Sisters of Battle Codex Review: Part 9 - Summary & List Building

Kovski

And thus we reach the end of this very...enlightening journey. There's no doubt about it, the Sisters codex has lost some punch, flavor and all round flexibility with the White Dwarf 'codex' replacement. That being said, there is still light at the end of tunnel and they still have some units and combinations other armies would die for. Scouting meltaguns in a transport with a twin-linked multi-melta, Celestian who just keeps coming back, Death Cult Assasins with five attacks on the charge and FNP. It kind of ends there but still, there are some things to smile about and it's not like the whole codex is made up of Vanguard Veterans which have to take two stormshields each (...).

In the end there is generally only a single viable choice per Force Organisation chart and occasionally two. What this post is going to do is look at the very basic building blocks of building a Sisters list from 1500 up to 2000 and how it interacts on the tabletop. I'm going to be quite blunt here but the options that I outline below are pretty much some of the only options there are. There is some leeway of course and you can modify things as you see fit but complete overhauls are going to be very hard to do effectively.

The basic choices you have to make go like this:

Celestine or 2nd Confessor/Kyrniov?
Jacobus - yes.
Battle Conclave x1 or x2 - what transport/size of squad? 5 + Confessor in Immolator or 6+ in Rhino?
Repentia - yes or no? If yes you need to be taking Retributors for transport hijacking.
Sisters of Battle - how many? I think three squads up until 1750 and then maybe a fourth...maybe.
Dominions - start with two.
Seraphim - 3rd Dominion or Seraphim squad?
Exorcists - are you taking Retributors for Repentia and increased anti-infantry at range? How many? Consider Exorcists for other slots or more Retributors.
Retributors - are Repentia stealing their transport? If so do you want Immolators or Rhinos? Are you maxing the FoC with Retributors or mixing and matching with Exorcists?

And that's basically it. At 2000 points if you want to keep this balance you'd be looking to max the HQ, Fast Attack, Heavy Support and maybe Elites but at 1500 you're really only going to be able to max out one or two of these slots (generally Fast Attack and HQ). You can of course skew your army at lower points to try and maximise some advantages you can try and gain (i.e. go minimal Troops and max HQ, Fast Attack and Heavy Support) but I think you'll find scaling the list up and down is going to work fine. Let's start with a 1500 list with this construct and build up.

We'll start with Jacobus and Jacobus only for our HQ. At 1500 taking two HQ's is pricey and digs into the points you'd rather spend elsewhere. We're also going to give him a nice Battle Conclave of Death Cult Assasins who are going to have a Rhino for a ride. Six DCA, Jacobus and a Rhino drops in at 215 and gives us an excellent counter-attack unit with the joys of Jacobus.

Jacobus
6x Death Cult Assassins, Rhino

Next we're going to grab three Dominions. Ya, three. Even at 1500 these guys are too good to pass up and bring excellent forward momentum and anti-tank to the table. We'll go with squads of five packing two meltaguns, a combi-meltagun and an Immolator with twin-linked Multi-melta. This gives us three meltaguns on the first turn (or the combi-melta can be saved until Faith goes off) and a twin-linked MM all with Scout. Sounds good even at 180 points each.

5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta
5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta
5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta

Now we need to look to our Troops - the poor old Sisters of Battle. There's always going to be the weighing up of how many squads of these girls you should take. They can't combat squad and don't come in anything smaller than 10 girls so you're never going to have lots of scoring units. They are also quite price inefficient like Tacticals before them and whilst they fulfil a role, max squads just aren't the way to maximise your scoring potential and army potential in 5th edition. So, forty scoring bodies is too many at 1500 whilst twenty too few. They may have power armor but they are toughness three so we'll try for three full squads including a multi-melta, meltagun, combi-flamer and Rhino. This gives the unit some midfield denial ability with the MM and mobility with the meltagun and duality with flamer + bolters. If you wanted to improve their mobility threat you'd change the combi-flamer to combi-melta. The Rhino allows them to bunker, move around faster and last longer obviously. Each of these is a pretty hefty 190 points but gives us some decent scoring and lots of bolters.

10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino
10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino
10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino

We don't have many points left and we are severely lacking in range. At this point we can either cut something to fit in two Exorcists or roll with two Retributor squads. I'm going to go with the Retributors because they offer up anti-infantry at range with potential anti-tank from Rending and don't suffer the one-gun, suppress me syndrome of Exorcists. Two squads of five with four heavy bolters are a paltry 85 points each and bring us very close to 1500 (1495 to be exact).

5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters
5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters

We unfortunately do not get to add to our armor saturation here as we don't really have the points. We could drop a Dominion squad but I'd rather have three scouting Meltagun units running around. We thus get this for 1500:

Jacobus
6x Death Cult Assassins, Rhino

10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino
10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino
10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino

5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta
5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta
5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta

5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters
5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters

1495 points
62 infantry, 7 vehicles

A very nice number of infantry though they are T3/3+ and 18 melta weapons (6 MM, 9 meltaguns, 3 combis) - plenty of ability to drop tanks and eight heavy bolters, DCA, 33 bolters and three combi-flamers for infantry. Looks good at 1500 with 30 scoring bodies as well.

What we end up with is a very short-ranged list and this is going to be common for all Sisters lists. We can shave the combi-weapons to add in some HKM for a more impressive first turn salvo alongside the Dominions and whatever you have in Heavy Support, but ultimately the damage is going to be done with melta and bolter (and the occasional flamer). There is really very little you can do to get around this. Combat units like Repentia, Death Cult Assassins and Celestine will work around this a little bit but not much and are much more of a harassment tool (i.e. Seraphim + Celestine) or counter-charge unit.

So to take this to 1750 and 2000 we really want to up our armor saturation the most as seven isn't that high. We also would like to add Celestine as well but really only have Heavy Support and Troops to add vehicles in. We've got the free slots from the Retributors to add Rhinos/Immolators in for Repentia and otherwise can really only expand our number of Sisters of Battle, add some Repentia and add in Celestine for another beater unit. We could drop one of the Dominion squads down to Seraphim but only if we could squeeze in the third Retributor and transport. With this in mind we could get something like...

Celestine
Jacobus
7x Death Cult Assassins, Rhino

7x Repentia
7x Repentia

10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino
10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino
10x Sisters of Battle w/meltagun, multi-melta, combi-flamer, Rhino

5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta
5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta
5x Dominions w/2x meltaguns, combi-melta, Immolator w/twin-linked multi-melta

5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters, Rhino
5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters, Rhino
5x Retributors w/4x Heavy Bolters

1994 points
83 infantry, 9 vehicles

Here though the problem is of course we've jumped 500 points without gaining any scoring power and have only gained two Rhinos... This is going to be the problem for any Sisters of Battle list at higher points - balancing their scoring potential with their offensive abilities and for this reason their lists are going to probably run better at the 1500-1750 point range where they can 'get away' with using 3x10 Sisters of Battle for scoring.

This points to an obvious flaw in the codex design and again there are quite a lot of issues with the codex as it was written. That being said there are some diamonds in the rough and the 1500-1750 lists you can make aren't that bad. They suffer from a general lack of range and need to get up close and personal to unload their full potential (and then suck in combat) but they are still certainly viable if not exactly amazing.