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.

Howdy, folks!

Most everyone is sick to death of hyper-powerful death stars. Until now, the most common suggestion for fixing the problem is to ban battle brothers to avoid the crazy unit combinations. I myself was a proponent of a modified version where BB could not join units from other detachments, but could cast psychic powers and benefit from warlord traits.

This idea is probably obsolete. Several books have the capability to create mega death stars in-book without needing allies. If you ban BB tomorrow, the Eldar Jetseer council loses hit and run from the Baron, or it takes a Phoenix Lord and gives up three shots at Fortune, but it’s still potentially broken. The Screamerstar, underwhelming as it is, still works. The new Astra Militarum is more than capable of fielding ridiculously strong death stars without tossing any Space Marine characters into the mix.

Banning BB outright also causes problems like Tyranid synapse not working on their allied formations, so it’s more complex than you think at first.

So banning BB doesn’t fix the problem. In fact, doing so probably limits the number of armies that can compete because not every book is equally good.

Instead of banning BB, how about one simple house rule.

A unit may only ever be joined by a single independent character at any time.

Instantly, AM blobs with Priests and Yarrick and whatever else are fixed. No more O’vesa star. Beaststar is gone. Gravstar is out. You can have Yarrick leading 50 Guardsmen, but no Priest to give him rerolls to his saves. You can have a Priest keeping 50 Conscripts Fearless, but he'll have to test on his own LD to use his hymns instead of Azrael's. If you want to use Primaris Psykers to TL your entire army, you'll have to find units to stash them in. Absolutely everyone is affected equally. Deathstars like Wraiths and Draigowing still exist, but they are not egregious.

What is not 100% fixed is Screamerstar and Jetseers. With Jetseers, you can still take two Farseers and simply put the one that gets Fortune with the Warlocks while the other rides with Windriders. The upshot is, the one with the Shard of Anaris may not get Fortune. With Screamerstar, you can put a single Tzerald with Forewarning in the unit, but the Grimoire bearer has to be in some other rather kiillable unit. However, in both cases, the power of those two death stars is greatly diminished. Jetseers without Hit and Run is not nearly as bad as the current situation, and a Screamerstar with only one Tzerald is kind of toothless.

This fix lets you keep your allies, which are pretty fun, but stymies the rules-stacking for everyone out there, including the in-codex abuses.

Nuke Battle Brothers from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. I have great hopes for 6.5.

slaede wrote:
Howdy, folks!

]A unit may only ever be joined by a single independent character at any time.

Nice elegant and simple. I like it. Helps curtail a lot of abusive tactics while allowing players a lot of freedom.

Coldsteel wrote:
Nuke Battle Brothers from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. I have great hopes for 6.5.

Banning battle brothers does not fix the problem for reasons already explained.

Nuke battlebrothers from orbit? You can't be serious. Your just a grunt. No offence but that rule has a multimillion dollar price tag...

I think we have a winner!

 Hyglar's Hellraiser wrote:
Nuke battlebrothers from orbit? You can't be serious. Your just a grunt. No offence but that rule has a multimillion dollar price tag...

They can bill me!

Coldsteel wrote:
Nuke Battle Brothers from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. I have great hopes for 6.5.

Nah, keep battle brothers, just prevent allied ICs to attatch to other squads. Or do what OP says

I feel a little jipped on credit:

 buddha wrote:
I still think the easiest comp that doesn't ban anything is just to limit the number of independent characters in a unit to 1 at any given time. Boom, deathstars solved.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/589236.page

But it really does solve most every issue. Even screamerstar goes down because it really relies on multiple heralds in the same unit to be truly effective.

 buddha wrote:
I feel a little jipped on credit:

 buddha wrote:
I still think the easiest comp that doesn't ban anything is just to limit the number of independent characters in a unit to 1 at any given time. Boom, deathstars solved.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/589236.page

But it really does solve most every issue. Even screamerstar goes down because it really relies on multiple heralds in the same unit to be truly effective.

I assure you I never saw that. But you thought of it first!

The only thing that would suck is if you are allowing people to play the 30k Legion list from Forgeworld.(I play list, it's quite fun.) Their is alot of HQ choices who's whole point is bassicly to go int he same squad as your warlord to make him better in CC. None of thows are NEARLY as broken like alot of the dirt ball tactics you listed.

I had to think about this for abit.

In the end I think if your going to limit one IC per squad, you ALSO need to remove the benafits of battle brothers. I think this would be fair. Feels hypocritical to ban muti-IC well still allowing the benafits of battle brothers.

I was toying with the idea of only allowing 1 Psyker per army, but I think your solution is even better really.

The only quibble from first blush is that the current badboy winner is Flying Circus. Your blog goes into painful detail how effective it is. While this is a brilliant idea it does leave only that daemon build as the build. Im certain a missile can be taken to it as well but it doesnt quite get swept up like most of the other offenders.

 lazarian wrote:
The only quibble from first blush is that the current badboy winner is Flying Circus. Your blog goes into painful detail how effective it is. While this is a brilliant idea it does leave only that daemon build as the build. Im certain a missile can be taken to it as well but it doesnt quite get swept up like most of the other offenders.

Agreed. The last thing I want is circuses everywhere. The 2+/4+ goes a ways toward fixing this, but if it became too dominant, I would want something done. Perhaps 2+/5+ is more fair as that's the same as 3+/3+.

slaede wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
The only quibble from first blush is that the current badboy winner is Flying Circus. Your blog goes into painful detail how effective it is. While this is a brilliant idea it does leave only that daemon build as the build. Im certain a missile can be taken to it as well but it doesnt quite get swept up like most of the other offenders.

Agreed. The last thing I want is circuses everywhere. The 2+/4+ goes a ways toward fixing this, but if it became too dominant, I would want something done. Perhaps 2+/5+ is more fair as that's the same as 3+/3+.

For now I think the end of the month will probably see to it that the current meta goes wayward regardless. MC's, allies, flyers and other things will be changed to the point they no longer are top. At that point a shinny new bolder will have freshly rolled down the hill for us to collectively push up again.

Too extreme. Basically, this one simple rules change spells the death of the deathstar army. I am against that. Deathstars provide variety in playstyle. The normal deathstar isn't really the problem. The problem is the mega-deathstar.

Of all the suggestions that I've seen, the one I still like the most is IC's can never join a unit that is not a part of their detachment. It still allows the normal deathstar, which has existed forever, but at the same time, it curbs the super-deathstar.

Yes, screamerstar will still exist. The "normal" seer council (sans Baron) will still exist. Draigowing will still be there. So what? These deathstars have always existed before (except the screamerstar). No one had a problem with them in previous editions. I don't see why they need to be ended now. Break up the mega-deathstars, but don't put a gimp in my playstyle choice. Normal deathstars can still be fun to play (and play against).

This solution would just lead to players fielding other broken units. Deathstars can be beaten by TAC armies. I'm more of an advocate for developing better tactics and strategy to win rather than using house rules. The problem with house rules is if one is accepted then more will eventually follows. Also where do you draw the line? You're introducing a mechanic to curb one perceived problem that also restricts others fielding far tamer lists, thus unfairly impacting them.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
This solution would just lead to players fielding other broken units. Deathstars can be beaten by TAC armies. I'm more of an advocate for developing better tactics and strategy to win rather than using house rules. The problem with house rules is if one is accepted then more will eventually follows. Also where do you draw the line? You're introducing a mechanic to curb one perceived problem that also restricts others fielding far tamer lists, thus unfairly impacting them.

I'd rather have criminals carrying knives instead of assault rifles. I hear the "but they'll just use the next best thing" argument a lot on here, and it doesn't really hold water. Even if they do use the next best thing, the quality gulf between most units and the top units will still shrink, which is a step in the right direction.

I don't like that my sanguinary priests wouldn't be able to party up with a squad already being led by some other guy though. Maybe you could go through codices and give some guys a "support specialist" special rule, where they ignore the 1 IC limit.

slaede wrote:

A unit may only ever be joined by a single independent character at any time.

While I do like this idea, it nerfs CSM again. The codex is barely playable even if it brings the BBQ-chicken squadron, having an IC HQ in the CSM dex has only been of much use in a situation where it is covered by a unit, the units leader, and then an extra cannon-fodder HQ model to help get the main HQ into combat.
Removing that choice makes the Champion of Chaos rule even more painful.

But, CSM aside, I wanna hug this idea <3


Automatically Appended Next Post:

niv-mizzet wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
This solution would just lead to players fielding other broken units. Deathstars can be beaten by TAC armies. I'm more of an advocate for developing better tactics and strategy to win rather than using house rules. The problem with house rules is if one is accepted then more will eventually follows. Also where do you draw the line? You're introducing a mechanic to curb one perceived problem that also restricts others fielding far tamer lists, thus unfairly impacting them.

I'd rather have criminals carrying knives instead of assault rifles. I hear the "but they'll just use the next best thing" argument a lot on here, and it doesn't really hold water. Even if they do use the next best thing, the quality gulf between most units and the top units will still shrink, which is a step in the right direction.

I don't like that my sanguinary priests wouldn't be able to party up with a squad already being led by some other guy though. Maybe you could go through codices and give some guys a "support specialist" special rule, where they ignore the 1 IC limit.

If the "1 IC only" rule was put into 7th ed, I'd bet my left ball that every 7E codex would give that to at least two powerful IC's, or power units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whitedragon wrote:
I was toying with the idea of only allowing 1 Psyker per army [...]

Well that's the Daemons codex gone

 jy2 wrote:
Too extreme. Basically, this one simple rules change spells the death of the deathstar army. I am against that. Deathstars provide variety in playstyle. The normal deathstar isn't really the problem. The problem is the mega-deathstar.

Of all the suggestions that I've seen, the one I still like the most is IC's can never join a unit that is not a part of their detachment. It still allows the normal deathstar, which has existed forever, but at the same time, it curbs the super-deathstar.

Yes, screamerstar will still exist. The "normal" seer council (sans Baron) will still exist. Draigowing will still be there. So what? These deathstars have always existed before (except the screamerstar). No one had a problem with them in previous editions. I don't see why they need to be ended now. Break up the mega-deathstars, but don't put a gimp in my playstyle choice. Normal deathstars can still be fun to play (and play against).

It doesn't spell the end of a deathstar, it tones them down. You can still have the Baron in a fortuned Beast Pack, but it won't be fearless, and that is risky, which is good. Draigowing exists, your dual Wraithwing is unchanged.

It's not you and me that are quitting the game, Jim. You and I can handle mega death stars, but the average player sees this absurd crap and says the hell with it. Moreover, pretty much every account I heard from Adepticon was that no one was having much fun because everyone had a death star and nobody was enjoying the game. Even some of the better players are jumping ship for tighter rulesets. I am quite sure the battle brothers ban getting tossed around as an idea doesn't fix anything, so I'm proposing something that will bring some sanity.

This solution would just lead to players fielding other broken units. Deathstars can be beaten by TAC armies. I'm more of an advocate for developing better tactics and strategy to win rather than using house rules. The problem with house rules is if one is accepted then more will eventually follows. Also where do you draw the line? You're introducing a mechanic to curb one perceived problem that also restricts others fielding far tamer lists, thus unfairly impacting them.

So rather than taking four Grav Centurions, two IH Chapter Masters on bikes, Tigurius and maybe Cypher in one absurd unit, they'll take what? What exactly is tactical about creating a unit with unlimited range, TL, ignores cover S10 blasts? A moron can win with that. The game is losing players because units like that are possible and they make the game perceived to be non-tactical. It's not about balancing the game, it's about making it less stupid and more fun.

slaede wrote:

So rather than taking four Grav Centurions, two IH Chapter Masters on bikes, Tigurius and maybe Cypher in one absurd unit, they'll take what? What exactly is tactical about creating a unit with unlimited range, TL, ignores cover S10 blasts? A moron can win with that. The game is losing players because units like that are possible and they make the game perceived to be non-tactical. It's not about balancing the game, it's about making it less stupid and more fun.

I do agree with you, but sadly I do actually know a player who takes the current in-print GW-certified [and not FW for some odd reason] as some kind of religious text, and simply will not allow any changes.
...Regardless of how the game turns out for him/his opponent.

And I fear that this is yet another obstacle we're going to have to live with.

On another note, we can unofficially make rules changes. I for example could play with a 5th ed ruleset with a 6e patch, if someone agrees to it.

slaede wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
Too extreme. Basically, this one simple rules change spells the death of the deathstar army. I am against that. Deathstars provide variety in playstyle. The normal deathstar isn't really the problem. The problem is the mega-deathstar.

Of all the suggestions that I've seen, the one I still like the most is IC's can never join a unit that is not a part of their detachment. It still allows the normal deathstar, which has existed forever, but at the same time, it curbs the super-deathstar.

Yes, screamerstar will still exist. The "normal" seer council (sans Baron) will still exist. Draigowing will still be there. So what? These deathstars have always existed before (except the screamerstar). No one had a problem with them in previous editions. I don't see why they need to be ended now. Break up the mega-deathstars, but don't put a gimp in my playstyle choice. Normal deathstars can still be fun to play (and play against).

It doesn't spell the end of a deathstar, it tones them down. You can still have the Baron in a fortuned Beast Pack, but it won't be fearless, and that is risky, which is good. Draigowing exists, your dual Wraithwing is unchanged.

It's not you and me that are quitting the game, Jim. You and I can handle mega death stars, but the average player sees this absurd crap and says the hell with it. Moreover, pretty much every account I heard from Adepticon was that no one was having much fun because everyone had a death star and nobody was enjoying the game. Even some of the better players are jumping ship for tighter rulesets. I am quite sure the battle brothers ban getting tossed around as an idea doesn't fix anything, so I'm proposing something that will bring some sanity.

Let's put it this way. The more general the rules change, the more sweeping are its effects felt and the more against it I am. It may be a simple change on paper, but the impact on gameplay is huge. Not only are you impacting the deathstars, but you are impacting all aspects of gameplay in regards to IC-unit interaction. There's no need to cut off an arm just to fix a cut on the finger. Just because people don't like the new deathstars doesn't mean we should implement a rule that will also affect everyone's normal, everyday non-OP units, because that's exactly what we will be doing with such a general rule change.

I'm more of an advocate of fixing a problem while minimizing it's impact on the rest of the game. The more specific the fix, the better because the less other units will be impacted. For example, re-rollable 2+'s sucks. A general fix would be no re-roll's of any kind on any saves. Well, that would impact Tzeentch Daemons, units with Precognition, Ministorum Priests, Fortuned beaststars, etc. Now the specific fix would be re-rollable 2+'s becomes 2+/4+. Now that fixes the heart of the problem with minimal (in this case, zero) impact on anything else.

The deathstars you mentioned were never really a problem. They've existed since 4th/5th edition. They can be dealt with. The simple change of disallowing IC's to join units from a different detachment IMO is enough to fix the most abusive units. It is also a much more specific fix than the very general amendment of only-1-IC-per-unit.

Now screamerstar can still exist, but really, just how good is the screamerstar anyways? Even with re-rollable shenanigans, they are much, much easier to deal with than the seer council or beaststar.

There is a fine line between trying to make the game playable for the masses and trying to stay true to the original rules. My philosophy is to make the game more playable for the masses while trying to stay as true to the original rules as possible. If there is a problem, I have no problems with trying to fix it. I'd just rather do so without changing how the game plays on a fundamental level.

Deathstars date all the way back to 3rd edition. Blood Angels could take two Chaplains combining their Death Company, field five man tactical squads and use the Flesh Tearers rules to max out on power fists. This was a zero point scoring unit.

Even though I'm normally in favor of more restrictions, I too would prefer limiting only allied characters from joining allied units, as battle brothers allows. Doing more than that would catch too many innocents and change the game too much (such as with the aforementioned Sanguinary priests).

I'm all about fixing this mess we're in, but I think a tweak regarding allies (characters can only join units from their own detachment) would be much better and lighter handed. "Rule of least disturbance" and all that... if a smaller fix works, go with the smaller fix (only affecting allied characters).

 RiTides wrote:
Even though I'm normally in favor of more restrictions, I too would prefer limiting only allied characters from joining allied units, as battle brothers allows. Doing more than that would catch too many innocents and change the game too much (such as with the aforementioned Sanguinary priests).

I'm all about fixing this mess we're in, but I think a tweak regarding allies (characters can only join units from their own detachment) would be much better and lighter handed. "Rule of least disturbance" and all that... if a smaller fix works, go with the smaller fix (only affecting allied characters).

I'm not opposed to that fix since I started that thread some time back. However, the current thing is to ban BB outright, and I would prefer that not happen.

 jy2 wrote:
Too extreme. Basically, this one simple rules change spells the death of the deathstar army. I am against that. Deathstars provide variety in playstyle. The normal deathstar isn't really the problem. The problem is the mega-deathstar.

What exactly is this 'super deathstar', and how is it distinguished from the normal deathstar?

The reason that these deathstars get so powerful is by paying flat costs for combining non-linear bonuses.
For example: Re-rollable saves. The ability to re-roll saves scales non-linearly with save value. So a 5+ save unit finds itself 50% more survivable with re-rolls., while a 2+ save unit finds its survivability increased by 600%. Yet for both units the cost is the same.
Similarly with ignores cover. For most armies, AP2 weaponry tends to cost a lot and be quite rare, but their cost isn't usually twice the cost of AP3 because the easy counter exists to get in to cover. Ignores Cover abilities drastically increase the deadliness, acting as a multiplier to the power of the weapon but paying a flat cost.

Of all the suggestions that I've seen, the one I still like the most is IC's can never join a unit that is not a part of their detachment. It still allows the normal deathstar, which has existed forever, but at the same time, it curbs the super-deathstar.

I think the idea of not letting IC's join units from other detachments is probably the best one I've seen.
However all of these ideas are fighting an uphill battle. The problems in 40k need to be fixed with a scalpel. But because the community won't let you use a scalpel, you're trying to use a hammer. Possibly you can get it right... but there will always be some weak army that gets negatively affected by these changes,

I'd say a super-deathstar is a deathstar where you can add out-of-army characters to make it even more deadly/nasty, like adding the Baron to a seer council or a Shardseer/Eldrad to the beaststar or the Buffmander to the Ovesastar or Coteaz to almost any non-Grey Knight army or Sevrin Loth to an Tigurius-led Centurionstar. Back in the previous edition, these deathstars could never have existed.

A more specific fix is the scalpel solution as it targets the problem specifically. A more general fix is the hammer solution, which aims to fix a problem by changing the core mechanics of the game. Usually, these fixes have the adverse effect of potentially changing the meta. Restricting the number of IC's to 1 will in essence change the meta as it greatly discourages running deathstars of any kind in competitive play.

Okay I think this is a potentially cool idea but I think it is beyond annoying that people always jump to screamerstar when they think deathstar. Screamerstar has not won any big tournaments. Get over yourselves.

 herpguy wrote:
Okay I think this is a potentially cool idea but I think it is beyond annoying that people always jump to screamerstar when they think deathstar. Screamerstar has not won any big tournaments. Get over yourselves.

I am aware that everyone uses Screamerstar as an example of an egregious death star. I am also well aware that Screamerstar is terrible (see the "underwhelming" bit in the OP). Well, not terrible, but barely better than average. Nevertheless, since everyone else still complains about it, so too will I use it as an example.

Any deathstar can be beat by bringing a balanced tactical army that can exploit its weaknesses. It just seems like there is so much b*tch moaning going on right now.