I couldn't disagree more. I prefer to give all of my veteran Sisters Superior power weapons as their allotted war gear. Precisely because I do intend that they get into hand to hand. All squads save my Retributors. In my experience Sisters do very well in an assault, often times the fact that I do so is very disturbing to the other player.
Here is the basis for my opinion. I field every unit in my army either with a transport or jump packs. Every Celestial and Sororitas squad, including my Canoness's bodyguard is given a meltagun and heavy flamer. All squads save those mounted in Immolators (bodyguard and retributors) will have seven members, the Immolator borne squads have six.
I deploy my retributors as far forward as possible and centered. The rest of the army will be place in echelon to their flanks. Seraphim are usually placed behind my Immolators. On the first turn I roll forward with everything but the retributors who give supporting fire. I tend to focus the varying squads fire on single units until they are removed. All squads will stay inside their vehicles until they are destroyed or until I've isolated my opponents HQ from the rest of his army.
My goal on the first turn is to maneuver out of the way or destroy those squads set up in support of the enemy HQ. The second round usually sees the wings of the army maneuvering to push the enemy army apart, then concentrate their fire so as to destroy the squads closest to the HQ. Pushing the rest of the army away from it. Any squads knocked out of their transports will continue to concentrate their fire with the rest of their wing and will assault likely targets to insure that they don't get near my main push.
Hopefully I've been successful in dissecting the enemy with fire, not necessarily destroying it, just pushing it out of support distance from the rest of its parts. I then use interior lines to insure that wherever the enemy attacks I can hit him with superior power against his distance diminished troops.
If I've isolated the main force of his army, I will then move up my Seraphim, Bodyguard, and any Celestials (I keep all of these centrally located so as to be able to shoot along with the rest in the opening phases of the battle. But also enabling them to mass later on). Drop them out within assault range of the enemy HQ and main force, pour all the fire I can muster into him. To do so I am often forced to almost surround him to get full effect from my heavy flamers. After this, I charge.
I try to evenly space my Veteran Sisters Superior and my Canoness around so that they will hopefully catch everyone of the enemy within 2" of one of them. I then double up regular sisters with these power weapon armed figs, tripling up if my numbers allow. Usually the opponent will go first, but against most armies, my Initiative 4 Veterans will at least go simultaneously. Initial casualties I take against my regular Sisters. I then lay in with the power weapons. Considering that I can often outnumber him at least three to one at this juncture (more if the firing went well) it doesn't usually last that long.
After the center is wiped out, its really just a matter of cleaning up what's on the flanks as the center is divided up to support with fire the forces that originally pressed the flanks away.
Note that it rarely goes exactly this way, often times a player will deploy a majority of his forces to one flank. Even when they do this, my mechanization allows me to mass to whichever flank I wish, often catching foot mobile troops left useless for most of the battle.
I prefer to mass towards the weak portion of my opponents army, if he comes on en masse, I maneuver as I described above to create this weakness. Although I admit that a Sister is terrible one on one in close combat against virtually everyone, there is no reason why a Sisters army should be terrible in hand to hand. They're cheaper than Marines, and their transports are cheaper than the Imperial Guards. This allows them the best of both worlds, a rather large force that can afford to be fully mechanized.
I think that this tactic really maximizes the potential of the heavy flamer. I once hit a Chaos Lord and his bodyguard with four heavy flamers and an Inferno Cannon in one round. I got almost thirty five rolls to wound out of five weapons! Its like Napoleon using cavalry to force his opponent into square so that his artillery would achieve maximum potential. The heavy flamer being available to Sisters Elite and Troops squads may just be the single biggest advantage that they have. But it is the assault after the firing is done that buys you that one more round to take care of the rest of the opponents forces. It also keeps them from assaulting you, taking most armies out there at their weakest.
I may have rambled a bit, but this is why I like assaults. I find them to be very successful with my Sisters. Often laying into the enemy at the start of turn three, if not turn two. Regardless, you will never see me sitting back and shooting. In my opinion surrendering the initiative this way is tantamount to defeat. If you don't lose, you at least deserve to. Counter attacks are fine, I often perform them when I'm not given the option of moving first. But just sitting and hoping my bolt guns do all my work is opening the door for my opponent to do to me what I want to do to him.
"Forward for the Emperor"
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