Detachment Focus: Army of Faith

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Army of Faith Detachment from Codex: Adepta Sororitas

The Adepta Sororitas – or Sisters of Battle as they’re more commonly known – have always had one of the game’s more powerful mechanics in Miracle Dice, and when their Codex launched early in tenth edition they received a slew of powerful new rules and detachments. One of these was Army of Faith, which specializes in using additional Act of Faith on its units and deploying Jump Infantry.

Detachment Overview

For Sisters players who really want to make use of Jump Infantry, the Army of Faith has everything you’re looking for. Well, kind of – Bringers of Flame is actually a better choice for a few reasons, but there are things to like about the Army of Faith, which both lets your units double up on miracles per phase, and also offers a host of tools for powering up your units, with added bonuses for Jump Pack units. Seraphim are a very solid unit, and the army wasn’t hit that hard by the points update on them as it’s not nearly as interested in taking big units as Bringers of Flame armies are. There’s still plenty to like here about the detachment, which includes the army’s only “up/down” Stratagem, but it’s an army that requires a ton of thought and resource management to play effectively.

Detachment Rule: Sacred Rites

Each Sororitas unit in your army can perform up to two Acts of Faith per phase instead of one.

This is a tricky ability – it’s potentially a huge buff when your dice are good, and a mediocre one when they aren’t. Unlike Hallowed Martyrs, this Detachment doesn’t give you much to do with bad Miracle Dice, and the ability to use two acts per unit means you’re going to want a ton of extra dice to work with, making it a very hungry army. This turns playing the Army of Faith into one big complicated resource puzzle, where you’re constantly the using Enhancements and Stratagems to mitigate the detachment’s downsides.

As a result, this ability really wants to combo with the Solemn Procession ability on the Triumph of St. Katherine to automatically gain a 6-value Miracle Dice every round, but with that model eating a 60-point increase in the Q4 balance update you’re getting punished hard for the sins of other, better Detachments.

On its face, this ability is pretty straightforward. It’s good for when you need to pass two saves on a Canoness using her 2+ invulnerable ability, and great on Exorcists and Immolators where you want to pull the occasional 12-damage strike, or guarantee a wound gets pushed through for max damage. The challenge is just knowing when to use it and how, and how to manage your dice when you’re potentially burning through them at double the rate. The good news is that being able to double up means you can afford to toss away dice much more trivially than before, and you can get a little bit greedier about burning medium dice on things like regular saves to keep an ablative wound on the table.

Enhancements

The four Enhancements for the Army of Faith are primarily concerned with mitigating the Detachment ability, either by giving you extra miracle dice or helping pitch bad ones. There are some interesting effects here but not a ton of power.

• Litanies of Faith (10 points) – Canoness or Palatine only. At the start of your Command phase, if the bearer is on the battlefield, take a Leadership test for them and if you pass, you generate 1 Miracle Dice. Given both of those characters only have Leadership 7, this really isn’t that good on its face. That said, you can put it on a Palatine and then attach her to the same unit of Battle Sisters as a Dialogus. This will let you test at Ld 6, giving you about a 75% chance of generating an extra Miracle Dice each turn, plus you can use the Dialogus to help push through a double 6 for hits with your squad’s Multi-Melta shots, which then turn into Lethal Hits thanks to the Palatine. It’s a lot to invest for one extra die per turn, but you also get some interesting effect out of it and it’s a little bit more attractive with the points drop to Battle Sisters in the Q4 balance update.
• Divine Aspect (5 points) – In the Movement phase, you can pick an enemy unit within 12″ of the bearer and they have to take a Battle-shock test. If they fail, you get 1 Miracle Dice. This isn’t particularly powerful but for only 5 points it’s there to fill space. You can use this to try and turn off Overwatch, and even against Space Marines if you can force 2-3 tests in a game odds are good they’ll fail one of them.
• Blade of Saint Ellynor (15 points) – Add 1 to the Strength and AP of the bearer’s Melee weapons, plus they gain [PRECISION]. Also, every time they fight, if they destroy one or more enemy models, you gain 1 Miracle Dice. This is solid on either a Jump Canoness or Palatine, but more than likely you’re putting it on a Jump Canoness with a unit of Seraphim to give her melee output a little more oomph and the ability to cut down mid-level characters or a foot Canoness to add a bit of power to her Power Weapon.
• Triptych of the Macharian Crusade (20 points) – Each time the bearer uses an act of faith to substitute a saving throw, that save is successful regardless of the value of the die being used. This is really good, but pretty expensive at 20 points. It’s something I’d consider on a Jump Pack Canoness as a solo character and secondary unit, where she can use her free Stratagem ability for up/down every turn and then spend bad Miracle Dice to protect herself from incidental shooting in a pinch.

These are just OK as far as Enhancements go. The Triptych is the most interesting, but far too expensive for a world where the Triumph costs you 250 points. The Divine Aspect is the most likely addition to your army, mostly because it’s five points. Though it’s a fun trick for a Jump Canoness, who can get close to an enemy while staying out of sight, and potentially Battle-shock them before another unit moves in.

Stratagems

The Stratagems in Army of Faith are pretty solid, and three of them are straightforward buffs with an added aura effect if they’re used on JUMP PACK units. This is pretty neat, but with only 3″ of distance, it’s hard to make this work how you’d want it, since your small jump units don’t often want to be stuck trudging alongside bigger units. All six Stratagems are priced at 1 CP.

• Shield of Faith (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in any phase, just after one of your units takes a mortal wound. You can either use this on that unit, or on a friendly Sororitas JUMP PACK unit within 3″ of it. Until the end of the phase, models in your unit have a Feel No Pain 5+ against Mortal Wounds. If you targeted a Jump Pack unit with this stratagem, then instead every unit within 3″ of that unit gains the ability until the end of the phase. This is a solid way to help power through Psychic shooting from Thousand Sons or Grey Knights, and can be useful against Chaos Space Marines fishing for devastating wounds. The aura effect is neat here as well, and can stop an opponent from splitting effects to get around normally only being able to use a stratagem on a single unit.
• Light of the Emperor (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Command phase on one of your units – they become blessed until the end of the turn. While a unit is blessed, they ignore any or all modifiers to the profile characteristics of their models, WS/BS of weapons, and any roll or test made for it (excluding saving throws). If you use this on a Jump Pack unit, then every unit within 3″ of that unit is blessed instead. Even without the aura effect this is solid for those specific times when you need it, though note that it’s not going to stop effects which reduce/worsen your damage or AP characteristics like “ignore any/all modifiers” abilities do, and that makes this one quite a bit worse – the primary value here is going to be pushing through effects like -1 to wound on Deathshroud/Scarabs or using it with your vehicles to fire out of combat and ignore modifiers from Big Guns Never Tire.
• Faith and Fury (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase to give a unit [LANCE] on their melee weapons for a phase. If you destroy one or more enemy units with that unit’s attacks this phase, you gain 1 Miracle Dice. This is just objectively great on an army which otherwise struggles to get good strength on its melee units, and when you combine it with something like the Blade of St Ellynor you can get 2+ to wound on weaker units and 4+ to wound on tougher vehicle targets. This is just always great, and the fact you can use it to get extra Miracle dice is a good bonus.
• Blinding Radiance (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase or the Fight phase, after an enemy unit picks its targets. You can use this on one of your targeted units, or a Jump unit within 3″ of a targeted unit. Until the end of the phase, opponents get -1 to hit when targeting your unit. If you picked a Jump unit, then this applies to every friendly unit within 3″ of your jump unit. Again, this is always great, and if you can live the dream of doing an aura that’s pretty solid as well. You can always make use of this – though in my experience you’re typically going to be disappointed when your opponent just hits you anyways despite the modifier – and using it on multiple units is great.
• Divine Guidance (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase or the Fight phase, on a unit from your army that hasn’t shot or fought yet. Until the end of the phase, each time your unit makes an attack, improve their AP by 1. If you destroy one or more enemy modes with those attacks, you gain 1 Miracle Dice. This is amazing. Fantastic Stratagem, and always helpful. It’s particularly great on flamers, where going from AP0 to AP-1 is a massive increase in lethality (just ask your Thousand Sons playing friend about this), and spitting out four hand flamers’ worth of shooting is going to put a hurt on a ton of units. The only shame is you can’t use this with Overwatch. Anyways, this is always good, and the miracle dice is an extra bonus. You are going to use this every turn, and sometimes multiple times per turn. Great free Stratagem target for your Jump Canoness.
• Angelic Descent (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used at the end of your opponent’s Fight phase on a Jump unit from your army. Pick that unit up from the battlefield and put it into Strategic Reserves. You can’t pick a unit that’s in Engagement Range of an enemy unit. This is fantastic, and one of the key reasons to take the Army of Faith Detachment. It gives you the ability to pick up a unit every turn, and it’s a great Stratagem to use on a Jump Canoness, who can go back up for free, then deep strike on the following turn, helping you score secondary objectives like Behind Enemy Lines, Establish Locus, Containmnet, and Engage on All Fronts.

This are some pretty great Stratagems, and you’re going to want to spend your CP on them most turns. This in turn makes it important to have multiple Canonesses in your army so you can pop out a free Strat every round.

Playing This Detachment

The Army of Faith are a tough Detachment. They’ve seen some limited success since Pariah Nexus dropped, but only from Stephen Box, and partly because he’s the only top player trying to make them work. And that’s not super surprising – Army of Faith presents a somewhat needlessly complicated resource puzzle for players, where your Detachment rule is at best mediocre and a number of the Enhancements and Stratagems are trying to make it not so bad. The Detachment Rule really wants you to have a lot of Miracle Dice, and it’s pushing you to keep playing the Triumph of St. Katherine even at that insane 250 point cost.

The big issue is that while the Detachment pushes you to have lots of dice, it doesn’t really give you any way to manipulate dice values outside of Cherubs, Dialogus, and the Triumph. It’s the only Sisters Detachment that actually wants to attach a Dialogus to things, and that’s an area where again, the points increase designed to hurt Bringers of Flame ends up hurting this Detachment with collateral damage. This is an army which desperately wants cheap trash units to get killed and generate Miracle Dice, but since the Codex pushed the army more toward elite-ness, they just don’t have those units.

The net result is that successful Army of Faith builds focus on tankiness instead, taking cheap squads of 5-model Jump units who can spread out and share -1 to hit aura effects from Blinding Radiance, while the Triumph can hand out additional speed and a 6+ feel no pain while you use your double Miracle Dice to pass invulnerable saves. Units like Sacresants and Arco-flagellants really benefit from -1 to hit, and having it on tanks is pretty great too. And while this Detachment’s version of the ignore modifiers effect isn’t the good version, it’s still OK and being able to do it with a targeted aura effect is nice. This is an army which wants three units of five Seraphim, and you’ll want at least one and possibly two Canonesses with Jump Pack – you can make the decision to attach them to a unit at game time based on the opponent. Having one unattached Jump Canoness who can up/down free for scoring is pretty great, but at only 3 wounds and no Lone Operative, she’s pretty fragile and you’ll want to make sure your opponent can’t just kill her off the table with Indirect Fire.

Although Celestine is a Jump unit, she’s not necessarily a unit you want in the army – she’s an expensive unit and typically wants to be joined by a large brick of Seraphim, and that’s not necessarily what the army is looking for. Instead you’ll still want Vahl and the Triumph, and there are options for other characters like a Dialogus and even Junith Eruita, who gives you a way to convert bad Miracle dice into CP you can use on the Detachment’s decent stratagems.

A Sample List

Although it’s still way too early to understand exactly how the meta will shake out for sisters armies with the new points, we can point to a few lists which may give us an idea. As we mentioned before, only one player has had success with the detachment since Pariah Nexus, but we can look at Stephen Box’s list for some inspiration about what to run.

The list - click to expand

Stephen scored 1st place with this list at the Cardiff Carnage event in late August, running a solid mix of sisters units and vehicles – two Castigators, an Exorcist, and Warsuits – dropping Celestine and her brick for two small units of Seraphim, a Rhino full of Sacresants, and a Jump Canoness. This list took a beating in the Q4 2024 points update, but you can cut the Immolator from it to bring it back under cost, and that’s something you’d want to do anyways as you’ll be cutting the Dominions. That said, you have some build options here, and it’s worth playing around with some alternate options and a third unit of Seraphim.

Final Thoughts

The Army of Faith are definitely the “hard mode” version of the Adepta Sororitas, and not just because they lack the power of the Bringers of Flame or Hallowed Martyrs. Juggling resources with this army is tricky, but rewarding, and if you can pull it off, it’s an impressive sight.

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