Isabella is the most useful healer in Warhammer 40K: Tacticus by a long shot. Incisus is god-awful compared to Isabella, and while Rotbone is great for Chaos units, he doesn’t hold a torch to the way Isabella shines. She isn’t going to help clear waves of enemies, but she’ll make sure your team stays alive to finish the job. Here’s everything you need to know about this must-have character, from her abilities to how to unlock and use her.
How to Unlock Isabella
If you were unfortunate enough to miss the August 2023 Battle Pass, you only have one real way of unlocking Isabella right now, and that is by playing the casino and opening Requisition Scrolls. She is an Uncommon character, increasing your odds slightly than, say, Celestine, but that isn’t saying much since the odds are still slim to none of getting a full character through a Requisition.
Snowprint has not added or discussed the possibility of adding an Adepta Sororitas Campaign. Since they currently seem to be focusing on fleshing out the missing Elite levels and a Saim-Hann Mirror (potentially), you’re just going to have to pray to the RNG gods that you get lucky enough to unlock her.
Keep an eye out for any changes to current rewards in the Guild Store, Guild Raids, Onslaught, and other aspects of the game, as they may rotate her back in eventually. She was available through the Guild Store in early 2023, so it is possible she will wind up back in there again one day. If she does, we will update this guide, but otherwise, try to stay up-to-date on any Tacticus news and information available on Discord and in-game patch notes.
If you’re a new player and did not purchase the Commissar Yarrick pack, you should get an offer to purchase Isabella instead shortly afterward. These offers expire quickly, so you may have already missed it if you’ve been playing for a while.
Isabella’s Active and Passive Abilities
Isabella’s Active
Isabella’s active ability can be extremely useful and turn the tides of battle, but it’s not why she shines so bright. Regardless, Rite of Restoration heals herself and adjacent friendly units for X health while also reviving a random friendly Imperial character and up to 2 random Imperial summons with X health in adjacent, free hexes. Do note that the characters will be unable to move or attack the turn that they’re revived. This ability also only affects non-mechanical units, so characters like Morvenn Vahl or Snappwrecka will not be healed.
At max rank, this Isabella can heal adjacent allies for 2992 damage and revive the above-mentioned units with 2493 health. Just remember that she needs up to 3 adjacent hexes to revive those units and that they will not be able to move to safety after being revived. You should move Isabella away from the front lines if you want your units to stay alive after getting resurrected.
Isabella’s Passive
Isabella’s passive is insane and easily makes her an absolute monster in Legendary Release Events, Onslaughts, and hard Campaign levels. It’s useful outside of those areas, too, but you’ll often hear players talk about how good she is for LREs, thanks to Medicus Ministorum.
This ability states that any adjacent friendly unit that takes damage gets instantly healed for X health, so long as the damage isn’t lethal. At max rank, Isabella can heal adjacent allies passively for 1197 health per hit they take—and that’s the important part. This isn’t just based on a single attack, but she will heal them for X amount for every hit they take. Characters like Bellator hit 6 times with their melee attack, meaning that she is healing close to 7200 hit points at max rank.
We will discuss more in the final section on how to best use this passive ability to your benefit, but just know that you can easily survive waves of enemies with Isabella and a few tanky characters in a corner of the map.
Isabella Stats and Attacks
Isabella has some decent stats for a healer and is actually tankier than you might think. At max rank, Isabella has 6507 health, 1530 damage, and 1379 armor. This allows her to take a few hits without going down, forcing enemies to really focus on killing her if they don’t want her to just heal up on her next turn. Healing is based on a character’s raw damage stat, so Isabella can easily heal around thousands of points of damage a turn, not to mention her active and passive.
Isabella only has a melee attack and suffers from the same ailment as Bellator—not being able to shoot her gun past a single hex. Anyways, Isabella will hit 3 times for Bolter damage, which is decent given her damage stat. She’s supposed to be a healer, remember, so don’t expect to go around one-shotting enemy units. When it comes down to it, though, she can still put up a fight.
Isabella has two traits: Act of Faith and Healer. Healer is what the name implies; she can opt to heal a unit adjacent to her (or herself) rather than attack or use an ability on her turn. Act of Faith is the faction-specific trait for all Adepta Sororitas characters. She gets +10% Crit Chance and +25% Crit Damage every time a friendly Imperial dies or kills an enemy. However, once she or another unit with Act of Faith crits, the bonus resets.
Isabella has medium mobility, moving three hexes on her turn. This is on par with most characters in Tacticus.
For equipment, Isabella uses a Crit Item, Block Item, and Block Booster. For her Crit Item, give her a Combat Knife instead of a Bolt Pistol. Her Act of Faith trait gives her a high enough Crit Chance that the added damage from the Combat Knife is way more useful than the +15% Crit Chance bonus from the Bolt Pistol with less Crit Damage. For a Block Item, stick with a Force Field for most situations, as a Refractor Field is only really useful against high-damage targets that would eat through the bonus block from the Force Field.
How to Use Isabella
Turtling is the name of the game when it comes to Isabella. For the sake of this guide, we will imagine you’re in a Legendary Release Event, but this method can also be used in Arena or Campaign levels that are giving you trouble as well.
Turtling is exactly what it sounds like; you put Isabella in a corner of the map and surround her with 3-4 tanky units like Bellator, Brother Burchard, Calgar, etc., and pray that her passive is enough to heal those units while they deal with the onslaught of Tyranids and other units. You will have to occasionally heal Isabella, as some ranged units or AoE damage may target her, but using this method, you can easily push to higher and higher LRE levels that previously were not possible.
Likewise, in a regular Campaign level, you can either go full turtle or just move your units up together, keeping Isabella next to as many units as possible to ensure that they will not go down if they get targeted. Remember, her passive can’t heal lethal damage. If one of your characters (Imperial) goes down, she can revive them, and you’ll still get all three medals. Keep that in mind when trying to 100% Fall of Cadia Mirror, Octarius Mirror, Indomitus, and their Elite campaigns.
Keep Isabella in the back next to your squishy units, or surround her with tanks and be amazed at how much damage they can now tank. Either way, you’ll soon come to find out that Isabella is one of the best characters in the game and a crucial part of unlocking characters through LREs.
