Sisters @ Moofool Games 4 & 5

Evil. Pure Evil. Bottled.

I went out on the Saturday night, had a few cans/pints and headed home about midnight from the pub and getting home at half past I figured it would be a good idea to open the missus' bottle of Baileys. The hangover in the morning told me it was a bad idea and I ended up missing game 4 on the Sunday morning giving the GK a 20-0 win (like they need it). I should pay more attention to those ads.

I managed to make it in for game 5 and was pitted against the birthday boy Dave C (the C is for Coco Pops) and his 4+ Raven BA list led by Meph. With 2 Furioso Dreads and a TDA unit riding with him. At least Celestine could hurt Meph reliably.

The deployment was Spearhead with 3 objectives primary (2 in the middle of the quarters that weren't deployment zones with the other in the centre) and 2 objectives placed anywhere outside 12" of a previously placed objecive as secondary.

With Dave's plan being 'Boost Ravens for cover saves, than assault the following turn' I needed to go first in order to set up a firebase and spread my girls out to avoid being charged and battered ala pissing off Chris Brown while sharing a car. Needless to say I didn't get it and Dave plonked both of his Ravens near the middle while I put Celestine down ready to play chicken: her Krak grenade is capable of taking them out when they've boosted. Yes, I am being facetious - it's odds of 216:1 to bring that Raven down when it's moved over 6" and I don't like them odds so instead I'd rather listen to Mortal Kombat.

After doing that I allowed Dave to move and he boosted, shot at Celestine and I saved. I moved Celestine. He boosted both Ravens again and killed her. Then she got up and chased off after a Razorback in the hope I'd crack it open and mangle the squad that fell out.

This was pretty much the first 2 turns.

In my turn 2 the mech cav arrived with both Exorcists and a Rhino full of Sisters on my right, the Conclave Partybus, Retributors and more Rhino Sisters in the centre, with the foot Sisters on my far left on the objective. I had to down the Ravens in order to stand a chance or I'd be multi-charged into oblivion and everything combined to bring down the one of my right (the one in the photo above) containing Meph and a Furry Dread.

Meph races into hiding while the Furry pops smoke and races for my right-hand corner while the Raven boosts on top of the Sister's Rhino near the centre but thankfully does sweet FA as smoke saved it while the Lasorbacks did very little beyond ferrying RAS toward objectives.

In my turn 3 (fast-moving, wasn't it?) a unit of Dominions showed up on my right and made straight for Meph in his hidey-hole beside the hill and promptly dealt him a few wounds. I made the choice not to try to tag Meph with the Exorcists but take out the other Raven and cut down the BA mobility instead and I managed to bring down the other Raven and stunlock one or two Lazors. Sadly Celestine decided to have a lie in and didn't show up.

Meph jumped into the Dominions while the Terminators and the closer of the  Furries headed for the Rhino that was cockblocking the Exorcists, which they duly wrecked and assaulted, wiping the girls out in one round of combat. The other Dread moved toward the Sisters in their Rhino and exploded it, assaulting the unit inside and killing all but 2 (the Sarge and the Meltagunner) while Lascannons wrecked the Partybus. At least Meph got bogged down by a pair of Dominions that were saved by their Shields of Faith and decided to hang around and tarpit him. Class.

Celestine must have had a hit of Adrenalin because she hopped back up and made straight for the damaged Meph while the other Rhino Sisters showed up on my left objective. They were trying to make things hard for the units that were wading through but having no luck so I switched tack and went for the softer units (Scouts and Razors) and did...nothing. I was beginning to think that I could have left some of them at home for the contribution they had made overall. Less is more sometimes.

That 2-girl unit that was fleeing managed to rally thanks to their Act of Faith and combined with the Exorcists to bag the scary Furry while my Conclave had decided to race for the middle objective and detour towards the far one if time allowed, but it meant that at least one Exorcist was now going to suck Thunder Hammers or Furioso Claws. My other two squads of Dominions showed up on my right and wrecked 2 vehicles so it wasn't all bad and Celestine bagged Meph in one round: She's a Maneater...

The Furries and Termies chased after my Exorcists and the Dominions which they both mangled (it wasn't much of a task tbh) while the surviving Lasorbacks continued to float around and piss me off by going for objectives, with one RAS unit backing up the Scouts on the left-hand primary and their Razor parking on the central one to contest. With my army decimated, it came down to the handful of models that could swing the game my way: the Conclave continued toward the left-hand objective while Celestine, post-Meph, linked up with the 2-girl squad that had bravely melta'd the Furioso's rear armour and headed toward the central objective to tackle the fast-moving Razor.

The surviving Exorcist chose to ignore the Furioso bearing down on it and pumped missiles into a Razorback and Immobilised it while the Rets did the same to another pinning almost everything in different quarters. The Dominions were using their Rhino hulls to cockblock themselves from assault while they got to fire their pew-pew Meltas at Marines, managing to break one squad. Nice. Celestine use her HFlamer to hit the Razor and managed to Immobilise it (not wreck it despite moving Fast, thanks Lenny) so I assaulted but didn't destroy it. So that's one objective contested. The one in my half of the board had no Troops near it while the one in Dave's half had 2 units parked on it. As it stood Dave would win if the game continued.

Lenny from game 3 was asked to roll and it went on. Savage. Dave was not happy: I don't think that even Coco Pops would have cheered him up at this point. The Furioso mangled my Exorcist while the Termies faffed about behind a hill. The fleeing Marine squad sauntered off the board while the units on my left planted themselves in cover on the objective. The Conclave tore toward the objective on the left while Celestine left the Melta Sisters to deal with the Immobilised Razor and headed right while the Dominions were hoping to hold out against the RAS on my right. The Rets finally did something and gunned down 4 of the 5 Marines on my left while the Conclave parked themselves on the objective next to them. The Dominions continued to tarpit the RAS on my left next to the objective (3+ saves for the win) while the Melta lady melted the Razor to give me an objective.

Dave wept as the game went on and he did sweet FA to my army while my Conclave devoured his Scouts and last RAS, while the Dominions passed enough saves for them to hang around and contest an objective to give me a win in Turn 7. It ended 15-5 because Dave had done so much damage to my army but at least I had clawed a win against a bad match-up.

As a result I had ended up in 7th place overall which meant that I had managed to finish within the top 10 target I had set beforehand so I was well happy with my performance. Especially as I had managed to miss a game completely.

I'm glad that I got the chance to run Sisters against a variety of opponents because it gave me an appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses. They're hardly on the same level as GK but they can win games thanks to the proliferation of AP 1 (which will give some armies fits) and Celestine's ability to ressurect and cause havoc before floating off to grab objectives. They do have really bad counters but they can hold their own against most opponents. Whether they're ETC material I'm not sure tbh because when things go wrong they don't have the forgiving features that other armies have like ATSKNF (they need to rely on a D6 roll to get that) and they're basically Guard Vets in Power Armour sans orders.

Saying that they are good fun and I've been inspired to build up an army of them for casual games (black and pink armour naturally) while I wait for the Chaos Codex to drop. Thankfully there's enough in the half-dex to keep my coming back to retry lists and give them at least one more run out before they get a full codex (2013 at the earliest?) so I'll come back to them with a few ideas, one of which will deal with their Faith mechanism.