Detachment Focus: Bringers of Flame

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 Bringers of Flame 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 the Bringers of Flame Detachment, which quickly emerged as the strongest of the bunch thanks to the incredible movement and damage buffs it provides.

Detachment Overview

The Bringers of Flame Detachment does what it says on the tin – this Detachment is about moving up to your enemy and covering them in holy fire. The Detachment’s rule acts as both a movement buff – letting you Advance and shoot – and a damage buff, giving you +1 Strength when you get in close. These effects combine to create an army that wants to press forward quickly and just absolutely devastate their opponent with flamers and other guns using units which can punch well above their weight.

Detachment Rule: Fervent Purgation

Ranged weapons equipped by Adepta Sororitas models in your army have the [ASSAULT] ability and each time you make an attack with one of those weapons against a unit within 12″, they get +1 Strength.

This is a massive buff, and plays heavily into taking lots of flamers. Suddenly getting S5 on your hand flamers makes Seraphim insanely good, but it’s also really great on Dominions taking artificer-crafted storm bolters as well as Retributors and Immolators, where increasing the strength of their Melta weapons from 9 to 10 makes a huge difference, giving you a 4+ to wound against a host of new targets and 3+ against others. The addition of [ASSAULT] is also fantastic on tanks and other fast-moving shooting units that want to get around the board quickly, and helps ensure you’ll always be able to move into position without giving up shooting. It’s an ability which combos very well with the Triumph of St. Katherine, where the buffs to movement and Advance rolls let you take full advantage of her ability with all of your units.

Enhancements

This Detachment has some very good enhancements, and in an effort to reign in the Detachment, all four received major points increases in the Q4 balance update. Fortunately all are viable, but none are mandatory. Two of them give you outlets for throwing away bad Miracle dice to achieve better effects.

• Righteous Rage (15 points) – Each time the bearer fights, you can discard up to three Miracle dice. For each one you discard, until the end of the phase, add 1 to the Attacks and Strength Characteristics of the bearer’s melee weapons. This is very good. It’s just a great outlet for the 1s and 2s you roll, and converting those into +3A and +3S on a blessed Halbert for a Canoness with Jump Pack to give her 8 S8 attacks is just brutal. Even at 15 points it’s good for the cost, but the steep expenditure of Miracle Dice means this is either a late-game tool or a way to stabilize the game with a big trade-up if all your early dice are poor.
• Manual of Saint Griselda (20 points) – At the start of your Command phase, you can discard up to 2 Miracle dice to add 1 to your pool showing a value equal to the sum of those dice. 20 points is a lot for this ability, and its utility has to be weighed against the miracle economy of the rest of the list. Units like Morvenn Vahl or a character wearing the aforementioned Righteous Rage enhancement are happy to expend bad dice to activate their abilities, so taking this enhancement is generally reserved for lists that don’t otherwise have a good way to use their bad dice.
• Fire and Fury (30 points) – While the bearer is leading a unit, Torrent weapons in that unit get +1 attack, and all other ranged weapons get Sustained Hits 1. This is incredibly strong, as a jump pack Canoness attached to 10 Seraphim puts out an incredible 9d6+9 flamer shots at S5 (and has access to Devastating Wounds via stratagem). Alternately, this can be used in other squads where the power of Miracle Dice can be used to guarantee additional hits on high-value weapons like Multimeltas. The units that benefit most from this enhancement are already expensive and fragile, and adding this 30pt enhancement makes them a centerpiece unit that must be played around and protected. 
• Iron Surplice of Saint Istalela (10 points) – Only available to a Canoness or Palatine, this enhancement gives the bearer a 2+ Save and a 5+ Feel No Pain. When combined with the Canoness’ ability to get a once-per-game 2+ invulnerable save for a phase, this makes a solo Canoness into a durable action piece that requires disproportionate effort to remove relative to its 60-point cost.

Stratagems

Unlike some of the other detachments where a significant chunk of their output or mobility is rooted in the stratagems, Bringers of Flame leans heavily on its detachment rule for both. This is great because you don’t have to begin the game with CP pre-budgeted to use certain stratagems to execute your game-plan.

• Shield of Aversion (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Sisters-flavored Armor of Contempt. Excellent in conjunction with 2+ saves like the ones on Paragon Warsuits or Saint Celestine, or for protecting the ludicrous number of tanks you’ll be bringing in this detachment. Often it lets you use lower-valued miracle dice to make crucial saves as well, so despite the opening comment you will probably use this every turn.
• Righteous Blows (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Pick a unit that hasn’t been selected to fight and give its melee weapons Lethal Hits until the end of the phase. One unit that lost a model to those attacks must take a battle-shock test. The units that most benefit from this are Sisters melee units that have access to rerolls or a high volume of attacks. Repentia, Arco-Flagellants, and halberd-wielding Sacresants are all excellent targets for this stratagem. Unfortunately the stratagem doesn’t include a clause that allows you to take those units off the shelf and add them to your army mid-game, so in practice you will rarely use it outside of desperation moments with the Triumph because this detachment has nothing to offer melee units beyond this stratagem.
• Carry Forth the Faithful (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Pick a transport that is about to advance. You can reroll the advance roll, and then units inside can disembark normally even though the transport advanced. This is an excellent stratagem. If you’re going to use it, you probably know where you want to go, which means the re-roll is actually just a chance to fish for a good advance roll before you reach for the miracle dice you were going to use anyway. Watching your opponent’s wheels turn as you explain in deployment that your immolator full of dominions can put five ladies 30” away on turn one (via Scout and the Triumph movement boost) is gold, and even when you don’t use it this stratagem will influence how your opponent maneuvers.
• Cleansing Flames (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Torrent weapons in your unit gain Devastating Wounds. If you’re bringing a big unit with flame weapons in this army, this stratagem is why. The number of devastating wounds it can deal is uncapped, which means that while the aforementioned Seraphim squad with Fire and Fury should expect to do about 7 mortal wounds as part of its 295-point fusilade, sometimes it spikes and does something ludicrous like 19 mortals to a Khorne Lord of Skulls. (True story. My opponent had to sit down for a moment.) Of course, sometimes it spikes the other way and does no mortal wounds when firing at a Land Raider on 2 wounds remaining after your 9d6+9 shots results in a whopping 20 hits. (Also a true story. I had to sit down for a moment.)
• Rites of Fire (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Pick a unit that disembarked from a transport this turn. When a model in your unit shoots at an enemy unit within 12” of your model that is also on an objective you can add 1 to the wound roll. If you kill a model in your target unit, that unit must take a battle-shock test. This stratagem is excellent because the conditions are so esoteric that you’ll never be tempted to use it. If you really need that wound roll to succeed, spend miracle dice and save the CP for grenades. There’s an argument to be made that a unit of flame Retributors with a Canoness gets great value out of this, and while that’s true, a unit of flame Retributors with a Canoness generally has a hard time finding their way into lists.
• Blazing Ire (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Pick a transport that just survived being shot in your opponent’s shooting phase. One unit inside can immediately disembark and shoot back at whatever shot the transport (if it’s an eligible target). This stratagem belongs to that highest of tiers: Stratagems you never use because they force your opponent to play around them. For example, if you’ve got a 6 banked in your miracle pool an Armiger Warglaive can’t safely shoot your immolator from inside its melta range because you can all but guarantee they will eat return fire from the passengers. This forces them to engage from longer range or whittle you down first with another activation so a single passed invulnerable save doesn’t ruin their day. It’s not game-breaking, but it adds another layer of consideration to their sequencing and gives you the flexibility to punish misplays (or simply not use it if you need the resources elsewhere).

This is just a solid, versatile set of stratagems.

Playing This Detachment

Bringers of Flame is about speed and lethality. In the modern era Sisters are extremely light on mission tools, so the objective of a Bringers list is to remove the opponent’s scoring options by making them put their models back on their tray. This is not a trading detachment. There are no fun tricks to force your opponent to engage in multiple phases by reviving characters, nor ad-hoc auras to counter your opponent’s gimmick with a gimmick of your own. Imagine Castigators and Exorcists pressing forward to get Strength 11 on their main guns. Morvenn Vahl zooming 17” to deliver the Emperor’s Rerolls to your opponent’s doorstep. Celestine reducing your opponent to tears as you pass save after feel-no-pain after save (before inevitably failing to revive and extracting a tear from you as well). The experience of playing Bringers of Flame is about watching your opponent extend their ruler all the way across the table and saying “huh, that’s far” while mumbling to themselves about how Miracle Dice are bullshit.

The core of a Bringers list will usually be the Triumph and two to three Castigators. Even at 250 points, the need for speed means the Triumph is still central to how the detachment plays. Adding 3+d6” movement to your shooting platforms is an incredible boost, and knowing you’ll have at least one 6 each round makes it easier to plan your big moves. Similarly, re-rolling 1’s to wound in shooting benefits everything in the army. From there you can either flex into Vahl and Paragons, Exorcists, or Seraphim, but points will be tight so you’ll have to decide what your output plan looks like. The detachment doesn’t have a way to fall back and shoot, so once your units are tagged in melee they’ll either have to shoot themselves free, fall back, or wait for Vahl or the Triumph to come dig them out. Your plan for melee matchups will inform how much you can invest into tanks vs. the screens and support that keep you scoring while they do the killing.

The detachment wants to use its speed to apply overwhelming firepower to one section of the board and then reposition. Sometimes that means aggressively driving across the board on turn one to shoot into your opponent’s deployment zone, sometimes it means speeding to the other side of your own deployment zone to get angles on a key target. Ideally a Bringers list will include a way to safely remove your opponent’s chaff without exposing your tanks, either in the form of Seraphim who can scoot behind walls after killing their target, or Exorcists that can pressure your opponent with indirect fire and drive them into your Castigators. With many lists struggling to include more than 12-14 units, this detachment doesn’t want to get into a trade war with most opponents, so the core gameplan is to fight from safety until you’ve created the conditions for a knockout punch, and then zooming forward to put the game out of reach for your opponent. 

A Sample List

Sisters took some big hits in the Q4 balance update but they’re still plenty alive and kicking. Thomas Congdon took this list to a 4-1 finish at the Mid-MO Maelstrom event in early November, beating Necrons, Dark Angels, Ultramarines, and Custodes before falling to Dan Sammons’ Astra Militarum in the final round.

The list - click to expand

Even with the increased cost, there’s enough power in the Triumph that it can still see play in a successful list. Here the big loss is instead Celestine and her Gemini, who no longer make the cut in favor of a Jump Canoness. The list also trades out Dominions for Exorcists, which combine with the ranged and indirect punch of Triple Castigators and double Exorcists to be a nightmare for heavy infantry armies, and in that sense it was good news for Thomas to face two marines and a Custodes list in the middle rounds. It’s easy to see how guard could prove to be a tough matchup for the list, where it really misses the anti-tank firepower Retributors and Dominions could provide and Dan’s double-Dorn, double-Tank Commander list would have caused real problems for Thomas.

Final Thoughts

The Bringers of Flame Detachment were the primary reason Sisters were nerfed hard in the latest balance update but looking at early results it’s clear the army still has the power to produce respectable event results. While times are leaner than ever for the list itself, there are still plenty of very good units to work with in the army and a ton of damage output and the combination of being fast and hitting hard is always going to be a tough one to beat.

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