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With the prevalence of Deathstar super units, is there any chance of a resurfacing of the Deathstrike or is the only use for that box of fiery pie to build lovely manticores?

YOU decide.

Deathstrike as far as I have heard is only useful in Apoc because you can take multiples of them easily and they are harder to hit than typical superheavies because of their size.

The main downfalls to using a deathstrike in a normal game is as follows-
1) its difficult to take multiple of them without nerfing your main fighting force that is supposed to keep them alive. Guard is all about that HS slot.
2) If you take one, it could possibly never fire all game before its destroyed.
3) You literally have one, only one pie plate and thats it. It's blast radius is random, so its unreliable there, and it always scatters 2D6, making it even less reliable.
4) If your one single pie plate scatters off what you want to hit, its wasted points.
5) If the unit your shooting at is in area terrain, they still get a cover save. Yes, that forest gives them a cover save from a nuclear missile. Welcome to 40k.
6) It is at the end of the day only strength 10 AP1. Enemy still gets invulns, it still only pens AV14 on a 4, and its still one shot. As opposed to the manticores potential 12 shots, 3 per turn.

Manticore every time.

The Deathstrike is the only thing in the game that should legit be strength D.

Manty is far better, for the reasons ultimentra pointed out. However the Deathstrike will make you far more friends, Manty is really not fun to go up against.

The Deathstrike is the unholy union of a nuclear weapon and a sawed-off shotgun.

I wouldn't call it a choice so much as a necessity.

I agree with ultmentra, a manticore is far more reliable to a deathstrike

raverrn wrote:
The Deathstrike is the unholy union of a nuclear weapon and a sawed-off shotgun.

I wouldn't call it a choice so much as a necessity.

Great post

OP, I would only ever take a Deathstrike in friendly games, hoping to pop off the missile at the ideal time at the ideal target is hard to predict. It would be fun to obliterate a unit with one shot though.

Well, in apoc deathstrikes can get vortex missiles...

For regular 40k, they're not THAT bad. Apocalypse blast S10 Ap1 ignores cover will kill stuff when it gets to fire. The odds of which, I'd note, aren't THAT bad. Especially not if you bring more than one.

And at least it's not Ap4 and allows cover saves. Manticores lost an awful lot of their power once 6th ed's changes to vehicles and the new non-parking-lot codices started coming out.

 Ailaros wrote:
Well, in apoc deathstrikes can get vortex missiles...

For regular 40k, they're not THAT bad. Apocalypse blast S10 Ap1 ignores cover will kill stuff when it gets to fire. The odds of which, I'd note, aren't THAT bad. Especially not if you bring more than one.

And at least it's not Ap4 and allows cover saves. Manticores lost an awful lot of their power once 6th ed's changes to vehicles and the new non-parking-lot codices started coming out.

I disagree. Manticores are great at punking infantry hiding behind ADLs. This means Necron Warriors, Fire Warriors, Guardians, DAs, etc. Even against units like Paladins they double them out. The ability to barrage snipe enemies is another issue altogether.

Manticores got better, not worse.

They're good at killing Sv4+ or worse infantry behind an ADL, but you know what else is good at that? All guard artillery.

The deathstrike, on the other hand, kills things with a real armor save, and it also kills things that are IN cover, not merely behind it. Plus, it explodes vehicles.

Back when everyone played razorspam or leaf blowers and you could blow up a vehicle on better than a 6 with an Ap4 weapon, you could do some crazy damage with that. Now... what's it good for?

The deathstrike is at least good against hard targets.

I disagree. Manticores are great at punking infantry hiding behind ADLs. This means Necron Warriors, Fire Warriors, Guardians, DAs, etc. Even against units like Paladins they double them out. The ability to barrage snipe enemies is another issue altogether.

Manticores got better, not worse.

This^ Manticores are arguably one of the best units in the guard codex. Probably #2 just behind the Vendetta Gunship in terms of making its points back. The amount of wounds you can put out on a squad is ridiculous, and its great against AV12, has just as much chance to pen AV14 as the Deathstrike does, but can do it three times over if you roll good on your D3.

If you roll well on the D3... and you don't roll as far to scatter. And the manticore has the same chance to cause a penetrating hit, but the deathstrike is THREE TIMES more likely to just kill whatever you were shooting at outright. And you ignore cover saves, which vehicles can still get.

And it doesn't necessarily matter if you put down more wounds. It's Ap4. You have to put down three times as many wounds against MEq just to get to parity.

The manticore is good against hordes not in cover and good for stripping hull points off of vehicles. The imperial guard should have no problems doing either of these by default. You shouldn't need to blow points and slots on specialized equipment to handle that kind of threat.

 Ailaros wrote:
If you roll well on the D3... and you don't roll as far to scatter. And the manticore has the same chance to cause a penetrating hit, but the deathstrike is THREE TIMES more likely to just kill whatever you were shooting at outright. And you ignore cover saves, which vehicles can still get.

And it doesn't necessarily matter if you put down more wounds. It's Ap4. You have to put down three times as many wounds against MEq just to get to parity.

The manticore is good against hordes not in cover and good for stripping hull points off of vehicles. The imperial guard should have no problems doing either of these by default. You shouldn't need to blow points and slots on specialized equipment to handle that kind of threat.

Statistically speaking you are more likely to roll to get more than one shot per missile then not. 2 or more S:10 Large blast templates is a big deal and is at a good price too. And they're barrage. You forget that SV4+ units are a lot more common now than they used to be thanks to Jeremy Vetock and Phil Kelly. Not to mention that they only take up one FOC freeing it up for other things like Leman Russ tanks or AP3 or better artillery guns. Don't think of Manticores as an only unit. Think of them as a supporting fire platform.

This ^

People who aren't trying to troll will argue in favor of the manticore. It is a matter of reliability and pure statistical superiority in scoring actual wounds that finds the Manticore to be a better unit. Doesn't matter how good your one shot is.

Deathstrike is still one shot, and it's one shot that might not even fire before its destroyed. You know you'll at least get one shot out of the manticore unless you put it up on your front lines for your opponents gunline to aim at.

You really can't go wrong with the Manticore. Along with decimating anything with armor 4 or less, its very effective against vehicles and anything it can instant death. The only thing it flounders against is MEQ, but if you're lacking Ap 2 or 3 as Guard go find a different army.

I have been using 3 deathstrike missiles in my IG/inquisitor force for a while now.

With the common occurance of cover saves this edition, having a deathstrike missile that not only ignores cover but can hit everything in a 3+d3 inch raidus from the impact point, including going up ruins, is a godsend for IG.

True, the missiles aren't exactly the best. I've had games were nothing fired for two whole turns of rolling, but when a missile goes off, it kills things. Lots of things. Easiest way to remove a threat is to nuke it after all!

Also it's imposing. Add to the fact the deathstrike is av 12 on front AND side, where as the silly manticore is av 10 on side, being tougher to kill and scary is a nice combo.

The manticore has other issues, such a single weapon destroyed can put it out of the picture, and it's random for how many missiles they fire, and it's only ap 4 (really?). Not the best.

IG really doesn't need ranged anti-tank in their heavy slot, especially in the current meta. They do just well putting their anti-tank elsewhere. Try the deathstrike sometime, once it fires, you'll be glad you did.

 juraigamer wrote:
I've had games were nothing fired for two whole turns of rolling

And that's the downfall of the Deathstrike. While it's failing to fire, the manticore is consistently getting off an average of two large blasts a turn.

True, but we play a game based on dice. Dice happen.

 juraigamer wrote:
True, but we play a game based on dice. Dice happen.

But that doesn't change the fact that the Deathstrike is inherently unreliable, even for a dice-based game. In fact, you can be prevented from launching the missiles simply from people stunning/shaking/weapon destroying the tank, which only shows how untrustworthy it is in comparison to the Manticore which is guaranteed to start doing damage turn 1 and onwards, unlike the Deathstrike. Also just claiming that we play a dice based game doesn't change the fact that you can alter/manipulate the dice rolls towards your favour through things that allow you to re-roll or add modifiers to hitting/shooting like weapons being twin-linked, re-rolls from Zealot, hitting on a flat 2+ for Kharn or a 3+ for those with Wolf-tooth necklaces. Otherwise we wouldn't have the incredibly nasty Screamerstar existing to begin with. Back on topic, even in the case where the Deathstrike fires, it is normally late in the game where the enemies forces are likely to have already made incursions into your own army and mixed up with them meaning that the blast is just as likely to hurt you as the enemy and prevent a more focussed strike against the bulk of the forces early on when they are still mobilizing which you can do with the Manticore unlike the Deathstrike.

tybg wrote:And that's the downfall of the Deathstrike. While it's failing to fire, the manticore is consistently getting off an average of two large blasts a turn.

So? Quantity of firepower is not the same as quality of firepower. As already mentioned, a manticore has to apply three times as many hits against a lot of target types (vehicles, Sv3+ or better, anything in cover, etc.) in order to just get up to EQUAL of what the deathstrike does.

It's the same mistake being made over in the other thread. Just because 10 guardsmen with lasguns put out more shots than 3 guardsmen with plasma guns doesn't mean the lasguns are better. Same for the manticore.

And it's still one of those things that's like the helldrake - popular, but doesn't add much to what their codex already does. And as we know, popularity is never the basis of a reasonable argument.

Manticore dies immediately to a thunderfire cannon thanks to it being barrage now. Suddenly meh.

 juraigamer wrote:
Manticore dies immediately to a thunderfire cannon thanks to it being barrage now. Suddenly meh.

This would apply for the all types of artillery though and isn't really relevant by bringing up a situational piece of weaponry that only one army in the game can bring. It's like me saying that the Deathstrike missile automatically dies from a pulsar shot from a revenant titan brought in from the Escalation. This revenant would likely kill any vehicular unit it shoots anyways and you're unlikely to face a revenant titan in the vast majority of your games. Also if the thunderfire cannon is wasting its firepower on your manticore for whatever reason and not focussing on eliminating squishy guardsmen from objectives I think you're not facing against the right foes, especially since it can't reduce BS when shooting something out of LoS (which most manticores should be) meaning that if you factor in the scattering with small blast template and having to roll at least a 4+ to glance it I think it would take more than one round of shooting to take it down like you so erroneously believe.

 Ailaros wrote:

tybg wrote:And that's the downfall of the Deathstrike. While it's failing to fire, the manticore is consistently getting off an average of two large blasts a turn.

So? Quantity of firepower is not the same as quality of firepower. As already mentioned, a manticore has to apply three times as many hits against a lot of target types (vehicles, Sv3+ or better, anything in cover, etc.) in order to just get up to EQUAL of what the deathstrike does.

It's the same mistake being made over in the other thread. Just because 10 guardsmen with lasguns put out more shots than 3 guardsmen with plasma guns doesn't mean the lasguns are better. Same for the manticore.

And it's still one of those things that's like the helldrake - popular, but doesn't add much to what their codex already does. And as we know, popularity is never the basis of a reasonable argument.

It's also the same mistake of just taking one Demolisher or relying on Marbo to take out a group of enemies. You are gambling points for a one shot splat weapon that has a chance of not even firing once. What the Manticore doesn't have in balls to the wall firepower it has in reliability and number of shots. Plus, there is a 33% chance each turn you get to have 3 hits which is equal to a Deathstrike hit. Even if you can't get that you still get shots in which are still very powerful.

Rolling a 5 or 6 on a manticore is nowhere near the same number of required hits as a deathstrike. The manticore suffers from its multiple barrage rule, and uses a smaller blast radius.

Anyways, what you're talking about here is guaranteed doing so-so damage, at best, with a weapon you don't really need compared to a weapon with a fewer number of shots, but will actually kill what it hits.

This is the lascannon vs. autocannon debate all over again. And we know which way that one lands.

It is very similiar, isnt it? I suppose the question is whether a payout of 0-1 really good shot or 4-12 ok shots is better for you. I would argue that the manticore is better if you want to take a list with a lot of leman russ tanks since they dont deal with hordes as well but can cover for the manticores deficiencies.

I tend to run 2 Medusa's & 1 Manticore. You have some solid fire power and 3-5 S10 Large blasts each turn. The Medusa's give you that decent AP and the Manticore give you the multi-shots to clear horde.

You make friends with the deathstrike because the games are a lot of fun, you lose friends with the manticore.

I prefer the manticore in most games because I find it a reliable platform. A single str 10 ordnance shot will still make short work of most armour and the multiple shots prevent the enemy from carparking their vehicles. When the tables are turned and I go up against a horde army, it wipes large chunks or enemy off the table. I find it to have a very useful role in every game I play.

The deathstrike isn't as bad as many people make them out to be. The main problem I have found is usually, by the time it has fired, my opponent has already spread out from their deployment zone so there isn't a large concentration for a single shot to make back 160pts easily. In the larger games where space is at a premium, it becomes a whole different kettle of fish. If it fires early in the game you can wipe out a huge chunk of your opponents army before the battle has really got underway.

Personally I would take the manticore because it has plenty of ideal targets and can support your force in any game. The deathstrike I find to be more situational in that I can't use it all that well in smaller games and unless I find a concentrated clump of enemy(or a good sized vehicle or mc), a single shot can be difficult to earn its 160pts back.

In actual use from trying both, The manticore is by far the better when building a take all comers or tournament list.

The deathstrike, is not too awful bad granted, but not near as reliable or useful in the majority of games as the manticore.

 Ailaros wrote:
Rolling a 5 or 6 on a manticore is nowhere near the same number of required hits as a deathstrike. The manticore suffers from its multiple barrage rule, and uses a smaller blast radius.

Anyways, what you're talking about here is guaranteed doing so-so damage, at best, with a weapon you don't really need compared to a weapon with a fewer number of shots, but will actually kill what it hits.

This is the lascannon vs. autocannon debate all over again. And we know which way that one lands.

Did you just say the Manticore does 'so-so' damage at best?

Jesus, thats like saying the Hellturkey has 'reasonable' firepower, or the Revenant titan is only 'mildly' unbalanced.

It drops goddamn S10 pie plates every single turn. That hurts everybody, and absolutely *reams* certain armies

Honestly I take most of Ailaros's posts as trolling nowadays.

 Dakkamite wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Rolling a 5 or 6 on a manticore is nowhere near the same number of required hits as a deathstrike. The manticore suffers from its multiple barrage rule, and uses a smaller blast radius.

Anyways, what you're talking about here is guaranteed doing so-so damage, at best, with a weapon you don't really need compared to a weapon with a fewer number of shots, but will actually kill what it hits.

This is the lascannon vs. autocannon debate all over again. And we know which way that one lands.

Did you just say the Manticore does 'so-so' damage at best?

Jesus, thats like saying the Hellturkey has 'reasonable' firepower, or the Revenant titan is only 'mildly' unbalanced.

It drops goddamn S10 pie plates every single turn. That hurts everybody, and absolutely *reams* certain armies

I can somewhat see his point. A Manticore will do about the same amount of damage to a Space Marine in cover as an Autocannon would except that it causes instant death. A Deathstrike will annihilate anyone it touches no matter what is protecting them short of a 4++ or better. Comparably the damage isn't -that- great if you roll terribad.

However, the Manticore is superior in how it forces a ton more cover saves nowadays in this SV4+ heavy meta. Not only that but it has an average payout of 2 large blast templates a turn which will bring a lot of hurt to most armies. Plus you don't need the Manticore to do heavy vehicle killing as you have a -lot- of vehicle killers in C:IG.