Deathstar as bullet sponge?

Last night I played a game agains the Black Templars and brought a pretty large Beast Pack to handle CC duties.  I ran the following:

5 x Beastmasters
8 x Khymera
5 x Razorwing Flocks
Baron
Shardseer on Jet Bike

At 1500 points this unit represented about 1/3 of my overall points.  And it did absolutely nothing offensively.  My opponent spent three full turns shooting it (unfortunately I did not get Fortune with the Farseer) and I failed my last ditch charge.  He ended up destroying it in combat (with two units) on turn 3.

However, because he was so focused on killing it, he mostly ignored my Ravagers, Venoms, and Warp Spiders, who proceeded to roll up his flank and then encircle him.  By the time he finished wiping out the Beasts, I'd crippled the rest of his army.  He conceded on turn 5.  

My question is, was spending that many points on what is essentially a very shiny distraction worth it?

My view would be this:


IT WORKED, DIDN'T IT?!

Ha! Yes. Yes it did. I was just wondering if anyone thought it may be advisable to put some of those those points into more dark lances or splinter cannons? Or, as you said, since it ain't broke, I shouldn't try to fix it (at least as of now)?

The entire point of a deathstar is twofold.

First - it can kill things.
Second - it is hard to kill.

I will say your specific build looks like it could do with a bit of tweaking for optimization, and I'll also admit I'm unsure why it was so difficult for you to get into assault with it. But it also sounds like it was a core component of your victory, so I'm unsure what your issue with it is.

Ah, yes, those are two very good points. My issue with getting it into assault was just some horrible rolling on my first turn run move and my opponent keeping a respectful distance until the unit was mostly gone.

What tweaks would you recommend to optimize it?

I find my Beast Pack does 1 of two things every game. First, gets into assault Turn 2 and kills a units a turn for the rest of the game. Or, gets shot to pieces for the first two to three turns and maybe kills a unit. However, because the opponent is so focused on killing it, the rest of your army does all of the heavy lifting and wins you the game.

The second situation is most common. People usually knows what it can do and therefore throw firepower into it early to try and slow it down. Situation 1 happens usually if people have never fought the Beast Pack before or simply cant do anything about it.

Thanks to you and Thor for putting it into perspective.  I was just worried that I used it wrong because it didn't kill anything and ended up being a massive points sink.  But I'm encouraged to hear that the DE Subject Matter Experts have had similar experiences when running the Beasts.