Following DJ3's thesis, I'd also like to chime in and share my experience with the highly unorthodox shooty deathblob.
Before the Paladins, the best deathstar that also shoots come in the form of chaos terminators with a few reaper AC and some combiplasma/melta. There are other deathstars with shooting output, but they lack the range or the reusability to be meaningful. With Paladins, the GK player can sit there, swagger forward and reliably destroy anything with shooting and out-fight just about anything in H2H.
Going over to the thread about Deathstars you can see the menatality of 'ignore it' just as DJ3 has stated. The best way to nullify a deathstar is by not engaging it and the best way to use a deathstar is forcing the enemy to engage them. Why do you never see TH/SS terminator without a Landraider? Thundercav, Nob Bikers and Mephiston are great because they're so fast that if ignored, they'll just destroy one thing after another, whereas Logan+Wolfguard+Arjac/Swarmlord & Co cannot. The bottomline is, where the Deathstar is, the enemy won't be, unless they can out-punch your deathstar. If you spent 600+ points on a squad of dudes, you'd want them to be more than just a big **** off sign (although often people are completely fine with this).
The shooty deathstar, Paladins and Necron courtblob, not only do they serve as a giant ****off sign, it also dishes out damage from afar, which forces a response, and moreso if they score. Paladin is great because they deny a whole swath of the board, they shoot and more often than not, they also score. This is why they can have a 1500pt army consisting only of Draigo and 20 Paladins and still be reasonably competitive.
However, just as we discussed earlier, the speed, or threat radius, of a deathstar is also incredibly important, because this predicates how large a swath of the board the enemy need to relinquish if they choose to ignore the deathstar.
Thus, there are 5 metrics for determining the effectiveness of a Deathstar, the cost factor notwithstanding, as that's a efficiency argument:
- Speed - How large an area do your blob deny? What's it's reach?
- Shootyness - How much damage can your blob dish out outside of H2H? A Lance/Chrono Blob can threaten up to 36", way further than the reach of even the fastest unit.
- Scoring Status - Can the unit score? If you can deny the enemy's objective while simultanously claiming his, its a great advantage.
- Fightyness - How 'invincible' the unit is in H2H. Let's take the TH/SS Termie yardstick for example, they'd deny a whole swath of the board against Guards, but they can't do that against Daemons.
- Durability - How vulnerable the unit is from attrition or shooting. Case in point - DCA with Might & Hammerhand + Rad and Psychotroke wrecks havoc in CC, but you never see them outside of transports.
Necron deathblobs, as DJ3 said, have a virtually unlimited speed because they can teleport, but that's not the same as having unlimited speed because you can't assault out of deepstrike.
Now, let's examine the various blob setup:
It's fighty, it's tough it scores and with MitM, it also have a pseudo shooting attack. The Phyrric eternals can put out some S5 Gauss/Tesla shots, but the shooting is largely irrelevant, therefore the Immortals can be used as ablative wounds as long as there is a single one of them left.Originally Posted by Fighty Hacky Blob
My shooty blob is not as fighty and doesn't score, but it has a 36" S8AP2 gun with rerollable damage results and even though Imhoteh's 2+/3++/Phylactery makes the blob much tougher, but I can't use the Crypteks as ablative wound, which actually makes the unit roughly equal in terms of toughness.
It shoots, it scores and with 3 sets of MSS, it's more fighty than the Shootyblob but it's not as tough, although Trazyn can actually serve as the ablative wound. On paper this is actually the best setup for a Deathblob, but it lacks the alpha-strike potential of Anrakyr blob or the utility of the Imhotekh blob, so it's not a case of 'i must take this unit', but rather, which of these 3 blobs will fit my list the best.
It teleports, it's fighty and it scores. It lacks the utility of the other 3 blobs but is the toughest in a straight-up fight.
In anycase, I think all four blobs are slightly on the side of inefficient, i.e., about 70pt on the wrong side of expensive and all suffer against Jaws and Warp Rift. But other than that, if people are trying to find a list that functions around a deathstar that's actually good, I think you can start by trying out these setup.
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