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

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Slay the Heretic – Purge the Enemy: You gain a point at the end of your Shooting phase for destroying an enemy unit with each of a bolt weapon or a flame weapon or a melta weapon (i.e. if you destroy one enemy unit with a boltgun and another with a Ministorum flamer, you would score 2 points). If you manage all three, you get an additional point for a possible max of 4 per turn. Outside of these, it’s business as usual for Imperium weaponry, and the Sororitas unit upgrades have returned pretty much unchanged – Incensor Cherubs still give you a once-per-game unit specific Act of Faith, and the Simulacrum still lets a unit perform an extra Act (though you do now have to pay 5pts for Simulacra again). HQ Morvenn Vahl 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.

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. Before making a dice roll for a model or a unit from your army with the Acts of Faith ability, if you have one or more dice in your Miracle dice pool, that unit can perform an Act of Faith. To do so, select one or more of the dice from your Miracle dice pool, instead of making any or all of those dice rolls. For each individual dice that is being rolled as part of the dice roll, you can select 1 Miracle dice from your Miracle dice pool to be substituted in place of that dice. The dice that it is being substituted for is not rolled, and instead the value of the selected Miracle dice is used as if it had been rolled. Each Miracle dice can only be selected for substitution once. Once all Miracle dice substitutions have been made, remove the chosen Miracle dice from your Miracle dice pool, and roll any remaining, unsubstituted dice that are a part of the dice roll. You can use Miracle dice when a unit performs an Act of Faith for any of the following types of dice roll: Crusade rules which tell the story of your army, including the ability for your characters to become martyrs – or a Living SaintRejoice 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 This is one of the best new datasheets that GW have put out in ages, to an extent that is going to warp army construction and this book around it. As a Sanctified HQ with the Supreme Commander keyword, there are multiple angles to trivially slot her into any Sororitas list, and vanishingly few reasons why you ever wouldn’t even at her 265pts price tag. Obviously you can park these Defenders of the Faith on an objective to gain a Miracle dice every round, but it gets better. Use an Act of Faith to help blast your foes off it and you’ll gain a Miracle dice from your creepy little Cherub, plus one for destroying an enemy unit with a Simulacrum Imperialis in tow. 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.

This kit contains the components to assemble five Celestian Sacresants with one having the option to be assembled as a Celestian Superior. There is also the option of hooded or helmeted heads and anointed halberds or hallowed maces. Celestian Sacresants Components For 1CP, you can ignore any or all negative hit modifiers in either the Shooting or Fight phases. Probably the most significant place this is going to come into effect now is for Retributors, which no longer ignore the move and shoot penalty with Heavy weapons naturally, but may also come into play for Repentia. In general this has been way less relevant in 9th, so it’s nice to see it given broader use cases. Warlord Trait – Impervious to Pain Overall this is a surprisingly sweeping set of changes to a stratagem section that didn’t exactly feel like it was underperforming. If you’re set in the ways of 8th edition Sisters some of these will feel like real gut-punches, but it’s worth reading further into some formerly-neglected datasheets – for example, the Holy Rage changes aren’t as bad as they look, as the Repentia Superior can now grant both advance and charge and also 3d6 drop lowest for the charge roll with a Command phase ability. Of the absolutely new stratagems, Defenders of the Faith seems like a clear high point – one of the weaknesses of Sisters is their low Toughness, and being able to negate that is helpful for keeping them on the table. Warlord Traits

Palatine Points

What if your opponent is going to punch out your melee unit before they get to swing? For 2CP using Spirit of the Matryr you can make any Adepta Sororitas unit fight on death if it has not fought yet this phase. Any fight on death mechanics are always very strong, but in Sisters it’s particularly good with the potential boosts you have for units below Starting Strength and the possibility of pulling off the fight on death & Divine Intervention combo. 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. We’re not showing off her stats, but it goes without saying that she starts off as the embodiment of the God-Emperor’s might and only gets deadlier.

That leaves 90pts for a unit with two hand flamer models as your probable loadout for these, and especially at S4 (or in Ebon Chalice where you can proc mortals) there are homes for that. ZephyrimEach blessing can only be used once per battle, so make sure your Canoness or Palatine of choice is geared up to take the best advantage of it before you get started. The Ebon Chalice get not one but two active Sacred Rites, which is a reasonably big win when you consider that there are two fantastic melee options in the shape of Hand of the Emperor and The Passion and you can now take both. Additionally, when you use an Act of Faith, you can first discard a Miracle dice; the dice you then use for the Act is automatically counted as a 6. You are likely to have fewer Miracle dice than before, but this is definitely helpful for making sure that you’ve got a 6 on hand whenever you need one. Stratagem – Cleansing Flames – 1CP Choose Censer of the Sacred Rose to keep your Battle Sisters steady under the heaviest fire, and combine it with Icon of the Valorous Heart to help them stay alive… or The Fiery Heart to get a juicy 6 on your Miracle dice when they finally do die. Such is the path of martyrdom! On to more buff characters, the Imagifier has also had a rework. First is if a Adepta Sororitas unit dies within 12″ of this model, you can reroll the Miracle Dice you gain, which is decent. The big ability is that while an Imagifier is leading a unit, models in that unit have a 4++, and if that unit is Celestian Sacresants it gains a 2+ save instead. She can lead Battle Sisters, Celestian Sacresants, Dominions, and Retributors. Additionally she can join a Battle Sisters unit that is already lead by a Canoness, Palatine, or Junith Eruita.

Closing out Heavy Support we have two flavours of Tonk, the classic Exorcist and the new fangled Castigator. Ever a warrior first and administrator second, Vahl strides the battlefields of the 41st Millennium clad in Purgator Mirabilis, the finest warsuit of its kind and an ancient relic restored to glory by the Fabricator General of Mars himself.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. And then we have the highly versatile Battle Sisters Squad. You have a lot of weapon options, but read your datasheet carefully – there are caveats to having multi-meltas or heavy bolters, as you can only have 1 special or heavy weapon per 10 models in a unit. However, it is worth customising your squad to maximise their damage output – both far and close ranged. The Incensor cherub gains you a miracle dice – which gives the ability to perform one Act of Faith, which again is worth a read as their rules and abilities are legion. Speaking of the Dark Master, the Book of Fire includes his full Warhammer 40,000 datasheet, and if you saw our article telling of Be’lakor’s return to the 41st Millennium , you’ll know he’s an absolute beast. 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.