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So I was considering trying out a cheap deathstar with eldar, consisting of 9 dire avengers with an exarch that has a power weapon and shimmer shield: defend and bladestorm

A doom, guide, fortune, farseer, and a power weapon fusion gun exarch. All in a waveserpent w dual cannons. What do you guys think?

Not really a YMDC topic. How many points are you spending for that unit?

WOAH! TOTALLY didnt realize I posted here, MB.

I Think the unit total runs around 500 points including everybody.

Its 90 for the exarch

175 for the farseer

287 for the dire avengers and their ride
total points cost of 552

On paper, it seems tactically flexible, and for what it is, quite destructive. I have the mobility to threaten the back field long fangs, or even a tank if I need to by turn two.

My list has reserve modification. I think i really like it.

The problem is that you have all your eggs in one basket. Even with fortune, you can get knocked out of the air and then 500 points of your army is very vulnerable.

I'm not a big fan of deathstars.

Well that was the only negative I could really find. Ultimately its quite cheap for a death star, and unlike most death stars, its quite versatile. I figure its got a decent chance of even taking on 10 TH SS termies in CC. With doom and guide, I have a fair chance of killing enough of them to make a difference in CC, once I charge them, the termies are all at -1 attacks to 1 each. With an average 4 termies dead, that means six attacks and only 5 wounds, thats assuming non of their armor and nivul saves are failed from my attacks.

Give the Autarch a power weapon and mandiblasters and you'll be in a slightly better postion once in CC. The extra attack and ignoring armor will net you about 2 more dead TH/SS termies compared to a bare Autarch.

Sure, it's a pricey combo, but no more so than other deathstar units. A worry that I would have is whether or not it's comparable to other deathstar units in the same price range and I'd probably say no.

Gavin Thorne wrote:Give the Autarch a power weapon and mandiblasters and you'll be in a slightly better postion once in CC. The extra attack and ignoring armor will net you about 2 more dead TH/SS termies compared to a bare Autarch.

Sure, it's a pricey combo, but no more so than other deathstar units. A worry that I would have is whether or not it's comparable to other deathstar units in the same price range and I'd probably say no.

Im excited to give it a shot. Considering what you are actually getting for the points here, namely 2 hqs, a troop choice, and a rather effective vehicle, I expect good things from it. It is just utterly versatile.

On that note, a rules question, if a model with one attack charges into close combat, and has two close combat weapons, will it have two attacks (when considering defend exarch power)? My answer is yes, but in the next phase of assault, or if I charge a unit with two close combat weapons with my defend exarch and squad, will the unit I charge have 1 attack, or two?

Because the model has 1 attack base + 2 CC weapons = 2 attacks -1 for defend= 1 attack total? Or is it 1 attack base -1 for defend (to a min of 1) =1+ 1 for of 2 CCW to a total of 2 attacks?

Ironically, I just built a list carrying this loadout. Make sure to give the autarch mandiblasters. I am running eldrad in there, so I have 3 power weapons, a chance to re roll fortune, and a mind war to pick out power fists and the like.

It is not so much of a deathstar, just a really flexible and versitile unit. It would not take out 10 palidans or 10 THSS terminators, but say only 5. You have 3 power weapons, figuring 12 PW attacks on the charge, you want about 4 or less other death star targets remaining.

Dr. Serling wrote:Ironically, I just built a list carrying this loadout. Make sure to give the autarch mandiblasters. I am running eldrad in there, so I have 3 power weapons, a chance to re roll fortune, and a mind war to pick out power fists and the like.

It is not so much of a deathstar, just a really flexible and versitile unit. It would not take out 10 palidans or 10 THSS terminators, but say only 5. You have 3 power weapons, figuring 12 PW attacks on the charge, you want about 4 or less other death star targets remaining.

My list looks pretty much like this

Farseer with all runes: Fortune, Guide, Doom
Autarch: Mandiblaster, Fusion Gun, Powerweapon

2x 4 Firedragons w Firepike Tank hunter Exarchs in brightlance serpent

1x 9 Dire Avengers w Exarch: powerweapon, shimmershield, bladestorm and defend
in dual cannon serpent

Its a "death star" hahah. But its not designed to go toe to toe with another death star unit. Rather its designed like a rapier. Lightning quick strikes that bleed the opponent until hes too weak and slow, then rush in and slit the throat.

I would gladly pit my eldar list against 10 paladins. At 2000 pts that 10 man squad is literally half of what the opponent is fielding. and there is PLENTY of Str 8 in my list to deal with them.

The more I think about it tho, the more I think that for 1500 pts and lower, eldar may just have one of the sternest death stars here. Once we get 2000+, this unit is still useful, just requires MUCH more tact..... man I gotta get this thing on a TT XD

2x 15 guardians w brightlance and conceal lock

3 dual scatter laser walkers
2x Fireprisms

I played this unit, with and without farseer and/or autarch when the current codex first came out. I also tried it with Asurmen or Maugan Ra.

They can bog down almost anything for a long time, especially TH/SS terminators who only have 1 attack against them. But they have no killing power. At the end of turn 6, your 500 point deathstar will still be standing there slugging away at the last guy of the 200 point terminator unit unable to put a wound on him.

Add to that the fact that your opponent can allocate attacks to the farseer (and when he's dead, fortune goes away), that a psychic hood can negate fortune unexpectedly, that you do occasionally see a librarian with null zone.

If you want to use the unit, just send the DAs with their exarch with defend & shimmershield. That's close to 200 points. Let them bog something down, then send in another 200-300 points of real assault troops--banshees or harlequins--to finish off the guys that the DAs are holding.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I played this unit, with and without farseer and/or autarch when the current codex first came out. I also tried it with Asurmen or Maugan Ra.

They can bog down almost anything for a long time, especially TH/SS terminators who only have 1 attack against them. But they have no killing power. At the end of turn 6, your 500 point deathstar will still be standing there slugging away at the last guy of the 200 point terminator unit unable to put a wound on him.

Add to that the fact that your opponent can allocate attacks to the farseer (and when he's dead, fortune goes away), that a psychic hood can negate fortune unexpectedly, that you do occasionally see a librarian with null zone.

If you want to use the unit, just send the DAs with their exarch with defend & shimmershield. That's close to 200 points. Let them bog something down, then send in another 200-300 points of real assault troops--banshees or harlequins--to finish off the guys that the DAs are holding.

Its such a cheap death star that I could send it in to bog something down, make sure the exarch and farseer are in the center of the squad when they exit the transport and assault and you dont have to worry about them being in base with that fist attack. And I could easily sit back with one squad of dire avengers and bladestorm that 5 man termie squad into oblivion. Wouldnt take but what, two shooting phases on average? Less if I bladestorm and assault. 5 man termies would be dead before they could swing, and a 10 man squad would be seriously weakened.

And a libby is easily enough taken care of. But theory hammer is pointless at this point imho. It always devolves into "oh ya? well my unit could beat up your unit." Over all, I think dire avengers are a hidden gem in our codex, and their usefulness goes far in excess of min max in serpents, or maxed out for bladestorm purposes.

I'm going with the budding consensus here. I've had them used against me and they were a huge pain in the butt, but they didn't really kill anything. If you want a big, tough unit, I think I'd go for wraithguard here.

As for deathstariness, it's not really a death star. A death star is a death star because its something that's big, expensive, and, most importantly, powerful. A unit of 10 ogryn with yarrick is a deathstar because 500 points allows you to practically obliterate anything you come across at 12" or less. A jetlock council is a deathstar because you can multicharge an entire parking lot form 18" away and wreck half your opponent's mech army in a single go.

Avengers? Not so much. Not to say it's a necessarily bad unit, but it's not all that popular for some rather good reasons.

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:
Its such a cheap death star that I could send it in to bog something down, make sure the exarch and farseer are in the center of the squad when they exit the transport and assault and you dont have to worry about them being in base with that fist attack. And I could easily sit back with one squad of dire avengers and bladestorm that 5 man termie squad into oblivion. Wouldnt take but what, two shooting phases on average? Less if I bladestorm and assault. 5 man termies would be dead before they could swing, and a 10 man squad would be seriously weakened.

Not with shooting alone they wouldn't. You've got to remember your theoryhammer and it's application. First, you'll have to be in range of the termies, at 18" that's putting you just outside their threat range. Say you take Eldrad (because, why not?) and you Fortune your DA unit, Guide them as well, and Doom the Termies. Your unit Bladestorms at ~18" and hits with 12 + 4 (Guide); about half of the 16 wound and another half of those misses come back for about 12 total wounds. The Termies get 2+ so 1 in 6 of those wounds get through. Two (2) dead marines, not counting another dead marine from the Autarch's Fusion gun, but if they're that close they're getting the charge on you. No smart Chapter Master is going to use only TH/SS termies - there's going to be some LC's (say 1 per 5) in there too for the attacks, wound allocation, and hits at higher Initiative, so they're likely down to 1 LC and 7 TH/SS. If your Wave Serpent is shooting you might get another casualty in your favor, but let's leave the transport out for now, saving you some points.

Next turn, if the termies are at 18", they're moving up to 6" range; if in range of the Fusion gun, they're going to assault. You get first swings: your Exarch and Autarch might kill a marine each if they're lucky (about 1/3 chance for the Exarch and 2/3 chance for the Autarch); the DA's swing and have about a 2/5 chance to kill another marine, Eldrad's up and has about another 2/5 chance to take out another. If we're doing the odds right, you're going to kill one, maybe two terminators out of the bunch of 8 that are about to swing on you. We'll say a TH guy goes down before the LC guy goes snickety-snick and probably Wolverines up about 1/3 of a Dire Avenger thanks to the Shimmershield and Fortune; the 6 remaining TH's swing and pound another DA into a red smear. With completely average rolls, you'll tarpit the Termies until the end of the game.

What you really want to do is get the charge on them so your extra attacks with Doomed power weapons work in your favor. You'll take out about 3-4 TH/SS termies if you charge and probably only take a single wound in return. Overall, not a bad investment in comparative costs.

Gavin Thorne wrote:

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:
Its such a cheap death star that I could send it in to bog something down, make sure the exarch and farseer are in the center of the squad when they exit the transport and assault and you dont have to worry about them being in base with that fist attack. And I could easily sit back with one squad of dire avengers and bladestorm that 5 man termie squad into oblivion. Wouldnt take but what, two shooting phases on average? Less if I bladestorm and assault. 5 man termies would be dead before they could swing, and a 10 man squad would be seriously weakened.

Not with shooting alone they wouldn't. You've got to remember your theoryhammer and it's application. First, you'll have to be in range of the termies, at 18" that's putting you just outside their threat range. Say you take Eldrad (because, why not?) and you Fortune your DA unit, Guide them as well, and Doom the Termies. Your unit Bladestorms at ~18" and hits with 12 + 4 (Guide); about half of the 16 wound and another half of those misses come back for about 12 total wounds. The Termies get 2+ so 1 in 6 of those wounds get through. Two (2) dead marines, not counting another dead marine from the Autarch's Fusion gun, but if they're that close they're getting the charge on you. No smart Chapter Master is going to use only TH/SS termies - there's going to be some LC's (say 1 per 5) in there too for the attacks, wound allocation, and hits at higher Initiative, so they're likely down to 1 LC and 7 TH/SS. If your Wave Serpent is shooting you might get another casualty in your favor, but let's leave the transport out for now, saving you some points.

Next turn, if the termies are at 18", they're moving up to 6" range; if in range of the Fusion gun, they're going to assault. You get first swings: your Exarch and Autarch might kill a marine each if they're lucky (about 1/3 chance for the Exarch and 2/3 chance for the Autarch); the DA's swing and have about a 2/5 chance to kill another marine, Eldrad's up and has about another 2/5 chance to take out another. If we're doing the odds right, you're going to kill one, maybe two terminators out of the bunch of 8 that are about to swing on you. We'll say a TH guy goes down before the LC guy goes snickety-snick and probably Wolverines up about 1/3 of a Dire Avenger thanks to the Shimmershield and Fortune; the 6 remaining TH's swing and pound another DA into a red smear. With completely average rolls, you'll tarpit the Termies until the end of the game.

What you really want to do is get the charge on them so your extra attacks with Doomed power weapons work in your favor. You'll take out about 3-4 TH/SS termies if you charge and probably only take a single wound in return. Overall, not a bad investment in comparative costs.

While I appreciate the amount of work you put into this, you merely proved my point. The flexebility of this unit means that in vacuum, I could roflstomp a comparative amount of termies into the ground. If it was thunder hammer storm shield termies, I would simply sit back and guide doom a few termies down, move foward, bladestorm, and then assault. Or if it was a "squishier" death star that had mobility, I could easily tarpit if necessary. But 4 ws 5 init 5 power weapon attacks and 6 ws 6 init 6 power weapon attacks, with reroll to wound, on the charge is nothing to sneeze at. Especially when that unit just hit its target with 31 bs4+ rerolling to hit and wound str 4 shots. On termies, if my mathhammer is correct, you are looking at approximately 25 hits, 18 wounds and 3 dead terminators. Just from shooting. Now the only time I would consider blade storming in this situation (facing a 10 man th/ss and LC termie squad) was if I could get the charge. So I have a 1/3 chance of vaping another termie with my fusion gun. Then my squad charges with 18 str 3 reroll to wound attacks, 3 wound on 2+ attacks, and 10 ws5+ power weapon attacks with wound rerolls. Thats gonna equal approx 9 armor saves, and 4 invul saves. Thats another 3 dead termies all together, leaving us with only 4 termies to swing back with only 1 attack each. 2 of which should miss, and two wounds. With fortune, you are likely to make a rerollable 4+, even better if you have eldrads 3+ as he is likely to be the target if the termies are still in base with him. (there would statistically be less termies if eldrad swung his powerweaponstaffofawesomeness)

Over all this unit is FAR superior to equal points of terminators. Less so if we talk about paladins, but even then, weight of dice would be a MAJOR help with them.

Defend wouldn't protect the Farseer either.

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:I could roflstomp a comparative amount of termies into the ground.

Two things. Firstly, you're talking about assault termies. If your opponent is bringing tactical terminators, point for point, they will obliterate you in shooting, and if you get into assault, you are obliged by the rules to get any independent characters into the fighting. ICs that, after a single rerollable invul saved are instantly killed by powerfists. Plus, a 5++ is pretty nifty, but when you're up against something that hits on 3's and wounds on 2's, you're still taking losses even if you save on 5's.

Secondly, nobody brings THSS termies alone. If you're going to talk about a DA squad with a farseer and an autarch and a wave serpent backed up by an eldar army, then you need to talk about the THSS termies in a land raider possibly with an HQ unit of their own backed up by a space marine army.

This loadout is good against things that put out low WS and low S power attacks in close combat, like power blobs or banshees, or against things that put out only a very small number of total attacks, like dreadnoughts or most MCs. Against things that put out a lot of attacks or against things that put down a decent number of power attacks, or are good in shooting, they die just as fast as regular avengers, except they cost more.

I run a 10-man DA squad with PW, Shimmer, Defend exarch in most of my lists. I use them as a bodyguard for Eldrad for the most part. They work well against tactical marines and assault marines when they can get the charge. Having the avatar around helps a lot. They'll last longer taking fearless wounds than they will if they have to pass moral checks because they just don't do that much damage. Against dedicated CC units like assault termies or thunderwolves, they'll fold rapidly even with fortune.

I was speaking from my own experience of having actually used the unit, rather than from theoryhammer.

The problem you encounter in actual gameplay (that isn't obvious on paper) is that DAs are only str3 in assault. So everything goes fine until it comes time to score wounds, at which point you're trying to turn up those 5's to wound regular marines--and this is with your one attack for a regular DA, after only actually hitting with half your attacks, and then your opponent's guys get their armor saves.

So in assault after the first turn, you're looking at mostly 0-1 wounds scored on a marine or terminator unit from the DAs per phase. With average dice that's enough to bog a marine unit, but not enough to finish them off before the game ends.

Realistically, it's unusual to get more than one shot out of a DA unit before they're either re-embarked, in assault or dead.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I was speaking from my own experience of having actually used the unit, rather than from theoryhammer.

The problem you encounter in actual gameplay (that isn't obvious on paper) is that DAs are only str3 in assault. So everything goes fine until it comes time to score wounds, at which point you're trying to turn up those 5's to wound regular marines--and this is with your one attack for a regular DA, after only actually hitting with half your attacks, and then your opponent's guys get their armor saves.

You decry math in favor of a much smaller data set, and then you use math to prove your point?

You could have saved your proverbial breath by omitting the first sentence...