How to Play Adepta Sororitas in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

The headline for 11th edition is that armies are no longer locked into a single detachment. Games Workshop moved to a Detachment Points (DP) budget and released a free Adepta Sororitas Faction Pack (v1.0, legal from 20 June 2026) that updates the army for the new edition. Crucially, there is no new Sororitas codex yet -- you still use the 10th-edition Codex: Adepta Sororitas for datasheets and its original detachments, and bolt the Faction Pack on top. The pack adds three new narrow-focus detachments (Chorus of Condemnation, Sacred Champions, Sanctified Orators), the generalist Champions of Faith, plus a handful of new datasheets and rules errata. Your core identity -- Battle Sisters, Miracle Dice, Acts of Faith -- is unchanged. What's new is flexibility: you now mix and match detachment effects within a points budget instead of committing to one. Confirm everything against the Faction Pack PDF and the 40k app, since points and DP are patched often.

The Sisters' faction rule is Acts of Faith, powered by the Miracle Dice pool -- the mechanic that defines the whole army. You gain one Miracle Die at the start of each battle round and one every time a Sororitas unit is destroyed; each is rolled immediately and kept at that face value in a pool. Then, before you make almost any roll (hit, wound, save, charge, Advance, damage, or battle-shock), a unit with the ability can spend one die from the pool to substitute the result -- swapping in a stored 6 for a critical save, a guaranteed 9" charge, or a clutch wound. Each unit can perform one Act of Faith per phase. The skill ceiling is entirely in resource management: banking high dice for the moment they win the game, and remembering that dying models actually feed the pool. Play greedily and you'll waste 6s on rolls you'd have made anyway; play patiently and the Sisters feel almost scripted. Confirm exact timing and which rolls qualify in the app -- errata tweak the list.

In 11th edition each detachment carries a Detachment Points cost, roughly 1 to 3 DP, and your army has a DP budget set by game size (commonly around 2 DP at 1,000pts / Incursion and 3 DP at 2,000pts / Strike Force -- verify current values in the app). You spend DP to field one to three detachments, so you can run one big army-wide detachment or stack several small ones. Many detachments also carry a tag, and you can't take two detachments sharing the same tag. For Sororitas this matters a lot: the three Faction Pack newcomers are narrow 1 DP detachments per the Faction Focus, so you can slot one alongside a bigger 10th-edition detachment like Hallowed Martyrs or Bringers of Flame to layer a themed sub-theme onto an all-rounder core. Sacred Champions, for example, carries the REVEREND tag, which blocks stacking with another REVEREND detachment. Treat all specific DP numbers as directional and confirm them in the app before finalising a list.

You have two pools to draw from. From the 10th-edition codex: Hallowed Martyrs (the classic all-comers Miracle-Dice engine), Bringers of Flame (a shooting/flamer-forward build), Army of Faith, and Penitent Host (Repentia, Penitent Engines and self-flagellating melee). From the 11th-edition Faction Pack: Champions of Faith, a flexible generalist that hands out army-wide buffs to a few chosen units each turn; plus three tightly-focused newcomers -- Chorus of Condemnation (jump-pack angels and Exorcists that mark targets and enable spotting), Sacred Champions (an elite Celestian Sacresant melee brick, REVEREND tag), and Sanctified Orators (a character-buff detachment giving extra 'free' enhancements). The Faction Pack detachments are the freshest and most flexible under DP; the codex detachments still hold up and are well-understood. SprueSentry has dedicated pages for the four Faction Pack detachments below. Always check the Faction Pack PDF for the definitive list and any tags.

Pick by what you own and how you want to win. Want a safe, forgiving all-rounder to learn the army? Champions of Faith (Faction Pack) or Hallowed Martyrs (codex) both reward a balanced Battle Sisters core and lean on Miracle Dice. Love the jump-pack aesthetic -- Seraphim, Zephyrim, and a fast, target-painting Exorcist game? Chorus of Condemnation. Built around a hard-hitting Celestian Sacresant deathstar and Reverend characters? Sacred Champions. Running a character-heavy list and want to squeeze in extra enhancements 'for free'? Sanctified Orators, ideally as a cheap 1 DP add-on beside a bigger core detachment. Because the three newcomers are narrow and cheap in DP, the strongest lists often pair one of them with a broad 10th-edition detachment rather than running it alone. Match the detachment to your models first; chase the meta second. Browse compatible kits on the boxes index.

The Sisters run on two resources at once -- Miracle Dice and Command Points -- and good play is about spending both deliberately. Early game, resist the urge to blow high Miracle Dice on rolls you'd probably make anyway; bank them for guaranteed saves on a key unit, a certain charge, or a battle-shock you cannot afford to fail. Remember that losing a unit hands you a die, so a cheap screen dying isn't pure loss. On the CP side, most Faction Pack stratagems cost 1 CP, so you can realistically fire two or three per turn -- plan which phase each one lands in before you move. The trap is treating dice and CP as free: a wasted 6 or a mistimed stratagem is often the difference in a close game. Track your pool visibly (many players line the dice up on the table edge) and confirm each stratagem's exact CP cost and timing in the app, since errata adjust them.

The cheapest on-ramp is the Adepta Sororitas Combat Patrol box, a self-contained starter force built around a Battle Sisters core with support units and a Canoness -- enough to learn the army in small games and a solid backbone for a larger force. From there, add whatever your chosen detachment leans on: jump-pack Seraphim/Zephyrim and an Exorcist for Chorus of Condemnation, Celestian Sacresants for Sacred Champions, or extra characters for Sanctified Orators. Rules-wise, download the free Faction Pack PDF and the Warhammer 40,000 app for live points, then pick one detachment and one 500-1,000pt list rather than buying broadly. New to 40k entirely? Read our beginner army guide, then browse current Sisters kits and starter bundles on the boxes index. Box contents change between editions, so verify the current Combat Patrol / Army Set contents before buying.