DE Deathstars

A unit with four Grots with Aberration, with a liquifier gun and flesh gauntlet, in a fully kitted out Raider, with Urien and an Archon with Huskblade, PGL, soul trap, drugs, armour and grenades. The grots will be strength seven on the charge after Urien upgrades them, so can be fairly well relied upon to wreck most tanks. The Archon will be the same after using his soul trap successfully, and they can regrow a wound you took from shooting a turn, because you allocated it on Urien. I'm working on some grotesques, and have been for a long time. Thinking about this makes me want to finish them in a hurry! I've not worked out the points, over 600 though. They're a big enough target to draw all the fire, and if you can actually get them there as well they'll be a pain.

Siticus the Ancient wrote:

Anggul wrote:

At first glance Grotesques' stats make them seem pretty scary, but really even with that many high-strength attacks they just aren't going to do that much. Even if 5 of them make it there alive they're only going to drop 2 or 3 marines on the charge. I suppose, however, they're going to be hard to do much damage to so they make up for their lacklustre damage with really good resilience.

That's really what Grotesques excel at (and why many people overlook them) - they are incredibly resilient. Three wounds, T5, and some limited wound allocation shenanigans... Not to mention a pain token off the bad to the Archon you took those bodyguards for in the first place.

It does sound good, T5 is what really does it for them, not even power fists are going to bring them down any time soon, and they're probably going to win the fight after a couple of turns. It's a good thing the latest vampire counts gave us those grote- I mean vargheist/crypt horror models, I'm really wanting to give them a go now.

They will still, however, fall to mass power weapons like assault terminators, but just avoid things like that and they should be fine.

I'm looking for some Grots right now but have a question on haemies for my death star...Does Urien take up one slot by himself or could I run Urien, Haemie, and Baron. Since you can take 1-3 haemies per slot.

My idea is one Ancient Haemonculus w/ Agonizer and Liquefier and 3 grots with aberration with liquefier and scissorhand.

stealthy327 wrote:

I'm looking for some Grots right now but have a question on haemies for my death star...Does Urien take up one slot by himself or could I run Urien, Haemie, and Baron. Since you can take 1-3 haemies per slot.

My idea is one Ancient Haemonculus w/ Agonizer and Liquefier and 3 grots with aberration with liquefier and scissorhand.

Urien is a single HQ choice on his own, so unfortunately you can't do that, It would be awesome if you could upgrade the Haemy HQ's to Urien instead of an ancient though......

Grots are awesome. nuff said.

but as a deathstar i would run 8 incubi, heamy and drazar.

Drazhar with 9 of his buddies(incubi) on a raider with Flickerfield. No need for a haemie because pain tokens are going to be thrown at you feet!

8 Incubi inc Klaivex, PGL Archon, Haemy

Do people really rate the Klaivex? Some nice stat boosts I guess but always seemed a bit pricey, esp with upgrades. Are they significantly better than..... more incubi?

The blood stone does look very cool tho......

I'm not really sure DE do death stars so well, but maxed out beast squads I could see being a real hard unit if you are will to put the points (and £/$s) in to it, but still not really a death star..

I wouldn't consider a Klaivex before I've maxed out transport capacity, but after that it's a worthy upgrade. Yes he's expensive compared to other sarges, but those don't come with a S4 PW.

As far as upgrades are concerned, all are too expensive and/or situational for my tastes. The squad I posted above usually Fleets for position, so the Bloodstone would be wasted on them, but without PGL-sitter, something to counter cover could be a good idea.

Haemy w/ Liq gun, VB
4 Incubi incl Klaivex w/ Bloodstone
in Venom

For 2 Flamer templates. It's pricey as hell though.

I think Dark Eldar and her playstyle is the anti-thesis to the term "deathstar".
Our army is better suited for MSU play imo.

Blood stone and LG I like it!

Yea, I'm just not a big fan of incubi in the current meta. With all the 3+ armor space marines running around (with 2+ terminators), there is a lot of AP 1/2 weaponry sitting around. I realize a lot of their effectiveness is due to being put in the right place at the right time, but shooting decimates them (whether its massed small arms, or armor piercing). Their one major strength is close combat, where they tear most units apart, which is their biggest problem. 9 times out of 10 they are winning the combat, if they don't wipe out the opponents unit, and are now left in the open, with a bunch of guns pointing at them. Add to this the fact that they are ONLY good at killing infantry, and serve no other purpose, and they are a clear AI glass cannon.

Grotesques on the other hand have T5, multiple wounds (2 more wounds than a 10-man incubi squad), are effective against light infantry, heavy infantry (w/Archon) and tanks (w/FC(haemy)), and have FnP from the start. The several times I've played them, they've eventually been taken down, but only after a HUGE amount of firepower goes into them. My incubi, on the other hand, usually make it to the other side, decimate 2/3 termagaunts/guardsmen/scout squads while being decimated from shooting. That is if their raider isn't shot down before then, in which case they most likely won't do anything. When my grots are downed they usually still make it across the board, and soak up a lot of damage doing so.

This might just be my unique experience though...

Always good to hear from experience. How many points of both do u use. I've been considering both so that was v useful

Today I decided to try out Archon, four Grots and Urien Rakarth combo. They -hurt-. They hurt a lot. S6 thanks to Urien's upgrade, S7 on charge... nasty, nasty, nasty stuff piled up on their massive toughness.

Closet thing I've taken as a Deathstar is a Haemonculi, Duke, 20x warriors with PGL and 2x Splinter Cannons.

And the dirtiest fact of all: I took them vs. Tyranids.

GreySeerZ wrote:

Yea, I'm just not a big fan of incubi in the current meta. With all the 3+ armor space marines running around (with 2+ terminators), there is a lot of AP 1/2 weaponry sitting around. I realize a lot of their effectiveness is due to being put in the right place at the right time, but shooting decimates them (whether its massed small arms, or armor piercing).

I would say a meta filled with 3+ or better Svs is a point in favour of my homies I mean, Incubi. Which I'm completely unbiased on, I might add.

GreySeerZ wrote:

Their one major strength is close combat, where they tear most units apart, which is their biggest problem. 9 times out of 10 they are winning the combat, if they don't wipe out the opponents unit, and are now left in the open, with a bunch of guns pointing at them. Add to this the fact that they are ONLY good at killing infantry, and serve no other purpose, and they are a clear AI glass cannon.

It's not all bad. 3+ with FnP is still pretty good at weathering shooting. At least, that's my experience. Note that I do take special care in not having their Raider being shot down; it's a pretty big issue to me.

GreySeerZ wrote:

Grotesques on the other hand have T5, multiple wounds (2 more wounds than a 10-man incubi squad), are effective against light infantry, heavy infantry (w/Archon) and tanks (w/FC(haemy)), and have FnP from the start. The several times I've played them, they've eventually been taken down, but only after a HUGE amount of firepower goes into them. My incubi, on the other hand, usually make it to the other side, decimate 2/3 termagaunts/guardsmen/scout squads while being decimated from shooting. That is if their raider isn't shot down before then, in which case they most likely won't do anything. When my grots are downed they usually still make it across the board, and soak up a lot of damage doing so.

See above (in part); adding to that I must say Fleeting infantry is still pretty damn speedy. I guess it depends on whether you're looking for a damage sponge or a chainsaw. Different lists have different needs, after all.

I used a Klaivex (Drazhar stood in for him) in my Incubi recently - they almost made it there before their Venom was downed and they got hit by the Lash of Submission. Surprisingly, my friend opted for pulling them closer, into rapid fire range, rather than just moving them out of the way into the open. After gunning down the Incubi, the Klaivex stood alone, passed his leadership test, and got charged by the Daemon Prince. In the interests of fairness, I pointed out that the Klaivex had Demiklaives and both powers before he did this. He did it anyway, and the Klaivex took three wounds off him before he got killed. If I hadn't forgotten he had the powers in the second round of combat, it might have been different. Oops! I only took him because I had spare points left over, and didn't have enough for a properly viable unit composed of stuff I owned. Might do it again in future, he's scary. Not as scary as Drazhar, but potentially very effective, and obviously much cheaper on points. Disappointed he didn't get to use the Bloodstone, but it most likely wouldn't have done much anyway. 7 Incubi, plus a Klaivex, Drazhar and Archon in a Raider could be quite nasty. I suspect it wouldn't last anything like as long as the Grotesques once the transport was taken down though. Maybe swap out an Incubus for a Haemonculus as well.

I saw another post where they ran: Archon, Urien, 4 grots BUT what about:

Urien
Lady Malys (Str 4 on the charge plus voids magic, I play a lot of eldar so no DOOM)
4 grots
-1 abberation/scissorhand
- all added strength (str 7 on the charge)
Raider FF/NS


They have 3 pain tokens to start with making the lady even more deadly being str 4 on the charge, the grots will be str 7 on the charge and Urien's clone field shenanigans to eat power weapon wounds. (since he is T5 PFs won't instant kill him if he fails a save). They would be nasty, I mean nasty! I might think about running the Raider with a dissie cannon to rough up terminators a little first.

What do y'all think?

Well its one of the better ideas with Grots, that way they are immune to Force Weapons and at least equate to Death Star, meaning it can take any unit.

But it costs more then 500 points.I say - reserve this for Apocalypse or 2.5k point games.

Sorry if this is necroposting but been thinking about a DE deathstar and I've come up with this,

Baron sathonyx
Haemonculus
Hexrifle
5 beastmasters
Agoniser
1 claw fiend
4 razorwing flocks
10 khymerae

Total points 470pts.

Idea is haemonculus leaves his pain token with the beast masters and baron stays with the unit to provide stealth and he can leave the unit if they need the 12inch charge or stay with the unit and provide a PGL to charge into cover. Works out on the charge as 2 agoniser attacks, 8 beastmaster attacks, 5 claw fiend attacks, 24 rending attacks and 40 khymerae attacks. Not to bad me thinks.

Beasts dont have Power From Pain, only Beastmasters.

Can I just clarify this?
Can you have two HQ's in one unit? This may seem like a stupid question, but I'd never heard of this before I came across this thread.

Yes- you can attach multiple Independent Characters to one squad.

CaptainBalroga wrote:

Yes- you can attach multiple Independent Characters to one squad.

Awesome. Thanks, I was completely unaware of this and I have been playing for a while. This shall make things more interesting...

In my perspective, DE dont have something what you call Deahtstar. They are more like their CWC, unites helping each other gain the advantage. A squad of 10 Wytches, assaulting a unite, say a tac squad, later that turn to be assaulted by 5 incu 1 klaivex, 1 archon is a good synergy. Sac a few wtches to take up the fron of the assault, then decapitate the enemy with the incus.

9 Wytches with 2 upgraded weapon - shardnet and hydra are my preferences - 1 hekatrix with agoniser.
5 Incu, 1 Klaivex with onslaught and bloodstones. And now comes the question, what type of archon. I have two compositions for that matter:
Archon of Pain:
Agoniser, Ghostplate, Clone Field, Combat Drugs.
Can paint the wall with literally anything, that doesnt have an AV. MC's T8+? Wound on 4+. on the charge thats what like 6 attacks with ws 7.
Sinister Archon:
Huskblade, Clone Field, Soul Trap, Combat Drugs.
For this to work, you have to assault an IC, most are tough, but if you can land one unsaved wound, than 90% victory, your str is 6, if not 8 by c.drugs. With 6 or 8, you can happily charge a nother IC, or an MC for that matter, only needing 1 unsaved wound and blam, you are str 10.

So in my thought, a DE Deathstar is something that synergy's well with your list.

The first archon is a point saver and has moderate useage, the second archon needs good tactical sense and Lady Average to be at your sidefor one round of CC.