What is the answer to Wolf-tide/Barkstar?

Painjunky wrote:

A suicide charge from some reavers can force the deathstar to bunch up too.

That's one of the better tactics against a unit like this, that covers such vast areas of battlefield real estate. Any charge that impacts (ie doesn't fail due to death from overwatch) will force every model in that unit to move towards the charging unit. Come at the unit from a flank or, better still, from behind and not only halt their forward momentum but force them backwards or sideways and to get closer together. With a poor consolidate roll you can leave them quite bunched up and ripe for d-scythes, warp hunter barrages etc. Of course, ideally you want to survive your own turn and die in the enemy turn, which seems unlikely against a deathstar but even if that doesn't happen you can just do it again the next turn and so on.

Also worth noting that beasts ignore terrain when moving but not enemy models. String out a unit of throwaway troops (hello Hellions!!) in front of them and they will be basically stuck in place. A 1" charge and d6" consolidate is way better than 12" movement, 2d6" charge and d6" consolidate. It is however important to check what special rules they have. If they do indeed have hit & run this tactic could easily backfire. Of course, they're likely to wipe out the screening unit anyway so they won't get to use it!

Hmmm, what's our best points-per-resilience tarpit unit, and how many points is this barkerstar thing?

Take a whatever that formation is with tons of FA slots. Fill those up with Beastmasters and Khymaerae (I'm thinking their 5++ save would help).

Try and get the first charge in, and then steadily feed it suicide beast squads for as long as you possibly can, while the rest of your army scoots around unopposed.

Take this with a grain of salt as I haven't played a game in yonks, but would it be possible to make Beast units sizeable enough to just survive a single round of combat and keep it points-competitive with the deathstar?

Apart from that, how about that brilliant idea from a thread a while ago about making an unbound list filled entirely with single Beastmasters? 185 single units in an 1850pt army.

Not tournament legal, but I want to see it happen...

Count Adhemar wrote:

Also worth noting that beasts ignore terrain when moving but not enemy models. String out a unit of throwaway troops (hello Hellions!!) in front of them and they will be basically stuck in place. A 1" charge and d6" consolidate is way better than 12" movement, 2d6" charge and d6" consolidate. It is however important to check what special rules they have. If they do indeed have hit & run this tactic could easily backfire. Of course, they're likely to wipe out the screening unit anyway so they won't get to use it!

Have you just found a purpose for Hellions? Genius!

Ynneadwraith wrote:

Have you just found a purpose for Hellions? Genius!

Hellions would do the trick but, to be honest, Khymerae are probably better. Larger bases and cheaper units. A unit of 3 Khymerae blocks off roughly 11" of battlefield, so 6 units will cover pretty much the entire length of the battlefield for under 200 points.

But he could multi charge them all and wipe them out in one round. Turn 2 the latest. What do you do after that?

CptMetal wrote:

But he could multi charge them all and wipe them out in one round. Turn 2 the latest. What do you do after that?

It's a speed bump. You're feeding the unit ~180 points to tie it up and slow it down. It might only be for 1 turn but during that turn the barkstar could have moved 24" and been locked in combat with something that it actually wants to kill instead of moving 3-4" and fighting something you don't care about losing. Plus you still get to shoot at the barkstar in your shooting phase in the turn before and the turn after it gets wiped out so you've lost very little in exchange for slowing them down, maybe claiming some objectives or destroying the rest of his army.

Make sure to charge him first?

Ropey I guess...

How many points is the deathstar?

I'd say you'd still be quids in if you dedicate half of the entire points cost of the barkstar purely in throwaway beasts, leaving the rest of your army to deal with any vestigial army he has attached to his deathstar and win you the game.

You could probably go further than that actually.

How many Khymaerae do you need to string one unit in a long line all the way across the battlefield?

A full unit of 12 will take up 44" of the battlefield strung out in a long line for 120pts, leaving gaps of 14" per side uncovered.

6 of those (720pts), arranged in a long line 1 after the other, leaving a 10" gap between the first line and the rest to absorb any consolidation move/avoid multi-charges. Then just feed them maxed out beast units turn after turn.

Good luck moving 20+ doggies through a 14" gap in any sort of meaningful way, and it leaves the gap at the other side for your fast vehicles to nip through and nab objectives.

Fight douchey tactics with douchey tactics!

I will jump on the band wagon and also scream "screening units". If you are able to refuse flank, that is a valid tactic. Otherwise have a few cheap, large area denial units. As others have stated, beasts work great for this (unfortunately not much else right now :/).

Small Reaver squads, raider transports (driving sideways), and even venoms will work in a pinch. Remember that he cannot come within 1" of you at any time, so just sting them out accordingly and use terrain.

And dont cry when (not if) your screeners die. If any highborn are in the squad, they will get regenerated by our Haemunculi friends back in the Dark City

fisheyes wrote:

And dont cry when (not if) your screeners die. If any highborn are in the squad, they will get regenerated by our Haemunculi friends back in the Dark City

Plus, you know, we're Dark Eldar. We don't cry when our 'friends' die horribly. We laugh!

His turn- he moves forward up to your dep zone.

Your turn- you move into his dep zone mostly on a flank, reavers charge the star (LOSB terrain can be used to avoid overwatch) to bunch him up and drag him off to the other flank.

Another unit of reavers moves in this assault phase to block him for next turn. How long is a reaver, like 2.5"? So 3 could block off 13.5".

His turn- he kills your screen.

Your turn- you send another reaver unit to block him while rest of your army guts his back field.

Have to think a turn or 2 ahead but you control his star with charges and screens.
He only kills a cheap throw away unit a turn. His chances of multicharges are slim as most of your army is on the other side of the table.

Works in theory.

I beat a list like this a few weeks back (pretty badly) at a friend's request.  It may not be relevant though as I was using a beast/cavalry daemon incursion.

From that game though, I can tell you that medium to large beast units are fairly effective at tying up huge ones, and reaver hammer of wrath attacks should be pretty effective against invisible units.  Of course this means that your best units for this match up are all fast attack...  The helm of spite probably also isn't a bad idea - as I used karanak pretty effectively and he has the same 12" bubble effect as the helm.

Strategy - Not really relevant to the dark kin:

So ya, I was tailoring and I had a better, more recent codex - but these lists are certainly beatable.

I was just thinking. What about a huge screen of Wyches in front of your fast movers? I mean, Wyches will want to be charged (to be in CC for 4++) and they are comparatively cheap. And if you take them as part of RSD you have an initial 5+. Or they could be ObSec when contesting as part of CAD.

Hm spreading out denudes a lot of the power from this kind of list.  By your description it sounds like he was spreading the unit across the whole board and trying to dragnet it, presumably launching multiple assaults if possible.  I've found a lot of people do multi-assaults wrong.  Given the level of filth on display I would check out the multi-assault rules and really rules lawyer him and force him to do it exactly right since it will knock a lot of the wind out of his sails.

As a recap - all charging units have to try to do the following if possible:
(1) Get into base contact with a model in the target unit, else;
(2) Get into base contact with a friendly in b2b with the enemy, else;
(3) Get into 2 inches of a friendly in b2b with an enemy, and in all cases;
(4) Maintain coherency with a friendly model that has completed his charge.

What people do wrong mostly is ignore #4, sending their models into both targets and then using spare models to bridge the gap to maintain coherency.  This is wrong, you have to keep coherency as you go and it makes multi-assaulting dispersed units really hard, especially with variable assault distances.

By my reckoning the need to follow rules #2 and #3 and the lack of immediate coherency to the secondary target will force the bulk of their units into a big pile around the primary target.  If he's spread out to the limits of his unit coherency he will have to move a large number of his models into this big zone around the primary target.  The 40cm bases actually work against him because 40cm + 2inches is a huge area.  What tends to happen is all  the models get pulled into the zone around the primary target leaving the rest so strung out they need to use all their movement to just maintaining coherency.

I agree with the comments that the best counter is surely large numbers of reavers (I'd say 36ish).  They can outpace the dogs and if he spreads out you can actually refuse a flank and dogpile him.  6D6 caltrop hits plus 30 or so S4 bladevanes will let you buzzsaw his dogs and either limit his return swings massively or completely knock the unit out of combat (if it even survives!)

Also note that a unit can only ever score a single objective, no matter how big its footprint is.  Going second, beating up his support units and just running around with reavers should let you play for objectives. Ideally he drops the ICs out of the deathstar and you can pick it appart in pieces. It's only crazy as a single unit.

Korona wrote:

As a recap - all charging units have to try to do the following if possible:
(1) Get into base contact with a model in the target unit, else;
(2) Get into base contact with a friendly in b2b with the enemy, else;
(3) Get into 2 inches of a friendly in b2b with an enemy, and in all cases;
(4) Maintain coherency with a friendly model that has completed his charge.

What people do wrong mostly is ignore #4, sending their models into both targets and then using spare models to bridge the gap to maintain coherency.  This is wrong, you have to keep coherency as you go and it makes multi-assaulting dispersed units really hard, especially with variable assault distances.

The rules for multiple assaults add to the above rules by saying that a model cannot move into base contact with a model in a secondary target, unless it cannot move into base contact with an unengaged model in the primary target. This supercedes much of the above. You simply move your initial model into base contact and then move models that are towards the back of the unit to block the route into base contact for those closer to the primary target. If you cannot move into base contact with the primary you then get to try for the secondary and as long as you can maintain coherency then you're good.

This tactic is hard to do with variable charge distances since blocking models entirely from getting within 2 inches of a based friend takes quite some doing.  It's easier to do if you bunch the unit up but I was more thinking about the unit being strung out across the board out in a 5ft long line and trying to "dragnet" the board.  If he's bunched up that's great, you can go back to plan A and run away from him.

Wow, I have been doing this multi-assault wrong. So a small unit of (lets say 3) Grots trying to multi-charge would be basically impossible. Unless you are able to

1. Place the first Grot b2b with "Unit A" (while maintaining 1" distance from Unit B)

2. Place second Grot within 2" of first Grot near Unit A (but is somehow unable to make b2b with friendly or enemy model)

3. Place third Grot b2b with Unit B, while 2" from first Grot?

This makes multi-charge basically impossible without 5+ (but really 10+) guys in a squad.

Very interesting...

I think you ignore the 1" distance from other units when charging. Someone will correct me if wrong.

Otherwise yes, multi-assaulting is harder than many ppl realise as they don't know the rules.

Yeah you can ignore the 1 inch rule but it doesn't help all that much. Rules 2 and 3 make it very tricky to free up models for the coherency "bridge" other than the ones who are a long way from the target. If you space the unit out like that you risk rolling a poor charge distance and having to waste a lot of models to maintain coherency. The unit doesn't have many weak points so you need to work to maximise the number of tricky rolls he has to make. Keep giving your opponent opportunities to fail dice.

Korona wrote:

As a recap - all charging units have to try to do the following if possible:
(1) Get into base contact with a model in the target unit, else;
(2) Get into base contact with a friendly in b2b with the enemy, else;
(3) Get into 2 inches of a friendly in b2b with an enemy, and in all cases;
(4) Maintain coherency with a friendly model that has completed his charge.

I reread the rule and don't quite agree.

Just to make the writing a bit shorter, I will use engaged mode to mean an enemy in base to base contact with a charging model and an unengaged model to be the opposite.

First should be maintain coherency, but that doesn't make much of a difference.

(1) should be move to base to base with an unengaged model.
(2) should be move to base to base with an engaged model.
There is no requirement to move into base to base with an engaged friendly model as per your (2).
(3) is correct

I think most people doing this wrong ignore (3) and start the conga line once the first model that can't reach base with the primary target is reached.

Ah you're right - it's actually quite clear I just misread it. It's a bit of a shame but not going to make a huge difference.

Something else to note which isn't in the assault rules but does matter a lot is that models can't move through other friendly models, even if they're in the same unit. This restricts the ability to move in models from the back of the unit since they will have to go around their comrades.

Btw, anyone know of any Batreps of Eldar or Dark Eldar vs Wolfstar?

Quite a few actually. Please check out Skari, I am sure he has faced this at least once in his Youtube channel. Even if not, he has faced down many a deathstar, only to tear it apart with careful planning and cunning.

fisheyes wrote:

Quite a few actually. Please check out Skari, I am sure he has faced this at least once in his Youtube channel. Even if not, he has faced down many a deathstar, only to tear it apart with careful planning and cunning.

Has he? I cant remember him facing a deathstar. Which vid?

Thanks Fisheyes.

Found Skari vs Wolfstar here:
https://youtu.be/QpEzrakSxoI

That's a cool bat-rep no doubt but I wouldn't call it a death star or a wolf star and obviously not a bark-star.

But you get the idea. MSU and spread out, force him to move off objectives, and feed him inconsequential units to keep him off foot.

Many a good batrep there, take a look through them. I am sure there are a few Deathstar match ups in there somewhere