About this deal
It’s worth saying that they do have additional cool functions in Crusade, with Dolan acting as a hype act for your Saint Potentia, so if you’re trying to tell an awesome story in that mode, you’ll want to get these two in on the act. She no longer has the RR1 wound aura (though keeps the hit re-rolls you’d expect of a Canoness) and her defensive aura has changed, in line with a general move away from invuln stacking. If you like fancy battle standards the Elites slot now has two choices for you – the generic Imagifier and new Named Character duo of Aestred Thurga and Agathae Dolan.
There are a massive number of buff characters competing for your points, but the Hospitaller is definitely on the list if you’re going wide, and can be a good place to put the Book of St.The Canoness’s datasheet has also been tidied up considerably from the mind-bending horror it evolved into in 8th, being way, way easier to understand! These are actually spread around a little more broadly than the Space Marine or Chaos Space Marine equivalents, since there’s more types of PRIEST in this army – the regular 25pt Preacher just knows the default Prayer, War Hymn, which is similar to their old aura ability but now just affects one CORE or CHARACTER or ENGINE OF REDEMPTION unit within 6”, granting them +1 Attack until the start of your next Command phase. Finally Light of the Emperor has been rewritten in line with the new Morale mechanics in 9th edition, meaning the affected unit ignores all modifiers to it’s Leadership and during Combat Attrition tests.
Basic Celestians are a little toned down from before, thanks to Exceptional Proficiency losing a wound-buffing component and their hit boost from a nearby Canoness now only being +1 instead of re-rolls. Outside of the Named datasheets, you’ve got your three generic HQ choices, the Canoness, Palatine and Missionary.While loss of the +1A aura stings, he’s still dirt cheap at 40pts (or 45 with the power maul he can now take) and feels like a very plausible include alongside Vahl if you want to build a Battalion. Offensively, they’re swinging with either a hallowed mace (S5 AP-1 D2) or an anointed halberd (S6 AP-3 D1), and the sergeant can (and nearly always should) upgrade to a spear of the faithful, which gets the best of both worlds (the halberd profile, but D2).