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There's often a great deal of talk around Death Stars and the rules (particularly around characters) needing to focus on preventing them from returning at almost any cost.

The thing is, when I thought about my own experience, I struggle to bring to mind more than a few examples from decades of play. And then only one that I actually saw on a regular basic (that being Draigo and a Librarian in a unit of Terminators).

Presumably, though, others out there have had rather different experiences. Thus, I'm curious to hear what you consider to be the most egregious examples from 3rd-7th edition and your experience with them (or else why you found them so difficult to deal with).

I don't remember a great deal of 40k stuff but for HH there were some brutal ones:
- Lorgar with the Invisibility psychic power with either a brick of Gal Vorbak or Terminators. Impossible to shoot and murderous in combat.
- Magnus and a brick of Sekhmet. Combined with Tsons basic rules I'm glad I only ever played it once in a test game to see how bad it was.
- Valdor with ten Hetaron Guard. A third of an entire 3k list made up of 11 models that could themselves take on an entire 3k list. The Prospero book was a dark time for HH.

In 5th
Ork nob bikers with painboy
Grey knight Terminators
Space marine smash fether build. (He was a marine captain on bike. unkillable and destroyed everything, spent 2 turns shooting 2000 pts marines on him and did like 1 or 2 wounds wich he regenerated)

In 6th, anything with invisibility.

In 7th it mostly revolved around guys that could pick (and not just roll randomly) the infamous invisibility psychic power.

There were Nob bikers and Grey Kinght Paladins in 5th ed., which both worked by using different equipment on each model to spread wounds around.

Thunderwolf Cavalry and attached characters could do something similar, but they were even more All Eggs In One Basket due to their high points cost.

In 6th (and 1st ed. HH) Invisibility was broken.

Back in 3rd edition, IIRC the Ulthwe Strike Force Seer Council had no maximum unit size, so you could theoretically do some crazy things with it; although I never actually ever saw anybody try.

For a brief while in 7th ed. fearless Imperial Guard infantry blobs with hidden power axes and power fists were quite in vogue.

 Lord Damocles wrote:


For a brief while in 7th ed. fearless Imperial Guard infantry blobs with hidden power axes and power fists were quite in vogue.

This was not a thing LOL

While many of the true Death Stars were unlikely to be seen outside of Tournament Play, they very much existed.

The Bark Star was one that abused Formations to make a mega unit filled with characters and 50 Fenrisian Wolves with 4++ and FNP.

 iddy00711 wrote:
Hey, going through the ETC list for 2016 when I spotted this list...

Primary detachment

-dark angel CAD

HQ1: Sammael -200
Troop1: 5 scouts -55
Troop2: 5 scouts -55
LOW: Azrael -215 (warlord)

Total -525

Secondary detachment -librarius conclave

HQ2: Tigurius -165
HQ3: librarian, bike, lvl2, force axe -110
HQ4: librarian, bike, lvl2, forceaxe -110
HQ5: librarian, bike, lvl2, force axe -110
HQ6: librarian, bike, lvl2, force axe -110

Total -605

Tertiary detachment -wyrdstorm brotherhood

HQ7: rune priest, helm of durfast, runic axe, jump pack -95
HQ8: rune priest, runic axe, jump pack -75
HQ9: rune priest, runic axe, jump pack -75
HQ10: rune priest, runic axe, jump pack -75

Total -320

Quarternary formation -wolfkin formation

FA1: 10 fenrisian Wolves -80
FA2: 10 fenrisian Wolves -80
FA3: 10 fenrisian Wolves -80
FA4: 10 fenrisian Wolves -80
FA5: 10 fenrisian Wolves -80


Not only is it on a top ETC list but it came first place at a rather competitive tournament in the UK. To me it looks like a pile of crap, but someone must have an idea about how it works...

 Lord Damocles wrote:


Back in 3rd edition, IIRC the Ulthwe Strike Force Seer Council had no maximum unit size, so you could theoretically do some crazy things with it; although I never actually ever saw anybody try.

I suffered a Seer Council of more than 700 points if I remember it well, and lose to it every time until I was sick of it but I wouldn't be surprised if it was hard countered by some lists that just didn't exist in my local meta. I ran a Blood angels army with a single rhino so it was far from a competitive meta, but lists like that made everyone try to play the best list they could to put some fight. Of course my best list at the time was almost certainly not the best list that could be made with the miniatures I had.

At the end of 7th I saw a lot of GK + Celestine as a deathstar.

Also anything with invisibility could form a death star in 7th.

oh there's a whole bunch of them:

3rd edition:
Ulthwe Seer Council - unlimited size, doubled range of all their powers. could basically Mind War anything that wasn't a tank into submission, and singing spear the tanks...

Flesh Tearers Death Company - another massive unit, Flesh Tearers had a rule that and the first model that succumbed to the Red Thirst MUST be the unit sergeant
You know, the guy normally carrying a powerfist or power weapon AND Command, vet and Terminator squads lost a second member on a 5+, not just a 6. So flesh tearers inevitably ended up with a huge Death Company equipped with the nastiest weapons available, and that's before you attach a character

4th Edition:
Nob Bikers - squad of fast, tough Nobs equipped with Power Klaws, with a Waagh banner making them WS5. Not much more to say

5th Edition:
DraigoWing - What most people think of when they think of a Death Star: Kaldor Draigo + Grey Knight Librarian both attached to a Paladin squad loaded up on Falchions with a Force Stave and a Daemonhammer. This squad will buzzsaw through most of the enemy in melee, especially if the Librarian has the Quickening

WolfStar - Attach a whole bunch of Wolf Lords to Wolf Guard. Give each Wolf Lord two Fenrisian Wolves. That's it.

WraithWing - Wraithseer/wraithguard/wraithlords + a Farseer. Incredibly tough, incredibly annoying, will either steamroller everything or die laughably fast

6th Edition:
AdLance - Adamantine Lance Knight Formation. put 3 knights together and if they're within 3" of reach other they get to reroll their Ion Shield saves, charge distances and make D3 Hammer of Wrath attacks instead of 1. Brutal.

BeaStar - pretty sure this was a bunch of Dark Eldar beastmasters?

Super Friends - Grab as many characters from as many different chapters as you can and lump them together for ultimate special rules overlap (thanks to the Allies matrix listing them as Battle Brothers). Normally mounted on bikes and called a BikeStar

Jetseer Council - like the 3rd edition one, but on bikes, normally attached to Harlequin jetbikes so they inherited the Hit & Run rule & could benefit from Fortune

ScreamerStar - Fateweaver + heralds on disks + winged Daemon Princes + Screamers. Very fast, very deadly. Used the Grimoire of True Names to give one unit a 2++. Generated a truly obnoxious amount of Warp Charge that meant the nastiest powers WERE going to get through

7th Edition:
Draigostar - He's back! and this time he's hanging out with his gal pal Celestine

Green Tide - A formation that lets you essentially combine a whole Ork army into a single unit AND gives it Hammer of Wrath attacks AND lets it use Power of the Waagh! every single turn. Unlike other deathstars this isn't a bunch of powerful characters joining a unit, it's a bunch of units joining together into a huge green critter-ball of death. And they act as 90 ablative wounds for the warboss and 10 power klaw-equipped Nobs

Charax's list is pretty comprehensive. Although I'm not sure what they mean by WraithWing as most of those units couldn't be rolled together. The eldar bike council was definitely a thing in 5th edition though; lots of warlocks on bikes joined by 1 or 2 farseers who used Fortune to let the unit reroll its saves. I forget whether warlock bikers had multiple wounds to let you take advantage of 5th edition wound allocation shenanigans.

I didn't see the harlequin bike council much in 6th (didn't they come out in 7th?), but the bike council of 6th still had Fortune plus the Runes of Battle table for +1 to their rerollable saves, -1 to being hit, etc. I don't recall whether invisibility existed at this time.

Then 7th just did the same thing but definitely had invisibility.

Beast Star was a thing. Iirc, it was basically a bunch of drukhari beast units (not sure if clawed fiends were considered good at the time) lead by Baron Sathonyx (a character on a skyboard with an archon shadowfield to help tank for your squishy beasts.) The baron went away when the 7th edition drukhari codex came out though, so I think this was a relatively short-lived deathstar? Unless the baron got replaced by someone later on. It's maybe worth noting that the Baron also spent time in seer councils for a while because he gave the unit a 2+ invuln save which could then be rerolled thanks to Fortune.

Bark Bark Star (adding a character to a huge pack of fenrisian wolves and then tossing some buffs on it) was a thing because the wolves were pretty fast, kind of cheap, and killed stuff moderately well.

Green Tide was weird in that it was definitely one big super unit, but it wasn't especially hard to kill individual models. So like, you could spend the whole game without killing a single unit (technically) but still have a 1500 point pile of ork corpses. Still probably counts as a death star, but I don't recall ever feeling like I was facing a death star when I played against it.

This is probably partially because 7th edition wound allocation meant you were removing the nearest orks as casualties. So while all those hidden characters and power klaw nobz were safely tucked away within the unit, You could use positioning to keep away from the worst of their offense for a few turns. My buddy played this a lot for a while.

7th edition saw a lot of different death stars.

In my meta the ones going strong were the grav ones. Either centurion or bikes with gravs, then one invulnerable character (2++ rerollable of some kind) to tank all the attacks to the unit, invisibility and sometimes Coteaz.

I think 7th edition (and some 6th edition?) You had thise one spell that granted you invisabilaty. And then you added some 5 characters to a very strong unit and turned them invisible.

While not a deathstar I did run Baron Satonyx in dark eldar back in the day. I had 15 khymrea who had 4++ and I belive some 6 (or was it 10?) razorwing flocks. The rwzorwing had a crazy amount of rending attack (6 = wound) and the khynrea could attack but also soak damage very well.

The baron gave then stealth (-1 to hit) and hit anr run. With hit and runn I could move 3d6 away, and I believe thourgh enemies when I fell back and then you could charge again. While it was not very powerfull it vas a very though units, hard to hit and kill, it had a lot of damage in it. And it moved vert fast and pingponged around. Very fun.

The ones I remember most starkly are:

3rd edition death co. Not really a modern DS but abuseable list design meant a massive ugly DC unit.

Skip fwd a few editions we had nobz bikers and seer council. Both obnoxious but probably semi tame by todays standards.

Then end of 6th through 7th the real nastys.. all the above plus anything invisible and/or teleporting or with large area denial and ridiculous durability. Typically with a mix of fleeting, rending, hit and run, FNP etc. These were primarily seer council, draigo and centurions but possibly different retinue or other innovations such as forgeworld character for FNP etc.
And beast star with maxed beasts plus the baron plus Jb farseer. Both backed by msu alternate deploying units with alpha strike or cheap scoring potential.
I suppose honorable mention to the infiltrating fleeting hammernators + shrike.

Those are the main offenders I faced, or wielded.

Edit- I'll add a slightly jankier but IMO under the radar variant in grots + archon + phoenix lords (various). Awesomely durable fire magnet and damn killy too. Gods of endless war I pray to you now.. give me this build back and I forgive all the other 10th edition bs.

40K's had some nasty deathstars in the past, but I'm not really worried about deathstars in 10th because the way objectives are handled now makes putting all your eggs in one basket a bad idea. Uber-tough units still won't be able to hold more than one objective at a time, and uber-killy ones only get you so far if the enemy still wins on VP.

It remains to be seen what sort of buffs are available in any case.

 catbarf wrote:
40K's had some nasty deathstars in the past, but I'm not really worried about deathstars in 10th because the way objectives are handled now makes putting all your eggs in one basket a bad idea. Uber-tough units still won't be able to hold more than one objective at a time, and uber-killy ones only get you so far if the enemy still wins on VP.

It remains to be seen what sort of buffs are available in any case.

Also, things like Oath of Moment or Thousand Sons' ability to turn off a single unit's saves entirely seem like they're designed to discourage big, expensive squads.

I never ran it, but I've heard tell of the Guilliman Parking Lot.

I ran something different with Guilliman - 5 Aggressors for Chaff Dakka and Fists, 5 BGV for MC Powersword ginsu and Storm Shields, G for Auras, a Chaplain for Litanies, Tiggy for Buffs (Phsycic and his bespoke, a Primaris Chapter Ancient for ObSec and buffs, and a Chapter Apothecary for ressurection - and there was usually a Victrix for the Bodyguard rule but that was least effective and first cut.

In 7th I ran Sisters and Space wolves.
Wolf Lord on wolf
2 Iron Priest on wolf
3-5 Thundercav (can't remember how many)
St Celestine
SoB Priest

You got rerolls to hit, reroll to wound, and reroll to failed armor saves, and FNP.
You also got hit and run so you could bounce out of combat on their turn and then get all the fun charge bonuses again.

I recall one game I played a SW player and that star ate 20 thundercav, 19 Wulfen, a Wolf lord, and i don't know how many grey wolf squads.

It took 1 wound.

 vipoid wrote:
There's often a great deal of talk around Death Stars and the rules (particularly around characters) needing to focus on preventing them from returning at almost any cost.

The thing is, when I thought about my own experience, I struggle to bring to mind more than a few examples from decades of play. And then only one that I actually saw on a regular basic (that being Draigo and a Librarian in a unit of Terminators).

Presumably, though, others out there have had rather different experiences. Thus, I'm curious to hear what you consider to be the most egregious examples from 3rd-7th edition and your experience with them (or else why you found them so difficult to deal with).

Bark Bark Star, Screamer star, Seer star, Cabal Star, Smashfether star, Centurion star, etc. There were so many goddam deathstars in 7th it was ridiculous.

Screamer star had a rerollable 2++ invul and got powercrept by even more outlandish deathstars. Riptides could shoot twice per turn and marines had unlimited free transports and they were STILL doggak by the end of the edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 deviantduck wrote:
In 7th I ran Sisters and Space wolves.
Wolf Lord on wolf
2 Iron Priest on wolf
3-5 Thundercav (can't remember how many)
St Celestine
SoB Priest

You got rerolls to hit, reroll to wound, and reroll to failed armor saves, and FNP.
You also got hit and run so you could bounce out of combat on their turn and then get all the fun charge bonuses again.

I recall one game I played a SW player and that star ate 20 thundercav, 19 Wulfen, a Wolf lord, and i don't know how many grey wolf squads.

It took 1 wound.

I had an Ironhands Libconclave deathstar with SmashFether that took up about 1500 points hit a more normal Bark Bark star that took like 1700, UNDER SISTERS OF SILENCE and we did exactly 4 wounds total to each other. He did 2 wounds to my smashfether (healed one with It Will Not Die) and I killed 2 dogs.

Over 3000pts of models did a combined 4 wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Charax's list is pretty comprehensive.

Not with 7th.

By the end of 7th there were over a dozen different varieties of unkillable death stars. Riptide wing and Battlecompany had been almost entirely crept out of the meta.

are we all forgetting trip-tide(7th)?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:


For a brief while in 7th ed. fearless Imperial Guard infantry blobs with hidden power axes and power fists were quite in vogue.

This was not a thing LOL

I forget the exact build and never saw it in the wild, but I remember there were a few niche instances of big guard blobs - though more for being cheap and resilient tarpits than anything. I cannot for the life of me remember the exact loadout but it was either blob up several Infantry Squads, or take a 50 man strong Conscript Squad, throw in a Priest and Commissar for melee buffs and power weapons, and then there was either a Dark Angels or a Blood Angels character who gave the unit they were in a 4+ invuln save. I think the niche was less actively killing things with the infantry, and more just blocking off an entire section of the board with a sign saying "going here is more trouble than it is worth". Much like using Armored Sentinels to hold up fearless infantry that didn't have anything stronger than say S5 melee being forced to strike that frontal AV12 all game.

Niche, but it existed to an extent at least.

 kurhanik wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:


For a brief while in 7th ed. fearless Imperial Guard infantry blobs with hidden power axes and power fists were quite in vogue.

This was not a thing LOL

I forget the exact build and never saw it in the wild, but I remember there were a few niche instances of big guard blobs - though more for being cheap and resilient tarpits than anything. I cannot for the life of me remember the exact loadout but it was either blob up several Infantry Squads, or take a 50 man strong Conscript Squad, throw in a Priest and Commissar for melee buffs and power weapons, and then there was either a Dark Angels or a Blood Angels character who gave the unit they were in a 4+ invuln save. I think the niche was less actively killing things with the infantry, and more just blocking off an entire section of the board with a sign saying "going here is more trouble than it is worth". Much like using Armored Sentinels to hold up fearless infantry that didn't have anything stronger than say S5 melee being forced to strike that frontal AV12 all game.

Niche, but it existed to an extent at least.

IIRC it was a Dark Angels special character (Azrael, maybe?), but I think that was the closest IG've ever gotten to having a true 'deathstar' unit.
Edit:1d4chan still had the list in their old Tactica, it was Azrael.

 waefre_1 wrote:

Spoiler:

 kurhanik wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:


For a brief while in 7th ed. fearless Imperial Guard infantry blobs with hidden power axes and power fists were quite in vogue.

This was not a thing LOL

I forget the exact build and never saw it in the wild, but I remember there were a few niche instances of big guard blobs - though more for being cheap and resilient tarpits than anything. I cannot for the life of me remember the exact loadout but it was either blob up several Infantry Squads, or take a 50 man strong Conscript Squad, throw in a Priest and Commissar for melee buffs and power weapons, and then there was either a Dark Angels or a Blood Angels character who gave the unit they were in a 4+ invuln save. I think the niche was less actively killing things with the infantry, and more just blocking off an entire section of the board with a sign saying "going here is more trouble than it is worth". Much like using Armored Sentinels to hold up fearless infantry that didn't have anything stronger than say S5 melee being forced to strike that frontal AV12 all game.

Niche, but it existed to an extent at least.

IIRC it was a Dark Angels special character (Azrael, maybe?), but I think that was the closest IG've ever gotten to having a true 'deathstar' unit.
Edit:1d4chan still had the list in their old Tactica, it was Azrael.

Ah fair enough, that sounds right. For some reason I was thinking it was Mephiston, but its been so long I figured I'd cover my bases and just say one of the "Angels" chapters. Main place I saw it touted was in threads here by...damn I forget who. Jidmah? Jancor? It was a "J" name.

I like the idea of allying stuff in and mixing and matching but damn did it have lots of knock on effects. Even if I'm not fond of it, it makes me understand at least a bit why 10th is locking characters to specific units.

The main one I can comment on is the Nob Biker deathstar.

Max unit of Nobs on Warbikes all with slightly different wargear choices so you had to allocate a wound to each model before you started losing them.

Warboss on Warbike for more damage, Painboy on warbike for FNP. I'm pretty sure you could take a big mek with KFF on a warbike for a 5++ but I may be misremembering.

So it was a very tough, fast moving troops choice (thanks to the warboss rules of the time) that pulped whatever it hit. Anything it couldn't outright kill was run down after the unit fled from melee.

It's main weaknesses were other deathstar units and it's less than amazing LD once it started taking casualties

Breton wrote:
I never ran it, but I've heard tell of the Guilliman Parking Lot.

I ran something different with Guilliman - 5 Aggressors for Chaff Dakka and Fists, 5 BGV for MC Powersword ginsu and Storm Shields, G for Auras, a Chaplain for Litanies, Tiggy for Buffs (Phsycic and his bespoke, a Primaris Chapter Ancient for ObSec and buffs, and a Chapter Apothecary for ressurection - and there was usually a Victrix for the Bodyguard rule but that was least effective and first cut.

Parking lots aren't deathstars, though admittedly if you want the most devastating parking lot 5th ed guard leafblower got you covered. Now that was a parking lot.

 kurhanik wrote:

 waefre_1 wrote:

Spoiler:

 kurhanik wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:


For a brief while in 7th ed. fearless Imperial Guard infantry blobs with hidden power axes and power fists were quite in vogue.

This was not a thing LOL

I forget the exact build and never saw it in the wild, but I remember there were a few niche instances of big guard blobs - though more for being cheap and resilient tarpits than anything. I cannot for the life of me remember the exact loadout but it was either blob up several Infantry Squads, or take a 50 man strong Conscript Squad, throw in a Priest and Commissar for melee buffs and power weapons, and then there was either a Dark Angels or a Blood Angels character who gave the unit they were in a 4+ invuln save. I think the niche was less actively killing things with the infantry, and more just blocking off an entire section of the board with a sign saying "going here is more trouble than it is worth". Much like using Armored Sentinels to hold up fearless infantry that didn't have anything stronger than say S5 melee being forced to strike that frontal AV12 all game.

Niche, but it existed to an extent at least.

IIRC it was a Dark Angels special character (Azrael, maybe?), but I think that was the closest IG've ever gotten to having a true 'deathstar' unit.
Edit:1d4chan still had the list in their old Tactica, it was Azrael.

Ah fair enough, that sounds right. For some reason I was thinking it was Mephiston, but its been so long I figured I'd cover my bases and just say one of the "Angels" chapters. Main place I saw it touted was in threads here by...damn I forget who. Jidmah? Jancor? It was a "J" name.

I like the idea of allying stuff in and mixing and matching but damn did it have lots of knock on effects. Even if I'm not fond of it, it makes me understand at least a bit why 10th is locking characters to specific units.

I might have talked about guard super-blobs, but not with allies mixed in - one of the guys who started playing with me in 5th was always playing two catachan units of 40 guardsmen with priests, commissars, harker and possible other buff characters (guard had a ton of them back then) and backed the whole thing with guard artillery. These guardsmen easily hit just as hard as a unit of ork boyz and had no issues grinding down even powerful units like sanguine guard or TWC.

AFAIK the only allies available at that time were witch hunters (sisters+inquisition) and daemon hunters(GK+inquisition), and I'm sure he had neither.

But yes, I'd call these blobs death stars, they were just as troublesome to deal with as my nob bikers.

I also remember seer councils (jet bike or wave serpent based) being powerful death stars all the way from 4th to 7th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
The main one I can comment on is the Nob Biker deathstar.

Max unit of Nobs on Warbikes all with slightly different wargear choices so you had to allocate a wound to each model before you started losing them.

Warboss on Warbike for more damage, Painboy on warbike for FNP. I'm pretty sure you could take a big mek with KFF on a warbike for a 5++ but I may be misremembering.

So it was a very tough, fast moving troops choice (thanks to the warboss rules of the time) that pulped whatever it hit. Anything it couldn't outright kill was run down after the unit fled from melee.

It's main weaknesses were other deathstar units and it's less than amazing LD once it started taking casualties

Warbike, SAG and KFF were mutually exclusive until 7th - but at that point nob bikers were already nerfed into the ground.
The unit go its 5++ from the cybork upgrade.

It's main weakness was actually instant death, triggered by S8 due to the T4(5) nonsense of that time. Leafblower and longfang spam essentially ended the nob biker's era, though regular nobz in a battlewagon continued to be a staple in competitive lists until Codex:GK pretty much ended any chances of orks winning a tournament.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Green Tide was weird in that it was definitely one big super unit, but it wasn't especially hard to kill individual models. So like, you could spend the whole game without killing a single unit (technically) but still have a 1500 point pile of ork corpses. Still probably counts as a death star, but I don't recall ever feeling like I was facing a death star when I played against it.

I was surprised to see it here as well, but thinking about it, I feel like it qualifies. It essentially relied on stacking characters and their abilities with a powerful unit in order to super-charge it.
The ork codex at that time was so weak that hardly anyone really realized that, plus death stars at that time were usually stacked to be nigh unkillable.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
This is probably partially because 7th edition wound allocation meant you were removing the nearest orks as casualties. So while all those hidden characters and power klaw nobz were safely tucked away within the unit, You could use positioning to keep away from the worst of their offense for a few turns. My buddy played this a lot for a while.

That formation allowed the ork player to pick casualties instead of the shooting player, one of the main reasons for using (hammer of wrath was garbage). On top of that there were some MA+da lucky stikk shenanigans which could give most of the unit a re-rollable 2+ armor save.

 Jidmah wrote:

Warbike, SAG and KFF were mutually exclusive until 7th - but at that point nob bikers were already nerfed into the ground.
The unit go its 5++ from the cybork upgrade.

It's main weakness was actually instant death, triggered by S8 due to the T4(5) nonsense of that time. Leafblower and longfang spam essentially ended the nob biker's era, though regular nobz in a battlewagon continued to be a staple in competitive lists until Codex:GK pretty much ended any chances of orks winning a tournament.

Thanks for the correction Jid

 vipoid wrote:
There's often a great deal of talk around Death Stars and the rules (particularly around characters) needing to focus on preventing them from returning at almost any cost.

The thing is, when I thought about my own experience, I struggle to bring to mind more than a few examples from decades of play. And then only one that I actually saw on a regular basic (that being Draigo and a Librarian in a unit of Terminators).

Presumably, though, others out there have had rather different experiences. Thus, I'm curious to hear what you consider to be the most egregious examples from 3rd-7th edition and your experience with them (or else why you found them so difficult to deal with).

2+ Sv characters in Thunderwolf Cavalry (TWC) units with a 3+ Sv, the characters would tank AP3 wounds and the the TWC would tank AP 2 wounds. The whole unit would fight at full strength until you dealt a stupid amount of wounds to the unit because of Look Out, Sir. I fielded some deathstars in 5th and 6th edition with Necrons using the courts to get re-rolls on some saves.

In 8th I'd make an infantry deathball surrounding Obyron to benefit from his re-roll 1s to wound and focus fire on whatever I lit up with my +1 to hit Sautekh Stratagem.

Thanks for all the replies so far, guys.

It definitely looks like 7th was the biggest offender with its ally rules and broken spell tables.

Makes me realise just how much crap my group managed to avoid back in the day.

It was never a proper death star but you could do fun stuff with Inquisitors in 3rd and 4th.

Inquisitor in termi or artificer armor to take normal wounds, 3 Interrogators with storm shields to take any power weapons, and a bunch of cherubs and skulls as chaff.