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My friend keeps singing the praises of the "Deathstar"

The Deathstar is a massive unit of 40 or so chosen with shields and greatweapons, with the mark of Nurgle, Sigvald the Magnifiscent, Festus the Leechlord, and a couple other sorcerors for dispelling. The champion of the unit carries the Favour of the Gods magic item, giving him the ability to add 1 to whatever roll he makes on the eye of the gods table as long as it's not snake eyes.

The unit gets buffed by as many warshrines as the game size allows [2 in 2k, 3 in 3k, etc], which with its original roll on the eye of the gods table means this unit could very well be....

4+ ward save
T5
2+ armour vs shooting, 1+ in combat if not using greatweapons
S7

In addition to other possible buffs such as MR3, fear, terror, extra attack, etc.

The unit marches in a big square. Best bet [charging the flank] really only goes so far, as the warriors could be very hard to kill [T4 or 5, 4+ or 3+ armour save, possible 4+ ward save, Regeneration, -1WS to any attackers and they're WS6 themselves] and will attack back with 2 or 3 attacks each at S6 or 7.

I know there's some vagueries involved with "what if" it gets certain buffs, but it will get 3 rolls on the first turn of the game, and get to make 2 more each turn, all at +1 if the player wants, and once he gets the ability he wants he doesn't have to roll again the next turn, he can just maintain it.


Oh, and the warshrines march right up next to the unit behind it, with marks of either Tzeentch [3+ ward save] or Nurgle [-1 to hit with shooting].


The best we've done is:
Cast the warp portal Tzeentch spell successfully and roll 11 or 12 strength
Hit it with a giant that rolls yell and bawl, and they fail their Ld 10 check.
If the unit doesn't get "fear" or "terror" results on the eye of the gods table, put something that causes terror next to it and hope it fails its Ld 10 check -and then doesn't rally.

Are there any other units that can take this on head to head?

That's an example of a 'deathstar' selection in an armylist. This is definitely one of the better ones.

Taking them on head to head is not usually a great idea, sorry.

Well, tell you what. How many points is it? I'm willing to be bunging my Dragon riding Druchii Lord into it's rear, accompanied by the Manticore, I ought to shred it in extremely short order. No ranks for you, and killing all in BTB FTW!

Also, if I were to take as many Helstorms as my list allows, I'd tear through it in absolutely no time....

If you play chaos yourself yuo can do the dragon/lord with Splendor + Doom Totem in yuor back field combo.. make em take a Terror at -2.. then keep charging em with your dragon if they dont rally.

Have you tried throwing a thirster at it? He'll slaughter Sigmund or Festus in short order, then (presuming he survives a moderate morale test) he just has to chop em till they break.

'This unit is M4...just stay more than 8" away from it. Easy!

Nurgleboy77 wrote:'This unit is M4...just stay more than 8" away from it. Easy!

Yeah, the problem is that the warshrines cower next to or behind it, and the core choices are minimum marauder horsemen units. Avoiding this unit means basically that you'll go for a tie, because killing the warshrines is actually pretty tough with shooting and the marauders won't give enough VPs.


What does that dragon and lord have? The unit may well have its armour save, 4+ ward, and 4+ regeneration save, meaning you'll do very little damage, and then they can slap the dragon back pretty handily. And even if they lose one round, they'll test on a Stubborn 10.

We managed to get a "statistically wins combat" unit with some witch elves with Hellbron and a Cauldron of Blood giving them all killing blow, but the unit loses like 7 models a turn to the chosens' counterattacks, meaning that the unit will be ground down to nothing before the chosen are even at half strength.

OK from what I can remember that unit is 720+30+40+80(or is it 200 for the great weapons) or 880(1040) points by itself.

Then add 260 for the 2 shrines at 2000 Points plus the characters (2 special and 2 other)

Which means you have to field at least 3 core units still. What are those? Cant have much on them.

Slaanesh Daemons to modify the leadership values
GUO or Nurgle Daemons to modify stats down to a 1
Tzeentch spell to make entire unit Stupid
VC spell roll a 6 and model is dead next magic phase roll a 5 (per model).
1 unit of first strike flankers eliminates ranks
Banner of unit counts double unit strength on 20 Skellies
Etheral Creatures in the flank (cant touch this) and you will not be able to move
Couple Hydras
Sakven shooting

Run down the flanks and lets see that unit turn or rotate. Keep getting them to turn and they will not get to attack.

Not to mention making them run in between the terrain that would be setup. They would be looking to set up in the centre and I would be in the flanks.

Try those and let me know what you think.

Play for table quarters and try to nail the rest of his army. Best I can do.

Skaven would hose this unit, poison wind globes, jezzails , warpfire throwers, or brass orb.

Want a broken strategy? Use a unit of Slayers, all upgraded to giantslayers. Have them all stand in spear formation, one model wide. March straight into the front of that deathstar unit. Challenge every turn. One Slayer will die each turn, and the deathstar unit will do nothing for the rest of the game. Then, kill the rest of the Chaos units and then eventually either side or rear charge with Dwarf lord + Hammerers (WS5 (reduced to 4, so what) Great Weapons so Str. 6, can have a static combat res of up to +6, and the Lord will kill a few). The Chaos Deathstar is missing Stubborn, so they will potentially, with average luck, check at between -4 up to -11.

And that's against Dwarfs.

you can't have more than one warshrine effect at a time on a unit. also, festus makes the unit regen on a 5+. its not a very scary unit at all

Empire Great Cannons....good game.

Give me an X-wing fighter, and I'll kill your deathstar.

I can bullseye wamprats in my T-16!!

Heavy shooting will absolutely waste those "Deathstar".
There is just one problem you could run into. You wont know, someone field that thing.

heh. my buddy with Daemonic Legions may have a shot. He's got a unit of 12 Bloodcrushers.....and always charges in a Thirster, Keeper (with that thing that lets him gain a wound for each kill), and a Daemon Prince. Aint nothing that can stop that.

you CAN have more than one warshrine buff on a unit at a time.

The unit IS stubborn, Sigvald makes it so [and if you roll 11 with +1 or natural 12 on EotG you become stubborn too]

It doesn't ignore fear, but it could very well cause fear or terror depending on eye of the gods [and is unlikely to lose combat to a unit of skeletons]

Cannons... 4+ ward [maybe] and 5+ regenerate...

The core units are 3 5-man marauder horsemen units, naked. They use fast cav rules to avoid getting charged and/or block access to warshrines.

Chaos Daemons seems to be the best bet. Sounda quite promising!


Oh, and as for march blocking or terrain slowing it down, the unit can always march and ignores penalties from terrain - thanks to Sigvald

Dwarves...

4 cannons (every one targets a character and goes through a warshrine)
1 organ gun.
60 thunderers.
Anvil with the special character.

Skaven.
20x2 globadier units.
x2 warpfire cannon.
Warpfire throwers
Jezzails.

VC:
x2 massed units of wraiths in the flanks.

HEs:
Repeater bolt throwers x 3
Eagle x1 (march blocker)
Lord on super dragon in rear.
x2 units of dragon princes.- The dragon princes hit the flanks of the deathstar in the turn the dragon hits the rear. Throw in a BSB with the battle banner and he will be hard pressed to win.


Turn up with slayer cult and throw 20 doom seekers at him.

Any army:
Avoid combat every game until he gives up on the unit.

I'll second the 3 Hydras (what, you have 3 Rare Choices) who will dance around you breathing merrily turn after turn after turn, happily roasting your girly Chosen to a tee, with little to no chance of being hit back. Lovely!

Also, Tomb Kings....3 Screaming Skull Catapults, skulls of the foe...sooner or later you are running!

At the end of the day 4x 10 Chaos Warriors would have a lot more impact on the battlefield.
Warriors are just supernasty add some Marauders on hores, Shaggoth and Knights and you have some really nasty stuff there.
Way better than any of those totally overrated "Dethstars".
Deathstars work, if you split them up into 4 regiments, add nasty shooting and force the enemy to come to you. Hello Dwarfes?
To me a deathstar is a army formation build up from 4 regiments - more if you afford it - and not from one big regiment.

I dont have my codex on me.. but the lord on the dragon thing wasnt made to charge them..
You give the lord sporific musk or daemonic splendor.. whichever is the one that makes all terror tests generated by him or his unit be taken at -1. Then you buy a BSB with the terror totem in the back field on a hill somewhere so his whole army can see it.. everyone that can see it is -1 Ld.. Stubborn or not they are taking a terror tests at ld 8.. Toss in a couple hell cannons to make them make a bunch of ld9 panics Have fun

Hmm, there have been lots of specific suggestions, can we generalize it? Here's how I see the "Deathstar's" power breakdown

General Deathstar: Lots of hitting power from the unit, + a strong character with ASF and full static rez.

This one up's the ante w/Eyes of the Gods and its associated bennies, and it sounds like he loads the front rank with the entirety of his character selection (Sivald, Festus + 2 Sorcerers).

Turbolaser: So this unit, in a fight with an enemy unit has Sigvald swinging 7 times at s7 ws too high ASF w/killing blow (so, 5 hits, 4 wounds, one of which is a KB? Sounds about right). Then the enemy can't swing back, because Sig's swept the front, and the unit brings down the curtain w/chosen Great Weapon attacks? Fierce.

Thermal Exhaust ports: The unit doesn't really have any protection from a dragon/thirster, beyond Sig. If you fly in a monster and throw up a challenge he can only respond with units in combat (and, indeed, must do so). Thus, you will be fighting rank and file if you go in the sides/rear, or your choice of a Sorcerer/festus or Siggy if you go in the front (depending on where you land).

It's worth noting that his static isn't any better than normal, if you hit a flank/rear you are scoring at +1/2 for orientation vs. 1 for banner and 1 for mass (and presumably one for BSB though you didn't mention that part, never seen a Death Star w/out BSB). So you start out down one point, but you are a Lord + flying mount, swinging first. Presuming you sweep your kill zone you should win by 2-3. Stubborn + a BSB ought to see him through this with no difficulties though.

Next he'll warp siggy over there (he has to, as you can repeat this every round and ultimately he'll break) and the fight goes down. This basically breaks down to how good you are vs. Siggy. He's got 2 threats, the one being just stacking 3 wounds on you, and the other being his KB beating your ward save. Carefully prepare your character w/the basics of character combat (KB, ward save, multi-wound weapon, whatever your dex gives you flaming to help vs. Festus's potions if possible) and hope for the best.

Worth Noting: The Death Star has a serious problem in that Festus prevents it from running down anyone. If you take his charge with a unit and then break (as you will, they'll deal like 12 casualties vs. a standard frontage unit), you'll always get away. You can limit what he gets done over the course of the game like this.

Empire with lots of hangunners and Hochland Longrifles would kill off this unit fairly quickly. Plus some Cannon, Hellblast love.

Once the new LZM book comes out.....steggie rush! a few in the flank and a few in the front aught to cause alot of mayhem (especially is some of them are str6 ancients). Im guessing with 4-5 stegs charging at once with impact hits and all will be able to win combat (even after steggie ganks a stegadon) and has a good chance of knocking enough of them out so that the stegs will outnumber, so barring rolling "cause terror" on the eye of the gods, they need insane courage.

Now given this is based on an army book I have only seen a few page scans of, but it seems like it could work.

Nine Steggies, with poisoned bolt throwers. That's 1.5 to hit rolls of a six per turn, meaning that an average of 12 Chosen will be wounded per turn (8-9 ranks, due to characters in front) with no saves, possibly a 5+ invul (so 2-3 survive) and a 5+ regen (so another 1-2 survive) meaning that an average of 4-5 chosen die per turn. so, over six turns (assuming you can get away with the fast Steggies) that is 26-30 chosen dead, meaning half points for the unit, and no dead steggies = win for the lizardman player. Note this is only the poisoned hits - it doesn't take into account the regular hits (probably an average of an additional 4-6 wounds per turn from those)

New Steggies - is there anything they can't do?

Kill the characters and the unit has problems. A High S/No AS weapon should shred Sigvald in short order. Then stubborn/terrain are gone. Ethereals could ruin it.

And don't forget marchblocking with fliers/fast units.

Marauder cav die to shooting. Poison unitslike skinks would have a field day running around shooting everything. Cav can sink the shrines and don't really fear the naked marauder cav.

Bolt throwers and cannons would rack up points quickly on the DS unit.

A funny gimmick, but is slow, would get nuked in comp, have trouble with non-battle VPs, etc.

How is a high S no AS weapon going to shred Sigvald? He'll gib the guy who has it with his ASF. Even if it does get through, Siggy has a Ward save (I think?) and a 5+ regen from his buddy festus. He's also probably sitting on several statline increases from EOTG.

Nowadays, who doesn't have ASF? The entire HE line, greater demons of Slaneesh, assassins, etc. ASF is not quite a unique as it used to be.

What is their initiative? I'm thinking Pit of Shades cast on it a few times with Teclis should hurt it quite a bit.

But I may just try Dwarf cannons with rune of burning, dwarf bolt throwers with rune of burning, anvil using rune of wrath and ruin, and a gyrocopter to march block. Oh, and a flame cannon for good measure. against both the cannons and the bolt throwers you wiil only get your ward save. anvil will halve your movement, and gyrocopter will march block. try doing damage moving two inches per turn. Thunderers will take out the Maurader Horsemen, and warriors will take care of anything else.