Powered armored opponents will often shrug these off, at least if you have my luck. In the tournament I won a couple of weeks ago my Immolators didn't kill a single fig. (%@#&!!!) Back to the point, playing at a tournament means you'll have to balance your forces to meet all kinds. Make sure to bring meltaguns and heavy flamers in all your squads, this'll help cover the basics and allow your Retributors to bring heavy bolters and multi-melta's. Which are very good against any army.

Back to the IG or non powered armored armies. Your flamers are your biggest strength here. For example, in my 1,500 pt army, I have four heavy flamers in my bodyguard, celestial squad and two sororitas squads. I've got two flamer templates from my seraphim squads and another two from my two Immolators. That's eight templates. Mount them all in rhino's and very quickly you can turn a very large area into an inferno that'll kill just about every eldar, guardsman, dark eldar, ork, and tyrannid you can get a hold on.

Mount your retributor's in a rhino, and buy a Immolator as a HS choice to carry a celestial squad, it'll make it mobile and much deadlier, plus allow it to claim victory points and table quarters. (at least by the outrider ruling at my last tourney) With sisters I try to deploy them as far forward as possible and fully mechanized. You have to get close, why waste time. Hopefully your opponent will come at you which will only make it quicker. If not advance, either way it should allow you to meet him head on, drop seraphim behind him and then flame with everything you've got. Try to target squads with just enough weapons to break them into your seraphim's crossfire.

There's no use in annihilating them if they're gonna run away. Your Immolator's have mandatory fallback rules so make sure to get behind the squads you intend to hit with them. If possible try to place your templates to hit multiple units with the Immolator. After the Immolators have gone just blanket everything else. Use your flamers first before you fire the bolters and melta's in your squad, you'll be sure to hit more targets with the template because any sane player will take the casualties from the front.

Sisters have the opportunity to be mechanized without spending too many points, not to mention the sisters themselves are cheap. Take advantage of this by constantly moving to get behind the opponent and unload on him, hoping to rout him into the crossfire you create yourself. The judges I've played before ruled that squads in vehicles and still mobile vehicles could crossfire, use this to your advantage.

Orks and Dark Eldar have open topped vehicles, flamers work great against them. Heavy flamers even have a chance of penetrating. Keep that in mind. I saw an ork army that had mobs of orks that were huge, he snaked them out across the board in a column and engaged with the front of it in hth, while the rear hustled along at 6" everyturn and were allowed to shoot. Effectively pulling his unit across the board, he did this with several units in every game. I really don't think this would work well against the Sisters.

For one, you could just roll up along both sides of the column and crisscross your flamer templates destroying a huge chunk of it. Or you could tank shock into the middle of it or drop seraphim in amongst them (where possible) and try to get them with the Inferno cannon. As I understand it, if it's a very big mob it'll be a roll off to see what gives way, but if the die goes against the orks, they'll break. A squad need only have one fig fall to crossfire to destroy the whole unit.

Dark Eldar are very fast, sometimes they can be too fast for their own good. If they race across the board at you they just might get behind you and put you in their fallback corridor. What a shame. Use your melta's and multi-melta's to take out their incubi, they are very nasty. Don't target the jet bikes until they slow down, those invulnerable saves for moving fast take away everything that's worthwhile to throw at them. Stay in your vehicle's as long as you can, good advice against any hth heavy army. You can fire from the inside, they can only fire at your vehicle, not you.

Tyrannids are a very heavy hth army, though zoanthropes and venom cannons will make short work of power armor. I scared the crap out of a tyrannid player by advancing on him in the first round, leaving fried bugs everywhere while my retributors looked to get shots in on his big guys. He failed to take out any of my vehicles that were close and never got in any hth to whole game!! Vehicles basically give the units they target with the strong AP weapons one more round to fight if they get hit. Sometimes this is all you need. I've seen several bug players hide Hive Tyrants and Carnifex's in unit's of termagents. Not sure if it's legal in tourneys but if it is, target the little ones around him so as to hopefully clear him out of 6" and then target him with your multi-melta armed retributors, you can run but you can't hide.

It seems you've played against Marines, Chaos and Eldar. Just a thought, take a Inquisitor as a second HQ choice (if allowed) and give her a psycannon. For 5pts its a great buy, if you come up against any of the greater Demons you'll be happy for it. Avatar included, mine plugged three wounds into a blood thirster and then rapid fired a flesh hound unit to death.

Hope some of this helps.

This article was by Ken Pant

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