Hey everyone, Reecius here to toss my hat into the ring of the Sisters of Silence and Adeptus Custodes debate. Check out Frontling Gaming for more great 40k content!
Over on our site, Petey Pab posted a great article about the state of Sisters of Silence and Adeptus Custodes in 40k and what to do with them in the ITC. I won’t rehash that argument because it hit the major points but to give a CliffsNotes version of it:
- (Obviously) we have new units in the game: Sisters of Silence and Adeptus Custodes in the new Burning of Prospero boxed set.
- These units have 40k Dataslates but without an HQ and Troops, or a new detachment to use them in, are only available at present in Unbound play according to a GW facebook message.
- Most organized play formats don’t use Unbound as a viable list building option, including the ITC. Therefore, at present, you can’t actually use them in most leagues or tournaments.
- The models are awesome in both rules and looks and some folks want to use them.
- Some community members feel that no exceptions should be made for these units to join in the fun.
- We must now decide what to do.
That’s the long and the short of the issue as it stands at present. The ITC specifically has a long history of changing it’s own rules (by community vote) to accommodate cool new stuff. When Imperial Knights all went LoW status (as they honestly always should have been) we gave an exception for them to ignore the 0-1 LoW restriction. When Eldar went all ranged D on us, we altered our rules to not prohibit Eldar players form being able to use their cool new toys. When Tau got units of Stormsurges, we gave them an exception to use units of Lords of War so they could get more than 1 Stormsurge on the table in a unit as that was their cool new thing. So to make a special exception for Sisters and Custodes would not be anything out of the ordinary.
Some players feel that the Sisters are under-costed (and with the Swords, yeah, I agree, but that is hardly a reason to not allow them as by the same logic no Wraithknight–or any unit to be perceived to be too cheap–would ever see the table). Some players feel that it is a bummer that Imperial faction players get an awesome tool that is not available to all factions and I can feel the pain there. Off topic: Interestingly, one of the cooler rules changes that has been proposed by a gaming group on the east coast of the USA for this next ITC poll has been to make the Culexus Assassin have no faction, thereby being available to all armies in the game which I thought was a cool idea, personally. Let us know in the comments section if you like that or not.
Back on topic: many players feel that it is no big deal to include them for any number of reasons: they like the models, the rules, etc. I think the Sisters are a great counter-balance to psychic deathstars which are very prominent in the meta at present and to me at least, not super fun to play against. Introducing a unit that could help to counter that is worth the price of admission, but that is me. We’ve had some creative solutions such as: allowing them to be taken in Inquisition or Sisters of Battle detachments, making them Elites in any Imperial faction, making them take up a detachment and allowing 1-3 units of them and even the suggestion of them taking up the LoW slot.
Some of my own Team Zero Comp teammates have expressed that they believe the Adeptus Custodes provide the foundation for even more Deathstars and may contribute to the issue. I can see that as they are quite beefy, but my opinion on that topic (without having played them yet) is that at this point I do not see them providing a better platform around which to build a Deathstar than what is already available.
Many voices in this debate brought up the fluff and the fact that the Custodes don’t seem to leave Terra anymore, and that the Sisters of Silence are not very present in the game’s current story and would feel odd in the game. However, the last 30k plastic boxed set gave us Contemptor Dreads and Cataphractii Terminators and with a few lines of text explained why we now have them. It’s certainly nothing new.
Forgeworld has been showing off this awesome toy, too! What a cool model. Good looks aside, these models are clearly not a one off release, and GW plans to give us more awesome Custodes goodies. There’s also been sightings of other units and rules for them, too.
The point here being that there are some strong emotions and some good points on both sides of the argument. I sincerely wish GW would have simply given us a detachment to work with upon release and then there’d be no argument at all! Haha, but they see unbound as a totally legit way to play the game–and it is–it’s just not so hot in tournament/league play. I think now with how crazy formations have gotten that the fear of unbound may not be as well founded as it way (especially if you don’t allow CtA allies as that is where the really crazy combos can be found) but would the community would be ready to accept that? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong. I know for one I would not want to see a big change like that before the LVO, but perhaps for the 2017 season, if everyone wanted it, sure.
So, as I sat thinking about the best way to handle this something occurred to me. With the (amazingly funny) GW video showing us the coming of the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red and all that has been hapenning and hinted at in the recent 40k releases I started to consider the possibility that there may be more on the way from both the Sisters of Silence and Adeptus Custodes not only in 30K, but in 40K, too! Now, this is pure speculation and I may be 100% wrong, but we seem to be seeing a gearing up in the recent books and hearing lots of rumors of a possible advancing of the story-line of 40k. If that were to happen, who’s to say that the Custodes may not rejoin activity in the galaxy? I mean, thousands of years of hiding on Terra is plenty of penance! Sisters of Silence could join the party again, too. It makes sense for the game and the business of selling models to include these awesome factions.
Making plastic molds is also REALLY expensive. If I were calling the shots, I wouldn’t take the financial risk on one off, factionless units for my flagship game (40k) if I didn’t at least have a plan to add more to them at a later date. I would guess that with the crazy success of this release, it would be an easy choice to make more units to flesh out these factions. As their dataslates already have faction symbols on them, I would guess that they will be gaining reinforcements and we may even see detachments for them or including them in the next supplement which I assume will include Magnus the Red as we’ve seen him confirmed. The message on Facebook was probably the only answer that could be given without spilling the beans about upcoming releases. Yes, they have been created for 30k, but if you were running GW, wouldn’t you want to sell these kits to both your 30k AND 40k customers? You vastly increase your customer base that way, and therefore, sales. All it would take to breathe them to life in the 40k setting would be some cool new story-line and off we go. I think it’s exciting!
Am I right? Who knows! Only time will tell. But, I think the prudent thing to do in this instance may be to just hang tight and wait as my guess would be that the solution to this riddle comes to us from GW sooner than later. But, I could be wrong and that is the risk in waiting.
What do you all think? Am I way off base, or does that sound like a reasonable course of action? Do you agree with my hypothesis or not?
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I think allowing the Culexus in any army would be very interesting. Would certainly shake things up.
I agree 100%!
Hopefully if more lists run the Culexus, the meta will shift to less deathstars too 🙂
The question is, if we’re going to make a special exception to allow the Culexus… why not allow all CtA allies?
That’s a “slippery slope” argument. Just because we make an expection for one specific thing for a specific reason doesnt then mean we have to make exceptions for everything else.
No, but it does set a precedent. It gives a basis for people saying things like “well you made an exception for Culexus Assassins, why can’t we all have Wraithknights?”. Those statements would still be stupid, but they would hold more weight because a similar decision has already been made.
Honestly I would love to see a rewrite of the ally matrix.
Myself as well, Leonix. I miss 6e matrix, where Imperials didn’t all get to play together and most armies had more options (though I’m glad Tau don’t have Battle Brothers anymore, Taudar was silly back then).
And it just isn’t fluffy to have a Deathstar of Space Wolves + Dark Angles. It’s just… wrong.
It’s not a slippery slope, because the presumption of a slippery slope is that a trend MUST continue in a given direction. My question is “What makes the Culexus worthy of an exception when other units are not?”
The argument so far has been that it will solve deathstars, but I don’t think I’ve seen much of any support for that argument at all. Is the Culexus universal amongst Imperial/Xenos armies that are already capable of running it? It isn’t, in my experience- lots of Gladius, Tau, and Eldar armies don’t bother using it because it simply isn’t necessary. So why is it we think that giving it to Chaos, Tyranids, and Orks is suddenly going to change anything?
I think Reese deliberately lists an number of other times the ITC has modified its rules to allow some new play style when a new Codex dropped and none of those changes were for any reason other than greater inclusion. The same as when the vote to allow Orks to use their cheaper Stompa.
Opening up the Culexus wouldn’t solve Deathstars, personally I think that requires reworking the Battle Brothers rules which still seems to be a bridge too far. What it would do is open up _options_ to all Codexes and skill levels.to help more players deal with Deathstars.
It opens up options, sure, but that’s a non-starter because that is almost by definition what it is doing. “It opens up options” is also true of allowing multiple superheavies, or CtA allies, or more than three detachments.
Again, it comes back around the question of _why_. Why allow this, but not other things? Why change the rules to give this model to more factions, but not other models? If we’re going to make a significant change to the game rules, there needs to be a good rationale for it- and I don’t feel like that has been made, at all.
I honestly thought that had been adequately presented. The Culexus is a relatively low impact way to help fight psychic Deathstars for armies that don’t have good tools for it currently.
I think the emphasis there is low impact. Might it turn out to allow a degenerative combo that we can’t see right now because it hasn’t been extensively playtested? Maybe. But would you honestly say that you think that opening up the Culexus Assassin, which you have repeatedly stated is not good enough to get into top tier lists, to Orks, Chaos, Necrons and Tyranids would be more harmful than for the meta?
It’s more than just a matter of the harm it causes- I don’t think it will cause any damage, no, but will it do any good? What sort of precedent does it set? There are lots of things you can do that won’t harm the game, but that reason alone is not enough to change the rules in my opinion- you need to show that the change you want to make has a significant net _good_ for the game.
I mean, if Armies of the Imperium could take Crisis Suits as troops, would it harm the game any? No, probably not- but that doesn’t mean we should do it.
GW’s facebook message is not an official FAQ or retcon.
Upon looking at the dataslate, it implies they are a party of armies of the Imperium, and listed as an Elite slot. This makes me think that any force that’s party of the Armies of the Imperium can field them as an Elite.
Until GW responds with official FAQ or Errata….
Armies of the Imperium is a group of factions used for ally relationships, not an actual faction. Just because Space Wolves and Imperial Guard are both Armies of the Imperium does not mean you can take a Baneblade in your Space Wolf detachment.
If you look at the faction symbol at the top of the Custodes and Sisters, you will note that it is one we have not seen before, NOT the faction symbol of any existing faction. So while they are one of the Armies of the Imperium, they are not any of the existing ones and cannot be included in detachments with them.
Man, who ever would’ve thought GW’s response of “you can’t use them outside of Unbound” would be so easily misunderstood?
Are we taking Facebook responses as 100% concrete answers?
I ask because GW have literally responded to some questions I’ve asked in ways which contrad the game. I’ve been told on a response I can use a unit in 40k that doesn’t even have rules outside of 30k.
Guess I’ll be running those too!
Facebook answers are not official. But neither is your interpretation of the rule. In this case, the Facebook ruling matches what the BRB says.
It’s not official, no, and I discussed that in the other thread.
But the datasheets themselves ARE official. Can you find that faction symbol anywhere else in the game? Anywhere at all? Because if you can’t, you are going to have a hard time fielding a legal detachment with the Sisters and Custodes, as virtually all detachments prohibit mixing factions and there is no generic “just elite slots” detachment available.
Armies of the Imperium is not a Faction, it’s a grouping of the Allies Matrix. All units in a Combined Arms Detachment all have to have the same Faction.
If you go down that path my Tempestus Scions are going to start taking TWC and Dreadknights. Because they’re all Armies of the Imperium.
That doesn’t make any sense. Just because they’re Armies of the Imperium doesn’t mean anything…
You can’t take a guard platoon in a detachment with your thunderwolves and baal predator.
Nothing in their actual rules allows them to be taken in a legal detachment since they have their own faction but no way to take troops + HQ with them.
Facebook post just clarified that. It didn’t FAQ or errata anything.
Hey Reece,
Thanks for the long article.
My 2 cents : Very happy to see that you are looking for a solution to address psychic Death Stars. The problem with sisters or the culexus to everyone is that you will make collateral damage in trying to fix the symptoms and not really addressing the root cause.
Chaos Daemons, who is a faction that relies heavily on psychic powers will be your first victim.
The root cause of deathstars is battle brothers, not psychic powers.
If you want to curb psychic powers, then set a limit to max dice per turn, or find another way to reduce its influence.
But again, if you want to address deathstars, try to find a solution to battle brothers. Adding new units/rules will create problems elsewhere.
Few ideas to address deathstars:
1. Make space marine bonuses only apply to its own chapter. (Essentially battle brothers but with no bonus applying to a battle brother)
2. Limit the number of independent character per unit
3. Limit the number of named characters
4. Limit the number of psychic dices
in closing, if you want to address deathstars, then focus on deathstars, not stuff around it.
Yes! 100% this!
Here are a few other ideas.
5) Tweak Libarius Conclave and Sorcerer Cabal so that they are one unit, and lose Independent character. You could still join IC’s to them, but they wouldn’t be able to be added to another unit to create a deathstar. Kinda like a Seer Council.
6) Get rid of battle brothers. Reduce them to Allies of Convenience, or at least remove the ability of battle brothers from different faction joining the same unit.
7) (My Favorite) Treat blessings like IG Orders. A unit can only benefit from a single blessing at a time.
8) Anti-deathstar artillery. Works like this, if a player has a unit worth more than X points or containing more than y IC’s at the start of his turn, his opponent places a small blast that doesn’t scatter anywhere over that unit. The blast is resolved as Strength D.
9) Get rid of 1st blood and warlord as tertieries. We don’t have to fix deathstars if we remove the incentives to taking them, and one of the incentives is that is is easy to win ITC missions because of 1st blood, Warlord, and the Eternal War part of the mission.
10) Remove the ability for IC’s to join formations that are composed of 2 or more units joined. For instance Green Tide or Wolfkin.
11) Ban or fix formations. Deathstars exists outside of formations, but formations throw gasoline on the fire.
The ideas are plentiful, and many of them would probably see fairly broad community support if they were added to the next poll.
I LOVE the idea of adding sisters of scilence to the sisters of battle codex. It’s fluffy, fun, and maybe sisters will see some more tabletops.
Side note: What is up with this site. I cant load a page or even post without clearing my cookies. Too many redirects.
How is it fluffy?
Because of the ta-tas naturally.
Female warriors wearing power armor who like fire weapons and hate psykers fighting for the emperor with a sergeant called a Sister Superior.
It’s pretty obvious what book they fit into LOL
Except in the actual fluff they aren’t part of that organization. Possibly the precursors, but the Sisters of Silence basically abandoned the Imperium after the Heresy. Sisters of Battle are a completely different organization started by the Ecclesiarchy.
So it’s not fluffy other than “girls in armor”.
Yeah, despite their names (because GW is really, really unoriginal) Sisters of Silence and Sisters of Battle don’t have anything to do with each other, lore-wise. They exist several thousand years apart in time, fill completely different roles within the Imperium’s organizational structure, and only have the most passing of resemblances to each other.
“They both use Boltguns and Flamers” as a rationale for them being similar would be as much a reason to connect them to the Salamanders as each other. Flamers are one of the most universal weapons throughout the Imperium and even the xenos races- Dark Eldar are basically the only ones who don’t use them.
Im in the opinion we leave them on the shelf for a few months and wait and see
I’m of the opinion people should use the models they paid good money for, especially as they don’t impact the game negatively.
That’s fine and well when you play with your friends, but organized play for events and Leagues like the ITC shouldn’t bend over backwards and make new rules for a small subset of players. That is not the sort of decision a large group that services this many players should make, imo.
1) Who bought Prospero Burns boxed set with the intention of using Sisters of Silence and Custodes at ITC events?
2) Eldar players who bought three Wraithknights when they were Heavy Support choices echo your sentiments about paying good money and wanting to use their models.
I’m also a fan of waiting for a bit. Saves having to change things AGAIN in a month or two if GW does open it up, and it’s not going to kill anyone to have to wait a couple of months before taking them to a Tournament.
Whilst I like the model’s and the rules it would really kill the flavour of both units having them appear in every other army.
I understand fluff doesn’t really come into tournament play (except CTA allies;) but if they are allowed in it should be come at a detriment. Perhaps cancelling all command benefits for the rest of the army as this is the usual drawback when playing unbound?
Whilst I like the model’s and the rules it would really kill the flavour of both units having them appear in every other army. I understand fluff doesn’t really come into tournament play (except CTA allies;) but if they are allowed in it should be come at a detriment. Perhaps cancelling all command benefits for the rest of the army as this is the usual drawback when playing unbound?
The last thing I really want to see is a Necron decurion or dual stormsurge Tau monster bash list facing off against me and my imperial armies with them having a culexus too.
As if those armies aren’t strong / resilient enough were going to hand them anti psychic defence to sure up one of their few weaknesses….
I hate death stars as much as the next guy. Especially after facing bark bark star at my last event. I don’t think giving everyone a culexus is the answer though.
Tau can already take an assassin. They aren’t CtA with imperium right?
Yeah, they’re only Desperate. Neither Tau nor Eldar particularly cares enough to bother taking the Culexus most of the time- he’s just not that good.
Just be aware that the Sisters of Silence themselves make a good base to a deathstar, one that doesn’t rely on psychic powers, say something like Saint Celestine (sp?) a priest with Litanies, the sisters of silence, some space wolf heroes and some blood angels. That is a star with psychic abomination, plenty of ablative wounds, plenty of 2+ saves, plenty of 3++ saves, re-rolls saves in close combat, FnP, hit and run, hatred, fearless, can get preferred enemy (through Ulrik), and eternal warrior (through Dante) if you want it, re-rolls charge distances, etc.
Yeah, but unlike the “real” deathstars, it isn’t that hard to just shoot at and watch it die. Let’s say you sink for ten Sisters, Celestine, Ulrik, two Wolf Lords, and a Sanguinary Priest- that’s almost 900pts of models. Can they live through being shot by 50 Warp Spiders/Jetbikes every turn? They cannot. Can they win a fight against a Wraithknight? Not likely. Will they assault the enemy on turn 1/2? Not without a miracle, no. So basically it’s a slow, fragile points bunker that most competitive armies will roll over like yesterday’s roadkill.
Being immune to psychic powers is a cute trick, but offensive psychic powers aren’t what is problematic in the game- it’s the defensive ones.
I agree which brings us back to why deathstars in their current form are used in today’s environment too much high strength, high quality shooting. But it would be effective against the current psychic deathstars, it would bring a hard counter to those lists into the meta which is a plus I guess.
Actually, even lacking psychic powers I’m pretty sure most deathstars would roll over it. Five Thunderwolves plus assorted characters should easily trump a bunch of S4 AP2 attacks that bounce of Storm Shields.
I will point out that the rules we have for these units are 100% 40k. I’ve seen their rules for 30k and they are totally different units. Apparently they’ve radically changed over the past few thousand years. Makes me really think we’ll be seeing them all over the place with the black crusade campaign.
I vote allow them in a detachment of their own with no command benefits. Simple and closest to base rules.
I think that expecting Sisters of Silence to “fix” the meta is a bit silly. Instead of making up new rules to benefit armies of the Imperium when fighting against deathstars, why don’t we fix deathstars?
Every ITC scenario at the moment has some kill point component, and the number of objectives on the board is generally pretty low (compared to the standard 6 in Maelstrom). As it is, the formula for ITC scenarios is pretty old, going back to the first BAO (combining two book scenarios). Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new and interesting scenarios which are designed to discourage deathstars, which are simply just not fun to play against.
I am 100% with this – although personally I would shake up the whole format not just the scenarios.
If you make each tournament an escalation event starting at 500 points for the first game and then adding units until you have 2000 point for the final game it makes the very clunky army builds that make deathstars really hard to sustain. It would also make the whole thing much more varied – the whole feel of a 500 point game is really very different to a 2000 point game and tests some different tactical skills.
I guess its a bit more effort in list building but really is it that big a deal for most people? In a world where some people turn up to tournaments with no list and then scrawl out something illegible for me to read I think trying to make this part of the game simple enough for everyone is a fools errand anyway.
I’m not sure I’d go that far myself, haha, but it does raise some interesting thoughts… While ITC itself is designed to be flexible, people tend to play it as a restrictive format. If they were to open it up to additional “sanctioned” formats, we would probably see a variety of game styles. Ultimately, users are generally afraid to trail blaze, and would rather be told what to do. This system works very well in Infinity, and you end up with no two tournaments being exactly the same, which keeps the game fresh and exciting.
Off the top of my head, I would propose ITC official formats for:
Points: 1500 / 1750 / 1850 points
Detachments: Single / Double / 3+ Detachments
Allies: All / Desperate+ / Convenience+ / No Allies
This would allow for a variety of formats that fit within a few guidelines that would be within the common language of the community. You could easily say your event is 1500, double detachments with Convenience+ allies, and everyone would know what that means.
Honestly, if we want to sort this out in the ITC, a community vote should be done, as usual. I’m with Reece on this one, as I fully expect GW to release official detachments for these guys and girls that fit with the possible plot advancement they seem to be planning. Recent trends indicate to me that there is no reason they won’t. For the time being, though, it does need to be addressed in the ITC. To be fair, though, I’m not sure if a full ITC vote should happen until after LVO. This ITC season is getting so close to done at this point, that it might be easier for everyone involved to finish out the season, and then address it from there. Until GW gives us actual detachments, though, I can see this being a point of contention. Whatever the case, I think the ITC should do something, at least temporarily. Hopefully we can get this sorted out soon. The debate, and in some cases, salt, is already starting to get tiring for me, since there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus yet on what to do.
This is speaking as someone who would like to see the Custodes and Sisters included in the ITC, but isn’t sure how to do it in a way that would satisfy the most people. Get on those official detachments, GW!
Why not put it up to an ITC vote ? Personally, I like the idea of allowing Sisters of Silence, but I’m also not a fan of deathstars either.
If we get full 40k-legal rules for Custodes and Sisters of Silence, then I demand we get full 40k-legal rules for Goge Vandire and the Brides of the Emperor, complete with detachments, formations, and Forge World support.
My games just aren’t complete if I don’t have official stamped rules for the 36th millenium’s most charismatic and despotic combination of Oliver Cromwell and Caligula.
Betrayal at Calth – 40k rules
Deathwatch box – 40k rules
Renegade Knights – 40k rules
Like Custodes and SoS, none of these releases fit in with a current faction at the time of their release. Since then they’ve either been better incorporated into existing factions (Knights and Calth models) or they’ve been given factions of their own (Deathwatch and Genestealer Cults).
As Reece said, there is no reason to think Custodes and SoS wouldn’t be the exact same. Does anyone really think GW is going to invest the time into getting people excited but only release 1 pack of Sisters and 1 pack of Custodes? You don’t make that kind of investment as a one-off. These models will be getting their own factions/sub-factions and will be getting expanded rules. Just wait for it.
In my honest opinion there is no rush to add these units to the game. GW didn’t intend for this box set to contain a complete sisters of silence army list. We already have Facebook working on models and units for custodes and I’m sure at some point they will provide rules for those new units to be used in 40k. Sisters of silence appears to be more involved in a future 40k release.
So hold your horses and wait at least 3 months till the next ITC vote in 2017 and let’s see what releases GW has in store to create legitimate armies. I have a feeling we might see a sisters of battle with silence or armies of the imperium codex and a full list for custodes from fw. Just because we got two new models doesn’t mean we need to change tournament rules just for these models.
^Exactly this.
Easiest fix to get rid of death stars is to simply get rid of the battle brothers rule on the allies chart. You’ll still have a few death stars lurking around (Chaos Demons maybe) but killing battle bros will get rid of most of the current deathstars in the game. It seems like armies of the imperium are the biggest abusers of the allies system anyway.
Or, specifically for the psychic deathstars, you could just make it so multiple blessings can’t be stacked on the same unit. This idea was suggested by a friend of mine, and after hearing it, I was surprised no one had thought of it before. It’s not a full cure, but it’s simple enough to be easy to implement, and it would take care of the deathstars that rely on stacking blessings on a unit. The Cabal star comes to mind here as a good example.
The sisters are very low in points cost. This cost surely assumes they are starting the game on foot and not on a BB drop pod.
IMO, we should not make special rules to allow these new models to be used in bound 40k lists until the GW FAQ has been voted on and ratified.
No sisters of silence in droppods!
Suppose I have only been thinking about these units in the context of a post faq setting. Really we should be using the FAQs. Not sure why they haven’t been posted on the GW homepage yet as it’s been some time since we’ve seen an update on them.
But yeah sisters in a post FAQ world are really the only way to go.
I agree with the person above who said that deathstars will never be resolved until you change battle brothers. Do away with that entirely. Make Allies of Convenience the best you can get.
As for these new models wait a month or two and I bet we’all get formations. But in the meantime focus on the root cause of the deathstar problem.
It certainly seems like enough comments in favor of at least including this in the next vote. Don’t you think?
If by next vote you mean first vote of 2017 after fw completes its custodes and likely sisters of silence lists and GW may be putting out its seperate sisters packs we would have a much better idea of army lists for these armies than an unbound comment by GW for a random box set not meant as a complete army.
Agree 100%. BB should be treated as AoC for ITC tournaments. This would fix many issues.
I have suggested this a number of times with my gaming circle. I like limiting Blessings to 1 per unit as well (I’ve also suggested this). We should do both.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about getting rid of Battle Brothers in the ITC, but I’ve never seen anyone online bring up the idea of blessings being limited to 1 per unit before this. I hadn’t even thought of it until a friend of mine suggested it, as mentioned above, but it’s such a simple change that would take care of so many psychic deathstar problems. And honestly, I do think that treating Battle Brothers as Allies of Convenience isn’t a bad idea. It lets people still play with their toys while solving the Battle Brothers problem, and it’s not as extreme as removing allies completely (which, yes, I have seen people suggest. Really though, allies in and of themselves are not the problem, IMO).
Yes!
Put this to vote!
Allies of convenience instead of battle brothers.
That would fix a LOT of issues, without creating big new, unknown issues.
Like I said, this should help get rid of some big abuses like TWC/Ravenwing/Librarius Conclave/Wulfen/White Scar/Centurion Stars that do nothing but break the game with unintended rules interactions.
The other person’s suggestion about limiting units to only being able to have one blessing at a time would also help shut down psychic deathstars from Daemons and Eldar type armies.
I agree, and have suggested as much before. I think the 1 Blessing per unit is also needed.
Speaking about allowing toys and rules that GW have realesed..
Now that Forgeworld have realeased their Death from the skies rules for all their flyers. Why not allow Death from the skies? I want to run my flyers and I want to control the reserves on both my side and my opponents. In my opinion having units that deny the opponents gameplay is the same for denying reserves or denying psychic powers. Please have a new vote about DFTS, I want my toys!
I personally think no Sisters or Custodes in ITC until they get a proper detachment of some kind.
And definitely no to the notion of the Cullexus having “no faction” for allying purposes.
Reece, this article does a good job laying out the situation and I agree that waiting for a bit is prudent. But you should also set a date to expect a decision.
I would say just wait for GW to sort it out. There’s no reason to jump to make a solution so suddenly when the models are so recent. We had genestealer cult and Deathwatch models for months but they were in such an unusable format that they weren’t really used until their full codices were released. That wasn’t seen as a problem, so there’s no reason this should be. Sure you could technically use those things, but it amounts to the same thing.
As for helping the meta, applying a single patch to the problem is never the answer. It just causes more problems for everything else that it affects that isn’t a psychic deathstar. I dislike deathstars, but you need to solve the root problem.
For example when riptides came out and were blatantly underpriced, instead of increasing the cost of riptides grav came along and ‘solved’ the problem… while also screwing over every other heavily armoured, high-toughness unit and making the game less fun for it. Then the issue was psychic deathstars because of a couple of specific powers. Instead of fixing those problem powers, they introduced the pointless mess that is the psychic phase which didn’t even work. All it really did was screw over the people who just wanted to use a couple more psykers than usual because that’s the style and fluff of their army.
Applying a ‘patch’ of culexus and sisters of silence is not a good solution. It isn’t just stopping the deathstars, it’s also stopping the reasonable use of psykers. The specific rules that make deathstars possible need to be targeted, not a couple of units that counter them. We don’t need another incident like grav making the game less fun.
I don’t think that GW will change on the sisters of silence and custodes. The miniatures are for a boxed game, and in second hand for those Horus Heresy players that want plastic instead. They are not meant to be played in regular 40k battles, nor should they be! GW explained that already and the only reason I can see that they got rules for 40k is for specific narrative campaigns where unbound is and house rules is okay. If you do a narrative campaign where the 13th black crusade comes all the way to Terra fine!
In their facebook post they heavily implied that SoS and Custodes would be part of their upcoming campaign books.
I think that means they are part of the fluff advancing to “one minute from midnight”.
Remember when Genestealer cult miniatures were for a boxed game?
And Silver tower miniatures?
And Deathwatch miniatures?
And cataphractii terminators?
And contemptor dreadnoughts?
All of those now have 40k rules as well (with the exception, of course, of Silver Tower which are incorporated into AoS)
I mean, how long did we wait between the 1st Horus box and Angels of Death? I’m all for allowing these units eventually, but why are we so quick to want to create something of our own when we didn’t do the same when Betrayal and Calth showed up with cataphractii terminators?
I think allowing these units for me will depend on whether we decide to accept the new FAQ in or not. I’m a fan of sticking to keeping how we’ve been playing pre-FAQ until after the season ends at LVO mostly because there are very major events between now and then (Warzone, Renegade, and TSHFT are the ones that stick out to me). It just makes sense that with 3/4th of the season gone by to stick to it rather then change it up over the holiday break. If we stick to the pre-FAQ, I don’t think we should go out of our way to include these units because of the shelf life on them and how they’re used in the short amount of time we have before the season ends.
If the community does agree that the new FAQ should be accepted by the ITC, then I’m all for including these units because then we will start seeing creative implementation/inclusion of them rather than every army having 1-2 units of Sisters of Silence in buddy pods which is exactly what I would do if I were allowed to deploy them in the transports of battle brothers.
Just my 2 cents for whatever it’s worth. I’m only concerned for the long term health of our competitive community rather than appeasing the cries for help from those who are too impatient to wait for real rules for these models. Just take this time to really convert and paint these models to a super high standard so I’m not looking at 3 color minimum including primer Sisters in pods in every Imperial Army or any other army that can take them AoC or DA that have trouble against psychic buffed death stars/lists.
Well, this discussion proved moot as the download rules have been updated with 2 formations, one including 1-3 sisters, the other 1-3 custodes.
I would suggest just let them be 0-1 elite choice in any Armies of the Imperium faction. This way ,if other armies want to ally the Sisters or Custodes, they would have to pay an Ally tax of an HQ and a troop choice to get access to a good unit.
I would actually like to see the assasins have no faction and like to see them not take up a slot on our Detachments.