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.

What is the best counter to a deathstar that you have available in your army?

Personally I play daemons amd my preferred answer is a tzeentch prince with his invulnerable save upped to 2++, with the inherent ability to reroll 1s he can tank and therefor tie up most things.

Your Daemon Prince hence become the possibly best "one model deathstar" at that point

I think it depends on what type of DeathStar you are facing, general speaking, tie up the shooty or shoot the choppy. Other than that, MSU is always good answer to DeathStar. Out score them.

It all depends on the deathstar, as mentioned above.

What codex is it from, how many sources, how many points make up the deathstar, is it melee or shooting, how many ICs, any formations? etc

Short of the lack of hit and run, a grim herald and 5-6 screamers is extremely hard to kill for the points and works as a decent road block. Even if the enemy hits and run you can keep using your screamers as a buffer. Or - use pink horrors as a road blocks for cheaper.

I usually either shoot it or try to tarpit it. It does depend on the star though.

* Culexus Assassin
* Sisters of Silence
* going first (Coteaz et al)
* getting lucky if they somehow fail to get off a critical Psychic Power
* Cerastus Knight-Castigator's Tempest Blade
* A sane tournament format, such as limiting to 2 or 3 detachments or 2 factions

+1 on Culexus

Tau: Combined Fire & Advanced Targeting Systems to help remove supporting characters. Combined fire I feel was built to help mitigate some death stars.

Space Marines: Counter with Iron Hands Death Star or try to out score, but since I don't have enough models for a full Gladius I don't know really.

Demons: Not entirely sure. Maybe Magnus could help but a 2++ rerollable demon prince sounds helpful. That and the screamerstar.

Grey Knights/Tyranids: I feel out of luck here. MC's will just get smacked with AP2 stuff with most likely a higher weapon skill or re-rolls to hit & weight of dice. Tarpitting also seems out of the question as H&R exists and 6+ armor doesn't do much defensively. Maybe a Knight Titan could help?

Cult Ambush, Telepathic Summons, and Mass Hypnosis. A WS1 I1 A1 deathstar is no deathstar at all.

I have had the displeasure of running a houndstar in to a Calexus - it's horrible.

How bad are the Sisters to come up against?
How effective see the to use?

Usually I run Space Wolves, my best defence against Deathstars is Seize the Initiative, I can get that on a 2+.
Combined with a solid first turn I can usually do more damage than the star can handle before the Libbies get their turn.
Doesn't work on Drop Pod stars though, at all.

10 gretchin, runtherder, squighound, grabba stikk.

~45ish points. 11 wounds, -1 a, ld rerolls. What are most deathstars, 500 points? I could take 11.

121 wounds, -11 a, reroll morale checks, obsec. lol

One thing I'll be testing out soon - once I get the Fall of Cadia book - is using a Stormsword as part of the Castellans detachment.

It's mostly to combat armies like Ravenwing, White Scars, and Eldar Jetbikes, which I sometimes see, along with hordes. Oddly, people rarely bring Deathstars as such to casual games around here.

But I feel the Stormsword would be somewhat effective against any Deathstar that doesn't have Invisibility or majority T6. Even if they have lots of good Invulnerable saves, they likely won't save every wound, and the star will start to break up.

Of course, this isn't applicable in an ITC event, since the Stormsword isn't there.

Kill everything except the death star.

Literally the counter to every death star. Also well placed missiles at their cores.

Deathstars are usually close combat units. Just force them to assault expendable cheap units or empty transports.

I usually play armies with low T or armor saves (orks and dark eldar) so I don't have a real hard counter for deathstars, but MSU is my typical style of playing so I'm not really scared about them.

The corpsethief claw is nice as a semi-deathstar because it scores 1 point everytime it destroys an enemy unit in close combat, so you can force it to assault and expendable squad but the dark eldar player would score a point anyway, two in case of a KP mission.

 Blackie wrote:
Deathstars are usually close combat units. Just force them to assault expendable cheap units or empty transports.

I usually play armies with low T or armor saves (orks and dark eldar) so I don't have a real hard counter for deathstars, but MSU is my typical style of playing so I'm not really scared about them.

The corpsethief claw is nice as a semi-deathstar because it scores 1 point everytime it destroys an enemy unit in close combat, so you can force it to assault and expendable squad but the dark eldar player would score a point anyway, two in case of a KP mission.

You remind me of an AM player in my meta.
He loses bad to other shootie armies but every melee player cringes when they see his name next to theirs - me included.

D-weapons. I play Eldar, I can kill anything.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
D-weapons. I play Eldar, I can kill anything.

Oh, good for you. You kill a dog/hound/space marine... and that's only if they're not invisible.

Multiple source RAD grenades and psykicatrope

 Glitcha wrote:
Multiple source RAD grenades and psykicatrope

That's why I love St Celestine's little body guards - you gotta D-strength something? I auto block with a recurring model that has no use beyond being an auto blocker. If desperation demands it I might throw a Cybermutt in the way.

 Corvus_corax wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
D-weapons. I play Eldar, I can kill anything.

Oh, good for you. You kill a dog/hound/space marine... and that's only if they're not invisible.

And they kill nothing of mine. Huzzah.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Glitcha wrote:
Multiple source RAD grenades and psykicatrope

That's why I love St Celestine's little body guards - you gotta D-strength something? I auto block with a recurring model that has no use beyond being an auto blocker. If desperation demands it I might throw a Cybermutt in the way.

that's not quite how Celestine works Her guards don't look out sir they just take a wound every time she suffers one. So a wound is always suffered by Celestine they just allocate other guard. Whereas look out sir means the guardian would suffer the wound.

gungo wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Glitcha wrote:
Multiple source RAD grenades and psykicatrope

That's why I love St Celestine's little body guards - you gotta D-strength something? I auto block with a recurring model that has no use beyond being an auto blocker. If desperation demands it I might throw a Cybermutt in the way.

that's not quite how Celestine works Her guards don't look out sir they just take a wound every time she suffers one. So a wound is always suffered by Celestine they just allocate other guard. Whereas look out sir means the guardian would suffer the wound.

Divine Guardian says any wound suffered by Celestine is resolved against surviving Geminae instead. Might be palming off rather than meat shielding but I'm struggling to see a difference.

If celestine gets hit by a 6 on the D-table she takes 6+D6 wounds. If I was to roll a 3 for the D6 then celestine and the 2 boddyguard would be dead.

 rawne2510 wrote:
If celestine gets hit by a 6 on the D-table she takes 6+D6 wounds. If I was to roll a 3 for the D6 then celestine and the 2 boddyguard would be dead.

Incorrect. If a D weapon hit causes 9 wounds and two Geminae are alive ALL 9 wounds are resolved against the one Geminae that is closest to Celestine.



That's because the single model suffers the wounds, not the unit. So the one Geminae model gets hit with ALL 9 wounds.

For a single model to take all the wounds you would have to look out sir to the Geminae. The divine guardian rule is not an auto LoS.

 rawne2510 wrote:
For a single model to take all the wounds you would have to look out sir to the Geminae. The divine guardian rule is not an auto LoS.

Awfully clunky way to say the Geminae have a 4++ save and confer a 4++ to St Celestine while at least one lives.

The point i was making is that a lot of people seem to believe that Divine Guardian is an automatic LoS which it isn´t. If celestine was to fail a LoS from a deathblow she would be suffering all the 6+D6 wounds and then passing them on to her Geminae.

Invun saves mean squat to deathblow.

 rawne2510 wrote:
For a single model to take all the wounds you would have to look out sir to the Geminae. The divine guardian rule is not an auto LoS.

I never said anything about Look Out Sir. You are not correctly resolving Destroyer Weapon hits.

Destroyer Weapons Attack Rolls do not generate wound pools. Each Destroyer Weapon Attack Roll is "instead of 1 [wound]". Celestine's rule passes off the entirety of the result of Destroyer Weapon Attack Roll to the closest Geminae.

no it doesn´t. the destroyer result isn´t a wound. You can´t just pass it on. you pass on the number of wounds created from the result not the result itself. Otherwise The ID effect of the hit would kill a germinae in 1 go from the 2-5 results which it doesn´t.

 rawne2510 wrote:
no it doesn´t. the destroyer result isn´t a wound. You can´t just pass it on. you pass on the number of wounds created from the result not the result itself. Otherwise The ID effect of the hit would kill a germinae in 1 go from the 2-5 results which it doesn´t.

You aren't resolving Destroyer Attacks correctly. There is no wound pool generated by the Destroyer Weapon hit. The entirety of the Destroyer Weapon Attack Roll is "instead of 1 wound".

Also, Destroyer Attacks are handled as str 10 so a result of 2-5 will pass of the result of that roll and ID a Geminae

Celestine doesn't roll for LOS, her rules say that her bodyguards take her wounds automatically.