Suddenly, priests

Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour, the God Emperor of Mankind?

In keeping with my tradition of writing entertaining but ultimately terrible lists, I decided to have a look at the new Adepta Sororitas codex just to see what nonsense was available. And there certainly is some busted units in there, but only one of them is a sister...

In addition to the usual smattering of sisters units in each force org slot, all of which function roughly similar to how they did before, there are a few key points that immediately jumped out. The first was the points of the Immolators and Exorcist tanks, which have both gone down in cost to quite the bargain. Though unfortunately these are both vehicles, and you all know how terrible I am with them...

Next up are the two special characters, Celestine and Jacobus. Jacobus has had a bit of a change, and is not quite as scary when combined with death cult assassins. However, he does give a very nice large fearless and counter-attack bubble, in addition to being a priest, which we'll get to in a bit.
Celestine isn't quite as infuriating to deal with anymore, she's gone up in points (but is still a cheap date), and can't get up as often as she used to, but can give Hit & Run to a unit she joins, which in itself is very useful.

So now we get to the really fun part, the priests:
These guys are fairly unassuming at first look, coming in at the price of a power fist with the stats of a guardsman sergeant. But then the list of special rules kicks in. First up, you can take 5 of these guys, and they don't take up a force org slot. They come with a rosarius, which starts making them fairly good value. Next, they all have zealot: giving a unit fearless and hatred is now very much worth the points cost.
But why do you need 5 sets of fearless in one unit? Hymns, that's why. Let them sing you the song of their people.

There are 3 Hymns to pick from each assault phase, requiring a leadership test to activate. The first allows the entire unit to reroll armour and invulnerable saves, the second allows rerolls to wound, and the final one gives the priest smash. All of those are pretty tasty, and scale out of control with bigger units. And the 'free' smash attacks mean that some points can be trimmed by not needing to buy power weapons.

Let's see what kind of death blob we can make:


Celestine: Warlord
Jacobus
5 Priests: 1 Litanies of Faith, 5 Condemnor Boltguns
3* 5 Battle Sisters: Condemnor Boltgun

Company Command Squad: Vox Caster
Platoon Command:
5* Infantry Squads: 5 Autocannons, Vox Caster
Platoon Command:
5* Infantry Squads: 5 Autocannons, Vox Caster
2 Vendettas

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor: Rad Greandes, Psycho Greandes, 3 Servo Skulls, Hammerhand
Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor: Psyocculum, Liber Heresius, Hammerhand

Aegis Defense Line


So, everyone joins a 50 man guard blob, bringing their toys to the party. A quick count gives the unit:

• Fearless
• Counter-Attack
• Hit & Run
• Psycho Grenades
• Rad Grenades
• Psych-out Grenades
• +2 strength with Hammerhands
• A potential scout move at the start of the game
• BS10 against psykers
• Reroll saves in combat
• Reroll hits in the first round of combat
• Reroll wounds in combat
• Four characters with smash attacks, in addition to Celestine's high number of attacks
• Adamantium Will.
• Oh, and imperial guard orders.
• And an ADL to hide behind.

Yeah, that will do.

And if something goes wrong, there is a spare blob tagging along behind just in case.

To explain some of the choices a bit:
The Condemnor Boltguns are combi-weapons that cause a perils on any psyker hit. There is a bit of a grey area with regards to what happens when a psyker is part of a normal unit, but the wording suggest that they would take a perils, as it refers to any unit hit, not model. Traditional scary things such as Fateweaver, Nurgle Daemon Princes, Mephiston, Jetlock Councils and even Screamer Councils suddenly evaporate.
The Litanies of Faith allow the Priests to automatically pass the test to activate the hymns, which makes them much better than the inquisiton equivalent, as normally they only have ld7.
And the vendettas are there because PQ keeps complaining that I never bring any anti-air...

Building a list around a single expensive unit, what could possibly go wrong?

Magic Gravity Bullets

Ah yes, this still exists. I suppose I had better do something with it...

So after a brief hiatus (ie: a year) to test lots of silly ETC lists, I'm back to playing something more my style. And luckily, after a very long time, I think I've found an army that suits my playstyle. The brand spanking shiny new Space Marines.

After a quick look at the book, chapter tactics, and special characters, the immediate conclusion is that Ultramarines and White Scars are fairly awesome. As I don't own anywhere near enough bikes, fluffy smurfs are the choice for the moment. They offer a great special character in the form of TIggy, and the doctrines provide very good on-demand flexibility.

Now we get to the real treat in the new book: The Magic Gravity Bullets.
More specifically, grav cannons wielded by centurions. These guys come in at a fairly high cost, but are very tough, and have a horrific amount of firepower that can deal with any target. With the Ultramarine Devastator doctrine, they have plenty of shots to take down flyers. Tanks and heavy infantry just evaporate. Even hordes suffer due to the grav-amps and hurricane bolters.

My original plan was to just spam these guys as much as possible (yes, you can get 18 into 1850pts), but assembling so many of these not so giant robots proved too time consuming, and the deadline for the next tournament was fast approaching.

The final thing these guys need is a bit of a general boost in terms of survivability and dealing with cover saves. That's where Tiggy and Commander Helpful come in. Between them, they give the Centurions ignore cover, twin linked shots, hit and run, and the potential for a 4+ invulnerable save.

Here's the list I ended up using at Gaelcon on 26th Oct. The fluffy highlander Ultramarine and Tau battle buddies:

Tiggy: Warlord
Chapter Master: Power Fist, The Shield Eternal, Bike, Artificer Armour

9 Scouts
10 Tactical Marines
Rhino

6 Devastator Centurions: Grav Cannon & Grav Amps, Omni Scope
Thunderfire Cannon

Commander Helpful: Command & Control Node, Multi-spectrum Sensor Suite, Iridium Armour, Vectored Retro Thrusters, Puretide Engram Chip

Riptide: Ion Accelerator, Twin Fusion Blaster, Intercept, Skyfire

10 Kroot

Skyray: BS filter, Disruption Pod.



See, fluffy.

So my thinking was that whilst centurions are amazing, they are a bit short ranged, so finding ways to get more reach into the army was essential, especially given the shooty nature of recent armies, and the anticipated lack of cover.

The Chapter Master has a very handy Orbital Bombardment, which can try to take out something nasty in turn 1. Combined with Commander Helpful and the Riptide, a lot of tank-hunting ordinance can be thrown out.
He is also pretty good in combat, and makes for a very good tanking unit to sit in front the of the centurions

Tiggy is of course very good, and is almost guaranteed to get 3 good powers on Divination. THe main ones I was looking for were Forewarning, and Perfect Timing. This gives the centurions a change against all the s10 ap2 wondering around, and allows Commander Helpful to go off with other units if needs be. Scryers Gaze is also amazing with Tiggy, the chance of reserves coming on at an inconvenient time is next to zero.

Commander Helpful is obviously very handy, but the two main reasons for his inclusion were a guaranteed ignore cover ability, and Hit & Run if the Cents ever got caught in assault.

Riptide and Skyray were the anti-air contingent, which when combined with the volume of shots the Cents can put out, should be just about enough to deal with most air threats. The Riptide, in conjunction with the Chapter Master, is also good for squishing things like flesh hounds in assault.

The Thunderfire Cannon was a bit of an afterthought. I wanted to try it out just to see how useful it was, and the long range was obviously a good addition to balance out all the short range firepower. And if all else failed, having a fortified piece of terrain to hide in seemed like a safe plan.

So that's my first Tournament Space Marines list. Tune in next time to see how it faired on the battlefield, and what the next iteration will be.