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I have found that warp spider spam's big advantage is that they are msu and are highly manoeuvrable so death stars dont do so well as the spiders avoid the star and kill the troops and supporting units.

As a deathstar player what would you do?

Let's say the deathstar(s) in question is two sets of 5 space marine command squad on bikes led by the usual chapter master with all the bling. You could technically do a conga line across the board and then advance the entire two squads up through turbo boost (plus scout) if available.

You then dramatically cut down the amount of space for the warp spiders to do their jumping around. The issue might be if you dont kill enough on the charge and therefore they hit and run away. I wonder if the additional protection might be to run white scars and therefore force a roll off on the hit and runs to decide who can hit and run first?

Does this work? Purely exerting board control to protect your squishier troop / supporting units.

If you want to protect your support units, you just have to be near your support units and not leave them to die. Chasing a bunch of Warp Spiders around is pointless anyway.

Alternatively, you could not use a death star and try to win the game the old fashioned way.

Also, 12 bikes don't make a line across the board.

If you run White Scars with plenty of bikes and/or transports, Scout your whole army up the board. Spyders my be fast, but if there is not board room, you realize very quickly how squishy they really are.

How Spyder spam has become a thing, I'll never know. As an Eldar player, I find them to be too slow and short ranged. As a Daemon player, I find them too fragile.

They definitely aren't slow. They are short ranged and fragile though.

And board control does murder them, but deathstars can't control the board.

If you outnumber the Warp Spiders on a Hammer and Anvil setup, for example, basically none of their movement tricks matter. There's no where for them to hide except back into their own deployment zone, which you are inevitably moving your entire army into.

In fact, Hammer and Anvil is an Eldar's worst enemy. The only single thing more problematic to them is getting the Initiative stolen, and that's a universal rule that screws every army equally.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They definitely aren't slow..

Keep in mind that my 2 main armies are Eldar and Daemons. Almost every unit I play can move 12-24" a turn. Some can move 48" per turn. Spyders move 6+2D6"+Fleet, and only if they didn't flicker jump in the previous turn. They "can" be very fast, but they are not guaranteed fast. Just make them Flickerjump once and ignore them.

WS guns are 12", then they can battle focus up to 6" plus up to another 12" for jump pack move during assault phase for a total of up to 30" away from you, therefore you might not even be able to catch them the next turn.

But realistically out of 5-6 WS units that shot at you, a couple of them may roll crap or below average for their run and jump moves, so hopefully you can charge at least one a turn.

I run Wolfstar with DA allies for +3" charge, so far every WS unit I get into CC with dies.

I can't understand how 6+5d6" a turn is slow. Most warp spider spam lists I've seen take them in a war host for 12+4d6 instead. That is a fast unit by any metric. Especially since they can do this and shoot. How flimsy they are depends greatly on terrain, and whether you play them RAW or not. If you play with plenty of Los blocking terrain and RAW they are almost indestructible. In a relativity open board with only one flicker jump they are softer than marines.

I find it difficult to park a deathstar nearby the support units and wait for the warpspiders to come closer as they are so mobile and can pick and choose the support units to murder. Usually these are squishy min sized troop squads so even if the WS die after doing their job, its beneficial to the opponent.

In any case, if you hang back your deathstar and dont exert board control, the WS have enough room to pull back and pull shenanigans on you.

Back to the original question, lets say you run a deathstar or two deathstars, which have a footprint long enough to span the board (12 bikers horizontally is 2 inch each, coherency 2 inches in between - doesnt this get you to 48 inches, could be wrong). Is it really dumb to move them up the board and force the warp spiders to lose board space or come forward and try and jump past the Deathstar cordon?

Like one of the posters above are saying, one or two warpspider units may roll badly and therefore you'd be able to catch and kill some of them.

Mind you this is for lists that are majority warpspiders so e.g. 45 spiders in a list like the one that won LVO...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Darkness Eternal - don't you think that assault Deathstars can control the board? In my example, the deathstar I am thinking of has a significant footprint and is fast moving e.g. SM bikes or Thunderwolf Cavalry in SonsofVulkan's example.

They move up the board and project a no-go zone of approximately 12" plus 7-8" realistically of charge range so let's say 20". For cavalry like TWC its 21"/22" and even more with RW allies.

I think shooty deathstars dont do well against WS because of their flickerjjump in a terrain heavy board. But assault deathstars can do well?

Nidzrule! wrote:
I find it difficult to park a deathstar nearby the support units and wait for the warpspiders to come closer as they are so mobile and can pick and choose the support units to murder. Usually these are squishy min sized troop squads so even if the WS die after doing their job, its beneficial to the opponent.

In any case, if you hang back your deathstar and dont exert board control, the WS have enough room to pull back and pull shenanigans on you.

Back to the original question, lets say you run a deathstar or two deathstars, which have a footprint long enough to span the board (12 bikers horizontally is 2 inch each, coherency 2 inches in between - doesnt this get you to 48 inches, could be wrong). Is it really dumb to move them up the board and force the warp spiders to lose board space or come forward and try and jump past the Deathstar cordon?

Like one of the posters above are saying, one or two warpspider units may roll badly and therefore you'd be able to catch and kill some of them.

Mind you this is for lists that are majority warpspiders so e.g. 45 spiders in a list like the one that won LVO...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Darkness Eternal - don't you think that assault Deathstars can control the board? In my example, the deathstar I am thinking of has a significant footprint and is fast moving e.g. SM bikes or Thunderwolf Cavalry in SonsofVulkan's example.

They move up the board and project a no-go zone of approximately 12" plus 7-8" realistically of charge range so let's say 20". For cavalry like TWC its 21"/22" and even more with RW allies.

I think shooty deathstars dont do well against WS because of their flickerjjump in a terrain heavy board. But assault deathstars can do well?

Your melee deathstar has to kill all the spider in a single assault phase, or they are going to hit and run out of combat, then move away from you to 12 inch distance, then warp jump 2D6+6 inch, now the distance between you and the spiders are average 25 inch, and you will never get the charge again.
In this sense, only the true, fast (12 inch movement, and fleet / reroll charge distances), deadly melee star with a ton of AP3/2 attacks like TWC or maybe the Wuflens in LR would could hope to effectively counter the Warp Spiders, other lesser assault units like ASM (other than that in Ravenguard Chapter, or a full 10 men squad in Skyhammer formation), or Assault Terminators, will not stand a chance.

But as your deathstar moves forward in a horizontal line, the amount of space for the warp spiders to disappear to would reduce. I agree that fleet or bonuses to charge distance make a big difference in trying to beat the warp spiders.

And its not all about "How to kill these units or catch that unit"...

Playing to the mission objectives is the most important thing, which a lot of bad players fails to do when all they focus on is killing. For example, the relic mission in Nova/ITC, WS spam lists will have a hard time preventing a durable deathstar from contesting the relic early on. This forces them to focus much of their firepower on the deathstar rather than ignoring it like in other missions. Also if some of the WS units move too far away from your unit, they may not get into shooting range the next turn.

That's true that Relic is good for Deathstar for sure. But the objective based missions are good for Warp Spiders especially on terrain heavy boards.

If you are doing maelstrom missions for example, you need to take the WS out before they take your obsec out...-

 Galef wrote:
How Spyder spam has become a thing, I'll never know. As an Eldar player, I find them to be too slow and short ranged. As a Daemon player, I find them too fragile.

Daemons fare better than most against WS spam, so that's not unusual. The versatility of offensive Psychic powers compared to traditional shooting attacks works in their favor against Spiders, as well as the speed of FMCs to hunt them down, and the fact that H&R is less of a worry due to them generally all dying in one round in combat against daemon units.

Even Warp Storm is a benefit in that matchup. Lots of separate units means lots of rolls for the offensive Storm results; can't jump away and they're relatively fragile as well.