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

Read this section first, because the Sisters' resource economy is usually described a full 50 per cent too small, including on our own earlier page.

We can be unusually confident about every word here. The pack does not merely name the rule: its Rules Updates section reprints the Gaining Miracle Dice block in its entirety under ARMY RULES, and the community mirror reproduces the same text word for word. Nothing in this section is second-hand, and the two sources agree exactly.

What you get. If your Army Faction is ADEPTA SORORITAS, you gain 1 Miracle dice:

• At the start of each turn.
• Each time an ADEPTA SORORITAS unit from your army is destroyed.

That first bullet is the correction. A battle round holds two turns, yours and your opponent's, so the standing income is two dice per battle round, not one. Our previously published guide said "one Miracle Die at the start of each battle round". Over a five-round game that is the difference between roughly five banked dice and roughly ten, before a single casualty is counted, and it changes every judgement about when you can afford to spend.

How the dice work. Each time you gain a Miracle dice, roll one D6. The number you roll is the value of that dice, and it cannot be changed or re-rolled unless a rule specifically says otherwise. Keep them to one side; that is your Miracle dice pool. So the pool is not a supply of sixes. It is a supply of known numbers, and half of them will be low.

How you spend them. Each unit with the ability can perform one Act of Faith per phase, substituting a dice from your pool for a roll. The pack's own FAQ sets out exactly where, and it is worth memorising because it is narrower than people assume:

Four clarifications the pack answers directly, all of which come up in real games:

• A Miracle dice can be used as part of a re-roll.
• But if you re-roll a roll in which you already substituted a Miracle dice, you cannot use a Miracle dice in that re-roll. The dice is lost, and your unit has still used its Act of Faith for the phase.
• The Triumph of Saint Katherine's Simulacrum of the Ebon Chalice cannot substitute two dice in a single roll.
• An Imagifier's Litany of Deeds can re-roll the Miracle dice you gain from the army rule when a unit dies within 12 inches, and can re-roll the extra D3 dice from the Saintly Example enhancement before they enter the pool. Dice quality is a thing you can actually build for.

One wording mismatch we are not going to pretend to resolve. The ARMY RULES block says dice are gained "at the start of each turn". The pack's separate amendment to the Triumph of Saint Katherine datasheet is worded "at the start of the battle round". Those are different sections governing different things. We report the army rule from the army rule's own section and flag the datasheet's wording where the Triumph comes up, rather than quietly picking one. The app is the place to settle it.

In 11th edition you spend a Detachment Points (DP) budget rather than picking one detachment. The budget scales with game size: roughly 2 DP at 1,000 points (Incursion) and 3 DP at 2,000 points (Strike Force). The Munitorum Field Manual points at the Warhammer 40,000 app for exact figures, and we do not quote a figure for Onslaught because no first-party document we read states one.

The Adepta Sororitas spread is unusually even, with three cheap specialists, a broad 2 DP middle, and one detachment that eats the whole budget:

• 3 DP: Hallowed Martyrs.
• 2 DP: Army of Faith, Bringers of Flame, Champions of Faith, Penitent Host.
• 1 DP: Chorus of Condemnation, Sacred Champions, Sanctified Orators.

Eight detachments are legal, and we can show it in two independent directions. The pack prints four in full: Chorus of Condemnation (page 2), Sacred Champions (page 3), Sanctified Orators (page 4) and Champions of Faith (pages 5 and 6). Its Rules Updates section amends four more by name: Army of Faith, Bringers of Flame, Hallowed Martyrs and Penitent Host. Four plus four is exactly the eight the Munitorum Field Manual lists and exactly the eight the mirror's own index lists, so nothing is unaccounted for either way.

No Adepta Sororitas DP cost is contested. All eight values are agreed by the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and the mirror's index, and the Munitorum Field Manual prints no increase or decrease marker on any of them. This retires a hedge our own earlier guide carried: it took a Faction Focus article at its word that the pack's new detachments were "narrow 1 DP detachments" as a group and lumped Champions of Faith in with them. Champions of Faith costs 2 DP.

Here is what the four new detachments actually do, briefly, with full pages linked below:

• [Chorus of Condemnation](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/chorus-of-condemnation) (1 DP, RECONNAISSANCE). Jump-pack angels mark enemies as condemned, and Exorcists exploit it. Read the rule carefully: it grants detection range against the condemned unit, it does not directly buff your guns.
• [Sacred Champions](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/sacred-champions) (1 DP, TAKE AND HOLD). Friendly CELESTIAN units get +1 BS and WS, flat. Version 1.2 is what simplified this to one sentence.
• [Sanctified Orators](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/sanctified-orators) (1 DP, DISRUPTION). Its enhancements do not count against your army's enhancement allowance. That is a structural exemption, not a combat buff, and it is why the detachment is worth a point.
• [Champions of Faith](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/champions-of-faith) (2 DP, DISRUPTION). Nominate up to three units each Command phase to be Righteous; they move further, hold better and hit harder. The broad all-rounder.

And the four codex detachments the pack keeps current, each of which now has its own page:

• [Hallowed Martyrs](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/hallowed-martyrs) (3 DP, PRIORITY ASSETS). Your army hits harder as it takes casualties.
• [Army of Faith](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/army-of-faith) (2 DP, TAKE AND HOLD). Two Acts of Faith per unit per phase instead of one, which is the biggest multiplier on the army rule anywhere.
• [Bringers of Flame](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/bringers-of-flame) (2 DP, PRIORITY ASSETS). Every Sororitas gun gains [ASSAULT] and +1 Strength inside 6 inches.
• [Penitent Host](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/penitent-host) (2 DP, PURGE THE FOE). Three Vows of Atonement, each usable once per battle.

Two detachments you may see elsewhere are not on this list. Penitents and Pilgrims and Pious Protectors are Boarding Actions detachments, a different game mode running on its own Minor Miracles army rule instead of Acts of Faith. They carry no Detachment Point cost and the Munitorum Field Manual does not list them at all.

Now the constraint that actually shapes list-building, and for this faction it is unusual: we are going to tell you what we do not know.

Most factions in this series have a clean tag story. This one does not, and pretending otherwise would be worse than saying so.

What is settled. Sacred Champions (1 DP) carries the REVEREND Unique Tag. This is first-party twice over: the pack prints a UNIQUE banner on its page, and the detachment's own rule block says in words, "This detachment has the REVEREND tag and cannot be taken with another REVEREND detachment." The Munitorum Field Manual agrees.

What is not settled. The Munitorum Field Manual version 1.3 also lists [Champions of Faith](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/champions-of-faith) with the REVEREND tag. The Faction Pack's Champions of Faith spread prints no tag on it at all: no banner above the heading, and no tag sentence anywhere across its two pages. Two official documents disagree.

Our policy for this exact situation is to assert the tag and not assert the restriction, and to say so wherever it comes up rather than quietly choosing a side. So:

> We do not know whether Sacred Champions plus Champions of Faith is a legal army. If the tag stands, it is illegal. If the pack's silence is the current state, it is legal. Confirm it in the Warhammer 40,000 app before you build it.

Why this is worth a whole section: Sacred Champions is 1 DP and Champions of Faith is 2 DP. One plus two is exactly the 3 DP a Strike Force budget gives you. The arithmetic lands perfectly on the one army whose legality is in question, and both are detachments about elite champions, so a player building thematically arrives there naturally. That pairing gets its own page, and we recommend it nowhere in this guide.

And the inverse mistake is just as easy to make. Chorus of Condemnation plus Sacred Champions plus Sanctified Orators is 3 DP and legal, even though one of the three carries a tag. A Unique Tag stops you taking two detachments that share it. Carrying a tag is not the same as sharing one. Those are the faction's only three 1 DP detachments, and only Sacred Champions has a tag, so no two of them collide.

Everything else is simple. No other Adepta Sororitas detachment carries any tag, so every other combination that fits your budget is unambiguously legal. Any 1 DP detachment plus any 2 DP detachment works, except the one pair above.

How we know. The Sacred Champions tag was verified by geometry rather than reading order, and the obvious read is wrong. In a plain text dump of the pack, the line "UNIQUE: REVEREND" appears at the end of the Chorus of Condemnation page, which invites giving the tag to Chorus of Condemnation. A coordinate-aware read shows the banner sits at y=132.4 on the next page, just above the SACRED CHAMPIONS heading at y=146.2, so it belongs to the detachment below it, and the Chorus of Condemnation page carries no banner at all. Sacred Champions' own printed sentence then confirms it independently. Chorus of Condemnation carries no tag. The Detachment Point costs and the Champions of Faith tag come from the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3, read with a parser validated the same day in both directions: against the Astra Militarum page it recovers eleven detachments and four tags, and against the Grey Knights page nine and none.

Pick by what you own and how you want to win, not by what a tier list said last month.

If you want a forgiving all-rounder to learn the army: [Champions of Faith](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/champions-of-faith) (2 DP). Nominating three units a turn is a decision you can make badly and still be fine, and the stratagem suite is deep and mostly 1CP.

If you own a lot of Battle Sisters and want the army rule to do the work: [Army of Faith](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/army-of-faith) (2 DP), which doubles your Acts of Faith per unit per phase. It is the most direct amplifier of what makes the faction distinctive, and it pairs with anything.

If your collection is bolters, flamers and Immolators: [Bringers of Flame](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/bringers-of-flame) (2 DP). [ASSAULT] on every gun in the army is a mobility rule disguised as a shooting rule.

If you love the jump-pack aesthetic: [Chorus of Condemnation](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/chorus-of-condemnation) (1 DP), but bring at least one Exorcist. Two of its three stratagems name EXORCIST specifically, and without one you are paying for a third of the detachment.

If you built a Celestian Sacresant brick: [Sacred Champions](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/sacred-champions) (1 DP). A flat +1 to hit with everything, for one point.

If your list is character-heavy: [Sanctified Orators](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/sanctified-orators) (1 DP), which effectively hands you a free enhancement. It is the best value spare-point detachment in the faction.

If you want penitents and engines: [Penitent Host](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/penitent-host) (2 DP). Note the Vows are once each per battle, not a menu you re-pick every round.

If you want one detachment and no decisions: [Hallowed Martyrs](/40k/armies/adepta-sororitas/detachments/hallowed-martyrs) (3 DP) fills a Strike Force budget on its own. That is the trade: no second detachment, ever.

The general shape that works, given the spread: take one 2 DP core that matches your collection, then spend the last point on a 1 DP specialist. That is a legal army in every combination except the one flagged above. Browse compatible kits on the boxes index.

Stop hoarding sixes and start counting turns. Now that you know you get a dice every turn rather than every battle round, the maths changes. You can afford to spend a 4 on a save that matters this turn, because another dice is arriving at the start of the next one. The classic Sororitas failure is a player sitting on a beautiful pool of high dice while losing the game on objectives. The pool is a tool, not a trophy.

Remember that dying pays you, and let cheap things die. Every destroyed Adepta Sororitas unit hands you a dice. That means a screening unit is not a pure loss, and it means detachments like Hallowed Martyrs are actively rewarding a thing that is going to happen anyway. What it does not mean is that you should throw units away: the dice you gain is rolled, so a dead squad might hand you a 1.

Battle-shock is what actually loses you objectives. A battle-shocked unit has Objective Control 0, so a squad standing on an objective while battle-shocked is holding nothing at all. This is why Chorus of Condemnation's Inspirational Battle Canticles, which un-shocks a unit within 6 inches for 1CP, is a scoring stratagem rather than a morale one, and why the Sanctified Orators Hagiomnifex option that makes battle-shock rolls automatically succeed is worth more than it looks. Check whether your detachment has an answer to battle-shock before you assume you can ignore it.

The cheapest on-ramp is the [Combat Patrol: Adepta Sororitas](/40k/boxes/combat-patrol-sisters-of-battle), a self-contained starter force built around a Battle Sisters core with support and a Canoness. It is enough to learn the army in small games and a sensible backbone for a larger one. The [Battleforce: Adepta Sororitas](/40k/boxes/battleforce-adepta-sororitas) is the next step up when you know you are staying.

After that, buy toward the detachment you picked rather than broadly: [Seraphim](/40k/boxes/warhammer-sisters-of-battle-adepta-sororitas-seraphim-squad-new) and an [Exorcist](/40k/boxes/warhammer-sisters-of-battle-adepta-sororitas-exorcist-new) for Chorus of Condemnation, [Celestian Sacresants](/40k/boxes/adepta-sororitas-celestian-sacresants-new) for Sacred Champions, [Repentia](/40k/boxes/warhammer-sisters-of-battle-adepta-sororitas-repentia-squad-new) and [Penitent Engines](/40k/boxes/warhammer-sisters-of-battle-adepta-sororitas-penitent-engines-new) for Penitent Host, or simply more [Battle Sisters](/40k/boxes/warhammer-sisters-of-battle-adepta-sororitas-battle-sisters-squad-new) for anything else.

Rules-wise, download the free Faction Pack PDF and get the Warhammer 40,000 app for live points. Then pick one detachment and build one 500 to 1,000 point list rather than buying across the range.

The pack also prints three new datasheets in full, which is worth knowing before you assume a unit you have seen mentioned is old news: Intranzia Fraye (page 7), Sanctifiers (page 9) and Celestian Insidiants (page 11). Two of them matter to a specific detachment: Celestian Insidiants gained the CELESTIAN keyword in this pack version, which brings them under Sacred Champions and into the Champions of Faith bullet, and Intranzia Fraye is a character, which is what Sanctified Orators cares about. Sanctifiers are a plain Infantry unit whose keywords are Infantry, Grenades, Imperium and Sanctifiers, so no detachment rule in the faction singles them out; treat them as a general-purpose addition rather than a detachment payoff. We do not currently stock a Sanctifiers product.

Five datasheets are Warhammer Legends and are not matched-play options: Celestian Sacresant Aveline, the Repressor, the Battle Sanctum, Crusaders and Death Cult Assassins. Each has its own spread at the back of the pack under a WARHAMMER LEGENDS banner. If you own them, they are fine for casual and narrative play, but do not build a tournament list around them.

Box contents change between editions, so verify the current contents of any Combat Patrol or Battleforce before buying.