deathstar paladins

[Reclusiarch Darius]

The point of Deathstars is that they outperform a similar investment in weaker (but more numerous) units. Stormhammers laugh at your firepower and kill pretty much everyone in close-combat. Nob Bikers let you get one turn to gun them down, then they're in your lines, eatin your dudez (same applies to Biker Command squad for Marines, which packs quad melta/plasma gun, storm shields and lightning claws with Khan/Biker Captain w/relic blade as backup).

 

Vindicators are actually quite rare, due to the internet group-think that says anything less than Pred/Raven spam is a waste of Marine heavy support (which I mostly agree with, because Devastators are stupidly overpriced, and Thunderfires die in a light breeze). Likewise, most Guard armies battle cannon spam, they don't like risking their decent guns to the enemy (Chimeras are cheap, Russes are not). Outside of Imperial/Chaos forces, you don't actually see much in the AP2 template department. Eldar have Fire Prisms, but they have to combo-fire to get a large blast (to generate enough hits to break your 'Shrouding').

 

Massed poison is complete garbage. Only T5+ stuff with weak armour or solo models care, everyone else shrugs it off. Against TDA, poison is the worst option for DE. They have Wyches for tarpitting you (if only for a turn, because you will break their 4+ in protracted combat, whereas their S3 punches again don't do jack against Terminators), and of course Trueborn for blaster spam. Incubi are sadly completely outmatched, you go first with halberds and you get 5+ invul and 2 wounds, whereas they don't get their 3+ armour and crumple.

 

Paladins do pay a premium to be awesome in both shooting and close-combat (other Deathstars are by definition close-combat masters, with weak/auxilary firepower). 16 psycannon shots is just plain brutal, and with character support (Grandmaster/Libby), they make a mess of other Deathstars. Your real problem is overkill; most strategy involving close-combat revolves around hitting hard but not so hard that you massacre (thus leaving you open to enemy firepower), 'hiding' for a turn in the enemy turn, then finishing combat the end of their Assault phase. The way you go about this is by combat squadding Paladins. They're still very tough to kill, but the enemy now has two seperate targets, instead of one big blob. Other Deathstars either can't Combat squad, or risk much by doing so (Stormhammers stop being a threat once you kill 3 of a 5-man squad, hence the need to stay 10-man).

[Captain Idaho]

Idaho, my man, I would NOT pit an HG against a unit of Paladins. ^_^ Most of them swing first, and they've all got power weapons...I6 and at least S5 if not S6...or more...Librarian, Draigo, and the unit might all throw up Hammerhand if they were confronted with an HG. They'd brush them aside, I fear.

 

Anti-tank fire is my recommendation. ;) And...believe it or not, this is coming from me...a liberal application of Hammernators.

 

Yeah, I wasn't going to, just lament the higher initiative they get. Mutual destruction works sometimes, but is just not an option for Honour Guard here. Of course there is always something I could do, like gun down the rest of the army. I can also multi-charge a weakened Paladin unit if necessary, but again this is a case by case basis and likely last resort to finish off the last few.

 

I have some anti-tank fire, so I can do that I guess!

[Brother Captain Kezef]

My deathstars come in at 780 points and seem to do the job quite nicely.

 

I was very anti-paladin but came round to them when i realised my opponents are using this kind of crap so i may as well. They are very useful against 'Nid deathstars as you can survive being dumped to init 1 from the whips and still claim enough NFW insta-kills to rock their world.