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I guess it's more prevalent at something like 'ard boyz than other tournaments, but it seems like every army list includes a deathstar, and the majority of the battle comes down to "how much better than your death star is my death star?"

It's pretty saddening to me that it's come down to this. In this regard, I rather like chaos daemons, as it seems like this sort of tactic isn't what they're good at or even try to do. Seeing a chaos chosen unit walk around with Ld 10 stubborn 3+ ward saves 5+ regenerate with either T5 or 1+ armor saves (or 3+ and halberds or greatweapons, with the potential for S7 greatweapons) and 3 WS6 attacks each is..... pretty darn annoying.

As a Orc and gobbo player, I LOVE deathstars! It almost ensures that they smother all of my fanatics on the charge. The best so far was an ogre irongut DS that smothered 6 fanatics! 42 hits and 37 wounds later....no more ogres. So the DS build is good, but it has sever weaknesses. Dorf and empire gunlines make them suffer too. I don't like them either, but, what can you do?

The key to defeating the deathstar is to shoot a torpedo into the thermal exhaust port.

I agree with mortevie.

Combo Charging a Deathstar will finish it off, and is, IMHO, a waste of points.

Isnt that the size of a womprat? You cant hit That!

Agreed with gob stomp. The fanatics tackle that, as long as theres no green knight afoot!

Twoshoesvans wrote:Isnt that the size of a womprat? You cant hit That!

It can't be that hard. I used to bulls-eye Womprats in my T-16 at home and that wasn't too difficult.

By "Torpedo" I mean multiple units.

I.E. A Deathstar of 35 Black Guard. How to best it? 2 Units of Chaos Warriors and Flanking Knights.

It can't be too hard.

Some of them are countered by other deathstars. My VC army at 'ard boyz had a unit of graveguard with a drakenhoff BSB wight lord. I put Vlad and another lord in it to make it extra killy - but if the opposing army didn't have something that required that much extra attention, I could just as easily attach the vampires to other units and spread my strength around the board.

The chaos deathstar seems like one of the really nasty ones. The main problem I've seen with it so far is that it's hard to WIN with - people tend to march block it or avoid it, and with that it seems very easy to force a tie.

I see a lot of deathstars these days too....most of them aren't played right though.

I play a lot of wood elves, and I found it is easiest to avoid deathstars. Treesinging a forrest in front of the uber DS unit is almost as much fun as taking them out with a dual wardancer flank charge....ahhh...I love game memories.

I used to complain about people being cheesy when fielding these type of units, but the fact is GW allows it, and I have become a better player (and certainly a more humble player after losing about two years in a row) by losing and the adapting my game strategy. But, that is why I enjoy playing with a regular gaming group.

Did somebody mention a unit of 35 black guard? My codex says they are 5-20 max. The Shades on the other hand, with the right character mix, can form shade star. GW wielding skirmishers with an assassin, some characters with the right items, and it becomes a nasty nasty unit that is hard to get points from. Sure you can't scout if you put the characters in it, but they are still skirmishers with 24" range.

At my FLGS death stars have a short life span. With 4 elf players, 2 empire, and 1 dwarf, death stars get war machined, out flanked, and out gunned too easily. The worst death star someone tried to run was 25 BoC minotaurs. Yes I am quite serious! He even has a movement tray for them. I remember the day when my hydra banner CoKs with cauldron bonus actually cleared the front rank (including the doombull). His mentality was that no matter how much you kill, he still gets to hit back. Should of checked on how easy it was to hit low/no armor guys like BoC and how many CR it would give up.

I usually just ignore/avoid death star units until I kill every thing else.

The term 'Deathstar' is a bit overused right now. There are many people who are actually referring to über-units instead of Deathstars, and those kind of units have been around as long as WHFB. Deathstars on the other hand are actually a new phenomenon caused by GW armybook leap (instead of 'creep').

The mentioned unit of 25 Minotaurs for instance, it's a nasty über-unit (though vulnerable to quite a lot of things) but no Deathstar. The one playing it may have called it a DS but the poster who mentioned the unit was able to show that it wasn't deserving of the name.

A Deathstar is either Unbreakable & ItP or at least Stubborn on Ld 10 and Immune to Panic
A Deathstar has excellent saves, usually Regeneration and/or Ward though one of the two in combination with a high Armour Save is also possible
A Deathstar has a character loadout (usually maxed) that enables the above (BSBs are often key here). It also tends to have characters that are there for reaping CR, accepting challenges and other miscelaneous uses.
A Deathstar is usually M5 and higher or has access to movement magic in order to actually be able to engage other units and gain VPs

Any other unit in the army is only there because of Core requirements and taking out/distracting any unit the enemy might have that could actually hurt/irritate the DS or simply to claim/contest tablequarters.

notabot187 wrote:Did somebody mention a unit of 35 black guard?

Just an example. I don't have my codex on hand.

notabot187 wrote:
At my FLGS death stars have a short life span. With 4 elf players, 2 empire, and 1 dwarf, death stars get war machined, out flanked, and out gunned too easily. The worst death star someone tried to run was 25 BoC minotaurs.

Had the same thing happen to me.

Cast Flames of the Phoenix, then watch it burn.

I wrote a topic on the subject a while back that might have some insights:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/226311.page

The discussion went for 2 pages, might apply here.

That was very insightful, thank you. Best part about reading it though was how every few lines or so, Tarkin would increase the size of the deathstar again hehe.

Which makes me wonder sometimes why people take such huge numbers of things. My grave guard DS takes enough to just barely get the +3 rank bonus, and depends on invocation to keep it there. If the enemy has no deathstar, I spread the characters out to other units to beef up the rest of my army and give the enemy multiple threats to worry about.

The chosen deathstar I saw at 'ard boyz had like 35 chosen, which I think is way too many, such a waste of points. Chosen have the potential to be nasty enough that a thin 2-line unit would do just fine, and the extra points saved could go into units to prevent flank charges. Or, simply 18 or so could allow you to build a solid square with a +3 rank bonus that, if any enemy charged your flank, would be dealing with a character and 4 deathmachine chosen models. Since the unit can acquire a 3+ ward save, regeneration, and 2+ armor vs shooting or T5 depending on blessings, taking casualties isn't really something to worry about, which makes me really wonder why anyone would take so many.

There seems to be some sort of limit with deathstars. If you make a DS so darn killy/resilient that nothing will ever touch it......you get a tie. That's it, the enemy avoids it at all costs, feeds sacrificial units and/or kills your other stuff and that's the best you can get. A deathstar with some sort of apparent weakness, though, that offers someone some sort of chance of victory seems like the best way to go, to tempt the enemy into giving it a shot. Not making it utterly invincible may be tempting fate and run the risk of the unit losing combat, but that's what the dice are for - risk.

I'd rather run the low-odds risk of my unit losing than make it unkillable and always get a tie because everyone avoided it.