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Exactly. The idea that screamerstar somehow only puts out 9 AP2 attacks and a small amount of low STR shooting is just underestimating and undervaluing the unit. Its not the best deathstar and its certainly not the worst.

 A GumyBear wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

Saythings wrote:
I played against one for the first time and my opponent got 4++ Invuln from Divination. However, I won the roll to go first and he didn't steal. I had a Command Squad with 4 flamers attached to Vulcan with a Heavy Flamer. I got roughly 4-5 hits on each flamer and I had rerolls to wound.

Turn1, I dropped in and flamed the squad before Grim and before Psychic Power were casted. I killed all but 1 Screamer and the attached Herald. Those two models alone with 2++/reroll 1's kept a squad of Sternguard in combat for 2-3 turns and he rolled 1's and 2's for their strength all game.

For only being two models and rolling the worst strength possible, I'm terrified of that deathstar. I had the best possible outcome Turn1 and it still stopped a small portion of my army from shooting and required my Command and HQ's attention. Ugh.

Sorry, but your tactic was illegal. How did you "drop" in with them on Turn 1? It isn't possible unless you've got a librarian with Gate of Infinity with that unit as well.

Its called a drop pod

My bad.

When he mentioned command squad, for some reason, I was thinking about IG Command Squad.

jakl277 wrote:
If you have 4 heralds with disks all with greater etherblade you add a lot of s5 AP 2 attacks. Greater etherblade gives +1s and AP2. That totals to almost twenty on the charge.

The shooting attacks with a greater loci are s6. Divination gives ignore cover and rerolls.

Yep, 21 S5AP2 attacks on the charge with Precience. 2 Wounds to a Wraithknight per turn.

So... 615pt minimum on Heralds, 300 for Fateweaver, and 225pts for Screamers... a grand total of 1140pts. 1140pts that can get alpha struck by not having T1, has a realistic chance of not getting Forewarning, can fail to cast Forewarning, has a 1/9chance of failing the Grimiore, can get shut down by Rune Priests, nuetered by a GK Storm Raven, and kills possibly one unit per turn barring opponents letting you multicharge.

No one is discounting the offensive potential of the Screamerstar, but it is inherently unreliable suffers from being alpha struck, and can be tarpitted by some units, namely Wraithknights, or outright hard countered by others ie Rune Priests, GK Stormravens, other Daemons.

Its a powerful build no doubt, but its far from an autowin. Its close if you get the rolls you need, but that is far from a guarantee. Not to mention people don't like the build, playing against 2++ Rerollable enemy isn't fun for most people.

I was directing that at the people who thought that
The shooting was S4
Only 9 Ap2 attacks.

I agree its totally beatable and thats the reason its not taken in tournaments. The only daemon lists that win GT are hounds lists and flying circus lists.

The screamerstar is not meant to engage wraithknights. Fateweaver has some ability to effectively shoot high T monsters. There are definitely a lot of counters to this build though.

jakl277 wrote:
I was directing that at the people who thought that
The shooting was S4
Only 9 Ap2 attacks.

I agree its totally beatable and thats the reason its not taken in tournaments. The only daemon lists that win GT are hounds lists and flying circus lists.

The screamerstar is not meant to engage wraithknights. Fateweaver has some ability to effectively shoot high T monsters. There are definitely a lot of counters to this build though.

I stated the 9 S5AP2 Attacks, because most running the Screamerstar aren't dishing out another 80pts for the Greater Etherblades, and many aren't getting all four Heralds. IMO, a smaller cheaper version can still get the job done most of the time while letting you take more in the army. We will see a happy medium come out in the future, less all out Screamerstar, more like a Screamerstar light.

Heralds can only take 30 pts of Rewards. And the Greater Ether Blade is only Str 4 Ap2. Lesser is Str User.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Grimoire Herald wont be getting another Reward. And if you take a Portalglyth on the Heralds, that one wont get another Reward either.

If you are not ready for the screamer star, or you haven't seen it before you are going to get rolled. But really that is any deathstar. My problem with the screamer star is all the counters there are around in popular armies.

Necrons seems like a great counter for the screamer star. That popular list with wraiths and nightscyths is all going to be tough. 9 screamers on the charge will do 36 hits, have a .75 chance of hitting, .50 chance of wounding, and .33 chance of that wound failing. So 2 wraiths die the first round, but then in the next round of combat on necron's turn only 1.5 wraiths die, then on demon's turn again 1.5 wraiths die. On necron's next turn they can charge the screamer star with another 6 wraiths. It will take even longer to kill. And by the time the screamers get through those wraiths the game is over. Not to mention those screamers have a hard time with nightscyths.

Demons is also a great counter for the screamer star. A lord of change in a flying circus list can also get boosted to 2++ rerollable. In which case both units just sit locked in combat until one person fails to get 2++. Only difference is that lord of change only cost 300pts and the rest of your army needs to deal with 4 other FMC. More over, the screamer star only has a 33% chance of grounding a FMC a turn so there will be many turns where they will not be able to assault.

With eldar waveserpent you split your waveserpents up on each side of the table, and try to avoid the star for as long as you can. You have a much longer range and demon's troops die really fast to your serpents. Wraithknights can also stall up the start for several turns.

Now, those are not by any means hard counters to the list, as in all of them things can go wrong, the dice can come up bad etc. But 3 of 4 most popular lists have ways to deal with the screamer star.

Tau is really the army that needs to look out, being the most popular and very vulnerable to the star. They can beat the star in a single turn if the 2++ rerollable is not activated or if they go first. Also, a little warning to demon players, be careful how you place your units even behind terrain. In one game I saw the tau player was going first and the screamer star was hiding behind los blocking terrain. The demon player knew the riptide would jump to the top of a building and shoot at the back of the screamer star. So the demon play put all the heralds against the wall of the terrain and the screamers in back. Instead tau moved the riptide, two skyrays and two broadsides forward and smart missile systemed the unit behind los blocking terrain. They were able to kill 3 of the heralds in that turn, one of which had the grimoire.

I knew a dude was bringing his Screamerstar to the last tournament I played in, so I deliberately brought my full on Dog-Star, which is 20 Flesh Hounds with 4 Jugger Heralds, 1 with locus of Abjuration. So they DTW on a 3+.

They failed either the Grimoire or Forewarning for a round or two of combat, and at the end of Turn 3 all the Screamers were dead, 1 Herald of Tzeentch was dead, and his 2 Daemon Princes were also dead from the Khorne Heralds (1 other Jugger was in a Challenge with a Disc Herald). All those AP2 attacks don't mean squat with good invuls around, especially when their Misfortune gets constantly denied.

That said, the Screamerstar is fun to use, because the models look cool and they're super fast, which appeals to my personal gaming style. The shooting is fun too, as Daemons lack much of that, so heavy dakka is a change of pace sometimes.

But I think it would be much less fun to play against! I'm pretty sure people are sick of my Dog-star (which is more my favorite).

I guess having both in 1 army, with just 2 Heralds each unit would also be really good. Maybe I'll try that next time. I'm getting bored with Fateweaver however...I think he's the real drag on these Daemons armies. Can't we do anything without the Grimoire?!

Its fun to run a non grimoire list although its just less competitive.

I don't think screamstar is that bad to deal with especially after every dealt with paladin-star last edition.

jakl277 wrote:
Its fun to run a non grimoire list although its just less competitive.

I don't think screamstar is that bad to deal with especially after every dealt with paladin-star last edition.

Paladinstars didn't have 2++ rerollable saves.

 jy2 wrote:

Thud wrote:
In The Relic, you can park the Screamers on the relic to basically deny it to your opponent, and then win on secondaries. Or, you can pull the ultimate dick move, and do the "That Can't Possibly be Right, Let Me Check the Rules Book" move. Join an IC to a scoring unit, grab the relic with the IC, leave the unit and join the Screamers, win game.

Is that even possible? To hold onto the Relic when you are no longer scoring (i.e. when your IC leave a scoring unit to join the screamerstar)?

The Relic is a messed up mission.

The only scoring requirement is for picking the thing up. So, a Herald in a Horror unit could pick it up. The only ways of dropping it is voluntarily, by falling back, or by being slain. Then leave the Horror unit and join the Screamerstar. It doesn't say the Relic has to be in the hands of scoring units at the end of the game for you to win, you just need to have seized it, unlike in the other missions where you need to control objectives to get the victory points.

Of course, I think this is a massive dick move and would lobby TOs of any tournaments I'm attending to fix it by errataing the whole damn mess.

Thud wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

Thud wrote:
In The Relic, you can park the Screamers on the relic to basically deny it to your opponent, and then win on secondaries. Or, you can pull the ultimate dick move, and do the "That Can't Possibly be Right, Let Me Check the Rules Book" move. Join an IC to a scoring unit, grab the relic with the IC, leave the unit and join the Screamers, win game.

Is that even possible? To hold onto the Relic when you are no longer scoring (i.e. when your IC leave a scoring unit to join the screamerstar)?

The Relic is a messed up mission.

The only scoring requirement is for picking the thing up. So, a Herald in a Horror unit could pick it up. The only ways of dropping it is voluntarily, by falling back, or by being slain. Then leave the Horror unit and join the Screamerstar. It doesn't say the Relic has to be in the hands of scoring units at the end of the game for you to win, you just need to have seized it, unlike in the other missions where you need to control objectives to get the victory points.

Of course, I think this is a massive dick move and would lobby TOs of any tournaments I'm attending to fix it by errataing the whole damn mess.

I was unaware of this...

I'm gonna do this with my Nids and shift it from a unit of Termagants, to a Tyranid Prime, to a Swarmlord with a Guard and then a Prime !

i play mono tzeentch and my 1500pt list list has won tournaments yet i dont play a single screamer they are good but not good enough to revolve a list around i think. they are more like something id involve if i had points or specifically wanted to have some but my good tzeentch list does not have them

It's a fun list to play even if it can go horribly wrong, grabbed a chariot kit to do a couple of heralds and screamers to add to the old metals I already had to give it a whirl, and it was a blast. Thing is as others have said dog lists with seekers and heralds can challenge out the grimoire which is going to be hell for the person running the star, especially as dog lists are on a similar level for competitiveness which should bring it back round to more of a mix at tournies.

I wish 40k had the same limits as Fantasy that you cant get a better than 3+ Invul save.

Relic game is amusing when you pass it to swarmy with some guard.
Most people walk around him, but when you need to get near him to take it the whole game changes.


Screamer star is pretty damn solid, but just using MSU and good spacing / placement avoids any real issues to be honest.

Ive rarely bothered to try and kill it since on average you need to make them roll 36 saves to actually fail one 100%.

Easier to keep my units covered by another one with enough spacing so a multi-assault isnt possible at any time.

That way you can feed it small, pointless units.
Guard are pretty good at this with infantry squads.

They are more of a nightmare for the smaller, more elite armies though as you dont have any disposable units.

Where did you get that from? Admittedly not many things GET a 2+ invul, but they are still there. My wood elf highborn/noble can get a 2+ Ward on his last wound, and then can be healed up with life and still keep the Ward. Old Dark Elves Pendent of Cheese gave a 2+ against everything strength 5 or above, not sure who else can get it. But to be fair, they two save systems aren't even comparable due to Fantasy's Multiple save system is totally different from 40ks. Imagine killing Hammernators with a 2+ armour FOLLOWED by a 3+ invul. Now Cry. But I agree with what I think your general idea is, 2+ re-rollable simply aren't fun to fight against.

Although truth be told that hasn't stopped my Fortuning my Archon whenever I can