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Hi Dakka,
I was playing a casual game earlier today. I brought a relatively fluffy, fun Dark Angels list. My opponent brought a tournament-level list (he apologized for doing that without warning me, but I wasn't offended). He was using ultramarines w/grey knights. The main unit he had was Tigurius, Draigo, a Grey Knight Librarian, and 5 Grav Centurions in a blob. Needless to say, I got thoroughly crushed. I was just wondering, what is the best way to fight a deathstar like that? I only managed to kill one centurion (the only other thing I killed the entire game was a thunderfire cannon, and that was on turn 1).

you can't. if he gets invisiblity on you're pretty much done for.

You could build a counter list by spamming stormravens like there's no tomorrow, or just focus on objectives or play like a troll and hide as much of your army behind LoS blocking cover from his deathstar as possible.

Like Sir Arun said; hide from it. If you don't have an equivalence for deathstar vs deathstar then make sure his can't get at your army.

If you can't concentrate fire on them, get a sizable (and preferably expendable) unit to throw them into to tie them up for a few turns while you try to get other victory points.

Can't tie them up with Draigo, he has gate of infinity. Honestly, scouts would be better for you, he wounds them on a 4+, they can take camo cloaks, and they are cheaper to lose than the tactical are.

Msu is your friend against death stars. Drop pod in, combat squad like crazy, and force him to shoot three different you its to keep you from claiming objectives. The cent star relies on psychic support to buff itself, that leaves little room dice wise for offensive spells. The most units they can ever take down is 14. You can field better than that and ignore them in an 1850 point game.

Put a culexus assassin in a landraider.

You can always try to fish for beam powers if you have librarians. I know that orks and tzeench csm have powerful beam powers but not sure about standard ones.

Other than that, hide or Culexus in a pod/raven/rhino.

I'm not sure if Dark Angels librarians get access to Pyromancy - but even if they do, they can't get Molten Beam reliably, and the only other one that springs to mind, the Telekenisis power Assail, has bugger all chance of hurting centurion warsuits.

Ultimately, Invisible Centurions is one of those things, like the old 2++ rerollable save hit and run daemons, that you can't really deal with in a normal game. Even storm shield terminators will get ripped apart by the amount of grav cannon fire, and with tigurius and draigo there's enough assault power in there that the normal weakness of centurions doesn't apply.

As noted, split up into combat squads and go for objectives.

Throwing a few Vindicator Shells at them would do reasonably well against them, as long as they aren't invisible, which isn't great odds, it does have to be said.

Or, if you have on, you could throw an Imperial Knight at the unit. Only Draigo actually has the strength to go through it, so you can stomp the rest out of existence relatively easy.

For 80 points more than the fully tooled Grav Cent star, you can take an Adamantium Lance, which, is almost impervious to the Cent Star, unless one of the other two psykers managed to score Vortex.

In the above instance, the Knights can comfortably erase the rest of his army in one or two turns, allowing you to then focus fire on the Cent Star. Getting 3 Knights worth of D-weapon CC attacks, especially when only one of the dudes can actually go through you in return, coupled with stomps can get rid of the Cent star easily.


Unless of course I missed the fact that GoI works when you're in combat?

inf that is the case, then take a Culexus

What is exactly a Dragio star and how does it work? I know it's not a topic to discuss that, but it's relevant to the talk. I've never played against it, so the info would be appreciated.

Yes, Gate works in combat.

For the OP though, you can take the DA librarians dataslate and try to get enough warp charge to be able to either deny invisibility and then spam vindicators at him or lock them in combat with some deathwing (difficult to catch unless you can reliably deny gate, hence the surplus of psychers) or some ravenwing with a PFG libby and then deny gate, allowing you to H&R in and out to lock them in combat for their shooting phase and then recharge them in your assault phase (preferably shooting them in between).

Having a reliable way to go 1st with big squads of Black Knights and vindicators is also a winner (since he won't have been able to cast his powers yet.

Boatloads of dudes in rhinos also works, since he's going to be able to wreck 1 vehicle a turn, so it might as well be a 35 point rhino and if you take greenwing, they'll be ObSec as well, running all over the place capping objectives, though you'll have to make sure you take out his other squads so they can't just pop all your rhinos for the gravstar to shred.

You are generally pretty hosed though, that list is a tourney list for a reason.

Zsolt wrote:
What is exactly a Dragio star and how does it work? I know it's not a topic to discuss that, but it's relevant to the talk. I've never played against it, so the info would be appreciated.

Draigo (the grey knights grand high mary sue) and either Tigurius (the Ultramarines special character who is secretly Ahriman) or Severin Loth (Red Scorpions Forgeworld Cheesebrarian) joinging a squad of 3-6 Centurions with Grav cannons and grav amps.

- Loth straight up gets to pick his powers, so can always know invis (though he must always pick all powers from the same discipline). Remind your opponent that since Loth's 2++ trick only works at the beginning of the turn and he doesn't have any warp charge to use, that little piece of bullcrap doesn't work.
- Tigurius can re-roll his powers, giving him a fantastic chance at getting invisibility. and can then roll on divination to get either perfect timing, allowing them to ignore cover, forewarning, giving the entire unit a 4++ or prescience, giving everyone re-rolls to hit as well.
- Draigo always know Gate of Infinity and comes with the only storm shield the grey knights have, along with eternal warrior and a stack of wounds, letting him tank AP2 shots for the unit and look out sir small arms fire while being a combat monster.
- Grav Cannons are salvo 3/5, but Centurions are slow and purposeful, so always shoot 5 shots, and Grav Amps allow them to re-roll to wound and armour penetration.

You can't lock the unit in combat, because Draigo can gate them away. You can't shoot blasts (like a vindicator to double out the centurions) or templates and everything else only hits on 6's (with very few exceptions like Beams or Nova psychic powers or weapons that create a line or automatically hit) because invisibility is stupidly strong. Invis also means you hit on 6's in close combat, unless you're kharn on don't need to roll to hit. Grav Cannons wound on your armour save and are AP2 as well as immobilising a vehicle on an armour penetration roll of a 6, so wraithknights are wounded on a 3, terminators on a 2 and pathfinders are wounded on a 5. Due to the shear volume of shots and only needing 2x 6's to wreck any vehicle that's not a land raider, monolith, orkanaught or superheavy, nothing is safe, not even fliers (especially since they can crash and burn after a single immobilised result). The Cents also have hurricane bolters for ensuring that chaff units still take a beating and are a huge reason why the current meta has made a swing towards 4+ armour save units in cover.

So you've got something that can't realistically be shot at, can't be hurt in close combat, can't be locked in close combat, has unlimited mobility, has an excellent psychic phase and can easily deal with any unit you care to put the the table. They also cost a good ~800 points for the unit and take 2 detachment slots (for the tournaments or metas that care about those things), so there are some downsides (apart from the terrible centurion models), but the benefits are massive. Ask yourself, how would your army deal with a unit that can't be hurt and pumps out ~26 wounds on any 2+ save unit at AP2? Daemons are't a bad counter, since they are only wounded on 6's by grav and usually have a decent enough psychic phase to deny invis and/or gate and eldar can sometimes have enough dice to shut their powers down and then take them out with wraithknights and/or drowning them in volume of shots.

You can add additional stuff to the unit, but that's the basics.

I guess my question is to center star players and what do they fear? What do you see in an enemy list and sweat?

my counter is not to play because I don't find the experience of watching my opponents armys' mastubatory annihilation of me due to an army build to be enjoyable.

A game where both sides have a chance and tactics and luck are involved is a lot more enjoyable to me. One where he has to get radically unlucky and I have to be radically lucky just to have a chance assuming I outplay him and the stars are aligned and it's a tuesday is not a good game.

This is why 40k is for the lulz. (and fluff wise it is good fun) If I want to actually match wits with someone I'll play infinity.

40k cannot be a pick up and play game because of aforementioned cheese.

 Drasius wrote:
...

Nice description, thanks. As far as I know SMs with different chapter tactics has to be in different CADs, so you can't put Tiggy in the same CAD as Severin Loth.

On fishing for psy, with Tiggy you only re-roll the powers, so you can't really fish for both invisibility and ignore cover/4++, unless you are really lucky, no? How does it look like, you have 3 rolls, roll one on telepathy, re-roll, if still not invis, roll again, then roll on divination?

What does the Grey knight librarian does there? What power he uses?

He'll be there for the Santic cheese that is Hammerhand, Vortex & Sanctuary

Vortex because D-Weapon
Sanctuary to make that Storm Shield a 2++ and Forewarning a 3++ for the entire unit
Hammerhand to stack on Draigos hammerhand so that Draigo swings at S10, and everyone else at S8

The Grey Knight Libby can also roll on div if you didn't get the power you wanted with tiggy or it took all 3 of tiggys rolls to get invis even with rerolls it can take a few rolls to pick it up and the grey knight lib automatically gets prescience for rerolls to hit if he rolls all 3 of his powers from div.

 Drasius wrote:
Yes, Gate works in combat.

- Tigurius can re-roll his powers, giving him a fantastic chance at getting invisibility. and can then roll on divination to get either perfect timing, allowing them to ignore cover, forewarning, giving the entire unit a 4++ or prescience, giving everyone re-rolls to hit as well.

In our game, he got all of these, but he did not use the invis part because he said he wanted to learn to use the unit without it (I guess in case he didn't get it in a tournament game).

It didn't help that on turn 1 (I went first), he managed to immobilize my land raider with the deathwing knights in it. Those guys didn't do anything all game because they were too far away.

For those of you who might be curious, here's the list I used (Note that it was meant to be fluffy and fun, not competitive, as I did not expect a gravstar or any other OP cheese nonsense):
HQ:
Ezekiel
Interrogator Chaplain w/MoR and plasma pistol
Elites:
DW Knights w/Perfidious Relic and dedicated LR Redeemer w/MM
Troops:
6-man Tactical Squad w/Melta, Combi-melta and Drop Pod
5-man Scout Squad w/Missile Launcher, 4x Sniper, and Camo Cloaks
Fast Attack:
6-bike RW Attack Squadron w/Power Sword, melta bombs, MM attack bike and LS typhoon
3-bike RW Black Knights w/grenade launcher and melta bombs
Nephilim Jetfighter
Heavy Support:
Tri-las Predator

As you can see, not intended for serious tournament-style play. Also, we weren't using objectives, we were playing some kind of special scenario (from some big tournament or other) in which we each nominated three units from each other's army that were worth points for killing. I killed one of them (TF cannon) and almost got a second (one of his dreadknights was down to 1 wound), so at least I did something.

 Drasius wrote:

So you've got something that can't realistically be shot at, can't be hurt in close combat, can't be locked in close combat, has unlimited mobility, has an excellent psychic phase and can easily deal with any unit you care to put the the table. They also cost a good ~800 points for the unit and take 2 detachment slots (for the tournaments or metas that care about those things), so there are some downsides (apart from the terrible centurion models), but the benefits are massive. Ask yourself, how would your army deal with a unit that can't be hurt and pumps out ~26 wounds on any 2+ save unit at AP2? Daemons are't a bad counter, since they are only wounded on 6's by grav and usually have a decent enough psychic phase to deny invis and/or gate and eldar can sometimes have enough dice to shut their powers down and then take them out with wraithknights and/or drowning them in volume of shots.

You can add additional stuff to the unit, but that's the basics.

Nice description of the unit. Harlequins are a pretty good counter, as well. A unit of Harlequins have a "-" armor save, so grav hurts them on a 6, and they can still take their 5++ save. Plus, they can take Embraces (which do D3 Hammer of War hits that bypass Invisibility) and Caresses (which auto-wound at AP2 on a 6 to hit). Both are pretty solid against invisible Cents - the former because you can get around Invisibility with 5D3 (or more) S6 auto-hits, and the latter because it means that any hit is almost certainly a wound. Harlequins can also take Eldar allies and load up on enough Warp Charges to try to deny some of the key powers. Dark Angels are going to have a hard time, though.

I was thinking...maybe a trio of Land Raider Redeemers would do well against this star.

 ZergSmasher wrote:


It didn't help that on turn 1 (I went first), he managed to immobilize my land raider with the deathwing knights in it. Those guys didn't do anything all game because they were too far away.

If it didn't get destroyed on turn one that is really a plus, centurions don't care at all about the AV, they'll still destroy any vehicle with 2-3 6's out of their 15-30 shots




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sir Arun wrote:
I was thinking...maybe a trio of Land Raider Redeemers would do well against this star.

Don't remember but I think centurions got split fire?, If they do they'll probably take out 2 LR per tun

 Lord Yayula wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sir Arun wrote:
I was thinking...maybe a trio of Land Raider Redeemers would do well against this star.

Don't remember but I think centurions got split fire?, If they do they'll probably take out 2 LR per tun

Split fire lets you shoot a different target with a single weapon, not any number of weapons. To destroy a LR you'll need 4 6s out of 5 grav shots with re-rolls. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

Zsolt wrote:

 Lord Yayula wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sir Arun wrote:
I was thinking...maybe a trio of Land Raider Redeemers would do well against this star.

Don't remember but I think centurions got split fire?, If they do they'll probably take out 2 LR per tun

Split fire lets you shoot a different target with a single weapon, not any number of weapons. To destroy a LR you'll need 4 6s out of 5 grav shots with re-rolls. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

Wouldn't it be 3? The first 6 immobilizes the vehicle, the 2nd scores a 2 HPs since it is already immobilized by the first, leaving 1 HP left on the LR and a 3rd 6 would wreck it. But yeah, one immobilize would be enough to leave the LR sitting on the back. 5 shots of grav weapon should statistically score 1.018 "wounds" with grav-amp, so yeah probably won't wreck it on the first turn but immobilize one and wreck the other (if in range of the grav weapons)

 Lord Yayula wrote:

Zsolt wrote:

 Lord Yayula wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sir Arun wrote:
I was thinking...maybe a trio of Land Raider Redeemers would do well against this star.

Don't remember but I think centurions got split fire?, If they do they'll probably take out 2 LR per tun

Split fire lets you shoot a different target with a single weapon, not any number of weapons. To destroy a LR you'll need 4 6s out of 5 grav shots with re-rolls. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

Wouldn't it be 3? The first 6 immobilizes the vehicle, the 2nd scores a 2 HPs since it is already immobilized by the first, leaving 1 HP left on the LR and a 3rd 6 would wreck it. But yeah, one immobilize would be enough to leave the LR sitting on the back. 5 shots of grav weapon should statistically score 1.018 "wounds" with grav-amp, so yeah probably won't wreck it on the first turn but immobilize one and wreck the other (if in range of the grav weapons)

Yeah, my bad, didn't consider the extra HP loss after second immo. Now I want centurions :l

Ignore....

Marshall Ragnar wrote:
Actually, it only takes 2 successfull Grav hits to strip 4 hull points.

I believe it works this way;

First 6 immobilizes and takes a hull Pont. All additional 6's take 2 hull points

I may be missing something, but 1 + 2 = 3, not 4.

Yeah, there is a reason why I'm not an accountant....ha

Small units. Lots of them. Spread out. Play objective missions. Hope to score points before you get wiped out!

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
my counter is not to play because I don't find the experience of watching my opponents armys' mastubatory annihilation of me due to an army build to be enjoyable.

A game where both sides have a chance and tactics and luck are involved is a lot more enjoyable to me. One where he has to get radically unlucky and I have to be radically lucky just to have a chance assuming I outplay him and the stars are aligned and it's a tuesday is not a good game.

This is why 40k is for the lulz. (and fluff wise it is good fun) If I want to actually match wits with someone I'll play infinity.

40k cannot be a pick up and play game because of aforementioned cheese.

The salt is REAL

Zsolt wrote:

 Lord Yayula wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sir Arun wrote:
I was thinking...maybe a trio of Land Raider Redeemers would do well against this star.

Don't remember but I think centurions got split fire?, If they do they'll probably take out 2 LR per tun

Split fire lets you shoot a different target with a single weapon, not any number of weapons. To destroy a LR you'll need 4 6s out of 5 grav shots with re-rolls. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

I think it's the sarge who gets split fire, so just he can shoot something else (via a piece of wargear - scope something?). Usually the sarge takes a missile launcher so he can shoot at troops or light vehicles while the cents take out something heavier.

Cents are one of the reasons nobody brings tanks In my meta. It doesn't help that almost every Space marine either takes cent stars or spams bikes which usually take grav.. Also necrons basic troops can glance and the new haywire infantry from the new army won't help. It's gakky rhino like vehicles or flyers here since grav kills them both just as effectively.

That said the real problem is that the cents are also almost always invisible which with the way invisibility works this edition means you can't hurt them and can only at best tie them up or take that 1 assassin imps can take.

Basically your best bet would be to take msu and force the cents to overkill your small units and "waste" shots.

Daemons baby. Just start a second army. Something like this isn't just good against Centstar, it's good against everything:

Fateweaver
Herald of Tzeentch: ML3, Disc, Greater Reward
Herald of Tzeentch: ML3, Disc, Greater Reward
Herald of Tzeentch: ML3, Disc, Locus
Herald of Tzeentch: ML3, Disc

9x Screamers
15 Khornedogs

10 Horrors
11 Horrors

Belakor

Belakor invis's the Khornedogs, who bullrush and take up a lot of table. The screamers get grim'd. Fate-y gets reserved and then comes in and flames things off objectives. He's the warlord. Between the dogs and the star, you're multi-assaulting anything T2 on any deployment. You can't hurt knights with anything except Belakor and psychic powers, so Adlance is your weakness. But then you just summon to your hearts content as they're unlikely to have much psychic defense and you just play the MSU game and use your mobility to jet around the board scoring objectives.

That's how you bear centstar. But sorry, your DA are cooked.