Sisters of Battle: First Blood





This last Sunday I headed over to a friends house for a couple games of 40k. I really wanted to try out the SoB codex and he wanted to play against it too. We also decided to use the new battle missions for the SoB out of the dreadfleet WD.

My 2000 point list I took over looked like this....

Kyrinov
Battle Conclave- 6 DCA, 3 crusaders, Rhino
Jacobus
Battle Conclave- 6 DCA, 3 Crusaders, Rhino

Battle Sister Squad (10)- multimelta, flamer, rhino
Battle Sister Squad (10)- multimelta, flamer, rhino
Battle Sister Squad (10)- flamer, flamer, rhino (I only own 2 MM)

Dominion Squad (5)- 2x melta, combi melta, immolator with multimeltas
Dominion Squad (5)- 2x melta, combi melta, immolator with multimeltas
Dominion Squad (5)- 2x melta, combi flamer, immolator with multimeltas

Retributor Squad (5)- 4x heavy bolters, immolator with heavy bolters
Exorcist
Exorcist

I have good shooting vs hoards and mech. I have a couple nasty hand to hand units. I have descent LD with a stubborn unit and a fearless bubble. It is also 70 models and 11 vehicles!

First Game

First game was the defend the shrine scenario. Basically I had to keep him away from the middle of the table. (one objective game, it being the middle) He could "desecrate" the shrine by having a model in base contact with it from his shooting phase till the end of his turn.

I had to deploy all in the middle with us alternating units to deploy. Kind of weird deployment, and all my fast attack had to go into reserve.

Lesson Learned- This meant I would not get to see how I liked scouting my Dominions.

He stole the initiative and turn one assaulted me with 2 units of genestealers vs a battle squad and a DCA unit. My sisters went down pretty hard but the DCA  won combat and whittled the stealers down to the BL and one more stealer. I took heavy losses.

Lesson Learned- DCA are good. Sisters can not fight in Hand to Hand. They just don't have the staying power any more. LD kills them. Could not tell if I liked the 6++ due to scenario making it a 5++ within 12in of the shrine. Scued it a little bit. I also forgot to use the Shield of Faith on my vehicles when the got destroyed.

The rest of the game was basically hand to hand fighting which favors the nids. He desecrated the shrine by revealing the deathleaper in contact with it, so I couldn't stop it. My Jacobus unit of DCA did well wiping out genestealers but got hit by more gene stealers and a fex unit and a hive tyrant and venom thrope.

Lesson Learned-DCA are really good, but not so great vs high toughness models. One maybe, but 4 is too many. Also lash whips are very good vs DCA.

I lost the game as he whittled me down and my reserves didn't not make it to the middle to contest. I was 2 inches short!!! The mission was really weird, but very fun. Not really fair but very fluffy! I did not get a feel for faith since we were in hth the whole game and my faithful units are shooty faith ones.

GAME TWO

Game 2 we played the objective game where you are recovering relics. It was spearhead deployment and he had 2 objectives in his deployment zone and I had 2 in mine. You spent a shooting phase to check an objective and roll on a chart. You could get 1vp, 1d3vp, or 1d6vp. If I found something it gave the model an in game bonus, but my opponent just destroys the relics. I had to survive the game with the relic to score it vs his were scored immediately. This made the game basically over turn one as he found 1d3+1d6vps vs my 1+d3. I think this mission needs a tweak.

His army was a chaos khorne army. He took 2 really big berserker units, 2 units of lesser daemons, Kharn, bloodthirster (greater daemon), a couple dreadnoughts,, and a defiler.

So not much armour to kill again. I shot him up pretty good but there was a very large shrine in the middle of the table still. He used it to get a small beserker squad into combat with Kharn and played peek a boo with my vehicles with his MM dreads. My Dominion squad used their AoF to kill 4 terminators, and my DCA wiped out the 2 units of lesser daemons when they came in and assaulted me.

Lesson Learned- Dominions are good. They can put out alot of good shots if my small units support each other. DCA are good. Really good. Really really good. Loosing you IC's in hand to hand hurts. My DCA have bad ld. Kharn and a greater daemon are tough for DCA to kill. I should have put more attacks into Kharn, not the squad.

This game was a blood bath. He ended the game with 8 beserkers, a defiler, and a greater daemon. I finished with all 3 dominion squads, my retributors, and 2 battle sisters left. I also learned rending retributors are the bomb!

A couple other things I noticed during play, if opponents think the new faith system will be easier to understand, they are wrong. Zach was constantly asking "they do what?" as I made faith rolls. The different units doing different things, and all the units looking the same makes it just as confusing as before, just now I have to remember what each unit does instead of just 2-3 faith powers. Shield of Faith will be annoying but not helpful. When it worked, it annoyed the hell out of him, especially on vehicles.

Overall I think they will be very competitive vs the current meta. I felt like I always had the tools to do the job in these games. The missions were screwy but the army was solid, I think.

I look forward to repainting this army. This might be my Bugeater army.

Overall I want to get my DCA done so I can take them to a RTT and see their full potential!