Monday 29 August 2011

In Defense of the Sisters


Let me come right out and say that I’m not a huge fan of the new Sisters of Battle White Dwarf codex. It has its share of problems, and doesn’t succeed at anything that has made 5th edition awesome in terms of army-building. It is not the awesomeness incarnate that is Phil Kelly’s Dark Eldar, which in my opinion should be the golden standard and critical benchmark by which all other books are judged. However, there are some choices in design that I think are reasonably correct, which have received no small amount of flak from the internet.





I’ve heard some whining about the new points costs of the basic Sisters themselves. I’m afraid I must disagree with the Pink Master. 12 points a model is perfectly appropriate, people! IG Veterans are 10 points with a 4+ armor save, and the sisters have a 3+, acts of faith, and increased leadership. They lack the toughness and strength of marines, and so they are 4 points less.  They should not be 9 or 10 points. This wouldn’t balance with Dark Eldar or Imperial Guard. It would drive the points of less costly units (ork boys, guardsmen, DE warriors) down to absurdly low levels over the long run, and throw off game balance in the short.

Another thing which has attracted the internet’s ire is the nerf to the Immolator. No fire point? No longer fast? GOOD! From a fluff perspective, they shouldn’t have either of them. The Immolator is a modified razorback, a variant of the rhino chassis with troop capacity and a main gun. It doesn’t have a baal engine. It doesn’t have a sunroof. The Mechanicum would be all over it if it did, and then BAM! Every rhino in the game is fast, and every razorback has firing points. You know, just so Grey Hunters can fire their meltaguns from inside their armored boxes. I will concede there are points issues with the current iteration of the immolator, but that’s a different story.

Oh, and eviscerators? A S6 chainfist is good, or at least not terrible. At least the tyranid player in me says so, so I guess that’s a result of busting tanks with my trygon. I’m not sure if it’s worth the points (because I forget how much it costs right now…) but I’m not willing to dismiss it out of hand. The jury is still out.

The Sisters ‘dex has problems, yes, and maybe even more than plague a normal codex. But there are the real problems, and there are the things people kvetch about. Now stop kvetching, and get to work making the codex good. At least till we get a full book.

4 comments:

  1. Slow clap fading in and now fading out. Kodoos for taking off the blinders that the retched Kool-Aid Man has put on the rest of the internet community. You made some very strong points and I know regardless of how they play out I will be using the White Dwarf Codex for my Sisters of Slaneesh army.

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  2. Thanks, Panda. Yeah, while I think think the whole thing needs work, it's definitely not as terrible as some people are saying. Glad to know I'm not alone in thinking so!

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  3. Looks like someone was wearing their "Sunday Best" when they wrote this post. I hope you don't mind but I featured your article at my blog in my weekly shout out series. Cheers and thanks for sharing.

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  4. Not at all, thanks for the shout-out!

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