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I've heard people use the term, but I haven't seen enough similarity to simply know what this means. Can you explain what a Death Star is?

P.S. I'm not asking about this:

Death Star units generally refer to an expensive unit that can deal a lot of damage and shrug off just about everything thrown at them.

By the way, in case you were wondering that is no moon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is an example - Eldar with Dark Eldar allies
Baron Sathonyx
2x Farseer with Jetbikee
10x Warlock with Jetbike

A couple of Warlocks take Conceal (grants the Caster Shrouded), Baron has Stealth, at least one of the Farseers get lucky and has Fortune. Baron runs at the front with his re-rollable 2+ Invuln save. Anything coming from the sides or rear has to deal with either a re-rollable 2+cover save (since the unit moved), re-rollable 3+ armour or re-rollable 4_ invuln.

Total unit cost? 835 points.

A death star is defined as a single super-unit that goes way beyond the offensive and defensive stats of a "normal" unit, obviously at a much greater point cost. For example, a basic unit of five TH/SS terminators is a powerful unit, but not a death star. It kills stuff, but it is far from unstoppable. A unit of ten with three HQ characters (with allies) is a death star. It is capable of wiping out anything that it attacks, short of another death star, and taking large amounts of enemy fire without losing the ability to crush anything in its path.

The advantage of a death star list is that you can point it at the biggest threat and wipe that threat off the table. It can immediately put your opponent on the defensive and dismantle their plans turn after turn.

The disadvantage of a death star list is that the death star is your entire army. You don't have many points left to spend on anything else, so an opponent that can counter your death star (whether by efficient shooting, tarpits and meatshield units to stall it long enough, or just winning on objectives) will easily deal with the rest of your army and win the game. And if anything goes wrong (failed morale test, bad rolling on armor saves, etc) you have no backup plan to bail you out.

 Happyjew wrote:
Death Star units generally refer to an expensive unit that can deal a lot of damage and shrug off just about everything thrown at them.

By the way, in case you were wondering that is no moon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is an example - Eldar with Dark Eldar allies
Baron Sathonyx
2x Farseer with Jetbikee
10x Warlock with Jetbike

A couple of Warlocks take Conceal (grants the Caster Shrouded), Baron has Stealth, at least one of the Farseers get lucky and has Fortune. Baron runs at the front with his re-rollable 2+ Invuln save. Anything coming from the sides or rear has to deal with either a re-rollable 2+cover save (since the unit moved), re-rollable 3+ armour or re-rollable 4_ invuln.

Total unit cost? 835 points.

Pretty much spot on. As far as where the term comes from, it's referencing the size, cost, and destructive power of the battle-station in question. A "Death Star" unit is excessively expensive, sometimes to the point of crippling everything else in your army; it is big, tough, and implacable, but often slow moving or slow to bring it's destructive power to bear and, lastly, "Death Star" units usually have so much destructive potential that engaging them is often suicidal, but exploit their key weaknesses and everything falls apart.

For example, if the above unit fails to generate Fortune, or if it suffers a bad hit from a Perils-inducing or anti-Psyker attack, it can be carefully picked apart by a savvy opponent. More often that not, however, the trick to dealing with a "death-star" is just to ignore it; most can only be in one place at a time (even if it can hold multiple objectives). Couple this with the fact that the rest of the army is going to be very limited, it's usually viable to just dance around the death star and pick off everything else, then engage at your leisure (sometimes not even necessary).

EDIT: Ninja'd by Peregrine; and more succinctly too!

Biker Lord w/ burning brand + Sorceror Lv3 + 10 Bikers + MoN =

Plasma and high strength pie plates are the exposed reactor core...

 Happyjew wrote:
Death Star units generally refer to an expensive unit that can deal a lot of damage and shrug off just about everything thrown at them.

By the way, in case you were wondering that is no moon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is an example - Eldar with Dark Eldar allies
Baron Sathonyx
2x Farseer with Jetbikee
10x Warlock with Jetbike

A couple of Warlocks take Conceal (grants the Caster Shrouded), Baron has Stealth, at least one of the Farseers get lucky and has Fortune. Baron runs at the front with his re-rollable 2+ Invuln save. Anything coming from the sides or rear has to deal with either a re-rollable 2+cover save (since the unit moved), re-rollable 3+ armour or re-rollable 4_ invuln.

Total unit cost? 835 points.

However, be careful when the enemy goes first and the enemy is named Tau able to take away cover.

Yup, the above posts are correct.
Do Imperial Guard have a death-star list?

My favourite Death Star is the RCDI (Royal Court Disco Inferno).
It's when you take 5-6 Lords, 5-6 Crypteks and two IC's.
I've seen those things go above the 1200 points easily, but they ARE almost unbeatable.

There are loads of available options for 'stars. My friend always used to run Logan, Arjac, Njal and 7 TH/SS WG, often with chainfists too. Engage at your peril....
IG as far as I know don't have one, I guess blobs with Azrael is half decent, given the right orders. Vendettas (except against Tau) are a bitch for their cost.
As for the RCDI, I'm a big fan and my cron army uses mini ones when I can, they can counter anything almost, you can even make 2 in big games

Kangodo wrote:
Do Imperial Guard have a death-star list?

Not really. The closest you can get would be a squadron of 3x LR Executioners for ~750 points, but it's not really a good idea. IG win by efficiency and spam, not by putting all our eggs in one T3/no-save basket.

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
Vendettas (except against Tau) are a bitch for their cost.

This is kind of missing the point about death stars. A Vendetta is a powerful and efficient unit, but it's also cheap. A list based around Vendettas is going to have several independent units wrecking stuff efficiently, not a single unstoppable ball of death. A death star has to be more than just a good unit, it's a unit that goes beyond the usual "powerful unit" level and into "I threw my whole army at it and it still tabled me" territory.

A 50-man IG blob with a fearless character is sort of a mini-deathstar.
Necrons get the disco court.
Chaos Daemons can throw 4 heralds of khorne into a unit of bloodcrushers for obscene cost and damage.
Chaos Marines have several flavors of lord with spawn or bikes.
That's just off the top of my head, every codex has something really expensive that you get all excited about, then dies to a pie plate.

 Badablack wrote:
A 50-man IG blob with a fearless character is sort of a mini-deathstar.

No it really isn't. Even for 50 guys it doesn't hit very hard, and it certainly isn't that hard to kill. There is a reason that 'blob' and 'deathstar' are different phrases.

One reason why Death starring is a fairly popular tactic is because dollars wise it's pretty light on the pocket and there's less stuff to paint. For the grey knights you could for example, spend your time painting several dozen acolytes, tanks, Coteaz, and all the supporting units, or you could buy Draigo and some dreads and maybe a storm raven or two and have a decent enough army with twenty or so models, a fearful wrecking ball of a unit, and save money and time on buying and painting models.

The death star had its uncovered exhaust port. Rerollable 2++ saved do not.

A real cheap death star is corbulo and 5 th/ss termis. Maybe supported with tycho. 330/505pts. Corbulo has a 3+ with a further 2+ for fnp. Anything st8 or above you give to the termis who also have a 2+/3++. Then you have the combined might of a rending st 6 corbulo 5 st10 termis and a st5 ignore all armour but strike at initiative tycho (these st values are on the charge).

Poly Ranger wrote:
A real cheap death star is corbulo and 5 th/ss termis. Maybe supported with tycho. 330/505pts. Corbulo has a 3+ with a further 2+ for fnp. Anything st8 or above you give to the termis who also have a 2+/3++. Then you have the combined might of a rending st 6 corbulo 5 st10 termis and a st5 ignore all armour but strike at initiative tycho (these st values are on the charge).

How do you intend to "give" the hits to a specific model? I thought in 6th allocation is determined by location for shooting. And in close combat the inflicting model(s) may allocate to any model in base contact.

For marines, i've used Lysander, a librarian with goi and 10 tac terminators with 2 cyclone ml's.

Lysander stands out front and tanks wounds giving re-rolls on bolter fire and the libby ports them around where needed. If any HQ's are still alive, Lysander charges in and hits them with his hammer.

Shame this won't be an effective tactic after next week.

Corbulo gets a 2+ look out sir rule as hes an IC. That means any model within 2" (the termis) can take the hit for him. Also you can use his re-roll if you fail it.

Don't forget Farsight and Shadowsun.

The now-legalised ShadowSight bomb has to be one of the worst ive seen on paper... a kick up the arse off 1.5K in points, it lands without scatter, kills everything within 12"-18" then assault jumps 3D6". Its obscene.

mini RCDIs do similar with combat. they land, 4 Crypteks wipe an average MEQ squad off the board, so your opponent throws something at them. If via shooting, all the shots bounce off 2+ Armour or 3+ Invuns. If via combat, about half your opponent's models are hitting their own unit, the other half cant damage very well due to T5 & 2+. Then they get hit with about 13 S7AP1 attacks.

good luck tanking all those...

The Necron Death Star I've not had the displeasure of fighting yet. But just 1 Lord is tough to kill, and the MindShackles are SOOOO irritating. I think that's the biggest Death Star right now.
I'm sure they'll get nerfed somehow next year when they get a new Codex, or in 2015....hopefully next year!

The Tau bomb certainly spells doom for anything near which it drops. But it's definitely not the hardest to deal with, just gotta spread units out, and then come at it from all sides with multiple blasts that ignore cover, and then multi-assault it, first with a tiny horde of who-cares-if-they-die models, then with big stuff to clobber them in combat.

It will be interesting to see what the Tyranids bring in couple months, but I'm sure the Space Marines will have some nasty combos to throw down this month....Battle Brothers really help stuff out in that respect.

Too bad my Chaos Marines and Daemons can't join each other, I think 2 Nurgle BIker Lords joined to Plague Drones would be pretty awesome!

But at least we have our 20 Flesh Hounds and 3 Jugger Heralds, who can be Blessed and Grimoired with pretty solid results....ideally Forewarning, and Endurance from a Tzeentch Herald and/or Fateweaver and/or Daemon Prince. In this case, it takes the Star Destroyers to help make the Death Star more deathly.

 IHateNids wrote:
The now-legalised ShadowSight bomb has to be one of the worst ive seen on paper... a kick up the arse off 1.5K in points, it lands without scatter, kills everything within 12"-18" then assault jumps 3D6". Its obscene.

mini RCDIs do similar with combat. they land, 4 Crypteks wipe an average MEQ squad off the board, so your opponent throws something at them. If via shooting, all the shots bounce off 2+ Armour or 3+ Invuns. If via combat, about half your opponent's models are hitting their own unit, the other half cant damage very well due to T5 & 2+. Then they get hit with about 13 S7AP1 attacks.

good luck tanking all those...

Actually you can't have both the 3d6 thrust movement and the deep strike without scatter (I go with the deep strike without scatter). Also it costs less than 1.5k points and it was always "legalized" you just have to understand how to play it.

While we're listing death stars, might as well mention the best of them all:

The Screamerstar.

4 Heralds of Tzeentch w/ discs, ML3, one has the grimoire.
9 Screamers.

One of the Heralds need the 4++ power from Divination, cast the Grimoire on the unit, good times for the opponent.

Thud wrote:
While we're listing death stars, might as well mention the best of them all:

The Screamerstar.

4 Heralds of Tzeentch w/ discs, ML3, one has the grimoire.
9 Screamers.

One of the Heralds need the 4++ power from Divination, cast the Grimoire on the unit, good times for the opponent.

I'm very curious about this Screamerstar. Does it deep strike? What does it have for defense? And offense?

scratch that:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2013/07/22/guest-tactica-the-screamerstar/

Omg that is simply ridiculous.

Screamers are Jetbikes, and have a slash attack if they fly over something (D3 S4 per model, ignoring cover I think) so have incredibly mobility and the ability to at least annoy things as it repositions.

What really makes them broken is getting Forewarning (4++ invulnerable) from Divination (which you have multiple Heralds to maximise your chance of getting) combined with the Grimore, which on a 3+ increases your invulnerable by 2, which gets them a 2+ invulnerable. Combine that with the fact they are Tzeentch Daemons, which means that they re-roll all 1's for saves you effectively have a unit with 2++ re-rollable. Oh and they have 2 wounds each. Its not an unstopable combo though, if you fail the 3+ then their invulnerable drops by 1 (which is why you bring Fateweaver for a free re-roll per turn for that) and in theory you can fail Forewarning (only Wolves and Nids can influence that now) but usually you get it a couple of times anyway.

Offensively they don't have that much punch but when combined with their defence it does the job, they never take wounds so they never lose combat in the first place. Base they have 3 S4 attacks which is enough to chew through horde units ok, or they can change them to a single S5 AP2 Armourbane attack which lets them kill anything short of T9. You always have Prescience, so they reliably get 5 or so kills against MEQ every turn.

Its rapidly risen in popularity recently because it is a great counter to Tau, which is one of the top tier armies atm. They can't kill the Council in time, so it ends up locking up half the Tau army (again the overwatch does basically nothing), giving the rest of the list time to close the distance. The best counter I have seen to it is GK Stormravens, who can force Perils on the Herald with the Grimore, but the unit is still a pain to deal with even with a 3++ or 4++ tbh.

 TheCadreofFi'rios wrote:

 IHateNids wrote:
The now-legalised ShadowSight bomb has to be one of the worst ive seen on paper... a kick up the arse off 1.5K in points, it lands without scatter, kills everything within 12"-18" then assault jumps 3D6". Its obscene.

mini RCDIs do similar with combat. they land, 4 Crypteks wipe an average MEQ squad off the board, so your opponent throws something at them. If via shooting, all the shots bounce off 2+ Armour or 3+ Invuns. If via combat, about half your opponent's models are hitting their own unit, the other half cant damage very well due to T5 & 2+. Then they get hit with about 13 S7AP1 attacks.

good luck tanking all those...

Actually you can't have both the 3d6 thrust movement and the deep strike without scatter (I go with the deep strike without scatter). Also it costs less than 1.5k points and it was always "legalized" you just have to understand how to play it.

That is why I say legalised. I mean you can now land w/o Scatter (as Farsight just does that in the supplement), and then 3D6 jump from Shadowsun which is your primary's Warlord.

You can only have one warlord which means you can only have one warlord trait active. So if you want the 3d6 movement you can have it but then your deep strike is totally useless or you can have deep strike without scatter and you get to go any where you want on the board for free.

that's ,my point, you can have both now, as Farsight just does it in the Enclaves book, its not his WL trait IIRC

 IHateNids wrote:
that's ,my point, you can have both now, as Farsight just does it in the Enclaves book, its not his WL trait IIRC

I don't know what supplement you're reading but in my copy it clearly says Warlord Trait: Through Boldness, Victory and then describes the no-scatter deep strike.

I don't have a copy, I was talking about something my mate said. He must've got something wrong...

apologies for going on about incorrect info people

As to screamercouncil/star shooting, I feel they can kick out a lot of damage. With the amount of divination boosts they can get, from perfect timing to misfortune and pre cog the heralds are mini fire platforms.

For example, just going with prescience with 4 ML3 heralds one with locus and flickering fire, they kick out 15 d6 of re rolling to hit (on 3s and precision on 6's) str6 shots. Lets take a average of 3.5 per d6, thats something like 53 shots hitting on 3;s re rolling and wounding on average 2's. Thats a lot of shots!.

For ap goodness, go for bolt of change, which with their mobility can be down right horrible (and frigging confusing as hell when you have a few of them with different strs when it comes to doubling models out) d6+4 + 1 (for locus) for str at ap2 and ignoring cover auto hitting everything on a 24inch line times by 2 or 3 will take out most units in one fell swoop.

Everything is 24inch though but with 12 movement and 24 inch boost they can easily get to where they need to be in one turn.

Against a farsight/shadow sun/libby bomb on friday I lost one unit of hounds to the bomb, most of another to str8 riptide blasts and 2 skyrays, my return firepower cost him all his drones, 3 suits and the libby. Precision shooting the drones just to take away his firepower and leaving 20 wounds on the libby and suits. With Misfortune would have been a lot worse!.

so yes the screamercouncil is quite a jack of all trades. It is let down though by only being able to shoot one target a turn which with that much firepower could well overkill it meaning it then cannot charge (or multi assault as it likes doing)

The only other deathstar that can kick out that much firepower is the farsight bomb and possibly a paladin deathstar The seer council is a better force multipler imo and the farsight bomb is a better fire base, paladins are a better CC unit BUT none have a 2++ rerollable.