White Dwarf has been on a tear over the last four months, delivering regular updates of Crusade rules that either give us good get-you-by rules for Index factions (see our Votann review) or entirely new rules that are straight fire (see the Kroot Crusade rules). This month in issue #505 that trend continues with the addition of Crusade of Faith rules for the Adepta Sororitas. If you’ve gotten sick of the Martyr rules or would like something that focuses more on the entire army instead of just a single model at a time, these rules are worth looking into.
Hymns of Battle
The big addition to these rules is the Hymn of Battle, which act as both a dual buff and a balancing mechanic unique to the faction. How does that make sense? Read on.
When you’re heading into a game, in the Crusade Blessings step you can pick one Sororitas Character to lead your army in prayer. They gain the Blessed Orator keyword for the rest of the battle and you increase your Crusade points value by 1, then you can intone hymns for the rest of the battle. This effectively gives Sisters armies a way to up their Crusade points by 1 for any battle, and is great for those moments where an opponent is above you by only one point, or by an odd number.
Intoning Hymns is pretty straightforward: Once per battle, at the start of the battle round if you have a character on the Battlefield and you led your army in prayer, you can discard two Miracle Dice to intone the Hymns of Battle that round, giving all of the CHARACTER units in your army a bonus until the next battle round. A unit loses this bonus while it’s Battle-Shocked.
The Hymns
When you chant a hymn, you can either pick one from the following list or roll for two, re-rolling any doubles until you get two unique results.
- Litany of the Emperor’s Will gives you +2″ movement and +1 to advance and charge rolls
- Verse of Divine Protection gives you +1 to your saves against incoming attacks with a damage characteristic of 1
- Chorus of Perfervid Belief lets you improve the Miracle dice you use for Acts of Faith by 1, and gives you back a dice whenever you use an unmodified 6
- Refrain of Righteous Guidance improves the AP of your ranged weapons by 1
- Catechism of Holy Wrath does the same for your melee weapons
- Vow of Unbridled Valour improves the Leadership and OC of your models by 1
These are all very good effects, and getting them for a single round in your “go” turn can be huge. Even the Vow of Unbridled Valour has its uses for an army that’s stuck with Leadership 7 on most of its units. More importantly, I’d take any one of these over the standard Crusade Blessings, and that makes this mechanic a win in my book. The one drawback is that it pushes you to take characters attached to units, making your investment in some already pricey units even higher, but that’s also a fine way to play Crusade and the benefits are pretty large.
Agendas
There are two new Agendas in this issue. Judgement of the Faithful gives you 1 XP for each enemy unit destroyed (to a max of 2 per unit), or 2 if that enemy was killed by a blessed orator or during the turn your hymn was up. This is just very solid and 1 XP per unit kill is great for an army that boasts the Sisters’ level of damage output.
Sacred Grounds is your other new option, and scores you XP for holding objectives outside your deployment zone at the end of the game. The big bonus here is that if you control more than half of the markers on the table, you score an additional RP.
Requisitions
Two new Requisitions are available in these rules. Battle Rites is used in the Crusade Blessings step when you opt to chant hymns and lets you re-roll one or both of the D6 when you pick your hymns randomly. This is huge, and worth taking in big games. Devout Warrior lets you upgrade a Legendary Character who spent a game as a Blessed Orator by giving them one more Battle Trait above and beyond the maximum number of Honours because sure, why not have seven traits?
Battle Traits
Speaking of Battle Traits, there are some new ones here – six regular ones, to be precise, and all of them go on characters. Most of them are also specifically tooled to interact with Hymns and the new mechanics. Conviction of Faith for example gives you extra Miracle dice, and a second extra dice if the trait is on your Blessed Orator. Inspiring Orator gives you additional hymn activations during a game at the cost of Miracle Dice. Raging Fervor gives your unit re-rolls of 1 to hit and ups that to include wounds if your hymn is active.
The stand-outs here are Solemn Prayer and Bombastic Projection. Solemn Prayer lets you re-roll one of your Miracle Dice if your model is on the battlefield in the Command phase, and that’s huge for some Detachments. Bombastic Projection on the other hand lets your character extend their hymn effects to all friendly sisters units within 6″.
On top of that there are four additional “unique” traits – each can only be given to one Character in your Order of Battle, and these are specific to four characters. The Imagifier can get a trait to give you an extra Mark for Greatness, the Hospitaller can take Final Rites to get a once-per battle XP bonus when you fail an out of action test, the Dogmata gives you the ability to spend RP to trade out traits you don’t like on units, and the Dialogus can get a 12″ aura to increase the CP costs of opponents’ stratagems. That Dialogus one is absolute fire; the Imagifier one is solid, and the rest are merely OK.
Crusade Relics
Finally there are a series of Crusade Relics here for addition to your armies, and there’s a solid count of them – six in total, three Artificer, two Antiquity, and one Legendary. There are some pretty neat effects here. The Icon of Chiros gives your Canoness, Ministorum Priest, or Dialogus an additional use of their once-per-game ability. Rod of Grace lets its Orator bearer recite Hymns twice per battle (paying 2 dice each time). And in the Legendary category the Book of Saint Lucius lets you randomly pick a third hymn to apply to your army when wielded by a Blessed Order.
The only odd one here is the Sigil Sanctorum, an Artificer relic which lets the bearer’s unit shoot and charge after Falling Back. Which is fine, but it has an added effect, which is if your Hymn is active, you can shoot and charge after falling back. Which is the same ability, and seems like an error – it should probably be after Advancing for that second ability, but it’s fine enough as is.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t a massive update, but it is a meaningful one, and I really like how it’s implemented, giving you a once-per-game buff to specific units that increases your Crusade Points and feels like a solid upgrade. It’s not a complete overhaul for the faction but it’s a good alternative to focus on if you don’t love the Martyr mechanic. That said, it’s also deep enough you could spend an entire campaign focusing on this and building around your hymns and build something really nasty to throw at opponents. If you play Sisters of Battle, it’s worth picking up a copy of White Dwarf 505 to get them.
On a related note, we’ve been adding rules support to Administratum – we added support for Chaos Space Marines last week, tracking glory and requisitions, and we’re aiming to get this and everything else currently out implemented before the Grand Narrative in November, so if you’re attending that, sit tight – we’ve got you covered.
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