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How have you found Starsoul Maces for each of the different Paladin variants? Are there any that would prefer to keep their standard weapon?

It seemed to me that Protectors might not want to use the Mace - they have a pretty good damage potential with their regular weapons, and possibly much higher against Behemoths. Likewise, Decimators can potentially have much higher damage output against horde units, but the Starsoul Maces make them much better generalists against smaller model count units.

How do you mix yours in?

Use them in every unit except for when I'm running decimators AND the enemy has a horde army (clan rats or zombies or something).

I skip them, Protectors and decimators have very specific roles, and your sacrificing your effectiveness at those roles for middling damage. For retributors it's a slight upgrade if you don't have a lord celestant on foot, if you do have one the base hammer is mathematically better than the star soul mace against anyone with a 4+ or worse save. Here is a chart I made to show the break point.

 Grimgold wrote:
I skip them, Protectors and decimators have very specific roles, and your sacrificing your effectiveness at those roles for middling damage. For retributors it's a slight upgrade if you don't have a lord celestant on foot, if you do have one the base hammer is mathematically better than the star soul mace against anyone with a 4+ or worse save. Here is a chart I made to show the break point.

So it seems worthwhile to put onto a unit of Retributors who may or may not always have a Celestant around, good to know.

I dunno if I would call 2d3 guaranteed wounds (against anything without a "ward save", of course) to be "middling". If you engage small units or heaven forbid a single target with a unit of Decimators and only get 1-2 swings per model, I can't really see it out-damaging the Starsoul. Though math may prove me wrong.

You only get one "Attack" with the star soul mace, and it only does 1d3 mortal wounds. Compared to the number of wounds decimators and protectors can do against their respective targets 2 is pretty middling. I see the charm of auto hit mortal wounds, but the most important measure of how effective a weapon is, is how many wounds stick, and 2 is not a hard bar to top for paladin weapons against their prefered enemies. Decimators can get a huge number of attacks to land wounds on, and protectors have exploding wounds against monsters and a large number of chances to get them.

The lighting hammer is the only weapon the Star soul mace is better than by default, and even that is iffy. The SSM's variability is higher (eg you can't count on it) and it's absolute max performance is lower (3 mortal wounds vs 4 mortal wounds) than the lighting hammer.

An average of 2 Mortal Wounds per mace, per round is actually pretty good.

Decimators have a specific role so, I could support not using them in that unit IF you know you were going against hordes. If you include them in a Take All Comers list though, it may be good to have them as a back up plan in case they are going against a large, single target monster.

They do more wounds than Retributors or Protectors without the mace so I would include them in those units.