Detachment Focus: Champions of Faith

Merry Grotmas! Games Workshop is releasing a new series of detachments – one per army, every day until Christmas. In this series we’re looking at these new detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games.

Following a thorough shellacking in the Balance Dataslate, Sisters of Battle are in dire need of good news. The Champions of Faith detachment arrives in their time of need to lift spirits with a thematic focus on some of the coolest models in the range. Will it also lift Sisters’ competitive viability? Read on to find out.

Detachment Overview

Like several of the new Grotmas detachments, Champions of Faith focuses on singling out a number of units in your Command phase to receive buffs until your next command phase, with various stratagem and enhancement interactions to match. These buffs get stronger if you select Celestian Sacresants, Paragon Warsuits, or basic Battle Sisters, and the focus here is on making the most elite Sisters units even stronger.

The Video Version

If you’d like to watch or listen to this Detachment Focus, we’ve got you covered with a video version, which you can find here:

Detachment Rule: Righteous Purpose

In your Command phase, you can make up to 3 Adepta Sororitas units Righteous by discarding a miracle die for each. While a unit is Righteous, they gain the following buffs:

• +1” Move
• +1 Leadership
• If they are Battle Sisters Squad, Celestian Sacresant, or Paragon Warsuit models then improve the Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill of those models by 1.

In addition, while they are not Battle-shocked, add 1 to the Objective Control of Celestian Sacresant models.

In light of the most recent balance dataslate severely curbing the Miracle dice generation of Adepta Sororitas (only 1 miracle die per battle round automatically instead of 2 as well as only 1 at the end of the phase where 1 or more units were destroyed rather than every time a unit is destroyed), this detachment rule leaves much to be desired, and was probably written prior to the most recent rule change. The silver lining is that if your limited number of dice are poor, the detachment rule offers a way to get value from them.

The buff itself is quite nice on Celestians or Paragons, but in the new Miracle economy dice are a precious resource. Most other units won’t warrant a discard just for +1 Movement and Leadership, unless there’s a particularly good stratagem combo you have in mind. Celestian Sacresants benefit quite a bit from +1OC detachment-wide, and if you’re taking this detachment you’re likely starting lists with three full units of Sacresants.

Note that unlike some of the other versions of this rule, you are not able to select a unit embarked within a transport, so if you want Righteous Sacresants they’ll have to get out of their Rhinos and stride across the battlefield on foot first.

Enhancements

The enhancements here are solid, leaning into the elite theme of the detachment. Only one is a must-take, but none of them are bad.

• Triptych of Judgement [15pts] – Each time a model in the bearer’s unit makes an attack, you can ignore any or all modifiers to the Weapon/Ballistic Skill and to the Hit rolls. Nice solid ability, especially when put on a character leading Celestian Sacresants as this makes them WS2+ when Righteous.
• Mark of Devotion [30pts] – Add 1 to the Attacks characteristics of the bearer’s melee weapons. If they are Righteous, add 2 to the Attacks characteristic and 1 to the Damage characteristic instead. Fairly solid on a Palatine or a Jump Pack Canoness, but quite pricey for characters that tend to be fire and forget units.
• Eyes of the Oracle [10pts] – The bearer’s weapons have the [PRECISION] ability and each time the bearer’s unit destroys an enemy CHARACTER model, you gain 1 CP. Okay now we’re talking – this is a very fun enhancement for a Canoness leading Sacresants looking for a fight. At only 10 points it’s a steal too.
• Sanctified Amulet [25pts] – Enemy units that are set up from Reserves cannot be set up within 12” of the bearer. Very nice – this screams “throw me on a Dialogus” to keep your backfield easily screened, and fills a much-needed niche in the Sisters toolbox now that screening units are in short supply.

Stratagems

Six stratagems, all of them with a base ability that is further enhanced if the unit is Righteous. Some of these secondary buffs help to justify the cost of making a unit Righteous, in particular To the Heart of Heresy and Indefatiguable Dedication.

• Shield of Denial (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – This gives a unit a 6+ Feel No Pain against Mortal Wounds after a Mortal Wound is allocated to a unit, upgraded to a 5+ Feel No Pain if the unit is Righteous. Mortal Wound protections are always valuable, particularly so since the reversion of Devastating Wounds earlier this year. Will be very situational though as a 6+ Feel No Pain isn’t hugely useful most of the time and it requires the unit to be Righteous to benefit from the upgraded effect.
• Suffer Not the Unfaithful (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – In Your Shooting phase or the Fight phase gives a Righteous unit either [LETHAL HITS] or [SUSTAINED HITS 1]. This is a fantastic output boost, powerful on a unit of Sacresants where the unit will generally already have either Lethal Hits or Sustained and will benefit from the other, but it becomes ludicrous in conjunction with full rerolls to hit (like a unit of Paragon Warsuits with Morvenn Vahl, which surely cannot fail to delete the universe with sustained hits active). Note that this requires planning ahead as you must be Righteous which means discarding a Miracle Dice in your prior Command phase.
• To the Heart of Heresy (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – In the Fight phase, you can give +1 Strength to the melee weapons of a unit, with an additional point of Armour Penetration if the unit is Righteous. In an edition where melee tends to be fairly low-AP, this is a very nice buff for the good melee units in Adepta Sororitas.
• Path of the Righteous (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – In the Fight phase, gives an Adepta Sororitas unit 6” Pile-in and Consolidate moves instead of 3” and if the unit is Righteous then when its models move, they do not have to move towards the nearest enemy model, but rather it can finish the move as close as possible to the nearest enemy unit. Extra movement during combat is always powerful, especially when it gives you the added buff of lessening the restrictions on how the movement can be used.
• Bastion of Faith (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – The Fight phase, just after an enemy unit has selected its targets, you can make one Celestian Sacresants unit that was targeted -1 to be hit. If that unit is Righteous, you can select a second Celestian Sacresants unit that is not Battle-shocked and within 6” of the first unit to apply this buff to as well. Quite limited in application, but this does synergize well with the Sacresants innate -1 to be wounded datasheet ability, making them very annoying to remove in combat by anything but a dedicated combat unit.
• Indefatiguable Dedication (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Fall Back and shoot in your Movement phase on any Adepta Sororitas unit. If they are Righteous they can also Fall Back and Charge. This stratagem is quite powerful – anything that prevents you from being tarpitted by chaff is going to be very useful to the kind of combined arms forces that Sisters’ tend to run.

Overall an excellent suite of stratagems that balance out the middling detachment rule. Judicious use of Miracle Dice to anticipate which units need to be Righteous will be key to getting the most value out of the stratagems, and you’ll generally want at least one of your Sacresant units to be led by a Canoness to ensure you can use one of these for free each round.

Playing This Detachment

The good news is that a list built around Sacresants and Paragon Warsuits will be less dependent on defensive miracle dice than the more armor-heavy varieties, and generally won’t be attempting deep-strike charges, so discarding dice is less of an ask here than in something like Penitent host or Army of Faith. The bad news is that keeping the buff active in multiple places is probably only feasible in one or two rounds, so the choice of when to push that button is a big decision.

The OC buff to the most durable power-armored unit Sisters have is a welcome boost to their ability to hold points and score. That said, they’re still T3 1W models, and most enemies will have an answer if they commit. The game-plan here is to force the enemy to overcommit, likely by using a combination of battle sisters and Hospitaller-led Sacresants, and then use the resulting Miracle Dice supply to punish them with amped up Sacresants and Warsuits which can then be made durable enough to (hopefully) survive the reprisal and roll the opponent.

It’s slow, it’s grindy, and it’s entirely unlike anything we’ve seen in other Sisters detachments, so this is definitely a fluff win for players looking for an army of power armored ladies with their boots on the ground. Sacresants have seen some play in Army of Faith, but here the durability tools on offer are similar while the boosts to output and OC should get them over the line and consistently onto the table.

The weaknesses of this detachment have more to do with the current weaknesses of Sisters in general. At worst this looks like a sidegrade from the other options in the current points environment, and may actually be the best Sisters choice for a few months.

Strengths

• Durable OC (for Sisters at least). 20 OC with a 3+/4++/5+++, and -1 to wound that heal 1+d3 models each turn isn’t impossible to remove, but it is difficult to remove with an equivalent unit and sets the stage for a tempo advantage. Reviving 2OC models over a wall is always hilarious, so there’s also a play here for some good jank. 
• Lethality. The combination of Righteous bonus and stratagems makes Sacresants an actual threat, and creates the most absurdly violent version of the Vahlgons available anywhere. 
• Miracle Economy. Oddly enough a detachment focused on slow-moving single-wound models is far less dependent on good miracle dice for effectiveness compared to armor or speed-focused builds. The prime use of miracle dice here is to discard them (for Vahl, Hospitallers, and Righteousness), so the detachment is less impacted by poor quality dice.

Weaknesses

• Speed. +1 movement isn’t much, and the Triumph is simultaneously a big boost and a big ask in this detachment. Skilled positioning in both the movement and fight phases will be key to avoid getting pushed or screened out of position. The stratagems here are fantastic for boosting speedy melee units like Zephyrim or Repentia, but those units cost a fortune in the current MFM so they have to be used sparingly
• Durability. Sacresants are durable for their cost, but they’re not actually durable. The game’s hardest hitters will have no problem removing your key units, so this can’t be played like budget Death Guard or Necrons. As always Sisters require careful positioning to avoid simply melting from the field. 
• Range. This detachment has nothing to offer the Sisters armor portfolio, so an opponent that can hold a lane with powerful anti-infantry weapons from beyond Vahl’s reach can make your life difficult. 

A Sample List

A Champions of Faith list benefits from lots of durable(ish) OC to demand an opposing commitment bigger than low-cost primary-denial trades, and a few heavy hitters to punish that commitment. To that end, each list starts with 30 Sacresants, plus Vahl and a unit of Warsuits. From that point the choice is about supporting pieces to enable mission play and which characters you’ll bring to support your Sacresants.

Who Dices the Diceless? - click to expand

This list is about forcing your opponent to play Warhammer, which great Warhammer players strive mightily not to do. The Immolator and Priest help you set up your early positioning, as you can either split a unit of Novitiates or Battle Sisters. The Priest with the Amulet can either deploy alone in the back to protect your home, or infiltrate attached to the Novitiates to zone the midboard with his no-deepstrike enhancement. 

From there you allocate your resources according to what your opponent gives you. The battle sister squads with Junith and the Imagifier (together or separate), and the Hospitaller squad are difficult for most armies to trade into, and they have enough OC to prevent sneaky primary denials. Righteousing the Aestred squad on turn 2 can help you achieve primary denial of your own, and they’ll get you miracle dice both when they kill and when they die. A cheeky 6” pile in/consolidate by the Sacresants can really hurt an opponent’s tempo, and from there you should have enough miracle dice for a go-turn if required.

This is usually a win-small list focused on guaranteeing your primary with lots of durable OC and denying your opponent’s at a key moment. However if your opponent overcommits to your side of the board and you get to bring out Vahl and friends early, or undercommits to removing your early pressure the game can blow wide open. 

Final Thoughts

Narratively a detachment of the Sisters’ most elite units is awesome. The Codex was sorely missing an analogue to the glory days of 9th edition Valorous Heart builds, so from a fluff standpoint this detachment is an absolute win.  

Competitively, this detachment would have made no sense just a few weeks ago. In the modern era however, the ideal Sisters plan of “just go fucking kill them” is no longer a realistic option. Instead we have OC2, power shields, and a dream. Is this a good detachment? Maybe not. Is it the best Sisters detachment right now? Quite possibly so. 

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