Anvil Sisters

 

Sisters are doin' it for themselves

You've heard me before, waxing lyrical about the old softback codices, with their prose vignettes and their 5ed (-1/+1) charm.  And you can see from the price, that these were £12 each when they were current.  The 9ed Adepta Sororitas Codex was £33ish.  I'm not sure if what was £12 in the early 2000s is £33 twenty years later, but as we have discussed before, the world has moved on and even the people who work for GW have bills to pay (and shareholders to satisfy in a way they didn't twenty years ago)

So meh, the production values are better and more work has gone into it, but I'm not sure about creativity.  Maybe.  What this new book appears to have done is take all of the nunneries mentioned in the old book and fleshed them out.  This has been done in the most direct and least surprising way, but it has been done.  It's nice that the background has been built upon and expanded in a logical and sympathetic way, instead of being overtaken by a burst of hyperbole and ruined by covering it in skulls and more guns than it can carry ammunition for.  Ahem.

So by way of contrast, I offer up these two roughly corresponding paragraphs from the old (above) and new (below) publications.  What the new codex does is to squarely plant them as a faction in their own right (like the Ad Mech) in the new starting line up.  Whereas historically they have perhaps been under the wing of the church and the OH (even if the OH were actually using them to watch the church), the new edition has them out there being the driving force behind wars of faith and then has the OH standing around watching that wars of faith do not exceed their remit.  Exactly how one or even a handfull of Inquisitors is supposed to stop of war (harsh language ?) once its started* is not explained.  I think I prefer the version where the SoB are more or less the chamber militant of the OH, rather than the new one where they are making war on their own behest.  Of course, for once, it's been carefully written not to contradict the earlier version; if only they had been so careful with the rest of the 40K corpus. 

The Obvious pointers are that the old codex is entitled "Witch Hunters" and the basic option was (is) to build your army around an inquisitor and his/her retinue, with added Iggies, ISTs, SoBs and/or Space Marines.   This new codex is about fielding an SoB army; there is a large new mini range to shift and we don't want to be giving the spending public the idea that they might be using a significant part of their existing collection, when the codex can specify some neat all new SoB options.  It's the current world we live in; I don't begrudge GW their commerce - all the people I might face over the table are likely to be ok with 5ed and an iggy command squad of Straken and four heavy flamers because that game is going to run like a Bruckheimer movie - we are not the target audience anymore. 

So an overall thumbs up from me, which is a first for these GW hardbacks.  And of course, as I've reverted to 5ed for all gaming, most of the rules stuff means bugger all to me, but some can be shoe horned in for thematic reasons. 
 

Sisters of the Casa Rosmaninhal of the Order of the Sacred Rose.

One of the other allied Priories of the Order of the Sacred Rose sent a delegation to aid their sisters on their mission to Devos IV.

Originally this was a strong delegation of well organised, aggressively militaristic Adeptas Sororitas, with  two squads of Seraphim, forty sisters with Rhinos and additional heavy support.  However, the attrition of usual warp travel that such a journey brings means that only five sisters arrive on Devos IV.

The fact that these five have survived against overwhelming odds and literally waded through the mashed bodies of their sisters to get to where they are today has them burning with zeal uncommon even amongst the evangelical hard line psychopaths of the Adeptas Sororitas.  Woe betide anyone who has anything to do with them.

Again, these were painted by Golem.

Sisters of the House of Marik of the Order of Our Martyred Lady

Canoness Don Coin is well aware that in a real shouting match, the Chamber Militant of Casa Bonetti are hopeless outgunned.  So even as they were preparing to leave their priory, she sent messages to other Adeptas Sororitas Priories inviting any who felt inclined to join her mission to Devos IV and smite the heretic, the mutant and the traitor in the Emperor's name.

The Priory of the Oriente Protectorate has sent a delegation from its chamber militant.  This has been deliberately scaled so to not be refused, ie big enough to be worth having, but small enough, ie not enough to mount an independent action, to be a veiled insult to the Order of the Sacred Rose.

The paint on these was definitely by Golem.

Casa Bonetti of the Order of the Sacred Rose

Bishop Popper (of the Cultus Imperialis "The Tree of Man") is officially the highest ranking member of the clergy on Devos IV.  Militant General Zhukov's staff generously allow him to sit at planetary command level within the offices of the Plenipotentiary for Morale and Propaganda.

Having seen other arms of the imperium contribute to the war effort (and thus qualify for or be better positioned to grab a share of whatever spoils there might be), he petitioned the ecclesiasty for a little more muscle.

Just as 3422nd Army Group form up and begin to move from Camp Nuttar around the top of the City to there planned positioned on the eastern side, the Adeptus Sororitas of Casa Bonetti arrive at the Space Port in Acre (lacking the Departmento Munitorium clearance to land directly at Camp Nuttar.

Bishop Popper is used to those who serve the ecclesiasty following his lead at the very least.  He has been able to call on a body of militant mendicants to offer to the Departmento as volunteer priests to accompany Guard units to war.

Now all of a sudden, eerily reminiscent of the Militant General, he has got what he asked for, but no experience or idea of what to do with what he has been sent.  And his relationship with the canoness is so far a vox greeting as she reached orbit.  How things pan out from here is a matter of some interesting wagers in some corners of the imperial war effort.

Her Grace the Canoness Talamare Ineglese Don Coin is the Commander of the Casa Bonetti's Chamber Militant.  She is a somewhat enigmatic character.  She is scared of clowns, to the extent of shoot pict casters which show them.  In vehicular transport, she prefers to drive herself, eschewing being driven by anyone else, even when she is unfamiliar with the type.  She does not issue commands or make plans, trusting to her charges to know what it is they are supposed to be doing.  On campaign, she is perfectly happy to live on grapes, onions and vitamin suppliments. Obviously there is an expectation that this is perfectly acceptable for the rest of the Chamber. Like the rest of her kind, she is short tempered, over zealous, intolerant and suspicious. Aside from all of this, she is perfectly normal.

Christmas Post 3 Sororitas Repentia

There's something hopelessly romantic in the enormity of the background of the dystopian grimdark of the 41st Millennium.  

There's a lot what is, quite frankly, mad shit.  All of which works in some weird way to give us a super world to play in and wonder at.  One of the things which makes, in the Grimdark, perfect sense is members of the Adeptus Sororitas doing self imposed penance. 

The fact that this penance involves volunteering to fight practically naked with giant two handed chainsword (itself a completely bonkers idea from the Sunbeam Rd era of GW).  Possibly with one eye bandaged up for luck.

The fluff, quite deliberately, never says whether that penance is ever expunged or whether they go on until they have given their lives for the emperor.  Of course this makes for great story telling.  

I do like these figures -  they've been kicking around the WIP pile for, erm, six years.  Bored now.