Beaststar

Hi all,
As a relative newb to the game I keep seeing the term beaststar thrown around when talking DE and particularly tournament play.
Though not especially interested in tournaments, I am interested in knowing what this star is!

Can anyone give me run down of it. Not worried about stat lines, point costs etc. but the composition of it and the tactics/thinking behind it!!

Thanks all

Jk

DE Beastpack. And a big one. Supported by two farseers on a bike (or Eldrad) and Baron Sathonyx. Fortune is the spell they are aiming for.

I use 20 Khymerae (4BM) supported by 2 Wraithknights 2 D-Avenger Serpents, warp spiders and some bikes. I have 5 kabalites as well but they rarely do anything.

Lesser version is to use only one farseer for a DE primary. Some (and me previously) uses Razorwing flocks. "Nobody" uses Clawed fiend.

If you go deathstar, go all the way and take 25 khymerae. Other than that, Vasara is spot on. One of your farseers needs(!) to have Shard of Anaris to make the whole blob fearless. Hit and Run from the baron is key to allow the unit extra movement in the assault phase. Spread the blob out and enjoy board control and ridiculous multicharges.

Beast Star Battle Reports

Here are some Batreps. Theres also a part 1 with an army list discussion somewhere on that site.
Enjoy!

I have had great success with the Beastpack. I run Dark Eldar primary and put the Baron and a Jetbike Farseer with the Shard of Anaris in with them.

I have run several set ups, but the one I have used the most and have won several tournaments with has 5 Masters, 5 Khymera, 6 Flock, and 1 Fiend. Each Beast has a job and they perform admirably.

The new hoopla is running all Khymera. It survives but doesn't do much damage to the tougher things out there. I have also seen people running a couple smaller ones. You can run Beastpacks in a number of ways and all of the Beasts are viable. Making blanket statements like "Nobody takes this or you should take this" is all opinion and there is no 1 size fits all and guaranteed way to go.

The unit is overall very powerful and can do many things. How you construct the unit depicts what you want it to do. You cant really go wrong with how it is constructed.

The thing about khymerae is two-fold:

1. They allow to be taken in groups of 5, which means that with baron, beastmasters and a farseer or even 2 you are rocking a unit that has 32-33 terminator bases. That is one HUGE footprint that you can establish board control with. If you face something you can't beat, challenge it with a beastmaster, and hit and run out at I6. Or if you have Eldrad, force weapon it to oblivion. His movement is not much of a hamper anyway as you can sling-shot him up the board and with the beasts' horrendous movement you can keep him in coherency all the time.

2. They counter Elite shooting extremely well, because you just don't give anything about S10 or Ap2, you fail a save, one dog dies... you can even have the Baron tank some wounds and with fortune, the unit becomes a whole lot tougher. They also don't care about Grav. To an extent they even counter the current Eldar/Tau Meta because they don't get insta-killed by S6 or S7 which is very prevalent in these armies. Well, in fact they do, but they only have 1 wound anyway. Flocks die in droves against such shooting. The only real weakness is volume of fire, which the flocks would be better at tanking. But there are few builds that revolve around volume of low strength fire (say bolters) these days, I can only think of a handfull in the competetive meta.

Thanks for the replies, not been able to check until now.
A final question, aside from the GW models, what could be used as alternatives, and where might I find them?

There is a long thread discussing this in the painting and modelling forum. Have a look

Link to the thread

Yup...
Baron
Farseer w/ shard on jetbike ( I throw in the runes of warding too... nice to stop a power that you NEED to stop!)
5 beastmasters
25 dogs.

I would urge others to never take flocks, but people will play with what they want. The simple matter of fact is a beaststar is the best weapon DE have at taking out waveserpents, tau gunlines, and nid or ork hordes. Heck, reread the rules on glancing a vehicle to death... how hard is it to surround a waveserpent full of wraithguard with 32 terminator type models? Answer is not very! Glance the vehice to death and the unit inside just dies! No saves, no emergency disembark... they just die.

The real benefit of a beastpack however is twofold.
1. They OWN the entire board. there is nowhere where they cannot reach, no place they cannot go, and can realistically threaten 2 objectives on opposite sides of the table at the same time. This makes it sooo hard for opponents to counter play it, because with the beasts movement and footprint, they cannot be sure what you are going to do or where you are going to go. They can charge AV14 tanks just to get closer to the enemy lines. they can charge soulgrinders and hit and run slingshot across the board.

2. Controling the flow of the game. Nothing does it better. Don't like those two riptides? Charge em both! If you win, (which you probably would) you run em down, if you lose, who cares? Hit and run at the end of their turn, shoot the hell out of the riptides, then charge back in! Or better yet, charge a riptide and firewarrior squad, wipe the warriors and watch the tide lose by 10 and get run down.
A screamerstar? Again, tie em up and leave when you want. You can control where you go and what both you and the opponent can do. Nothing will frustrate a tau player more than not being able to shoot with his super no cover saving buff commander/ riptide/ broadside units. If the opponent is scared of your dog unit and concentrates on it, the rest of your army is ravaging/ venoming and poisoning him to death. If your opponent ignores the beastpack for the rest of your army, you have already won the game, he just doesn't know it yet!

Found a Video Battle Report with commentary in which the Beaststar ist played in a DE primary detachment.

You can check it out to see how a Beastpack/star actually is played and the commentary also explains a lot of its abilites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhOSSWP7J7w&list=UUBzUEWxzduyn0PQsOtvY_5w&feature=share&index=2

EDIT: You do good in skipping the first 6 minutes, nothing happens there   

Id just like to add that while flocks are good for damaging high toughness and/or 2+ save models, they are a lot more vulnerable than they used to be. Im down to 2 RWF in my pack simply because I like my 'razorwing drone' conversions.

2 flocks will average about 1 rending a turn which against things like riptides can be nice but if you face any army with barrage or precision shots you will lose the models very quickly. Especially O'vesa but also any advanced targeting system riptide with hbc, flyrants and so on. Thats when you start noticing how much precision shots are in the game.

The good news is its still just a 15 pt model with 6 wounds.. which can be very handy with stealth parked next to baron or the jetseer for LoS options.