Sacred Rose Adepta Sororitas: The Forge Way

A little bit about the Sisters.

Adepta Sororitas. Sisters of Battle. The Daughters' of the Emperor. An elite sisterhood of fierce warriors that operates as an all-female division of the Imperium of Man, more specifically within the Ecclesiarchy (or Adeptus Ministorum). To keep it simple, they're "nuns with guns". Rooting out any corruption and signs of heresy that any humans within the Imperium might show, or any organisation on Terra. They will make sure you keep your tongue shut and stay on track! You don't want to piss them off...

Wielding a variety of weaponry that may be already familiar to Space Marines, from Bolt Guns to Meltas and Flamers, and also clad in power armour, wearing massive power backpacks and trained from birth. You definitely want to keep your distance from these units, despite how squishy they might seem, they can punch quite a big punch! Meltas, Multi-Meltas, Flamers and Rapid Fire Boltguns... they certainly do more than just tickle!

"So they're Space Marines?"

Both yes, and no, I suppose? There is a lot of crossover, but unlike the Space Marines, Sisters of Battle are unaugmented humans, no extra organs to super-human strength, in effect, kind of making the Sisters of Battle feats more impressive. In-game, you will find yourself saving on a 3+, or an Invunerable Save on a 5+, may not seem the best, but as a Astra Militarium player personally, I can tell you it feels much better and powerful. On the tabletop, you'll also find yourself collecting some Miracle Dice, a army specific ability for the Adepta Sororitas.

To keep it simple, everytime one of your units gets destroyed, or beginning of each battle round you throw one D6 dice, and whatever the result you get, can be used later on to improve your result. Example; we rolled a 5 on our D6 for the Miracle Dice Pool, next turn we find ourself shooting a flamer but oh no! We only scored 2 hits, at this point, we can use our Miracle Dice to turn those 2 hits, into a whooping 7 hits! Sounds cool, right? And it definitely is! Altough, you'll be doing a lot of resource managment and thinking to ensure you have Miracle Dice to use for whatever you actually do need, and which might be better off being saved for later!

Enough of talking about playing the game, another big part of this hobby is obviously painting! And thankfully, just like the Space Marines (and their hundreds and hundreds of different chapters, successors and what not...) our beloved Sisters of Battle also have a variety of different Orders to choose from, for you to paint! All white, all red, all black, all silver, black and silver, gold and white, and obviously you can just paint them however you want! At the end of the day, this is your hobby, and those are your models!

Over here tho, at the NorthernForge, we have opted to paint our Sisters of Battle clad in some beautiful white, stunning armour, our choice was the Order of the Sacred Rose, and how do we paint them? Well am I glad you asked!

What do we need?

Let's get our stuff together! Brushes, pots and what not! For this one, we are using:

• Army Painter Dry Brush Medium

• Army Painter Wargamer: Character

• Citadel Starter Brush

• Citadel Synthethic Shade Brush Medium

• Tesseract Minis: The Workhorse

• Orange Brushes Red Tip 1

• Citadel Water

• Army Painter Wet Palette

And a few extra bits, such as; paper towel to dry our brushes and few cups with water to clean off any metallics and washes, we don't want to be mixing that dirty water with the water we'll be using to clean our nicer, sabel hair brushes!

Oh! And obviously a model to paint would be nice, wouldn't it? I have opted to go for the Imagifier, a sort of support character that can be attached to your squads to improve their saves! Going from a regular save of 3+ to a 2+, and Inv Save of 5+ to a 4+.

And quite frankly, it IS a very nice looking model.

Let's get to painting!

Okay! Enough chit-chat, let's grab some paints and brushes and actually start putting some colour on our model! And don't worry, I will tell you the exact colour and brand I used at each stage, and even suggest some possible alternatives!

So step one, given we are painting the Order of the Sacred Rose, we will prime the model, in a nice and smooth coat! For my Imagifier, I used Citadels' White Scar Primer, but, let's be honest here guys, literally ANY white primer will be more than enough, be it Army Painter or Vallejo and so on.

However! Do keep in mind that white is one of those tricky colours due to its bigger pigments, make sure you warm up the can first! Ideally run it under some warm water, and then give it a very good shake for 2-3 minutes! And then don't spray it too far, or too close to prevent too much primer build up, or risking the particles drying before they reach the model! Short passes too!

Now, as marvellous as the pure white looks, I do prefer my models to have some grime on them, especially in the recess, which is where this beautiful concoction called 'Marine Juice' comes in nice and handy!

"But Nick, I can't find any of this juice anywhere!"

My friend, that is because you will have to make it yourself! That's right, time for some DIY (can we even call it DIY? Yes. We can. Can we? Uhhh, yes.) Anway! How do we make it? It's simpler than you would think, all we need is: Nuln Oil, Reikland Fleshshade and Lahmian Medium, and you will be mixing all of them in a 1:1:1 ratio! What I would recommend you do, is pick up yourself one of Army Painters' Empty Bottles, or just honestly, any empty old paint pot you have will be more than enough. I recommend you do this, because once you start using 'Marine Juice', you will never go back and always find yourself needing more! So it's better to get a batch ready and having it on standy by!

The beauty of 'Marine Juice' is that it is simply, just perfect for lighter colours. White, grey, beige and so on. Nuln Oil is simply too dark, Agrax is too brown Reikland by itself has that too-fleshy undertone, by mixing both Nuln Oil and Reikland we get a perfect middle ground, and with added Lahmian medium, we ensure it will flow smoothly exactly where we want it!

MASSIVE shoutout to Sonic Sledgehammer Studio, since I have discovered the miracle wash thanks to him!