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Abaddon is a death star. Just get him lots of ablative wounds. 35 plague zombies would work.

Do you think Commander Farsight and his 7 bodyguards with lots of drones make a good deathstar unit .

I run 17 Possessed/MoK/IoC/double Gift. If they make assault and that can with fleet and enough priority targets elsewhere in the list, they obliterate squads. Having 5++ is not the best durability but it usually is enough to ensure at least 12+ get to attack. Then they can just bounce. At the worst a deathstar is a major distraction.

I don't rely on my deathstar to win every game. I have other tools in the list. I dislike Harliestars and Seer councils because they are often the only path to victory. So if I stop them I stop you.

 Puretide1 wrote:
Do you think Commander Farsight and his 7 bodyguards with lots of drones make a good deathstar unit .

If Tau have a Deathstar, that is it.

Are their any good Tyranid Deathstars?

The only one I can think of is the Fex-star (3 carnifexs with a tyranid prime) but that seems to suffer from poor armor saves, high cost, slow movement. I'm not sure what kind of load-out is used for the fex-star either. HVC and a scything talon seems alright. Good range, decent damage to hurt vehicles, but the Carnifex poor BS is a downer. 2x devourers will limit the fex's melee power but man can you put out a ton of shots.

Carnifex's with double twin-linked Deathspitters are nasty.

Tyranids may not have a proper deathstar, but they have quite a few high damage units.

Prime with boneswords, Swarmlord and 3 guard with lashwhip/boneswords?

 Iranna wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
Death stars need to match the following criteria to work
* Resiliance
* Ability to deal damage
* Ability to effect targets.

I think this is a very good description of a deathstar's criteria, however, I would also contend that if something lacks one of these criteria - i.e the Serr council's lack of raw CC prowess - this does not stop them being a deathstar if the make up for that deficiency by excelling elsewhere, again i.e the Seer Council's extraordinary durability and ranged damage with Doom + Destructor.

Iranna.

Well, a Seer Council with an ordinary Farseer is an anvil unit. But if you include Eldrad and Yriel it becomes a hammer unit as well, since these two guys have cc weapons that ignore armour and wound on 2+. Also Yriel comes with the eye of wrath. A fortuned Council can survive this kind of attack made once per game.

Eldrad's WS5 and A1, he's not very powerful in CC. Yriel's a better CC unit, definitely.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Eldrad's WS5 and A1, he's not very powerful in CC. Yriel's a better CC unit, definitely.

Well, Eldrad is WS 6 with enhance and has 2 attacks, 3 on the charge.

Is there any chance of a dark eldar death star? No? Oh well, I'll be walking away from this thread then.

Not so fast! ...I don't have my codex to hand, is it possible for Lelith Hesperax to join a unit of Incubi? Double up with a Shadow Field Archon for extra durability.

What goes in a harliestar again?

 p_gray99 wrote:
Is there any chance of a dark eldar death star? No? Oh well, I'll be walking away from this thread then.

a grotstar is actually pretty powerful.
4 grots (liquifier and abberation with venomblade or scissorhand)+ haemi(liquifier) + archon tooled in a raider with a night shield.

tooled archon = combat drugs, shadowfield, soul trap, huskblade and PGL.

It isnt the best deathstar but it doesnt cost too much either. If grounded use the Haemi to LOS wounds around, if he dies no biggy he brought FC to the party. The archon tries to get his soul trap powered up and then he is a beatstick in CC. The abberation can win most challenges against chumps to allow you to use the archon to hunt ICs or rape the squad. Once powered up he will make short work of paladins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:
What goes in a harliestar again?

CWE harlies
Eldrad
Tooled Shadowfielded Archon
whatever other nasty character you like(phoinex lord, yiriel vect, Drazhar, or another shadowfielded archon)

 Exergy wrote:
CWE harlies
Eldrad
Tooled Shadowfielded Archon
whatever other nasty character you like(phoinex lord, yiriel vect, Drazhar, or another shadowfielded archon)

A pheonix lord goes well next so you have a place to dump your normal wounds onto without risking the shadowfield.

Lets say your harliestar is hit by a squad of ork boys that do 26 normal wounds and 3 PK wounds. You take the normal wounds onto the pheonix lord, then the 3 PK wounds on your shadow field.

This means that you have almost no chance of losing any tanking capabilities for the unit. At worst your PL takes one wound, but even then hes likely to not get hurt. If instead you ran two shadow fields, its possible that one archon would lose all his tanking ability.

 felixcat wrote:

I run 17 Possessed/MoK/IoC/double Gift. If they make assault and that can with fleet and enough priority targets elsewhere in the list, they obliterate squads. Having 5++ is not the best durability but it usually is enough to ensure at least 12+ get to attack. Then they can just bounce. At the worst a deathstar is a major distraction.

costs an arm and a leg and cant deal with 2+ saves, cant deal with 3+ saves most of the time. Also at it's cost it isnt really that survivable.

any termiantor, incubi, sang guard warptalons, DC will shred them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Exergy wrote:
CWE harlies
Eldrad
Tooled Shadowfielded Archon
whatever other nasty character you like(phoinex lord, yiriel vect, Drazhar, or another shadowfielded archon)

A pheonix lord goes well next so you have a place to dump your normal wounds onto without risking the shadowfield.

Lets say your harliestar is hit by a squad of ork boys that do 26 normal wounds and 3 PK wounds. You take the normal wounds onto the pheonix lord, then the 3 PK wounds on your shadow field.

This means that you have almost no chance of losing any tanking capabilities for the unit. At worst your PL takes one wound, but even then hes likely to not get hurt. If instead you ran two shadow fields, its possible that one archon would lose all his tanking ability.

not arguing but you can certainly tailor the last bit to your liking.

Whats CWE stand for? Its not coming up as a standard dakka abbreviation

 p_gray99 wrote:
Is there any chance of a dark eldar death star? No? Oh well, I'll be walking away from this thread then.

Well, I'd consider a Beastmaster unit led by the Baron.

Oh craftworld eldar?

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:
Oh craftworld eldar?

yes CWE = CraftWorld Eldar
DE = Dark Eldar

...stupid phone, can't work quotes...
Exergy - that possessed unit CAN take 2+, 3+ even more so. Let's say after some shooting that 10 models arrive, that's not nreasonable, and yet still a crazy amount of attacks being piledon. Plus with FC more of those attacks will wound. There will be some 1 rolls as a result, ans 2+ units aren't that big.

HOWEVER - I will agree that it's no deathstar. The resilience just isn't there, even with that big a squad, it could be taken out by a couple of lucky blasts.

 Super Ready wrote:
...stupid phone, can't work quotes...
Exergy - that possessed unit CAN take 2+, 3+ even more so. Let's say after some shooting that 10 models arrive, that's not nreasonable, and yet still a crazy amount of attacks being piledon. Plus with FC more of those attacks will wound. There will be some 1 rolls as a result, ans 2+ units aren't that big.

HOWEVER - I will agree that it's no deathstar. The resilience just isn't there, even with that big a squad, it could be taken out by a couple of lucky blasts.

those 17 possessed cost over 500 points. If you assume 10 of them will make it to combat that is 40 attacks on the charge, half hit, with FC 16.5 wound, 3 2+ saves fail. If you roll more attacks(1/3 chance) you will do 20% more damage, if you roll shred(1/3chance) you will do 3 more wounds but no additional failed saves and if you roll AP3(1/3 chance) you will do no additonal damage. For 500 points you could easily be facing a full 10 man unit of terminators which will strike down 4 guys in return. After the charge your possessed are screwed. Even if all 17 of them make it to combat and get off the charge they are unlikely to beat 2+ save units.


now think about 20 MoK marines with icon lead by your standard MoK chaos lord on jugger with sigil and axe of blind fury. This costs 150 potins less than the 17 possessed and is more resilant against somethings and due to the chaos lord going to do more damage against most things

Heh, well I didn't say they were the BEST option for the job. :p But, well argued.

Quick question; Is there an Imperial Guard Deathstar that isn't a powerblob? The only other thing I can think of is Straken + CCS + lots of bodyguards + Yarrick

My favorite Dark Eldar / Eldar Deathstar that isn't Harlequins:

5 Beastmasters
4 Razorwing Flocks
15 Khymerae
Baron Santhonyx
Farseer on Jetbike

Roll the Feel no Pain Warlord trait for the Baron, and forget about it.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Quick question; Is there an Imperial Guard Deathstar that isn't a powerblob? The only other thing I can think of is Straken + CCS + lots of bodyguards + Yarrick

Yarrick plus a max unit of Ogryns.

There aren't as many deathstars as the internet likes to believe. We like to pretend that there's this cool secret world that we're a part of and no one else understands, but outside of Draigowing and nob bikers it's not very effective.

Someone mentioned blob guard being a deathstar ffs. That's genuinely laughable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Yarrick plus a max unit of Ogryns.

...is an expensive way to lose.

 shamroll wrote:
Are their any good Tyranid Deathstars?

The only one I can think of is the Fex-star (3 carnifexs with a tyranid prime) but that seems to suffer from poor armor saves, high cost, slow movement. I'm not sure what kind of load-out is used for the fex-star either. HVC and a scything talon seems alright. Good range, decent damage to hurt vehicles, but the Carnifex poor BS is a downer. 2x devourers will limit the fex's melee power but man can you put out a ton of shots.

I played against a very solid Tyranid Deathstar not long ago. I know it was solid because I threw my Deathstar at it, which promptly got omnomnomified.


Swarmlord w/ 4 Boneswords and all Biomancy
1 Prime w/ lashwhip
1 tyrant guard

This is a single unit. The Swarmlord beefs himself up with Iron Arm and the unit enjoys majority toughness 7-9. The Prime challenges any characters and lashes them down to I1 while the Swarmlord eats things. Like a proper Deathstar, the real problem with this unit is that if you focus any high caliber firepower on it you are ignoring the rest of the Tyranid army, like Tervigons pooping out troops and huge swarms of gribbly death that can and WILL drag you down even if you manage to kill or seriously injure the Swamstar.

At any rate, in direct combat in Turn 3 without either unit having taken very many wounds at all, his Swamstar put a "smackdown" on Abaddon and his unit of Chosen. I sac'd a squad champion to tank the Prime, and let Abaddon avoid Lash Whip, but he promptly rolled a 1 for his Daemon Weapon and so went down to WS 1. Although he still dealt wounds these got allocated around.. I think killing the tyrant guard, which also counts as a character.

So, of course, Abaddon rolled a 22 and Spawned himself. Swarmlord then proceeded to clean house.

Even though this was not an ideal situation for my Deathstar, I don't really expect it to go any better UNLESS I could repeat the process of tanking the Prime and forcing the Swarmlord to take saves from Abaddon. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen because I can't control "his" positioning of the Prime, and the Swarmlord will always go on higher initiative (as high as 9).

In manlier combat, like an actual challenge, the Swarmlord steamrolls Abaddon by striking first and dealing wounds that force rerolls of my Invulnerable saves. Not much to do.


I now run Abaddon with a blob of 20 cultists who act purely as ablative wounds. It's not technically a Deathstar, because if people shoot at it.. well, it dies, but Abaddon by himself is enough of a monster in close combat and I like spending points in other units. The cultists are more of an Abaddon-delivery mechanism that serve as ablative wounds so that when he reaches combat, it's at full wounds.

 JGrand wrote:

Vindicators can deal with any deathstar by SS deathstars.

No reason to be scared of a blob of Paladins when you can obliterate them in a round with 2 Vindicators.

Or with against a smart opponent who uses Draigo and good spacing, maybe do 1-2 wounds...but whatever...

Added to the 24" range of the Demolisher, and then factor in the 24" of the 4 Psycannons you are about to face, probably re-rolling to hit from Prescience as well, I doubt that Vindicator would get close enough.

 Testify wrote:
Someone mentioned blob guard being a deathstar ffs. That's genuinely laughable. .

Guard benifit greatly from special rules conferred through allies -- hence why I mentioned multiple ICs.

Take the following, for example.
50 guard
- 5 lascannons
- 5 PG/MGs
- Wolf Priest w/Saga of Hunter
- Rune Priest with divination
- PCS nearby

So you have a squad that has the following special rules
- Outflank
- Rerolling to-hits
- Rerolling to-wounds of a 1
- Stealth
- ATSKNF
In addition the PCS can give orders to the squad, such as FRFSRF.

So lets go over the deathstar criteria.
* Resiliance
Check. 50 models getting a 4+ cover in area terrain or a 3+ cover in ruins makes for a durable squad

* Ability to deal damage
Check. 5 TL LCs gives a good chance to hurt tanks. PGs/LGs give a good chance to hurt infantry. PE

* Ability to effect targets.
Check. Outflanking when required. Being able to effect targets starting turn 2.

The blob does have its counters, but it also handles some things very well.