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Like many of you I've been puzzling around how to squeeze interesting and effective builds out of the new Dark Angels. One of the great things about the internet is the exchange of ideas and 40k is no exception to this rule. With that in mind I wanted to submit a list strategy that has been on my mind and I haven't encountered yet (at least on dakka) in a fleshed out form: the Black Knight death star, or Black Star, for short. I'm hoping that others will provide feedback and contribute ideas both on how to refine this concept as well as consistent counters. Disclaimer, there is some mild math here but it won't require you to do any in game.

Black Star capitalizes on two key observations about the codex:

1) Green marines and their heavy support choices are exceptional bargains. This codex should be able to do the ABC basics much better than most other codex's out there. This eliminates the need for a Ravenwing or Deathwing approach. The point here is not to cast judgment on the other 'wing' theme lists or what not. My goals is simply to present a competitive alternative to those types of builds. In fact what I think might be a more competitive option.

2) Black Knights are offensively very powerful units. They also bring something that other Death Stars typically lack, mobility. Often the best approach to dealing with a Death Star is to avoid it. Black Star can effectively negate that strategy. With Hit and Run you also remove tar-pitting as an effective counter. Nor will hiding in cover save you from the charge, or even shooting as you'll see later.

Now there is one immediate and obvious objection to Black Star: survivability. A unit with 3+ armor/4+ cover is not a unit you'll want to sink a large portion of your points into. However, if you embrace point #1 then I believe there is a solution to that problem. Dual Mastery Level 2 biker librarians. Heck you could ally in a third Codex Space Marine biker librarian. I'll treat that variation separately and just focus on the pure DA list first.

With access to both divination and telepathy this presents some interesting options if you are willing to fully embrace point 1) and abandon FoC shifting unique characters. In particular there are two powers I believe you want to focus on: Invisibility and then as a target of opportunity Precognition. Telepathy is largely the answer to Black Knight survival as it grants both Stealth and Shrouding, making their cover save 2+. Now we are in terminator class resistance to shooting. If you single mindedly focus on Telepathy with two biker librarians you'll have about a 55% chance of scoring that power. If you fail you are extremely likely to have many other effective defensive Maledictions like Terrify and Hallucination to target units that threaten the Black Star. And if you back up the unit with a Dark Shroud you can still turbo-boost into positive for a 2+ cover save turn 1 or in an emergency. Invisibility also has the happy side benefit of further buffing Black Star's close combat abilities, allowing them to hit 3+ and only be hit on 5+.

As you can imagine if you score Telepathy on your first psyker (1/3 chance) then you can go for Precognition. This allows said psyker to re-roll failed saves. Now you can be sporting a re-rollable 2+ save. This won't happen often, only 1/9 games but for thoroughness I felt it worth exploring.

The base cost of Black Star with 10x Black Knights and 2x Level 2 Librarian Bikers is 660 points, 740 with the Dark Shroud. Compared to Draigo Wing around 1000 points and Harliestar which ranges from 500 to 800 points depending on big you go with characters. The ally version I explore later with all the little extras will still clock in under 900-1000 points. This is a fair price for a Death Star unit.

Now let's look at special issue wargear. There are a whole bunch of fun and affordable extras you might consider. I'll list a few but this is an area I haven't fully thought out.

*) Dual Auspex's for the Librarians, poof goes the cover save.
*) Porta-rack. A deterrent for issuing and accepting challenges.
*) Power field generator. If you feel the need for adding invulnerable saves.


This list can easily be backed by a loadout of lascannon predators/devastators and cost effective tactical squads for holding objectives. Aside from that, the Warlord table is full of good options for Black Star, really with Brilliant Planning being the only dud. (Though it may help the rest of your list)

Now let's explore the Vanilla Marine Librarian Biker ally variant. A Mastery level two flavor here is 185 points. If you fail to gain Invisibility on the first two powers you can always take a third shot at it. That brings your per game odds of Invisibility to a whopping 70%! If you luck out and get it with one of the other psykers then may I suggest that Null Zone is a downright nasty psychic power, especially since Black Star is going to be in the heart of enemy territory.

Let's recap what a combined Black Star can do:

a) Enjoy a 2+ Cover save 70% of the time backed by Toughness 5, with significant defensive maledictions to protect you when you fail. In some cases you'll even have a re-rollable 2+ cover.
b) 10 Twin Linked Rapid fire plasma shots or you can get de-buffing grenades. You might want this just to avoid shooting everything to death.
c) 40 Str 5 Rending attacks on the charge plus 12 more force weapons attacks. You also have the option to give DA librarians things like Power fists.
d) Reduce cover saves by two and force invulnerable saves to be re-rolled
e) Move 12", not be affected by terrain in assaults, and ignore dangerous terrain tests.
f) Give themselves a 4++ save which wouldn't need to be rolled, but would be granted to enemies in close combat. (I think forcing the re-rolls compensates for this.)


As you can see the amount of punishment Black Star can do to almost anything is staggering. You can't run from it, you can't hide for long. Cover and Invuln save won't protect you. (Counters Harliestar and Daemons) It may not be the toughest Death Star, but it's not weak and is possibly the deadliest both in the shooting and assault phase. Tactically options like hiding and striking when the moment is right are viable; marching in a direct line toward your foes every turn is not required. Fail the telepathy psychic test and you can turbo-boost away.

Now while this list is very dirty for a friendly game it does have an obvious glass jaw. Rune Priests and Runes of Warding. IG fire on my target also has potential. And while I think this list wouldn't be impotent against Necron Airforce the rest of the list would need to be able to contribute to effective anti-flier defense. To be frank I'd be a little bothered with any list that had no obvious counter.

A final note, my guess is that depending on the dice gods to determine just how powerful your Black Star is, is not going to be popular with some players. However consider, a typical tournament which is what this list is geared towards, some favorable luck is going to be necessary for any victory. You can easily expect to enjoy 2+ saves in the majority of those games.

So what do you think? How will this list fair against other competitive list meme's out there? Do you see an obvious problem or optimization?

I think it would chomp through Boyz and IG blobs and utterly crush tac squads and assualt squads.

Counters in a T-setting?

Venom Spam
Draigowing
Cron Disco

The issue is that at the end of the day, you are spending a minimum of 670 for the 10 Black Knights and two level 2 Libbies on bike with auspex. This unit has 14 t5 3+ save wounds. Invisibility is a great power, but you have 2 rolls for each Libby on the Telepathy chart. As you mentioned, it's about a 1/3 chance of getting the power for each Libby. If you fail to get this power, you won't last that long.

I run a Seer Council in 6th and will tell you that even with 3+ re-rollable from Fortune, the unit can go down quickly. While the Black Knights have lots of hitting power (and built in hit and run), I just feel that there are too many hard counters to the unit. There is so much strength 7 spam in the game right now that t5 isn't always the boon you need. Helldrakes and Flamers of Tzeentch are very common and will eat you alive as you have no invulnerable save.

If I was to consider Black Knights, I would probably just run 6 Black Knights with 1-2 Nade Launchers and the Bike Libby or Sammuel. That way, you aren't investing quite as much. If they die to focused fire, you aren't crippled.


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Another possibility would be to take a Tech Marine on Bike with a power field generator. Getting the 2+ save and 4++ within 3" could help with durability issues. Combined with Sammuel out in front, those two characters would give you a much more steady durability.

I think you are looking at the auspex wrong. Multiples don't stack. Last line of the rule:

"A unit that is targeted by one or more auspexes has its cover save reduced by 1 until the end of the phase."

Yea I'm thinking at a competitive level the third librarian biker is needed to boost the chance of Invisibility to 70%. A larger meta question is whether a rounded, take all comers list ceases to be competitive in a tournament situation.

The helldrake is a rough one, especially double dragon. That might make the power field a mandatory versus optional piece of gear, then at least you have a 4++ fall back. Still that's brutal counter. Along those lines a banewolf would be pretty nasty. I do think the rest of your FoC could be constructed to handle some problems though, which is part of the reason I wanted to get fresh perspectives. People still run Harliestar inspite of the helldrake, I wonder what the response is there... One mitigating factor against CSM is you would have Preferred enemy on a lot of your units. Perhaps the best response is to find a safe combat to get tied up in.

DE and Venom spam is another good one, something fast enough to keep away and put out lots and lots of saves with plenty of targets.

Not sure I'm convinced on Draigo Wing or even the amusing Necron Disco. With Null Zone the chances of those units against massed plasma are not good, having faced a Null Zone psyker with Draigo wing before I can say it's not pretty. By the numbers they are expected to drop from just the shooting phase. Of course having the Disco pop backup is plenty annoying. Maybe you just stay at 18" and Dakka away in those cases. Either that or defer Death Star on Death Star action and go after the remnants of the army first.


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Hmm I thought Auspex allowed a model to forgo shooting to reduce cover by one for a unit within 12". But I certainly could be wrong

No biggy on that one.

Yea I'm thinking at a competitive level the third librarian biker is needed to boost the chance of Invisibility to 70%. A larger meta question is whether a rounded, take all comers list ceases to be competitive in a tournament situation.

The unit just becomes too bloated for what it is at that point. I'd have to say that shooting for TAC is still the way to go. Obviously, it is very, very difficult in 6th edition to be prepared for everything. However, going with a "rock" list and hoping to avoid the hard counter is only worthwhile if your hard counter is rare.

The helldrake is a rough one, especially double dragon. That might make the power field a mandatory versus optional piece of gear, then at least you have a 4++ fall back. Still that's brutal counter. Along those lines a banewolf would be pretty nasty. I do think the rest of your FoC could be constructed to handle some problems though, which is part of the reason I wanted to get fresh perspectives. People still run Harliestar inspite of the helldrake, I wonder what the response is there... One mitigating factor against CSM is you would have Preferred enemy on a lot of your units. Perhaps the best response is to find a safe combat to get tied up in.

Spacing is your best answer to Helldrakes. Against Tzeentch Daemons, you would have to have bubble wrap and anti infantry in the rest of your list. Guard blobs seem pretty mandatory here.

DE and Venom spam is another good one, something fast enough to keep away and put out lots and lots of saves with plenty of targets.

Venom spam stopped being good once GK hit. It's even worse in 6th. This is a good example of a rare hard counter.

Not sure I'm convinced on Draigo Wing or even the amusing Necron Disco. With Null Zone the chances of those units against massed plasma are not good, having faced a Null Zone psyker with Draigo wing before I can say it's not pretty. By the numbers they are expected to drop from just the shooting phase. Of course having the Disco pop backup is plenty annoying. Maybe you just stay at 18" and Dakka away in those cases. Either that or defer Death Star on Death Star action and go after the remnants of the army first.

I've never, ever seen a Necron Disco in real life. You would probably rock it with that much plasma regardless. Draigo wing is bad if they get a chance to shoot you. Premeasuring would be key. You would have to be ready to hit hard when you get the opening.

I still don't think selling out to the Black Star is worthwhile. Go with a 6 count unit and a character like Sammuel.

The key to this "deathstar" is that it absolutely NEEDS to be in cc in the opponents shooting phase. This thing will collapse extremely fast to any cover ignoring or reducing shenanigans.

A field on one or both of the librarians is really worthwhile as this gives some sort of defense against baleflamers, etc.

If you go big this could be alright. I wouldn't say it is tournament level as you have a pretty good chance of running into eldar psychic defenses or cover ignoring weapons.

It is however awesome looking.

The key to this "deathstar" is that it absolutely NEEDS to be in cc in the opponents shooting phase. This thing will collapse extremely fast to any cover ignoring or reducing shenanigans.

Hmm I realize that could be a problem! That volume of plasma shooting is so devastating most non-hoard units will crumple to it. I see two fixes, each with problems:

Reduce total number of Knights (or bring more grenade launchers) but this reduces wounds in the unit. (Though it addresses some accusations of bloating)

Don't shoot with everything. I think this is legal but it's really wasteful.

It's interesting, would most people consider a unit of 10x Deathwing terminators bloat? Probably not so that seems to be driven by the inclusion of 2-3 Characters.

The knight weapon has rending? I thought it was shred.

With this unit 6 knight would more than kill 10 tacticals. They need that turn 2 charge to not get shot up too much. If you can stay in combat until their turn you should be fine. But that first charge is crucial to the unit's survival.

You could add in a terminator squad to drop on turn 2 on the knights homers. That would at least provide some more shooting support and another priority target deep in enemy lines.

I like it. It's definitely a clever use of the codex that doesn't go straight to deathwing or ravenwing as most people seem to be doing.

The weakness to baleflamers is a huge concern though. People are definitely going to be playing helldrakes and those will ruin your day. You also run into a problem against cron air. This puts you in the position of having to dedicate the majority of the rest of your list to anti-air. Which then really puts you off balance if you run into AV14.

What I'm saying is that you would have to craft the rest of your list with a lot of care.

Yeah, I feel black knights, even without characters, is fine.

Consider your build, and now consider just 10 black knights. Half the cost, same offensive power, and the same weaknesses to anti cover attacks. You can get 2 units of 10 black knights and a naked Libby for 905, which is your cost for 10 plus 3 bike characters.

Black knights seems to be the premier alpha strike unit, able to wipe tough enemy units out with impunity in their turn. A better synergy would be some Los blocking terrain like the fortress or even land raiders to hide behind. If you go second, and can manage to avoid getting blown away on turn 1, the black knights are looking at shooting and charging on turn 1. I can see this style of list tabling air crons who took too many flyers before they even get to roll for reserves.

You are probably going to want a powerfist on one lib, a force axe on another and meltabombs with the huntmaster to deal with AV13 walkers and MCs. Fighting the Tau will be an issue as they can strip the cover save with markerlights and then focus all their ranged firepower at BS 5 on the unit.

Looks pretty solid, though the reliance on cover saves will be a problem against tau and template spam.
Remember that if you think you may kill too much with your plasma talons that all the black knights have a bolt pistol.

Thanks all for the thoughtful comments. As some have suggested I went down this path because, well, I think pure Deathwing will be figured out by better minds and pure Ravenwing I believe doesn't quit work for it's price, those bikes really needed base 2 attacks or a CC to build an army around.

Some responses.

The knight weapon has rending? I thought it was shred.

Stat-line is S +1 AP - Rending

As for the baleflamers, yes that's a big problem. Even an Icarus with someone like Telion manning it has a only a 27% chance of preventing just one from shooting. Many lists will run two.

For AV14, I had planned to focus on Lascannons for fire support. Decent for both Air and AV14. Though I fully agree with the kit suggestions for getting some powerfists and melta-bombs into the mix.

One problem with the turn 1 charge is that Scouting prohibits a charge on player turn 1. Your opponent really needs to blunder to permit this to happen. Turn 2 of course is fairly easy to achieve even on Hammer and Anvil if you turbo boost Turn 1.

Tau could be a problem but I feel that proper target priority on things like Pathfinders can mitigate a lot of that.

I like DevianID's way of framing the problem. Are three biker librarians costing at least 435 points worth more than another unit of 10x Black Knights?! If we set aside the problem of cover ignoring attacks the answer seems to be yes: Improving the group save from 3+ to 2+ doubles the surivability while adding 6 more wounds plus the potential for invulnerable saves. Of course 10x Black Knights have a lot more shooting potential than 3x Libby's but the potential of their psychic powers is still substantial and Null Zone is a ridiculous debuff! For CC I think it depends a lot on target, the potential for the libby's to bring AP2 weapons and instant death adds some diversity, though 40 attacks will yield 3-4 rending wounds.

But as many have pointed out 2+ cover is not the same as 2++ or even 2+ armor. I don't think two units of 10x BKs fairs any better against double dragon than Dark Star. At that point better to diversify as some suggest.

One model that's an effective Tank could make a big difference here and save a lot of points in Libby's, alas no Artificer armor and Bike combo for DA. Perhaps I should explore an ally option for this but the Shroud of Hero's would have been the perfect upgrade for this character. :\

So an interesting exercise but it may not be the next list people love to hate, perhaps thats a good thing. If only FnP could be worked in here somehow, but all options I can think of are extremely problematic. The banner for example is too fragile and expensive.

Still I think a complete analysis requires some play time, the maneuverability of the bikes and the potential to split off characters to tackle separate threats has a lot of potential that's very hard to evaluate just by the numbers. Of course that indicates this is probably a challenging unit to use well.

If i was going to run this unit. I would keep it to the basic 9 man unit for the three grenade launchers and 1 librarian for divination. For a unit like this to work you just have to create other higher priority targets. fnp banner would also go a long way towards keeping them alive.

So something like 9xknights
Level one divination librarian with powerfield

Backed up by a highly offense based list that just creates an overload of targets could work well. Also against the fliers it would just be get as close to his table edge as quick as possible. If you can do that it will be very difficult to get more than 2 or 3 of them to be able to see you. So they might get 1 or2 shots each a game if lucky.

You shouldn't really build an army around an ability you only get half the time.

Jaded knight, while improving the cover save from 3+ to 2+ doubles survivability from shooting only and versus attacks that don't modify cover, doubling knights always doubles survivability, in close combat and in shooting.

Also, you need to consider that 6 wounds on librarians are NOT 6 more wounds to the squad. If the Libby's take 6 wounds then they are all dead--then what was the point if bringing them?

I am a huge librarian fan, but if your taking the libbies to make you tougher then taking double the bikes, which also makes you tougher but versus everything, also doubles your fire power.

As to double dragons, 20 bikes are 2 times as resilient than black star to double dragons, and keep in mind black knights are fantastic anti air units if in range-- which they will be if they got hit by dragon flames.

As to null zone, this is a meta game consideration. I love null zone, but many times it is not needed. Still it's a useful upgrade.

If I made a black knight list, I would probably use 2 chaplains or prescience libbies on bikes with a null zone bike Libby. This gives an invulnerable save/combat buff. I would definitely make use of 2 black knight command squads as you get a slight discount, 2-3 elite black knight units with grenade launchers everywhere and scouts with bolters. The banner of devastation on a bike hq squad allows the entire army to alpha strike turn 1, and the scouts with bolters grant you the high quality volume of fire ( shooting targets hit by rad grenades) and positioning to make use of it turn 1.

The null zone is really just insurance to scoot up on his own and join a scouted knight unit. This list is downright nasty and designed to cripple an enemy before flyers come on the board. A few counters exist, but multiple smaller units of knights prevent antideathstar counters from targeting large portions of your force, and rad grenades plus salvo bolters plus auspex cut heavily into hordes. Best advice for this list is to either go first or hope for Los blocking terrain.

I'll put a more detailed response later, but since a few mentioned it I don't understand prescience/divination for Bikes? They are already twinlinked. If you want re-rolls in CC then the chaplain seems better. Could someone elaborate?

A comment on why take a strategy that works 50% of the time. (or 70% in this case) If you look at tournament theory for other games of skill and chance this is an excellent strategy and as the field get's larger it becomes a forced strategy. For example, tournament poker. However, it only works if the pay off in the positive 50% case is really large, e.g. be able to dominate most lists. Doesn't seem like that works here. But hopefully that explains my thought process.

I'm thinking the theory with Ravenwing in the new book is to build an entire army of Land Speeders, Bikes, and characters that can fit into a couple of Darkshroud bubbles, then run around blowing things up at mid ranges, using superior mobility and Jink saves to avoid taking casualties. Normal Bikes, Attack Bikes, and Land Speeders add in longer-ranged firepower and numbers that Black Knights lack.