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.

So the Deathstar armies are clobbering the meta.
If you're sick of playing against these things, what are your best chances at pulling a "your bulldozer unit just lost to my unit that costs a third of the points" turn around?

As a Necron player, the only thing that immediately comes to mind is a dedicated Death & Despair Squad™ (Deathmarks + Harbinger of Despairs in Nightscythes, resulting in pinpoint insertion of double AP1 flame templates that wound on a 2+, as well as 10-20 sniper shots that also wound on 2+), but I don't even know how well it would do against some of the top tier deathstars out there.

What cheaper-yet-effective options have the other armies got to handle these pesky super units?

Not exactly cheap, but with the advent of Escalation and the upcoming rumored 6.5ed changes, D weapons.

Ugh, if the answer to Deathstars turns out to be "bring something bigger, stronger, and more expensive", I will be utterly disappointed.
(Luckily for my army we've got a money-cheap option available to us in the form of the Transcendent C'tan, but I feel for those armies whose options will become A) bring an allied/formation Deathstar, B) spend small fortune on super heavy, or C) consistently lose every game).

Ahh I feel your pain. I am sick of playing against uber-deathstars. Seems to take a lot of tactics out of the game if you like to bring a TAC army.

The main one I come up against is my mate's Farsight list which has a huge retinue of battlesuits, drones, the works. Something which has actually been rather effective is my chapter master's orbital bombardment. The unit's physical footprint on the board is so big that it is hard to miss. If he does decide to spread out to minimize the effect then it is easier to move up units to assault it because that footprint is even larger.

So here is my general unit to counter it at 1500 points.
Pod with chapter master in terminator armour (so he has relentless for orbital bombardment) and a unit of sternguard with 2 heavy flamers (to roast drones and suits). This actually makes a sizeable dent in the unit that makes it manageable for the rest of my army to deal with.

Barrage. Thunderfires, wyverns, etc. are you friend for picking out the models that generally make a deathstar work.

Venom spam cripples a lot of death stars

The answer to most "all my eggs in one basket" deathstar is MSU. There are only 5-7 turns per game, so throw 25 separate units at them and see if they can kill everything. If you happen to be playing victory points, well... you were probably boned anyway.

Zandrek is a good necron tool for deathstars... stripping some of their buffs allows for tarpitting.

Oddly enough, the spyderstar is evolving as a way to battle other stars but that is more of a fight fire with fire.

DnD squads would do okay vs most stars... but since ID is based on ldr... you really have to think about placement and the amount of wounds they can put out. See council can spread out in a way that limits your flamers so you have to make sure you make all the wounds count.

If the enemy is too reliant on Death Stars the answe is to have too many units for him to wipe in 7 turns, combined with a way to wipe out his tiny scoring units. Wyverns are good for the latter, though barrage attacks may also be useful for sniping out the non-chars in a Death Star or at least putting wounds on the squishier models in the back.

Play the objectives and kill the rest of the army. The Deathstar alone can't destroy everything you have, as long you have a lot of units. Grabbing First Blood and Linebreaker is important; generally his Warlord is inside the Deathstar - without sniper volume of fire or barrage, it's hard to get him.

Try to divert his attention. Throw at him some expendable stuff that looks dangerous, so he'll focus on it and leave your stuff barely touched by the rest. Kill whatever supports the Deathstar (like Kairos in a Chaos Daemons army)

Also consider cheap transports. If he can't both shoot and charge a unit effectively, spending a turn's attacks popping a rhino is a poor use of his death star's time.

Grey Knight storm ravens mind strike missiles are decent

Guardsmen. A Gak load of Guardsmen. Now there is an order which lets each and every Guardsmen Precision Shots on 6's, add that to some special weapons sprinkled in there. That is dangerous to most Death Stars, especially when you add an Inquisitor for Grenades and BS 10 vs Psykers, Priests for Zealot and re-rolls to wound and Psykers with force axes all rolling divination, fishing for Misfortune. That is 50 Fearless Guardsmen who can Precision Shot, have 3 shots each as close range, Ignore Cover, have a 4++, re-roll saves in CC, Re-roll hits with Prescience, re-roll to wound in combat, has Rad Grenades, Is Bs 10 vs a unit with a Psyker in AND is chock full of sargant power weapons.

Guardsmen, trolling expensive units since the Horus Heresy.

 obsidiankatana wrote:
Not exactly cheap, but with the advent of Escalation and the upcoming rumored 6.5ed changes, D weapons.

Exactly.
It's a big game of paper rock scissors.

Flyers and MSU. Most deathstars aren't good at taking out flyers so FMC-spam daemons/tyranids and Necron Airforce can still work against these builds. Most deathstars also aren't good at taking out multiple units so MSU is much more survivable against them.

As always...Transcendent C'tan :(

It's kinda sad. It's a cheap solution, though, money wise. Points cost is ok.

I guess the other question would be, which armies are the most screwed when facing deathstars?

Best?

Big Mek w/ Shokk Attack Gun rolling boxcars that'll remove anything it hits
Allies time!

I am no expert, but I remember one game where I was against orks where the HQ was all decked out, quite a nasty unit. (maybe not a true deathstar, but. . .) I was unable to deal with them, but a 9 girl squad of sisters with a priest was tough enough that it took him most of the game to deal with it. I don't think he got a full use out of that squad only taking out one of my troops.

Is that a good Deathstar counter? Bogging them down with a tough unit?

(BTW, I still lost the game, but it was a good loss. I had fun, learned a lot, and I did not have that 'my units are outclassed' feeling.)

Harpies and Flyrants. Both can avoid getting charged, the Flyrant can nerf psychic powers and can precision-shot key characters. Harpies basically can nerf Hit an Run through the initiative penalty.

Edit: just as important, both can run around the deathstar and kill troops as well.

The problem is there is no catch all anti deathstar unit. They are fundamentally different.

However I would say the best anti-deathstar unit is the alternate missions that the TOs have been working on

Perhaps I should have worded it as "What are SOME OF the best anti-deathstar units out there?" instead.
Regardless, there's a pretty good collection here.
What armies haven't chimed in yet?

It sort if depends on the deathstar, doesn't it? I played a cron air list with three doom scythes against a ridiculously OTT Gravstar unit (farsight, ovessa, torchstar, severin Loth and three grav amp centurions) - they were using gate so were in a nice little bundle. Wiped most of the deathstar of the table in one turn of shooting. That tactic wouldn't have been much cop against a fortune spamming 2+ cover / 2++ unit.

Yeah. Against 2++, you just need to spam lots of fire or take out a specific dude. Against other death stars cover ignoring AP1-2 fire works.

Consider 4 dominions with melta guns, sister superior with plasma pistol, priest with plasma gun. They scout/outflank and ignore cover for one turn. That's 7 high str shots that ignore everything but the enemy's invuln. It would mess up some tough units, but a 2++ star would laugh at 8 shots.

against the seer council deathstar, blastmasters wipe the floor with S8, AP3 small blasts that ignore cover. down to the 4++ and causing instant death.

gravstars are easily dealt with by just charging them. they can't overwatch & they can't fight for toffee.

wraithstars are possibly the hardest to deal with, as they usually pack themselves with characters and wind up with a 2+ rerollable save on majority toughness six, 4++ and nasty close combat shenanigans, stealth & shrouded etc etc. best tactic I have is to try and lure them away from objectives by making them charge cheap deepstriking units with threatening meltaguns. I'm looking forward to trying my elysian drop-grots out on them next time we meet, see how he deals with 12 different units standing between them and the objectives.

a 2++ isn't that scary unless they have rerolls, so if you can get precision hits, take out the guy casting the reroll saves rule. then mass firepower will deal with it. the nastiest thing is the fact that they tend to break up your attacks by having models with different saves, so if burnaboys land 80 wounds on the unit, he'll take them 2 at a time on rerollable 2++.

 some bloke wrote:
against the seer council deathstar, blastmasters wipe the floor with S8, AP3 small blasts that ignore cover. down to the 4++ and causing instant death.

gravstars are easily dealt with by just charging them. they can't overwatch & they can't fight for toffee.

wraithstars are possibly the hardest to deal with, as they usually pack themselves with characters and wind up with a 2+ rerollable save on majority toughness six, 4++ and nasty close combat shenanigans, stealth & shrouded etc etc. best tactic I have is to try and lure them away from objectives by making them charge cheap deepstriking units with threatening meltaguns. I'm looking forward to trying my elysian drop-grots out on them next time we meet, see how he deals with 12 different units standing between them and the objectives.

a 2++ isn't that scary unless they have rerolls, so if you can get precision hits, take out the guy casting the reroll saves rule. then mass firepower will deal with it. the nastiest thing is the fact that they tend to break up your attacks by having models with different saves, so if burnaboys land 80 wounds on the unit, he'll take them 2 at a time on rerollable 2++.

Orrr they have protect and thus have a 2+ rerollable armor save and thus completely ignore the blast master.

Rune priests shut down seerstar + screamer star and can JAWS Riptide spam. They also have force weapons for FMC/MC Spam. They can be taken 2 per HQ slot so even as allies they can take two and have access to prescience.

Henchmen. Warriors are SUPER cheap, and come with a 3++ and a power axe. Best of all, you can also sneak a couple of death cult assassins into the squad to hide behind the shields. Add coteaz for guaranteed prescience + some other divination (you'd actually want precog here), and for a couple hundred points you've got something that can put down a huge amount of Ap2 behind 3++, with some serious ID capabilities mixed in there as well, especially if you throw in a hammerhand+rad grenade inquisitor.

Not only is this really cheap, and easy to add, thanks to the special inquisitor ally slot, but they even SCORE for goodness sake, at least if you take them from GK.

To be honest, i think that's one of the rare good uses for S: D. Tired of those annoying 2++ rerollable? Bring in something with ranged S: D and watch your opponent's reaction to his own kind of medicine. There's a slim chance that he'll realise that warhammer tabletop is not about win-buttons and there are tons of other units for a reason.

Hopefully the new BRB coming out at the end of the month (according to rumor) will be the counter to cheese like this. But, that's something I will keep my fingers crossed for and avoid getting my hopes up about.