My First Game - Post Battle Feedback.

Hey guys, last night I had my first ever game with the new Sisters of battle (army-lists and mission details can be found on my previous post) and I wanted to share a few thoughts about how the game went, how I found the new rules and which unit I particularly liked.

To start I'll say that the game was *very* close, it ended turn 5 and neither of us had very much left on the table. I should also mention that the game probably want very representative of a normal game because we both had consistently appalling rolls; flubbing almost every charge, psychic test, and save. ^_^*
Fortunately, because we were both rolling so badly, it kind of balanced things out.

We set up in your standard Hammer and Anvil deployment with the main objective of killing our opponent's "courier". In my case it was his shiny new Deamon Prince and for my opponent it was my Canoness. My Opponent won the roll off and chose to set up first. He castled his army at the far end of the table, Havoks and Vindicators in range of the Prince for those sweet re-rolls.

The first roll of the game was a psychic test from his Deamon Prince and he rolled double 1's and took 4 mortal wounds from Perils of the Warp. Not a great start. XD
His shooting was much more effective however and blew my Repressor up, killing one of the Sisters inside. He also killed both of the Penitent Engines and took a wound off the Rhino.
My first turn was pretty uneventful, I just ran / turbo-boosted everything up the board. I took a few potshots with my Exorcist against a Vindicator but rolled 4 1's to wound. -_-

Turn two and the forces of Chaos continued to bombard me, finishing off the Rhino and killing 3 more Sisters. Fortunately for me the Repentia managed to bail out unscathed.
By this point I was feeling a little dismayed; I'd not so much as scratched my opponents army yet and I'd suffered heavy casualties. I'd generated 2 or 3 miracle dice, but I'd rolled nothing but 1's and 2's, so they weren't going to be much help. However, it was time to bring in some reinforcements! My Serephim dropped in his back line and unloaded 4 Inferno pistols into my opponents Vindicator! All 4 hit... and then I roll four 1's to wound. :(
Celestine also arrived from reserves along with her trusty Gemini in an attempt to charge down the Havoks who have been pummelling my valiant girls from afar. My Exorcist fired off another volley and stripped 7 or 8 wounds off the closest Vindicator. The rest of my shooting was ineffectual so I declared some charges. The Repentia tried to charge the Chaos marine squad, lost 2 models to overwatch and failed the charge distance. The Serephim charged a different Chaos Marine squad, lost 1 to overwatch and failed the distance.  The Gemini charged the Havoks, lost 1 model and a wound to overwatch and... you guessed it... Failed the distance. Celestine was determined to show the others how it should be done, took a single wound in Overwatch and actually managed to successfully charge the Havoks! Hooray! Unfortunately she whiffed pretty bad and only managed to kill 2 of the traitorous little buggers.

Turn 3 and my opponent's dice obviously felt sorry for me as they betrayed him as badly as my own had betrayed me. He teleported  his Chaos Terminators into my back line along with the Teminator Sorcerer. He tried to cast Warptime and suffered another Perils of the Warp. He then tried to cast another power which was denied by my Canoness.
The firepower of his Terminators killed 4 of my Battle Sisters, but thanks to some sneaky placement of my Exorcist, he couldn't get to my Canoness. His Havoks fled from Combat with Celestine and his Deamon Prince took their place.
Now my luck was finally starting to pick up. The Executioner pummelled Half of the Terminator squad and the combined firepower of the Sister Squad managed to finish them off. My poor opponent failed so many 2+ saves. My Miracle dice count was rising and my charges were much more successful. The Repentia ploughed into the Chaos marines and overkilled them by a heavy margin. The Serephim made the charge into the other Chaos Marine squad but only killed one. The Deamon Prince killed the Gemini and slapped Celestine to death, but she didn't stay down long.

Turn 4 went a bit mad. It started with the Deamon prince rolling Perils of the Warp again! (That's three in one game) cuasing him to explode, spraying Celestine with its warp-addled brains. The rest of the turn was mostly our units harmlessly slapping each other about in combat. Nothing much happened on either side until my Repentia revved up their Eviscerators and barrelled into the Vindicator. They cut open its full tank which promptly exploded, killing all three Repentia, Celestine, my remaining Heavy Flamer Sister, his two remaining Chaos marines, both his Havoks and 2 wounds off the other Vindicator. What an Explosion!

Turn 5, my Canoness shut down both of my opponents Psychic powers again (Seriously, I love how the Sisters can put a stop to enemy casting now) and despite being taken down to a Single wound, her loyal Battle Sister Squad piled into combat to help and put the filthy Heretic HQ out of his misery.

With that my opponent was happy to concede. between our two armies, all we had left on the board was 1 Vindicator at half health, 5 Battle Sisters, a Canoness with a Single wound and a Mistress of Repentance. It was a terrific game that was super close, despite the terrible rolling on both sides.



Lessons I've learned:

1. Sister's are much more fragile than you think.
As a Marine and Necron player, I take it for granted that I'm probably not going to loose models to overwatch or against basic troops in combat. At T3 your opponents will be landing a lot more wounds than you may be expecting, and with units like Repentia and Penitent Engines having a lesser save value, they will drop to a light breeze.

2. Sisters *can* be much more resilient that you think.
If built in the right way we have access to plenty of 5+ "feel no pain" type saves and the entire army (more or less) having at least  6++ is really great. Using the right characters to buff and stack the Shield of Faith saves will be a great way to spread the love and make our armies pretty tough to budge.

3. Miracle Dice are great.
I was a little underwhelmed in the first couple of turns; I wasn't generating as many Miracle Dice as I was expecting, and the one's I did get were not very useful as they were all 1's and 2's. However, if you are using your Dialogus effectively and (unlike me) remembering to generate new dice each phase, you should have a very healthy supply of dice by turn 3. In fact by the end of the game I had 7 unspent Miracle dice, and I had used lot in the last 2 rounds of the game to keep my Canoness alive and to land some important hits with my Exorcist.

4. Penitent Engines are squishy.
Through bad dice rolls (and probably bad placement on my part) the Penitent Engines were all very dead before they even got a sniff of my opponents blood. On paper they are pretty neat with their 5+ FNP and relatively high speed, but don't get caught with your pants down; you opponent will want these big scary looking dudes dead as quickly as possible.

5. Deny the Witch is far from useless.
I was as disappointed as anyone else when I learned that we would still only be getting a deny the Witch roll on 1d6. It's super unlikely to affect the game in any meaningful way and is altogether pretty useless. However, if you combine that power with various Relics (The Brazier of Eternal Flame) Warlord traits (Pure of Will) and Order Convictions (Aegis of the Emperor) you can shut down your opponents Psychic phase with striking reliability.

Now obviously these are just snippets of ideas after playing a single game, so chances are these might be a little off the mark. They are of course only my opinion, after all as a new player to the army I certainly don't claim to be any kind of expert on them. That being said, I hope this was an interesting and insightful read for new Sororitas players and Vetrans alike

Have you played an games with the Sisters yet? How are you finding the new Codex?
Let me know in the comment below. :)