sisters firing line, Evil Sunz ready to charge. The Lootaz bracketed my Exorcist which had moved forward to cut off deep strikes and to get to the objective in the southwest quadrant ruins, though it still had a ways to go. The Orks made a fatal error here and shot my Red Squad, which lost five members. This increased the charge distance considerably and even after a re-roll, the orks failed to make the distance they needed (they needed to roll 11). It was a very big moment. 2 Celestine leaped forward to lead the charge and the Seraphim dropped from the skies onto the Southwestern objective. The Arco0Flagellents snaked forward into “maybe” range of charging the oncoming orks who wanted the northeastern 4 point objective. The Sisters of Battle, elated to be able to shoot, moved up into firing position while the Exorcists continued to take up space and block off lanes for deep strikes as best they could. En masse , The Sisters of Battle annihilated the 40 boy squad with Bolter fire, Melta fire and determination. They even had the extra shots to whittle the Boyz squad behind them to a significant degree…but I knew full well that he would Green Tide them if I didn’t finish the job. So Celestine rushed into them with a 9 inch charge, and through her strength of Faith, was able to attack twice! The orks adroitly used 2 command points to interrupt her. She got EXACTLY enough wounds to kill the whole unit to an ork after the brutal Bolter fire. This left the Arco-Flagellents with work to do. They made their charge and even the Missionary made it on an 11. The result? 54 attacks (plus the Missionaries) being re-rolled, STR 5, -1 AP. The entire Boy squad was annihilated to an ork. Again, no possibility of Green Tide. The sudden loss of so many orks was demoralizing but the ork characters were resolved to continue Krumping. The Psykers tried to kill her in the Psyker phase with Smites, but her Act of Faith protected her from the Mortal wounds. Once that failed, they tried to shoot her to death, splitting the fire of the Lootaz between her and the Red Squad that was damaged earlier. Red Squad took losses but Celestine stood, taking 4 wounds. Almost gone. One boss charged Celestine, and brought his Klaws unerringly to bear. She would have been destroyed if she hadn’t rolled 2 6’s for her Shield of Faith right then! She ended up having only two wounds left, unscathed. She then dropped her holy judgement upon the Ork and but could not kill him nor attack twice of course at this point. The Bigmek in the northeast quadrant also smashed into the Arco-Flagellents and managed to kill FOUR of them in one go! Oofta, only two left! The response was 12 attacks (I didn’t have the Command points to power them up anymore) and caused three wounds to the Ork. Tough dude! His Deffrolla found a hole in my network and drooped in into my backfield, but could not do much more than prepare for war. Its hull rattled with the impacts of orks ready to rumble within... He was sort of forced to place it 9” behind my Exorcist in the northeast quadrant because nothing else was really open. It charged the Exorcist, which planted 5 wounds on it before it was a slag heap. The Deffrolla did its job admirably. 3 The Seraphim moved with all speed north, as the Exorcist and a Dialogus took station on the objective they had secured. Celestine leaped from combat with her well armed assailant and rushed towards the Seraphim and the Lootaz. The Seraphim pistols seemed to bounce off the resilient hides of the mighty Gretchen who defended the Lootaz ,and they held on as long as they could, absorbing the charge of two Seraphim Squads, one of which made an improbably long charge to get there. The Gretchen morale broke but not before raining many blows down on the intruding Seraphim. In the end and they ran, leaving the Lootaz exposed. Still, those Gretchen were highly notable in their defense of their betters. The Sisters of Battle moved forward menacingly and finished Celestines Target and the Wierdboy who stood behind him. Most of their firepower was wasted but they did manage a few stray shots ta the Deffrolla I nthe backfield while trying to move away from it as much as possible. The two remaining Arco-Flagellents finished off the BigMek, and consolidated with the Missionary. Purple Squad came out of hiding and shot the Deffrolla as well but really to no effect. Its contents would be on their way quite soon. The last two exorcists poured shots onto the Deffrolla and left it with 2 wounds remaining. Disappointing number of shots! One of the HK’s did do some work though. There was little else to do. The Lootaz stood alone nad exposed on the Northwest quadrant facing Seraphim and Celestine judgement. The one Wierdboy hid behind some ruins in the north central area of the enemies deployment and then there was this Deffrolla issue… The Lootaz realized their danger and they had the Weird Boy Jump dem to the 4 point objective in the northeast. D’oh. This left the Seraphim and Celestine stranded and out of the fight. They fired down on Red Squad trying to finish it, and wisely not firing at the nearest target (Teal) this time. The Warboss, Painboy and the Nobz all rushed from their Deffrolla fresh from killing my Exorcist. The Warboss and Nobz made their long charge into Green and Teal Squads. Teal took the worst of it, losing 10 of their number, but Green Squad only lost two. The Act of Faith saved the Teal squad from deserting. One Nob died on overwatch, as they had charged everything within 12” and so the Overwatch was not inconsiderable. 4. The orks conceded at this stage but the Deffrolla was going to die to Exorcist fire and the Nobs to melta and Bolter fire in my round. The Arco-Flagellents would not likely have been enough to survive the trip into the Lootaz but that was going to be what they tried., along with the missionary. Celestine would leap over and kill the Wierdboy. Seraphim would advance ot midfield to prepare to melta any incredibly lucky Nobz. That the Canoness and her coterie did not. By turn 6, likely tabled. Brutal fight, but the biggest issues I saw were: 1 No KFF. This one thing would have made ALL the difference in his ability to keep ENOUGH alive to then Green Tide them. Different game then! 2 Putting the Warboss too far away or else taking casualties too near the Warboss. Either way it cost him his first mob. That was huge and something he will not do again I am sure. 3 Shooting the unit he needed to charge. I think we’ve literally all done this at some point and realized “oh crap” right afterwards when the shooting goes a little TOO well. Lol. This was really the big tactical issue which triggered everything else. 4 I would have forced the issue by putting the Deffrolla on the table and using it as mobile terrain to advance behind. Deep Striking boyz, tellyporting them and Green Tiding them is very effective and I think his fighting strength would have gone a long ways if he had simply not taken any wounds at all, and saved his Green Tide for the pivotal round 2, where all the donuts are made for orks. 5 Going second was a decent move because: objectives and Da Jump. So I totes might have done the same. Going first does however allow you to bring in your triple threat that much faster and tie up the shooting before the enemy can do it in round 2. So there was something to be said here for taking the initiative when it was available. I am torn on this decision but I think if the Deffrolla had been deployed, you definitely go first. So that Deffrolla was the key deployment error I think. Everything else was as it should be but that probably would have made him going second look like genius. Great opponent though, great game and he will come back with all those things in mind to defeat me.

As inevitable as the sun rising.

Another report!!! Lots of pics. https://www.facebook.com/groups/185402052000929/permalink/519833851891079/

Yup. But either way, i had a long but fun experience. It was gratifying to do well with Sisters at a major. And I could have done more, which is equally satisfying

I really think it was personal. While I have not played him (I dont think) he is friends with a couple people who just don't like me. Sooo... I don't think it was his back. He seems like a sturdy fellow to me. But one hopes you are right.

TSHFT RECAP Twas a long weekend. 6 games in one weekend is quite the marathon and it can tax your resolve to play on, but most of us made it to the end. I had never heard of Jim Vesal before yesterday and the room seemed to have this weird fanboy vibe about him. Turns out the number one player in the world was there and I didn’t even know his name. The room was filled with names you know. A BUNCH of top 5 guys from the various factions were there. Jason Ryder, Jason Byrd, Sean Morgan, myself, Paul Winters, Jonathan Kohatsu, Collin Sherman, and a host of other heavy hitters. Good turn out. First things first: I didn’t forget to deploy the Seraphim in any games, even though it was super close on my first game. A win already so I could have been happy with just that. 1 First game was against Matthew Bombard, and his Steel Tempests with Blood Angel allies. We played Dawn of War Mission 1 and he had infiltrators as his engineers. We both experienced fairly terrible dice rolls, but I could afford to have bad rolls more. He lost his ability to score Engineers almost immediately and wasn’t able to get upfield as quickly as he wanted to for other objectives, while I couldn’t make a save and lost entire units at a time to barely more than one round of shooting from his Deathwatch units, even despite my numbers. Since Celestine jumped to the fore and ganked some characters early before dying I didn’t have the ability to keep invuls on anyone beyond turn one, but that’s extremely normal for the way I play her. It just happened to occur when I rolled cold as ice. Likewise his saves were no better and the Arco-Flagellents were excellent in taking out three units in a round after an initial charge and some softening. I was able to score consistently with Objective secured troops. The final result was 28-21, so it wasn’t a blow out or anything and he was doing very well. He got forced to rely on characters too much near the end, and that allowed me to pick up points in rapid succession for Secondaries which was really the difference I nth game. Once the Seraphim finally got involed (took til turn 4 for them to fire a shot on anyone but they did work the last three turns and we were able to finish 6 turns which further underscores how close the game was given the score. 2 I played Joseph Darbison next. This game was destined to go poorly. There was simply NO line of sight blocker in the middle. None. Just a broad avenue you’d have to trek down in order to approach his T’au Empire castle, and some buildings and such in the corners… It was absurd and I kinda’ knew I was in trouble. I got to go first and so I was intending to kill three small drone units and gank objectives to take an early lead and force him from his castle. Instead, he seized. Just for any chance at all during the game, I advanced aggressively into that meat grinder with nowhere to hide and hoped my saves would preserve me. I used Celestine as bait and he took it, firing on her and preserving some of my units, which was a coup for me. My Seraphim made some attempt at getting to him from the flanks as those buildings were very conveniently located and I did kill some fire warriors wit hthe Missionary and Seraphim. Mostly the ability to ignore line of sight played big, allowing him to pour shots into those small units and kill them. I did kill his Command suit when It came to assassinate my characters and did deny him points that way after I rolled 2 6’s on saves!!! I was able to deny him a lot of points actually, just by using what little I had and by offering less important things as targets but the game was just an effort on my part to score as many points as I could before the end. THE BEST part though was Yellow Squad got to his lines and charged in to take th bonus points 2 rounds in a row. Man that one little member of Yellow Squad that survived was a champ and was tenacious, giving me two bonus points on her own. So epic. Final score was 27-19 and I was really pleased about making it to turn 6 and still getting 19. As before, given it was 6 rounds, I was pretty happy with how many points I DIDN’T give up in this one. TO apologized about the table and assured me that if it happened again they would come over and fix it, so that was cool. I wasn’t mad, but I did want to make sure I had an answer if it happened again. The Triple-tide plus Broadside list is a load, and had a good chance of winning anyways but it still stings to sort of play a game with really no chance. Scoring 19 points nad limiting him to 27 was a definite win though 3 Game 3 was against Justin Whitton and his Harlies. I have seen them very very rarely and so I was quite lost on the rules for them and had to ask a lot of questions. He helped me out a lot. He had three decked out troops with Kiss’s and Fusion, 3 Star Weavers, Masque, Shadowseer Troupe Master, solitaire, more troops with crazyt weapons… In other words he had a lot of AP that could get to you very very quickly. We had Hammer and Anvil Deployment mission 3. Justin had a broken arm so we had to do some cooperative gaming to help him get his stuff where he wanted it. On my turn I shot a couple of his bikers with Exorcists and then the rush was on. His initial approach was successful and he got to Yellow Squad turn one, but they managed to bounce it after taking serious losses. Then the Arco-Flagellents exacted revenge while the Skyweavers were ripped apart by Exorcist fire and then the occupants torn apart by Bolter fire. He assaulted hard, but because Celestine never really had to leave to attack anything she was able to harden their armor and make them bounce hard. Now in range of much more of my firepower, I brought it to bear hard, and it was not long before it was a very close up, very intense battle of his melee and me pulling away to tag him with shooting afterwards. The Seraphim played a vital role, coming down to take objectives and then at the end killing some sniper character and another. Finally they tracked the last model down to its lair and butchered him in the last round which we quickly played out just to see if it would happen in round 6. I was honestly surprised that the Harlequins were so incredibly fast, and they had some cool shenanigans. An elite type army would have been vbery sad to face it (and probably was). The final score was 33-16 Sisters of Battle. 4 Trevor Quan was my next opponent, and he brought Forge World. THREE Knights, and a minimal detachment of Admech to get the CP’s but he did use it to add two Onager Dunecrawlers. He brought a singular Armiger Helverin of House Mortan. His Cerastus Knight Acheron, Cerastus Knight-Lancer as well as his Knight Crusader were all of House Krast . We were on Hammer and Anvil, Mission 4. To make it fun (in retrospect I was being an idiot) I was like “Lets make this more fun. Let’s put MY last objective literally as far as possible from me and see if I can get it! With Seraphim”. He was all for it of course. So I stuck it at 6 inches from the corner as far from me as possible knowing the Seraphim would be the only ones who would ever reach it. I don’t know why I do these things. He went first, RUSHING his Knights up and smashing one into Red Squad. I had gotten too cute with their placement and he just got in there. One I could free myself I destroyed both of his Cerastus Knights with an ungodly fussilade of Meltaguns. His Crusader blew up a bunch of stuff in return and charged in, locking two units but taking wounds on the way in. Again I backed away and cut him but didn’t kill him this time. My Seraphim went after points in his backfield and rolled absolutely terribly, first failing to kill a character in a ruin with their pistols and then failing to kill him in melee. Similar luck awaited the Seraphim in the succeeding rounds as the Sisters thenfinally blew up the Crusader and he used his Command Points ot make it explode killing FOURTEEN Sisters of Battle and wounding or killing a lot of characters. He scored a lot of points with just that explosion. My Seraphim finally manged to get to his back end and get to his troopos there and a battle ensued between them that would last the rest of the rounds, and one lonely Seraphim just like from Yellow Squad earlier, battled and tried to kill them. She failed. Yeah. I could have easily scored that bonus point 5 times that game and instead: I didn’t. Lol. Anyways, the final score was 31-22 Sisters of Battle. 5 We were getting near the end and I was starting to wear down. Getting up at 4 AM when you’re used to 8AM can definitely make you feel it! My opponent was Rob Hartford. He had Grotesque spam and air plane spam in a nutshell. I can honestly say I’ve never been to an event where a guy forfeited, but this guy gave up before it started. As I cannot ever remember playing him (or maybe we did once and it was in the ancient past) this was super odd. It is what it is. I would have bounced his lis pretty hard in any event. This is a list type I have seen before, and perhaps he saw it that way also. His 3 Crimson Hunters would have to come to me and I’m pretty resistant to them. The Exorcists with 4+ invuls would be too (their likely targets). There’s only so much room to circle. The Razorwing fighters would have done better since they are nice fits against my infantry but whether they would last long is another matter as they would be the primary target until the Grotesques start to trickle in from the Webway. The Grotesques would have been a challenge on the charge but there again, the volume of fire and the Accuracy my Acts of Faith give me (+1 to everyone for shooting afterwards!) would have made close quarters rather difficult on them afterwards. Also I do have the Arco-Flagellents and the Canoness and Celestine. So all in all, I was not super worried about the matchup, as I’ve seen it before. We’ll just never know now. All one can do is speculate how it could have gone. I accepted the concession and away we go to Round 6 36-0 Sisters 6 Jason Rider ended up being my gateway to a 5-1 finish and the big big top 8. Our battle was brutal. At one point I killed two bike squads in one go, and he in turn was pounding me with Hammers, though my tanks weathered that pretty well. I was playing hard to the mission since he had me outclassed with his list. I used all the covers to try and stay out of his reach until I could get better shots. Seraphim jumped in to try and gank his Assassin while others jumped out and got their efforts in and were helpful in killing characters. His saves were pretty on point and 3+ invuls were everywhere so a lot of the oomph from the Seraphim was dissipated by that but I still have a lot of melta to offer and that at least was good against his various multiwound models. Unfortunately I went first, making the objective taking uphill given my attempts to avoid the worst of his firepower and draw him in. THAT was what really ultimately gave him the edge: he could simply mach-speed to the objectives at the end of any turn. And he could kind of even things up easily, ganking bonus points like a mad man. Lot of characters in that army. The big fail was when I got my sights on Bobby G and couldn’t down him. Had all the shots we really needed for it, but two wounds shy of the promised land and he did work after that. I also allowed my units to be waaay too close together , which cost me a lot of shots, and I didn’t stripe them as I probably should have to avoid the pile in stuff. So there were good take aways from it, and good reminders of how to do it better next time, but it was so much better than the first time I fought that list. But it’s just a REALLY solid list with a REALLY good General running it and there was no shame in losing to him really. I think he’s like the #1 best Space Marine player in the world currently or some such. 36-30 I placed 12th overall out of 88 and that’s not too shabby for Sisters of Battle. They now stand at 38-6. One more event to go to, on the 24th, and then I change armies. It would be cool to cap it off with a win at the event, so we'll see if we can do it. It's a 4 round event. Should be fun.

well its just crazy how many times it has happened. about 25% of the time! No joke, look back on these reports. its almost 1/3. I'm beside myself trying to figure out why it's happening to me. Something just is wrong with my brain or something. They are a good part of the force, and often do work for me. Just bizarre that I wouldnt be champing at the bit. In some games I brought in some and not all of them even. That's almost worse. If youcount all those times, it probably IS a full 1/3 of the time.

It's really not a terrible idea. Lol. As you can see in many of these battle reports, I have utterly forgotten them. Some weird mental block. Dunno. Top table is the entirely wrong time to forget 250 points of your army. And to be fair: there never really IS a good time to do that.

Some catchup reports. Took the Sistaz out for a spin again at a Tournament. First Opponent was Forge World heavy, with Death Korps of Krieg horsies outflanking me and tougher than any horseman has a right to be. It was a unit I had never actually seen before on the table arrayed against me. They fought alongside a False Celestine and Sisters in Repressors coming up the middle with a Canoness. bringing the 4+ invul aura with them. An Assassin popped shots off at me as well for a couple CP. Points see-sawed back and forth, and it was a close game. I prevailed 20-18. The Arco-Flagellents were key in destroying his outflanking horses, which was pivotal. Had the game gone on, it is fairly certain there would have been little left of his army, so the close score doesnt really tell the tale. We did not make it to the end. Second round was against...more...Forge World. Grrrrreat. Good news is the opponent was very awesome. He had TWO Daredeo Dreadnought or whatever they are called. Never seen them either, but I have heard of them. He had a Darkshrous and characters buffing him and hiding him, a Tech Marine and a Chaplain Dread (I'm seeing those all over the place these days) as well as Hellblasters which did work. It was Hammer and Anvil and a really big rock dominated the middle. I went first. The Exorcists had him outranged and so I let it do my dirty work. I swung my army to the other side of the rock to minimize his shots on me and then for two rounds I just pounded his Forge World Dreads to dust. The Sisters eventually advanced up to start killing things, and eventually get to the fight. Rounds three th Seraphim joined in and slaughered more The Sisters of Battle actually took pretty heavy losses later in the game despite him losing all his armor. He had some very good melee characters and of course hellblasters were on point. I failed a lot of saves. That being said the outcome was literally never in doubt in this one and at the end of the day, we had smashed all but some Snipers way in the back and his Vindicare, plus four Scouts on the other side I just never finished. I wanna say is was 33-14 or something similar to that. The third round was once again against Zachary Nelson (35th in the world currently) at top table. He had essentially the same list as before: Character spam with 60 plague bearers and some Pink Horrors to drop in later. His terminators were as brutal as ever at shooting and he used cloud of Flies Stratagem to hide them also although I used yellow squad to smash into and hold the line of his Plague bearers so that his terminators could neverget around his own mass of dudes. They never struck a single blow. Most of his damage was Termie shooting which was frighteningly effective (and my saves frighteningly poor) and his Daemon Princes ( he had three I think). As I OFTEN DO, I forget to bring in my Seraphim after I had dispatched most of his Pink Horrors and locked them up with an Exorcist. Like all my Seraphim,. ALL. So I had nothing to get his characters and even the odds. Net result: a loss. I wanna say 34-19. I did think of some pretty cool ideas during this game, and was particularly proud of the Arco-Flagellents again. I'm really not unhappy with how I did. Character spam with T4 Plague Bearers just is what it is: if you don't have snipers, you may never kill him and he'll get the jump on you. If my army had 3 Vindicare Snipers I think we'd have a very different game. Again and again I have considered them but that makes my army "Imperial" I believe which I don't want. Sisters without help do have a matchup issue here. Forgetting entirely to field the units that could have eaten his characters from behind probably did not help me. Le sigh. Total overall with the list: 33-4. Two of the losses were to #35 in the world (Zachary), one was from 53rd (Colin). I'll take it.

This time a 1650 or so game. This one was more of a refresher game for him so it was a training exercize while he reacclimates. It was fun though. https://www.facebook.com/groups/185402052000929/permalink/510697152804749/