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I have been looking over the new Deathstrike stats and it definitley looks a lot better in the AM codex but is it still a poor choice in competetive games? I can see it having a really strong alpha strike advantage with a good dice roll on round 1 or 2 but after that it will obviously just be dead weight. What are your thoughts on this guys?

The deathstrike seems reasonably good now. It is kind of dependent on terrain to protect it but it can do a tremendous amount of damage to a gunline or parking lot.

I would say there could be a place for 1-2 of them in a competitive list but there are a lot more options that are easier to keep alive until they do the damage you want. I think only time will tell the full story.

It now has a 2/3ds chance of flattening the hell out of something turn 2. Doesn't sound bad to me.

It shouldn't be all that difficult to make a 160 point piece trade with it.

Prescience or servo skulls will make it even worse...

Poly Ranger wrote:
Prescience or servo skulls will make it even worse...

Servo skulls could be great as they are not wasted if the shot fails to go off but prescience would be a big waste if the missile doesn't go off.

Id consider it worth it for a 2/3's chance. Rerolling scatter on a 10" diameter blast plate is exponentially better than smaller plates. And if it hasn't gone off by turn 2 and is still alive, it is definitely worth banging it on for a 1/6 chance turn 3!
Its a gamble but could seriously pay off by making sure that units on the outskirts of the blast are almost definitely hit.

It's probably worth it more for the psychological impact and forced spreading out/taking cover than the actual damage.

I don't know if servo skulls would be ALL that useful here, given that you can't deploy them directly into your opponent's deployment zone, and it's possible for your opponent to whisk them away so easily.

Also, I can't imagine how prescience would be worth it. With a 5" radius, you're all but guaranteed to hit what you were aiming at. I don't know how it's worth it to increase the cost of the vehicle by a third just to make a very unlikely event a little less likely.

The point of a deathstrike though is not just to hit what your aiming at but a megaton of other units around it as well. Prescience helps massively with this.
Also the 50pt psyker is not an increase on the cost of the deathstrike, as the rest of the game he will be presciencing other units instead. Im just talking about 1 turn.

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't know if servo skulls would be ALL that useful here, given that you can't deploy them directly into your opponent's deployment zone, and it's possible for your opponent to whisk them away so easily.

Also, I can't imagine how prescience would be worth it. With a 5" radius, you're all but guaranteed to hit what you were aiming at. I don't know how it's worth it to increase the cost of the vehicle by a third just to make a very unlikely event a little less likely.

I don't think the Deathstrike is actually capable of not catching it's original target in it's blast when you factor in the BS3.

The skulls from my games make the death strike even better than it is. With a 10'' blast it can miss a big blob of guys with only one d6 of scatter.

If it rolls a scatter and then a 9 or higher on the distance, it can miss its target. So you hit what you were pointing at at a tiny bit smaller than BS5. Would you pay to give prescience to a BS5 model? Probably not.

And I still dont' get how your opponent is going to have units that are close enough to a servo skull but are so far from a servo skull that they haven't just whisked it off. I mean, it's possible, but I feel like your opponents would get wise to that one in a real damned hurry.

Sounds like good medicine against Tau.

 Kain wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't know if servo skulls would be ALL that useful here, given that you can't deploy them directly into your opponent's deployment zone, and it's possible for your opponent to whisk them away so easily.

Also, I can't imagine how prescience would be worth it. With a 5" radius, you're all but guaranteed to hit what you were aiming at. I don't know how it's worth it to increase the cost of the vehicle by a third just to make a very unlikely event a little less likely.

I don't think the Deathstrike is actually capable of not catching it's original target in it's blast when you factor in the BS3.

Yeh if it scattered more than 8" it would miss a model with base of 1" due to 5" radius blast (it would need to scatter further to miss vehicles since it would be centrally placed and they are not 1" across of course). But that isnt the point of prescience on it. The point is to help catch as many units as possible.

Well it is barrage so keep that in mind. Not landing a direct hit can really suck if the intention of the shot is to barrage snipe and guarantee the death of high priority target and hopefully the majority of his unit after. More accuracy also means more hits. Is it always neccessary to land a direct hit? No, but it can certainly make a difference when it really matters. Precience is just a great way to all around maximize this things effect. After the shot has been made, the psyker can then move on to precience something else, so I don't think it's fair to entiely count the full point cost of the pskyer as part of the Deathstrikes cost.

Dekken442 wrote:
Well it is barrage so keep that in mind. Not landing a direct hit can really suck if the intention of the shot is to barrage snipe and guarantee the death of high priority target and hopefully the majority of his unit after. Is it always neccessary to land a direct hit? No, but it can certainly make a difference when it really matters.

The idea of using a Nuclear warhead to snipe a specific model makes me giggle.

The servo skulls are worth it in that they are 3 pts a pop a block scouts/infiltrators making the opponent have to work harder to kill the death strike missile. Against nids, orks, and some chaos lists they would be worth it for the reduction in scatter.

Against gun lines and parking lots a good placement of the template could be worth the prescience. If you are using a psyker inquisitor for other purposes (to give Ld10 to a unit, grenades, etc.) then using the prescience to buff a deathstrike might not be too bad but using a 50 pts model for it as a default plan is not what I would do as most of the time the opponent will be spreading out to reduce damage or moving forward to engage you.

A fortress or void shield list with 3 deathstikes and a power blobb could be hilarious. If the opponent sits back and tries to gunline they will take 3 S10 AP1 10" blasts...ouch.

I'd certainly be willing to give it a shot. Anything that can help keep my squishy guard out of close combat.

3 Deathstrikes will also help keep other vehicles (read chimeras/turox's/rhinos) alive as the opponent most certainly won't want to be shooting at these when 3 mini nukes are prepping to launch... could make a 'rhino rush' more viable...

Let it be known, that henceforth, the IG equivalent to a 'Rhino Rush' shall be the 'Chimera Crash' and the Tempestus equivalent shall be the 'Taurox Trample'

All kidding aside, Poly Ranger makes a good point. It will make a nice bullet sponge, especially if you drop it behind a little bit of cover to make it harder to kill.

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
Let it be known, that henceforth, the IG equivalent to a 'Rhino Rush' shall be the 'Chimera Crash' and the Tempestus equivalent shall be the 'Taurox Trample'

All kidding aside, Poly Ranger makes a good point. It will make a nice bullet sponge, especially if you drop it behind a little bit of cover to make it harder to kill.

I know if I was facing three of those I'd be sending everything I had at them.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
Let it be known, that henceforth, the IG equivalent to a 'Rhino Rush' shall be the 'Chimera Crash' and the Tempestus equivalent shall be the 'Taurox Trample'

All kidding aside, Poly Ranger makes a good point. It will make a nice bullet sponge, especially if you drop it behind a little bit of cover to make it harder to kill.

I know if I was facing three of those I'd be sending everything I had at them.

You'd be insane not to. Three of those will pie plate an entire army into nothing.

 Kain wrote:
I don't think the Deathstrike is actually capable of not catching it's original target in it's blast when you factor in the BS3.

Chances are the Deathstrike won't be able to see it's target.
It's not the sort of vehicle you leave in the open.
So if firing indirectly it won't be reducing the scatter by BS3.

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
Let it be known, that henceforth, the IG equivalent to a 'Rhino Rush' shall be the 'Chimera Crash' and the Tempestus equivalent shall be the 'Taurox Trample'

All kidding aside, Poly Ranger makes a good point. It will make a nice bullet sponge, especially if you drop it behind a little bit of cover to make it harder to kill.

Haha nice phrase coining!

Though, to be fair, I was assuming a small infantry base sized target.

If you're trying to hit a vehicle or monstrous creature, you'll have a higher chance than mere BS5 to hit what you were pointing at.

I mean, if you were firing at a land raider, I think you'd literally have to roll a 12 if you were scattering at a diagonal to miss it.

I would say the reward outweighs the risks for this thing.

The scatter can still be deadly as all get out.

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't know if servo skulls would be ALL that useful here, given that you can't deploy them directly into your opponent's deployment zone, and it's possible for your opponent to whisk them away so easily.

Also, I can't imagine how prescience would be worth it. With a 5" radius, you're all but guaranteed to hit what you were aiming at. I don't know how it's worth it to increase the cost of the vehicle by a third just to make a very unlikely event a little less likely.

It's not like that psyker is stuck babysitting that one vehicle once it's shot its missile.

Sure.

Still, you could be presciencing something else that turn, which is a particular risk given that you have to decide if you're going to cast prescience before you find out if the missile gets to fire that turn.