AoS How to deal with an eternal starhost

[Canas]

My girlfriend finds my eternal starhost near impossible to deal with. This despite her having a lord celestant on dracoth, a lord relictor, a retributor unit and a judicator unit with the big crossbow to deal horrible amounts of mortal wounds to them.

The main issue is that aside from those mortal wounds basicly nothing she does has any effect whatsoever. On top of that, she doesn't have that many models, so we only play ~1000 point matches at which point my eternity starhost is about 80% of my army, so it's not like she can win on other aspects.

So what exactly are supposed to be counters?

So far she's tried to following:

• Use ranged attacks to focus down the eternity warden (and reduce their saves to a "mere" 3+)
  • Issue is that she doesn't have nearly enough ranged attacks. At most this'l get her 1-2 wound/turn on the eternity warden and he is running around with a Phoenix stone. So that gets nowhere.
• Focus them down with her various mortal wounds
  • Issue is that the amount of mortal wounds is random, and although it'l eventually take out the starhost it can easily take 3-4 turns and by then she has usually suffered quite high losses as the guards do surprising amounts of damage, especially if they get to stand still. On the other hand, when the dice gods do favor her she annihilates the entire starhost in a single turn.

The only thing I can think of that we haven't tried yet would be to just drown them in attacks (e.g. throw a 40 skinks at them) and use the whole "death by a Thousand cuts" approach. But that isn't exactly viable with the stormforged.

So what exactly is viable against the eternal starhost? Preferably an approach that is still somewhat fun to play against.

 

[TaintedSpud]

I'd say Retributors with Starsoul maces. But then you mentioned "fun to play against."

 

[Canas]

I'd say Retributors with Starsoul maces. But then you mentioned "fun to play against."

yeah this seems kind of the issue with the eternal host... at a 2+ save, but with only 1 wound they seem to either be sort of immortal when they don't face mortal wounds or really stupidly squishy when they do.

 

[Bowser]

Having two lord relictors would help. One heals fhe oher deals mortal wounds. Unfortunately with what she has they are not extremely effective. She would do well woth a dracoth list, or vanguard raptors with a knight with a kight venator or two. The -3 rend when you roll a 6 will start taking out guard easily. Two Venators gives you 6 atracks, bound to kill 1 guard a turn mixes with raptors/crossbows should give enough shooting to keep the guard down. So either buy more, or wittle you down after 3-4 turns with one unit alive to take objectives. Are you playing scenarios or just a straight up fight?

 

[Canas]

We've started doing scenario's, currently doing the example warband campagne in the generals handbook. Sadly so far these have only been "kill the other side". Scenario's might help, but given that we're currently stuck at 800-1000 points she doesn't exactly have many options regardless.

And yeah, I figured that she is probably just going to end up needing to get more stuff to round out her forces. Just hoped it wouldn't have been as bad as it is now. The last few matches consistently go the same. My guard and her stuff fight for a bit. I barely take any losses while she suffers greatly, especially if my guard are allowed to stand still. Eventually her mortal wounds finally trigger properly and suddenly most of my guards are dead.The 1 or two other units I have left alongside the 1 surviving guard then clean up whatever is remaining of her army at this point.

Anyways She still has a bunch of heroes to paint from the boxed warhammer quest game which includes a venator which should give her some more versatility. But she currently can't use one of her hands properly so they've just been sitting around collecting dust for the last few months.

Also as for lord relictors, those are only available in the starterset aren't they? Or is there somewhere else we can get em?

More in general though, what exactly is a "fun" way of dealing with an eternal starhost? In between the amazing save and but low wounds they feel fairly hit & miss. They can potentially be borderline immortal going toe to toe with powerfull monsters and demons, or they can be annihilated by a single good attack that did D6 wounds and happened to not get saved like one of those dracoth''s claws. There's very little in between.

 

[Bowser]

I think with scenarios and shooting forcing you ro move the guard it would probably be more fun.

 

[Canas]

Meh, so far even when she just waits for me to charge her it doesn't play out much different. It just means I only kill 1 or 2 liberators in the first turn, instead of entire units....

 

[Seraphage]

The real issue is that you play 1000 point games While they are lots of fun, the points are just too little to recover from some bad dice or be as balanced as 2000p because the solutions are less ! So my real suggestion would be to go higher up in points !

 

[Canas]

The real issue is that you play 1000 point games While they are lots of fun, the points are just too little to recover from some bad dice or be as balanced as 2000p because the solutions are less ! So my real suggestion would be to go higher up in points !

I know, I have enough seraphon for it, but we don't have a lot of stormforged. And she hasn't been able to paint in a couple of months cuz she hurt her arm, so we have like 4 heroes laying around halfpainted. Which doesn't help with expanding. That and she wouldn't like it if I'd buy her a 1000 points worth of stuff, tad expensive

Though it still begs the question, outside of a hard counter like spamming mortal wounds, is there an "fun" way of dealing with something like the saurus guard?

 

[Seraphage]

I know, I have enough seraphon for it, but we don't have a lot of stormforged. And she hasn't been able to paint in a couple of months cuz she hurt her arm, so we have like 4 heroes laying around halfpainted. Which doesn't help with expanding. That and she wouldn't like it if I'd buy her a 1000 points worth of stuff, tad expensive

Though it still begs the question, outside of a hard counter like spamming mortal wounds, is there an "fun" way of dealing with something like the saurus guard?

Even if there is I don't know of it !