Gavin Thorne wrote:Give the Autarch a power weapon and mandiblasters and you'll be in a slightly better postion once in CC. The extra attack and ignoring armor will net you about 2 more dead TH/SS termies compared to a bare Autarch.

Sure, it's a pricey combo, but no more so than other deathstar units. A worry that I would have is whether or not it's comparable to other deathstar units in the same price range and I'd probably say no.

Dr. Serling wrote:Ironically, I just built a list carrying this loadout. Make sure to give the autarch mandiblasters. I am running eldrad in there, so I have 3 power weapons, a chance to re roll fortune, and a mind war to pick out power fists and the like.

It is not so much of a deathstar, just a really flexible and versitile unit. It would not take out 10 palidans or 10 THSS terminators, but say only 5. You have 3 power weapons, figuring 12 PW attacks on the charge, you want about 4 or less other death star targets remaining.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I played this unit, with and without farseer and/or autarch when the current codex first came out. I also tried it with Asurmen or Maugan Ra.

They can bog down almost anything for a long time, especially TH/SS terminators who only have 1 attack against them. But they have no killing power. At the end of turn 6, your 500 point deathstar will still be standing there slugging away at the last guy of the 200 point terminator unit unable to put a wound on him.

Add to that the fact that your opponent can allocate attacks to the farseer (and when he's dead, fortune goes away), that a psychic hood can negate fortune unexpectedly, that you do occasionally see a librarian with null zone.

If you want to use the unit, just send the DAs with their exarch with defend & shimmershield. That's close to 200 points. Let them bog something down, then send in another 200-300 points of real assault troops--banshees or harlequins--to finish off the guys that the DAs are holding.

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:
Its such a cheap death star that I could send it in to bog something down, make sure the exarch and farseer are in the center of the squad when they exit the transport and assault and you dont have to worry about them being in base with that fist attack. And I could easily sit back with one squad of dire avengers and bladestorm that 5 man termie squad into oblivion. Wouldnt take but what, two shooting phases on average? Less if I bladestorm and assault. 5 man termies would be dead before they could swing, and a 10 man squad would be seriously weakened.

Gavin Thorne wrote:

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:
Its such a cheap death star that I could send it in to bog something down, make sure the exarch and farseer are in the center of the squad when they exit the transport and assault and you dont have to worry about them being in base with that fist attack. And I could easily sit back with one squad of dire avengers and bladestorm that 5 man termie squad into oblivion. Wouldnt take but what, two shooting phases on average? Less if I bladestorm and assault. 5 man termies would be dead before they could swing, and a 10 man squad would be seriously weakened.

Not with shooting alone they wouldn't. You've got to remember your theoryhammer and it's application. First, you'll have to be in range of the termies, at 18" that's putting you just outside their threat range. Say you take Eldrad (because, why not?) and you Fortune your DA unit, Guide them as well, and Doom the Termies. Your unit Bladestorms at ~18" and hits with 12 + 4 (Guide); about half of the 16 wound and another half of those misses come back for about 12 total wounds. The Termies get 2+ so 1 in 6 of those wounds get through. Two (2) dead marines, not counting another dead marine from the Autarch's Fusion gun, but if they're that close they're getting the charge on you. No smart Chapter Master is going to use only TH/SS termies - there's going to be some LC's (say 1 per 5) in there too for the attacks, wound allocation, and hits at higher Initiative, so they're likely down to 1 LC and 7 TH/SS. If your Wave Serpent is shooting you might get another casualty in your favor, but let's leave the transport out for now, saving you some points.

Next turn, if the termies are at 18", they're moving up to 6" range; if in range of the Fusion gun, they're going to assault. You get first swings: your Exarch and Autarch might kill a marine each if they're lucky (about 1/3 chance for the Exarch and 2/3 chance for the Autarch); the DA's swing and have about a 2/5 chance to kill another marine, Eldrad's up and has about another 2/5 chance to take out another. If we're doing the odds right, you're going to kill one, maybe two terminators out of the bunch of 8 that are about to swing on you. We'll say a TH guy goes down before the LC guy goes snickety-snick and probably Wolverines up about 1/3 of a Dire Avenger thanks to the Shimmershield and Fortune; the 6 remaining TH's swing and pound another DA into a red smear. With completely average rolls, you'll tarpit the Termies until the end of the game.

What you really want to do is get the charge on them so your extra attacks with Doomed power weapons work in your favor. You'll take out about 3-4 TH/SS termies if you charge and probably only take a single wound in return. Overall, not a bad investment in comparative costs.

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:I could roflstomp a comparative amount of termies into the ground.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I was speaking from my own experience of having actually used the unit, rather than from theoryhammer.

The problem you encounter in actual gameplay (that isn't obvious on paper) is that DAs are only str3 in assault. So everything goes fine until it comes time to score wounds, at which point you're trying to turn up those 5's to wound regular marines--and this is with your one attack for a regular DA, after only actually hitting with half your attacks, and then your opponent's guys get their armor saves.