Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was reading through some 40k blogs and I seem to see a trend amongst many of them. The Deathstar unit is no longer as prominent as it once was. Did army wide force weapons in the GK book kill off TWC and nob Bikerz as being great deathstar units? Obviously you HAVE to take TH/SS terminators for Vanilla Marines but the Force Weapon doesn't matter for that unit. I don't know, I still find the TWC "Wolfstar" to be an incredibly powerful unit and 7 Nob Bikerz with Painboy/Cybork and Wound Allocation Shenanigans is a pain no matter what. I don't play in too many super competitive events and have yet to face GK so what does the Dakka community think?

Not sure who said that, but deathstars are certainly still viable. GKs still have to hit, wound, and then successfully activate their force weapons to get the instant kill and this can all be shut down by even mediocre psychic defense. So, if you fancy still running your thunderwolves, go nuts. Don't be afraid of the GK weapons unnecessarily, but do give them their proper respect. It simply adds a bit of tactics (oh my god NO!) to this game. Means that if you're worried about your deathstar getting instagibbed by a strike squad, you either whittle them down with shooting, or make sure you wipe em before they get a chance to attack with a high init unit.

gpfunk wrote:It simply adds a bit of tactics (oh my god NO!) to this game.

end of warhammer is nigh! Tactics? In Warhammer? My God...

Crazy, right? It's almost as if CREEEEED isnt the only person that can inject sound maneuvers into this game.

What tactics?

LEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINSSSSSSSS!

You know, with the new FW transport I would say deathstars are even better... after all, who can say no to the CRASSIUSARMOREDASSAULTTRANSPORT

DevianID wrote:You know, with the new FW transport I would say deathstars are even better... after all, who can say no to the CRASSIUSARMOREDASSAULTTRANSPORT

No.

Death Stars are still around just Many Small Units plays to objective and table corner missions better so you see less death stars since they can only be in one place at one time.

I find Wolfstars although really killy cost too many points and don't do too well against Assault terminators so I don't really take them outside of Ardboys or sometimes at 2000 pts. Grey Knights really didn't factor much into it. I haven't been running a wolfstar much because of Assault terminators being so common and not because of Grey Knights.

If you want a Rune Priest 4-5 scoring Grey Hunter units in transports, 3x Long Fangs in transports, 2 units of Wolf Scouts as a minimal core you find you don't have much points for a Wolfstar unless its 2k+

Nob bikers also don't do too well against Assault terminators either. Nob Bikers also got killed off by the whole Imperial Guard, lots of Strength 8 with Psyker battle squad.

If your playing Apoc the 30 capacity Crassius Armored Assault Transport might be something to try as DevianID said.

As avariel said, I never liked the wolfstar... BUT small units of TWC are fantastic. They do almost all of what you want, and if you take 2 units then if you double up on a target its like you have a deathstar. MSU is king, so multiple smaller yet capable combat units are OK as long as you general them correctly.

As for Nob bikers, they suffer from shifting metagames. Most people take lots of s8, and that is the main counter to the nob bikers. Again like avariel said, THSS termies are abound, IG have the PBS which is a hard counter to big nob squads, and dark eldar should have enough lances to deal.

The current 'Death Stars' IMHO are THSS termies in land raiders with some character support. Most other armies dont get such an efficient unit to act as a deathstar, so they take smaller combat units it seems. Orks, for example, get the amazing MANZ missile. Chaos has decent combat in the princes, termicide, oblits, and berzerkers. Eldar have CC dire avengers, the avatar, and Eldrad. DE do just fine with a small Incubi squad, and witch squads dont suck.

Well idk for C:SM. yeah they have the LRC with termies for around 460pts, or you could get 2 5 man sternguard squads wth 2 heavy weapons and a lass/plas razor for about 220 each. im just putting this up cause it looks like in some armys they might have better options that could do more in game then what a deathstar could do. just my opinion.

C:SM usually run 5 THSS termies, a Libby, and a redeemer, for 550. Vulkan and Pedro are also decent picks for them.

Versus your Sternguard, at range your 6 Lascannons do very poorly versus the raider. Since you need to be in the open for the sternguard to fire, the redeemer flamestorm WILL eat the sternguard. Also your asscannon and multimelta do a decent job of wrecking razors. Finally, once the THSS termies are delivered into the sternguard, they usually fold up all resistance.

Its not that the sternguard are bad, its just the build you mentioned, which is really good, delivers 6 s9 shots a turn, and 4 s7 tlplasma when up close. The Termies, on the other hand, deal 15 s8 hits in your turn and 10 more in their turn. So it only takes perhaps 2 game turns for the 5 THSS termies to outdo what the sternguard shooting does in 7 shooting phases.

who said they were going head to head? why would both stern squads be next to each other? stern can be in cover and fire, where does it say cant? why would they be so close to the LRR to get toast anyway? why give stern LC? why not 2 MM and 3 combi plasma. thats 4 MM, 8 plas (6 combi, 2 TL-plas), 2 LC... yeah come get me. get close and lose the LRR. Now try footslogging to the rest of my army see how well the works. Just saying.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or put one squad with 5 combi meltas in a DP land next to your LRR and pop it. Yeah I know they will not live. But, I will be lol watching termies trying to walking across the board!
Look i like termies, it just looks to me like other things can do better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
O this is just for C:SM. I am sure there are cooler things in the BA codex then sterguard.

Rex-Nine wrote:
Or put one squad with 5 combi meltas in a DP land next to your LRR and pop it. Yeah I know they will not live. But, I will be lol watching termies trying to walking across the board!
Look i like termies, it just looks to me like other things can do better.

I've done this. It's a great tactic. Not only is it fairly cheap (less than 200pts) for 5 of them in a drop pod, they're likely to kill the tank and footslogging termies die. Or just suck. That ~200pt unit is worth gold in my book. And yes, they are worth taking in Blood Angels too-as long as you have a squad of terminators and a squad of sanguine priests too. Gives you a good all around loadout of elite troops.

You can run death stars just fine as long as you add enough support to make up for the short falls. What you can't really do any more is run nothing but death stars and a couple of token troops like nob bikers and dual seer council because 5E codexes have tools to deal with that.