Detachment Focus: Hallowed Martyrs

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 Hallowed Martyrs 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 quickly became one of the game’s most powerful armies, bolstered by two detachments in particular. One of those was Hallowed Martyrs, an updated version of their Index Detachment.

Detachment Overview

The Hallowed Martyrs Detachment is the updated version of the Index Detachment for Sisters, and combines a decent (and pretty universally useful) Detachment rule with an incredibly powerful suite of Stratagems and some very solid Enhancements. It’s a powerful combination that helps counteract the impact of taking casualties here and there while keeping key units around by resurrecting them with Divine Intervention. The Hallowed Martyrs Detachment lacks the raw speed and ranged damage output of the Bringers of Flame Detachment, but makes up for it with a much nastier counterpunch as you punish an your opponent for failing to kill your units.

Detachment Rule: The Blood of Martyrs

While a Sister’s of Battle unit is below starting strength, add 1 to their hit rolls and while they are below half-strength, add 1 to their wound rolls.

This essentially turns severely hurt units in the army up to 11, and is especially potent on vehicles and units that have sufficient ablative models attached to their damage-dealing ones. The “sweet spot” for many of your units is going to be losing 1-2 models, where +1 to hit ups your damage output beyond the loss of a single model and you can hit a second jump point at half-strength: A below half-strength 4-model unit of Arcoflagellants can match the output of a 10-model unit with these dual bonuses, letting you maintain your damage output even as you lose models. This upgraded strength lets you trivially ignore bracketing on your tanks and forces opponents to overcommit to your units in order to ensure they’re destroyed – making it all the better when you shrug off their final shot with a well-timed Miracle Dice and then shoot back at +1 to hit and +1 to wound.

Enhancements

The four Enhancements for the Hallowed Martyrs Detachments are pretty great, and they’ve all shown up in successful competitive lists, though Through Suffering, Strength is the most common of them.

• Saintly Example (10 points) – When the bearer is destroyed you gain an additional D3 Miracle Dice. This isn’t incredible, but at 10 points it’s very cheap, and when you factor in that your character will often have to be destroyed twice getting an extra 2D3 miracle dice is pretty great. On that note, you get the dice before you use Divine Intervention, so at the very least it’s like getting free wounds for that character to stand back up the first time.
• Through Suffering, Strength (25 points) – The bearer gets +1 Attacks, Strength, and Damage on their melee weapons. If they’ve lost any wounds, add +2 instead. This is bonkers good and it’s particularly good on the Palatine, who already has a pretty effective AP-2, 2-damage Palatine blade to swing in combat and the ability to chuck a Miracle dice to do a ton of extra mortal wounds. She becomes an absolute blender with this Enhancement on her.
• Chaplet of Sacrifice (25 points) – At the end of your Command phase, if the bearer is on the table, you can re-roll 1 Miracle Dice from your pool and return it to the pool with the new result. If the bearer’s unit is below Starting Strength, you can re-roll up to three Miracle Dice instead. This is a solid ability, but a bit too expensive. Most games you’ll generate around 30 dice, and so adjusting them  has some value, but you’ve got plenty of other things you can do with low dice results. Plus, you can already get this from Dominion Squads.
• Mantle of Ophelia (20 points) – Goes on a Canoness or Palatine. Each time an attack is allocated to the Bearer, reduce the damage characteristic of that attack to 1. This is very good and also super annoying for your opponents as they try and kill a character quickly only to find their 2- and 3-damage weapons won’t help them as much as they thought. This can be good on solo characters who are around to do actions and annoy opponents, helping you avoid losing them the turn your opponent pulls Assassination.

You almost always want Through Suffering, Strength, and typically you see it on a Palatine in successful lists. Not only is she sporting one of your army’s best Character melee profiles, she’s also packing the rare Sisters plasma pistol, giving her a wonderful way to fish for her own wounds in an effort to pick up the damage you need for her to really tee off. It’s also really good on a Jump Pack Canoness with a Blessed Halberd, where you start with more base attacks (5) and can combine it with a free Stratagem and a once-per-game ability to get +3 Attacks and Devastating Wounds. This bumps her up to an eye-watering 9 Attacks at S6, AP-2, and 4 damage with Devastating Wounds – pretty nasty, and she can make for a great solo melee missile to pop in out of deep strike and light up a heavier target.

Stratagems

The Stratagems in Hallowed Martyrs are all about surviving the opponent’s punch and delivering a devastating haymaker in response. You have two defensive effects here, three “on death” effects, and a powerful melee buff. Most games you’re going to spend a ton of CP on Divine Intervention and Righteous Vengeance.

• Divine Intervention (Epic Deed, 1 CP) – Used in any phase, when one of your Characters is destroyed. You discard 1-3 Miracle dice, then at the end of the phase, you set the last destroyed model from your unit back up on the battlefield as close to where it was as possible while keeping it outside of Engagement Range. Then you roll a D3 and add 1 to the result for each Miracle Dice you discarded. The model stands back up with that many wounds. You can use this once per character, but can’t use it on Celestine. This is bonkers good, and allows you to cheat death in all kinds of fun ways. It’s guaranteed, which is great, and you have a lot of control over how many wounds you’ll get back up with, so you can do a bit of work to try and make that “below half-strength” effect do some work. That said, just be mindful that while it protects you from death for the rest of the phase you’ll still be in danger after you stand up, and vulnerable to things like dying in Overwatch or getting charged. If you think Vahl is about to go down, she’s an amazing target for this.
• Suffering and Sacrifice (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used at the start of the Fight phase. Pick an Infantry or Walker unit in your army. Until the end of the phase, each time an enemy model whose unit is within Engagement range of that unit makes an attack, it has to select your unit as the target. This is pretty situational, but it can be great for those times when you double charge with a more fragile unit like Novitiates or Seraphim and something like Paragon Warsuits or Arco-Flagellants. Most of the time you’ll gladly take the hits on those instead, allowing you to use your charge for free movement on the more fragile unit while your opponent bounces off your tougher unit and gets mulched in the process.
• Righteous Vengeance (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase to give a unit re-rolls to hit in melee. If that unit is below Half-Strength, they re-roll wound rolls as well. This is just very good – full hit re-rolls is always very strong, and it’s an extra-fun bonus when you can get the wound re-rolls on top of that. Note that, when she’s by herself, Celestine is a below half-strength unit.
• Sanctified Immolation (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in any phase, when one of your vehicles with Deadly Demise is destroyed. You skip rolling for the demise and it just blows up. This is always fun to have in your back pocket, and a wonderful little “insult to injury” chaser after you tank shock something with a wounded Immolator or Castigator. You won’t use it most games, but it’s great to have in your back pocket. It’s also great for your Mortifiers, where you can keep them near your tanks, explode them when one dies, and do exactly one mortal wound to your own nearby units, supercharging them with +1 to hit.
• Spirit of the Martyr (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP) – Used in the Fight phase, after an enemy unit picks its targets. Pick a Sororitas unit from your army, and until the end of the phase, when models in that unit are destroyed they aren’t removed but instead after the opponent finishes making attacks, those models get to fight and then are removed. This is a powerful effect, and though the cost is high – 2 CP is a lot – what you’re paying for is the guarantee (instead of say, fighting on death on a 4+), which makes it very strong. This is great for those times when an opponent gets the drop on a unit with some solid melee prowess, or for times when you’re just going to lose models and you need to get value out of them. It also combos hilariously with Divine Intervention to fight on death, then come back at the end of the phase.
• Praise the Fallen (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s shooting phase, just after an enemy unit has shot. One of your units that lost a model to that unit’s attacks can shoot as if it were your Shooting phase, but only at the unit which just shot them, and only if the enemy is an eligible target. This is very good for punishing an opponent trying to chip down a big unit like a Castigator or Paragon Warsuits. Not going to kill me in one go? Eat a face full of blast damage. It’s one of the nastiest stratagems in the game and really benefits armies which pack multiple vehicles.

This is a solid suite of detachments which pushes Sisters to more of a counterpunch play style, in which they play a bit more cagey and not nearly as aggressively as say, Bringers of the Flame. Reviving characters is a core part of your strategy, and while that’s powerful, it’s also something you need to plan for – if you make too many characters targetable at once to an opponent, they can potentially pick them all off in the same phase, forcing you to choose where to revive. You really want to limit how often that happens.

Playing This Detachment

Although Hallowed Martyrs have fallen a bit out of vogue recently as Bringers of the Flame became the dominant way to play the faction, they’re poised for a rebound with the new Q4 balance changes. They tend to depend on a broader swathe of units though make no mistake, they were still hit pretty hard by nerfs intended to punish Bringers. Broadly, the army works by taking good shooting – Castigators, Exorcists, and maybe Morvenn Vahl, and then protecting those shooting platforms from melee with the combination of suffering and sacrifice and fights on death abilities. In a melee matchup, small anti-melee pieces like 3-model arco-flagellant units and solo characters like canonesses will follow your big hitters like Vahl around and threaten to use Heroic Intervention and Suffering and Sacrifice to make you functionally immune to their melee with your shooting pieces.

The best news for the Detachment is that Arco-flagellants didn’t take any hits and they’re insanely good in Hallowed Martyrs, where they can reliably soak up damage in the shooting phase and turn that into an insane boost in output in the Fight phase. And while not being quite as points-effective as Seraphim kept them off the table before, that’s likely to change following the point changes, and running 2×10 Arcos is a solid strategy in Martyrs lists. Though even if you aren’t running that many, taking a single unit of three or ten, or two unis of three are solid picks for some extra melee support. If you take two melee units, once you have 4 CP you can basically dominate the melee game with the combined threat of fighting on death and then interrupting. The timing on your Righteous Vengeance Stratagem is such that you can use it when your unit fights on death, as it’s just used any time in the fight phase, on a unit which hasn’t been selected to fight yet. This means that a unit which gets wiped can, for 3 CP (or 2 if you’re reducing the cost with a Canoness), fight with full re-rolls to hit and wound, and at +1 to each. That’s just an insanely nasty combo to have to worry about, and can make it nearly impossible for an opponent to make any kind of profitable trade.

Another big benefit of the Hallowed Martyrs Detachment is being able to make great use of solo characters. You can very easily run two or three Solo Canonesses, giving one Saintly Example and another the Mantle of Ophelia (points permitting), and you’ll be shocked at how durable those units can be with their once-per game ability to get 2+ invulnerable save for a phase and on top of that they can use their Sacred Command ability to resurrect themselves for free on death (pooping out miracle dice when they die if you have Saintly Example). These little monsters make great distractions or dual charge threats – you can use the Suffering and Sacrifice Stratagem to force opponents to swing at her with her 2++ active for free.

Mortifiers are also good in Hallowed Martyrs for the early trade game – they fight on death, and if you shoot them you can use Sanctified Immolation to do exactly 1 mortal to all your tanks hiding behind a wall 6″ away, which activates your Detachment rule and super-charges your tanks. It’s a great tradeoff, and it’s great for Castigators and Exorcists – while it doesn’t necessarily help the latter shoot indirect, they’re plenty good shooting directly, and moving them out after they take a mortal to bombard enemies in line of sight can be devastating.

On that note, Hallowed Martyrs really want to punish opponents for doing chip damage, since your tanks get wildly better with +1 hit. Less so with +1 to wound, though often that’ll be because you’re likely to pay for it with -1 to hit as you bracket. Shooting back at a unit for 1 CP after losing a model with Praise the Fallen also means that Vahl and her Warsuits can be very dangerous as its hard to remove all three suits without doing mortals first, meaning they’re likely to open up on an opponent after being tagged unless an opponent is firing from out of their range or can soften them up with something like Grenades or Doombolt first.

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. In particular, this list from Jordan McGregor gives us a great example of a workable post-update list for Hallowed Martyrs. Jordan took this list to a first place finish in mid September at the Battle in the Bush 10 event.

The list - click to expand

Let’s start with the obvious: This list went up 140 points in the new update. That’s not great, but it’s worth noting that 60 of those points are on the Triumph of St. Katherine, which you’re going to cut in this list. It’s a decent addition for early game movement and extra Miracle Dice, but not one that’s absolutely critical to the list, particularly at the eye-watering cost of 250 points. Cutting the Triumph suddenly frees up 110 points to work with, and there’s a lot you can do with that. The Exorcists haven’t gone up, and the Castigators are perfectly workable at 160 points each, meaning your core of the list is more or less intact. From there you can look at Arco-flagellants, Mortifiers, and whether actually it just makes sense to leave Immolators in and go all in on tanks and Vahl or if you’d rather try and make some of the decent-but-still-a-bit overcosted melee units like Zephyrim and Sacresants work.

Final Thoughts

Although the Adepta Sororitas took a big hit with the Q4 balance update and a number of points hikes, those changes likely haven’t torpedoed the faction entirely and Hallowed Martyrs are well positioned to be a major part of Sisters’ post-update success. The combination of good shooting and unit protection with some key units and the ability to sneakily buff their own with damage gives them some powerful counterplay options and should help keep them relevant. That said, it remains to be seen whether this is enough to beat out Bringers of the Flame as a Detachment choice.

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