Games Workshop - Warhammer 40,000 - Adepta Sororitas: Celestian Sacresants

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Essentially, small units of these are still great line infantry, and there’s a real angle on going big in the new book. Good stuff. Elites The Emperor’s Grace is also a great buy for 20pts – your model heals d3 wounds at the start of each of your Command phases, and then once per game, for any CORE or CHARACTER unit that is within Miracle range, an opponent cannot re-roll hits, wounds, or Damage rolls. This is a powerful ability to have available, especially since Paragon Warsuits are CORE – a Canoness babysitting a set of these and turning off re-rolls on turn 1 or 2 can potentially keep them alive and firing a turn longer. To say the Adepta Sororitas are a faithful bunch is selling them rather short, as their sheer fanatical devotion to the Emperor of Mankind is so strong that great miracles spontaneously occur whenever enough Sisters congregate. They must have been praying extra hard lately, as those miracles are becoming even more powerful.

Today though, we’re going to focus on what the trio of new units can do. Let’s first take a look at the new stratagems from yesterday, then jump into the rules! Sisters of Battle Stratagems Overall there’s a pretty reasonable set of toys available here, and it’s nice to see some more creative ideas about how to make defensive relics that aren’t just “bearer is -1 to hit.” The Sigil probably stands out as the best single item, just to give you more flexibility with Hymns, but there’s interesting possibilities with Ecclesiarch’s Fury too. It’s also worth noting that A Sacred Burden allows you to spend 1CP to give a Superior model any of the Blessings of Sebastian Thor, The Ecclesiarch’s Fury, Litanies of Faith, or Redemption, which opens up some possibilities, particularly if you’re otherwise running named character-heavy – as is very possibly the case. Blessings of the Faithful This being both a damage buff and a durability buff really makes this powerful. Not only will you be getting double shots at full range, but you will also be getting super tough. First up – yes the damage reduction wording on WarCom is the same in the book, no we still don’t think it’s intended, and for the purposes of this review are assuming “to a minimum of 1” is going to be added to the effect post-haste. There’s also an apparent typo in their points as things stand, which claims they’re 240pts per model on a fixed unit of 3. We’re going to work on the assumption that these are 80pts each, but not totally invulnerable to small arms fire, until we hear otherwise.Each time you gain a Miracle dice, roll one D6. The number you roll is the value of that Miracle dice. This value cannot be changed or re-rolled, unless a rule specifically states otherwise. Keep your Miracle dice to one side - this is your Miracle dice pool. A third of these units sit comfortably within the same price range – and so drive up the overall value of the box, price wise and miniature number wise. Boarding Patrol: Adepta Sororitas – Points What’s more, Paragon Warsuit pilots train to fight as a trio, so you can look forward to adding a box (or more if you like – we won’t judge) of three of these elegant but powerful war machines to your collection. Castigator Acts of Faith are now your bonus for being monofaction – you can only gain Miracle dice if every model in your army has the ADEPTA SORORITAS, CULT IMPERIALIS or AGENT OF THE IMPERIUM keyword. No more miraculous soup. On the table, the faction has an interesting dynamic, with great saves but low Toughness, a relatively circumscribed weapon range which is nevertheless uniquely suited to the demands of 9th edition 40k, and an array of mechanics that give the army a whole lot of oomph that goes beyond what the units’ fairly pedestrian statlines would suggest.

Sacred Grounds – Shadow Operations: One ADEPTA SORORITAS INFANTRY or CULT IMPERIALIS PRIEST unit can perform the Sacred Grounds action each turn, starting at the end of your Movement phase and finishing at the end of your next Command phase (or the end of the battle), assuming they’re in range of an objective marker you haven’t already consecrated, and there are no enemy units in range. If completed, you score 1pt at the end of the game for an objective wholly within your deployment zone, or 4pts for one outside of your deployment zone. The marker also gains the Inspiring (ADEPTUS MINISTORUM) terrain trait.

Palatine Points

For someone with an intimate working knowledge of the existing book, first impressions can be rough. It’s pretty clear we’re now reaching a point where these books were written with at least the initial stages of the 9th metagame as an available datapoint, and thus we’re seeing what happens when an army that was unquestionably top tier gets a re-vamp – and in places it isn’t pretty. Not all of that is unwarranted, because some of what made the existing book strong (notably, Retributors) just wasn’t particularly fun or healthy, but there are a few places where multiple nerfs have been dropped on a single unit in a way that probably swings the pendulum too far the other way – even Retributors probably could have borne to lose either move/shoot or their stratagem, especially with Acts of Faith now not being available in soup. She’s probably the standout but is also the most expensive, and one of the low-key best design achievements in this book is that you can genuinely imagine taking any of these three units in the right list – no mean feat for direct competitors in the same slot. Balms and Banners

I’m in a similar boat to Liam here – every time I read this book I liked it more, and have ended up pretty favourable on it overall with a couple of exceptions. Sacresants, on the other hand, are pretty exciting. They’re quite an unusual unit, as “durable melee” and “1W” aren’t flavours that tend to combine that well these days, but an aggressive price tag and being a great place to put all the book’s buffs means that we’re betting on these getting there. Last month during Warhammer Fest Online we got a good look at all of the new models coming soon to the Adepta Sororitas. Battle Sisters across the board are about to see all manner of updates in the upcoming Codex: Adepta Sororitas, and to get into the crusading spirit we’re giving you a sneak peek at how they fight. As a general note before we jump into units, there are a few consistent equipment changes across this book. It looks like there was a goal that all weapon upgrades should be worth at least 5pts so costs could be nice rounded numbers – and to make some choices worthwhile at that price, they get an upgrade over regular flavours.Rejoice the Fallen works great for standard Battle Sisters, but if you really want to punish your foe for their blasphemy, use it on a Retributor Squad to reply by unleashing a barrage of heavy weapons. Remember, every slain warrior brings you closer to benefiting from The Blood of Martyrs… The Word from the Studio

The Book of Fire is the next chapter in this campaign, and it sees fresh forces being drawn into the escalating conflict – including the daemonic hordes of Be’lakor and the newly anointed Abbess Sanctorum, Morvenn Vahl herself.

If you play this faction, get this model – pretty much every competitive list we’ve come up with uses her, to the extent that she kind of leaves Canonesses or Palatines looking a bit purposeless unless you want access to Blessings of the Faithful (which to be fair you sometimes will). We’re honestly not massive fans of the design here – she’s just good at everything, can be put into any list and is competitively priced – so why wouldn’t you bring her? Named Characters The big test for the list would likely be whether the warsuits held up, but fully supported as they are here I’m definitely interested in giving them a go! Wrap Up As the rank and file of the Adepta Sororitas, it falls to Battle Sister squads to hold the battlefield’s vital points in the face of whatever the enemy might throw at them. Defenders of the Faith makes them incredibly tenacious when guarding an objective, with foes needing to press through a storm of boltgun fire only to find the Battle Sisters shrugging off wounds that would lay any normal human low.