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I like to play deathstars but I find that If I come up against another shooty deathstar or a Tau/Eldar combo (e.g. riptide wing plus as many wraithknights they can cram) - it really boils down to who gets the first turn...

What's a good way to reduce the dependency of a deathstar to getting first turn and therefore getting psychic powers going? The alpha strike aspect of the game is really starting to bug me.

One idea I had was to use a VSG or bastion but these can be blown up easily and in short order? Ideas are very welcome!

The Deathstar aspect of the game is really starting to bug me. Anyone know of a counter so that I can do something before they get their psychic powers going?


Whoops, wrong thread.

I played a centurion deathstar for quite a while that dominated against most armies, but struggled with alpha strike armies that got first turn on me.

I learned that the best way to mitigate this was to block line of sight with tall fortifications. I used the fortification network with 2 bastions and an aegis line. I just placed the 2 bastions next to each other towards a corner, and placed my deathstar several inches back so that way blast weapons that targeted the bastions still could not clip the deathstar models unless they got really lucky and happened to scatter exactly the direction/# of inches toward deathstar

If your enemy cannot see you, you are effectively invulnerable to everything except weapons that don't need LOS.
This pretty much completely mitigates the alpha strikes of lists such as the one you mentions with Wraithknight D-cannons and Riptide wing

Nidzrule! wrote:

One idea I had was to use a VSG or bastion but these can be blown up easily and in short order? Ideas are very welcome!

The SkyShield landing pad is a unique piece of terrain and as such cannot be destroyed like a Building. You can either place your' Death Star on top for a 4++, or down below if there is other terrain in front to help block LoS.
It's important to note that if your opponent is infantry-sized and on the ground level, they will not be able to see an infantry sized unit on top of the SSLP, so long as the shields are up and you are far back away from them. This doesn't work if you are up on the edge of the Skyshield, or your opponent has tall models, like Riptides and WKs.

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Sorry you feel this way krodakorr but 7th edition has developed into three broad competitive archetypes of lots of MSU, deathstar or Monster Mash.

Deathstar is the cheapest for me I find as I just need fewer models. I find both Deathstar and Monster Mash lists suffer a lot from an alpha strike. Thanks for the ideas re: bastion and skyshield landing pad. Like you say Galef - I am very afraid of the tall models who will be able to alpha strike me anyway.

Does one bastion work? Or is a void shield generator better do you think?

VSG is how I've protected myself from Alpha Strike.

Another idea is to stick Coteaz in there with a Dev squad of grav cannons or 3 thunderfire cannons to protect against melta-strikes... suffers from Grav Cents with Hunter's eye tho.

If you can make your reserves extremely reliable, keep them in reserve.

I have no idea how to combat the Gorgon Chain CM/Command Squad on bikes Deathstar. It is impossible to stop and even blobs don't seem to work against it.

Smashfether and co are pretty hard to stop. The best way I've found is to feed them chaff units (cultists, spawn) and keep them away from my big guys. I'm debating getting an Insensate Rage 'thirster, as his ridiculous number of attacks means he'll probably chew through a big chunk of the squad before going down.

 Lukash_ wrote:
Smashfether and co are pretty hard to stop. The best way I've found is to feed them chaff units (cultists, spawn) and keep them away from my big guys. I'm debating getting an Insensate Rage 'thirster, as his ridiculous number of attacks means he'll probably chew through a big chunk of the squad before going down.

In my experience, the D-Thirster doesn't do all that much. He's gnarly, and gets a lot of attacks, but he strikes last because of Colossal. It's pretty easy for the superfriends mob to wear him down. Then between look out sir and ablative wounds, you don't do all that much. I find the best technique for me is to bait, kite, provide chaff, and play to the strength of the mission. Most missions are objective based, and the superfriends have few ObSec units, so you can win on objectives and possibly lose on secondary or tertiary objectives if they're kill points. It's pretty annoying, but the list can only do so much unless you let them multi-assault everything.

you don't always have it in your list but as a daemon player, you just throw some stupidly resilient unit in there then surround them with summoned stuff so they can't hit and run. Then just wait for the game to end.