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Hi everybody, I was reading a thread just there about death company running with bolters and one person added the fallowing.

"I run 5 death company with bolters and 3 with power weapons, throw in a chap and a redeemer and you have 400 points of killing power that consistently kill 600+ point deathstars" Now I think this little unit is not bad considering dante and 5 normal sanguines guard cost 400pts.

So my questions this?! Firstly what are the best death star unit's around out there for all space marine chapters...... I'm Blood angels myself but I'm interested in what you other marine chapters run.

Secondly and more interestingly what are the most cost effective deathstar units for there killing power E.G 5 death company with bolters and 3 with power weapons, throw in a chap and a redeemer. For 400 points this little baby prob punchs above it's weight.

So lets have it guys what do you think?!

Deathstars by definition are not cost-efficient.

If you spend 700 points on a "death star" unit and it regularly kills it's value or more back in points then i consider it "cost-efficient".

The fact is death stars are not ment to be cheap I know that. Still I wana know what you guys run with and how many points it's rolling in at. And magic-Juggler would also like to know do they make there points back?

Marine deathstar- Land Raider Crusader w/ 5 TH/SS Termies and 3 Lightning Claw Termies. Plus if you have Vulkan in your army the Hammers get mastercrafted. 580 points.

Best deathstar I have seen:
10 Nobz, Painboy, Cybork armor, 2 powerklaws, 2 kombi-skorchas, bosspole, trukk. Crazy hard to beat. Somewhere around 400 points.

A deathstar that is often in nid lists is the Hive Tyrant with gubbins, 2-3 guards and possibly a prime.

This unit goes for anything between 300 to 500 depending on equipment. It can rip up most units out there, inculding that death company unit.

Of course, note that this deathstar isn't only a sledge hammer. It's still a synapse, prefered enemy spreading, stat-nerfing little pile of evilness.

I'v also come up against the 10 Nobz, Painboy, Cybork armor, 2 powerklaws, 2 kombi-skorchas, bosspole, trukk at Games days 40k tournament. Worst part was i damaged the trukk and with it's rules instead of being destroyed It shot forward 12" and unloaded all it's nasty cargo right in front of my lines haha

If you want to talk about making points back (which strictly speaking is an increasingly dated concept. For example, Lootas and Hive Guard infrequently make their points back vs Vehicles, but are still critical elements in their respective armies), I run MSU-ish Orks (to the limited extent they *can* do this). The *most* expensive units are the 2 units of 12 Lootas. For 510 Pts, I get 2 Battlewagons and 2 units of 3 Meganobz with 2 Kombi-Skorchas per unit. The Leadership means little as a rule considering the targets they face, they're extremely point-efficient at tearing through most units, and are a great fire magnet. Making points back is very seldom an issue as they have just enough strength that they don't grossly and inefficiently overkill their foes...

I have a friend who runs wolfguard termies with a rune priest and Logan. Termies are outfitted as 4 with stormshield/wolf claws, 2 chain fists, an assault cannon and an un-upgraded terminator.

Around 700 points I think, and it'd be much easier to deal with if it didn't shoot me or didn't out assault me, or there weren't long fangs. But that's another story.

Of course, you could always do the 10 man honor guard unit with the chapter banner for the +1 attack in a land raider (choose your preferred kind) led by Sicarius and Khan. A stupid number of S5 powerweapons swinging before marines. Not exactly effective against most targets, mainly because that is your anti elite/horde, and it rather relies on the land raider not dying (so some anti-tank disruption support would be best). 60ish attacks hitting and wounding on 3s is on odds 27 power weapon wounds. That's a dead just about anything short of a boyz mob.

Or a Dreadnought. People who invest in deathstars tend to forget these exist...When someone shows up with an army of tricked out Warriors and *one* Zoanthroape unit, and you brought a Kan Wall...

I'v heared of the space puppys and logan thats one mean squad rolling up your front door, Ail-ghan when your up against your friend how do you combat this death-star.

It also makes you think the coming grey knights are prob gona do the same, land raider 1 hq and a load of termines. Firstly the Hq charater is gona be as mean as anyting, and both the hq and terminators are gona have from what i hear just crazy strong physic powers. scary

Actually, massing Terminators for Space Wolves normally is not smart for they can rapidly become more expensive than codex Terminators. That, and Vanilla Marines can better-assist them in killing elite units through Null Zone.

As an Ork player, when dealing with Space Wolves, the Long Fangs tend to be my first target, especially if they're toting Missile Launchers. Since as a rule the Space Wolf player has a large assault range, I'll screen my Deffrolla Wagons with a throwaway Grot unit, before the Battlewagons either Ram the Raider, or repeatedly tank-shock the Terminators before I let loose with massed flamer templates or swarming the "uber" Deathstar.

The closest I've ever come to a death star unit with guard is 6 ogryn with a lord commissar (with power fist and carapace). As this comes in at under 350 points, it's kind of hard to call it a death star, though.

In fact, it's hard to get any guard unit up to 400 points, without being ludicrous and stupid (3 punishers with hull lascannon, sponson plasma cannons and pasq with camo netting and extra armor everywhere, etc.)

8 LC BT Terminator with furious charge in a LRC.

Its costs a lot but it kills loads.

Death stars can be fun, but if you take out their mobility they are screwed as they trudge up the battlefield eating as many guns the opponent can bring to bear.
And most (in my experiance, yay for doom) Death stars can go down in one turn quite easily.

With that being said, the most worthwhile deathstar are ones that bring their mobility with them... such as...
-Jetlocks with Farseer
-Nob bikers
-Anything in a pod (depending on if there is somewhere relativly safe to drop where the enemy can't simply run away)

It also helps that Jetlocks and nob bikers are some of the hardest to kill units in the game. Earning your points back is not an issue when you can draw the entire enemies firepower for 2 or more turns and still have something left at the end.

What about Marneus calgar and honour guard he's gotta be a few points. Dose anybody use this unit or have they ever faced it.



Point well made dayve, noting like a unit scaring another player into shooting it with all his guys while the rest of your army runs free. This is very much like the vindicator effect.... people see that big cannon and lose tactical reason.

That said I use to run a blood angels army with a lot of jump pacts with the main punch coming from 2 x 10 men assult squads, 1 x 10 man vetren assult squad and 1 chaplin and I made the point to keep all three squads paint scheme the same.

The point being my death star squad look like a normal assult squad just with 3 extra power firsts and a chaplin and let me tell you it worked a treat the first two squads worked well together but the vet squad would come in last and throw down 45 attacks this consisted of 12 power fist, 5 power wepon I 5 and 28 normal, All re-roll Nobody ever seen it coming..... In fact i even put a vindicator into this list to distract them as my little 450pts vet assult squad skipped across the bored.

Has anyone else ever put there death star in plain sight and watch there opponent pick off the wrong squad?!

I've had my warlocks out in the open many times, but its usually when i present more or less my entire force to my opponent. With so many targets, they tend to spread the shots rather than focus it. Big mistake.

Although with my marines, which i'm currently working on, will have a vindicator for the "OMG kill it now" factor.

Gabriel Seth, BA Libby and Assault termies in a crusader!!

Gabriel Seth looks like a very good hq choice, I'v just never used him. I shall try it out soon.... 5 x S8 attacks at I 5 seems very tempting. I think he's a hidden gem

Best death star unit imo is the Nob Bikers. 4+/5++ with perma 4+ cover, FNP & wound allocation shenanigans. That said I think deathstars are not that competitive. Remember how in starwars One deathstar was brought down by Multiple Small Units of X wings.

MSU > deathstar because the MSU can out maneuver the deathstar & the deathstar can ONLY focus on one of the MSUs per turn. Where as the MSU only NEED to focus on one unit, because it usually costs at least 30% of the opposing force.

Irishsean wrote:What about Marneus calgar and honour guard he's gotta be a few points. Dose anybody use this unit or have they ever faced it.


Has anyone else ever put there death star in plain sight and watch there opponent pick off the wrong squad?!

I have faced calgar and his buddies on multiple occasions in both terminator and honor guard and my DC came out on top each time. The caveat is that I busted open the raider and got the charge each time. If DC do not get charge they are just ws 5 FNP marines. But when they charge with reclussiarch or chap they are incredible the ws5 s5 i5 reroll everything is hard to beat.

Ard boy semi's last year I had them charge 10 honor guard (all with pw) with pedro and a chap and slaughtered them. Although to be fair I did sacrifice a jump squad to draw em out.

I would like to try the nobs that were posted earlier that may be interesting. Also of note if I do not wipe em first round of combat I can be slowly worn down.

I think DC are most underated unit in the BA dex.

I understand your point about MSU but the problem is if i had my blood angels on the board I'd be laughing as I love MSU so I can run my death star through in CC and you can't shoot half the time cus I'm locked in combat so i lose a man here and there but your losing whole squads

The more MSU I see in front of me the better, I love ork hords cus I just flank one side of the table and keep cutting into the force one unit at a time. Who are you more worryed about the death-star dante or the 3 assult squads hitting your units and over powering them?!

My SW death star unit consists of

1x Drop pod
4x Wolf guard terminators 2 with dual wolf claw and 2 with TH/SS
1x Arjak rockfist

The unit gets deployed once I have tied down his death star unit or a high point value target I Drop the pod down as close to the fight as possible with the pods Inertial Guidance system the pod can come in close for the kill with its lethal package. And this is not in my competitive list its eats about 400pts so i spend it somewhere else.

( At 2000+ point games its fun to take out a termi with TH/SS and throw Ragnar into the mix ) Insane bravado +3 attacks on the charge makes this unit unstopable.

Death Company Death star isn't scary. You have rage & MUST move closer to my nearest unit. A couple fast land speeders that will kite you back to your corner of the board, die, then let you try to fly back to me & do it again with the remaining speeder(s).
Or did you mean assault termies in a LR? Because again with loads of Lascannons, my 1850 list packs 5. 12 Long fang ML & 3 MM speeders I'm pretty confident I can either immobilize or blow that landraider & footslogging non-fleet assault termies aren't scary. Especially when Str 8+ Missiles Lascannons & Melta, AP 2 plasma denies your FNP.

Las/Plaz razorbacks, meltas inside. ML long fangs. MM/HF speeders.

By all means use a deathstar with dante & his sang guard w/ sang priest? Small squad there 5 sang guard, dante & a priest or 2? That's what 8 models? You can't assault the turn you come in, You may blow up one vehicle but so what I have 7 more. Eat TL plasma / Krak missiles / Melta / Lascannons, wound on 2's no FNP. You WON'T be stuck in combat a majority of the time. Why? Your deathstar will annihilate my small unit then be open to another round of shooting.

I don't know how your opponents are running MSU but tell them to learn to do it right?

Best death star in the game is 4 SW lords on wolves running around 280 point each with your choise of weaponds, 4 (?) wounds with +2\+3 T5, with 2 wolves each for las cannon shots and 5 Thunderwolves with thundershields, 1 Thunder hammer, and 10 wounds with full wound alocation shanigan.

It comes at around 1560 for the one unit. Of rcourse, if you know manadge to keep your 2 troop choises alive, you should do moast fine. (As long as your oponent does not go to the second floor of a building.)

Shas'O Dorian wrote:Death Company Death star isn't scary. You have rage & MUST move closer to my nearest unit. A couple fast land speeders that will kite you back to your corner of the board, die, then let you try to fly back to me & do it again with the remaining speeder(s)

If the DC is the only unit that I have left then absolutely you are going to lead me around like no bodies business. However when not in a vacuum I can simply move my LR first and block LOS to your speeder then I am free to go to the next closest thing I can see. Rage is manageable on both sides. Also if I have killed your 600+ unit with my DC then anything else I get or any resources you use to try and destroy or manage is just icing on the cake.

Now I am not saying that the DC are the end all/be all or anything like that. I am just stating that DC are underestimated and very effective for the points.

PraetorDave wrote:Best deathstar I have seen:
10 Nobz, Painboy, Cybork armor, 2 powerklaws, 2 kombi-skorchas, bosspole, trukk. Crazy hard to beat. Somewhere around 400 points.

That's nice to hear, as that's pretty close to how I tooled my Nobz squad I got for Christmas up

And yes, in the couple of game I've used them they were pretty hard for my opponent to deal with, only game they were killed it was due to their truck being destroyed and having concentrated anti-tank fire pored into them from all angles... wasn't pretty.

A friend of mine (playing BA) runs a squad of 10 Death Company with jump-packs (some power weps, those hand melta things, a PF and TH) along with Lemartes and Asteroth (probably spelt those wrong, don't have the codex), he said is was something like 700 points, I imagine it's pretty deadly in the right conditions but I don't think I could ever justify that many points in one unit. Haven't seen it in action really though, the one game he's used it against me I'd already mopped up most of the rest of his army by the time it deep-striked so was able to throw everything at it, didn't last very long.

I use Death Company in a LR as a Deathstar killer. Maybe that makes it a Death Star unit itself. 6 with bp/pw, chaplain in a LR is 310pts + 265pts for the LR. They's get the charge on something with 24 str 5 pw attacks rerolling everything and going at initiative 5.

That's 10 pw wounds against the WS5, T6 Hive Tyrant deathstar unit. Poof...

DarthDiggler wrote:I use Death Company in a LR as a Deathstar killer. Maybe that makes it a Death Star unit itself. 6 with bp/pw, chaplain in a LR is 310pts + 265pts for the LR. They's get the charge on something with 24 str 5 pw attacks rerolling everything and going at initiative 5.

That's 10 pw wounds against the WS5, T6 Hive Tyrant deathstar unit. Poof...

Did you account for the fact that lash whips make you go at initiative 1?

-Myst

A regular tyrant in a deathstar unit is ok, but if you really wanna go all out use the Swarmlord. It took me some time to use him effectively and in the right kind of list but now...he just blows stuff away. TH/SS termies and T-Cav die. And while he is slow, he is buffing units that are ranging further ahead...preferred enemy on a unit of 20 poison genestealers is a real killer to ANY infantry and if you throw Furious charge on them then tanks also get taken down a bit easier. A great counter charge unit to gunline sections (protects H-guard nicely) while simultaneously buffing the fast assaulters. Great all round. And yes lashwhips are necessary for his tyrant guard.

After my last game, DC have gone down in my estimation.
We were playing a 2v2 in the store and i ended up being teamed up with grey knights against DE and BA.

For some odd reason the BA player had 4 KP's... Dread, DC dread, Astorath, DC with JP+Lemartes (at 1500) I forget exactly the model count, but it was 20+ for the DC, maybe close to 30.
A simple Doom, A few FD meltas, and a charge of GKT's wiped them in one turn (with fearless wounds included)

I've not seen anything like that happen to other deathstars i've seen being played, DC are now a bit meh IMO.