I’m dreaming of a White Centstar.
Just like the ones I’ve dreamed about.
Where the pulse quickens and Hive Tyrants shakens
For fear of no cover all around.
I’m dreaming of a White Centstar
With every Perfect Timing I roll
May your models be dead tonight
Because all my Censtars be White…Scar!
Preamble
Oh the hilarity continues from GW. As most of you surely know by now, GW has give me, nay us, the most OP of relics this side of the Mississippi in the Hunter’s Eye from Warzone Damocles Kauyon. This little relic for White Scars characters gives the unit it is in Ignores Cover and the character +1 BS. All for a measly 4 Melta Bombs. I don’t know how many times I’ve rolled with my Grey Knights librarian on Divination, hoping for Perfect Timing. Trouble there is I have to roll to get the power off as well so at least there is a chance I can fail.
Now, I am guaranteed this perfect power that can be so devastating as my Grav guns cut through all armor and all cover with this relic. Let’s take a look at my new list.
White Centstar
GK – Nemesis
Librarian – ML3/Hammer/Warlord
5 Strikes – Incinerator
Nemesis Dreadknight – Hammer/Teleporter/Incinerator/Psycannon
Draigo
CAD White Scars
Librarian – Terminator/Hunters Eye/Storm Shield/Force Axe/ML2
2 x 5 Scouts
2 Drop Pods – Locator Beacon
2 x 3 Centurian Devastators – Grav/Missile/Omni
Allied Red Scorpions
Sevrin Loth
5 Scouts
Dreams of a White Centstar
So Space Marines allow me to self ally, and even if it didn’t I checked the rules for allies and it says you can’t have an allied detachment the same as your primary detachment. The primary is determined by your warlord so since my GK are my primary…you get the idea.
This gives my Centstar guaranteed Invisibility, Gate, Prescience (or another Primaris power of my choosing), and Ignores Cover, which I don’t even need to roll a psychic test for! Oh happy days. I lose FNP from my last build, but feel confident that Ignores Cover will be so much more useful as I won’t have to worry all that much about a lot of different cover builds out there.
The Missiles are there to help take down Void Shields. I lose a bit of the infantry killing power of the Hurricane Bolters, but I can always do Frag Missiles if need be.
For Psychic powers, I’m actually leaning towards Biomancy with the Grey Knight librarian, hoping for Enduarnce (4+ FNP anyone AND Eternal Warrior anyone?), and any other power there would be gravy. The White Scars Libby would then go on Divination and pick up Prescience and hope for Forewarning if needed.
All told, this gives the Centstar a ton of automatic tools to use and makes it more deadly than ever. Guaranteed powers and abilities gives me the time to plan and think about the different armies I might face and what I can do against them. I still have some good null deploy tools as well to avoid alpha strike armies.
Hunter’s OP Eye?
Is this relic OP? You bet it is. The ability to plug in Ignors Cover into any unit that can Battle Bro with Space Marines is crazy. But to be honest, in the land of 300+ points of free items (War Convo and Battle Co looking at you) I don’t feel to bad. There is OPness everywhere I look and I’m just a guy…looking for a girl…hoping to complete me.
We live in pretty crazy 40k times right now, with Tau super units buffing all their shots (according to a GW intern), 2+ Invul Chaos Knights, Raven Wolf Super Friends, no overwatch/pinning heavy bolters, and every other combo out there, things are pretty nuts. Make your list and go for it mang! Let the “Powers That Be” worry about balance with their quarterly polls and sup from the cup of life while we have it.
The Future
We complained that GW was holding us back on releases now we have so many we don’t know what to do with. This last release improved three different armies with one fell swoop, which when you think about it, is very cool. Think about it! Raven Guard with new cool and still fluffy rules? New units and a CombiFormation for Tau? The Hunter’s Eye for my Centstar? Whats not to love? I say embrace it and do our best in this wild future west of 40k.
What is also hilarious to me is that I see and mingle with a lot of casual and fluffy gamers, and they often bring stuff that is OP or lists that are tooled to survive and kill. The desire to win is inherit in most all of us I would say and how you go about it is colored by your own personal narrative, but I don’t think anyone enjoys getting blown off the table. I know I would often rather lose a close game then wipe a person off the table…unless I’m at the LVO, then I wish your army to crumble and die…but even then I feel a pang of guilt. When I talk about it afterwards, I don’t go brag how I wiped the floor with a guy, but rather say they had a really rough game and couldn’t make a save or something like that. Truth! Just ask my mom!
What we do have are some of the coolest models that GW has ever produced with rules that are making so many more armies able to compete. Yes, GW still sucks at writing coherent rules, but I bet a lot of us would do the same or worse. There is nothing like thousands of power pimpled gamers to take apart your ruleset and find the loopholes. Its going to happen in even the best of times.
What do you think? Is the future of 40k bright? Gotta wear shades? Is the Hunter’s Eye OP and needs to be banned? Post your thoughts below!
I use the Eye in my White Scars Battle Company and im OK with it.
The Hunter’s Eye is one of a number of things that I would prefer weren’t part of the Game. I’m not sure any of them have quite hit Game-breaking yet, but they do bring the power level up beyond where I really like it. That said, at this point, pin-point bans aren’t really going to solve the issue. Without a full-on hard reset, it just is what it is, and we’ve got to deal.
Yeah. It’s not really all that much worse than a regular Centstar, just reliable IC for one of them.
It’s still dumb, but 40k has been dumb for a while. You either embrace the dumb, you try to find people who don’t want every game to come down to “whose bullshit combo is better/who gets first turn”, or you find other games to play.
To be quite honest, I agree. There are a LOT of things I think aren’t really good for the game overall, but the Eye is really just the last in a succession of them.
Don’t get me wrong Cap, but any time you want to bring this list against my Tau you are more than welcome.
It’s cute, but a diversion at best.
Tell that to the #1 ITC Tau player the last time he ran into my Centstar with Hunter’s Eye. 😉
There is always a counter to everything IMO. I’ve typically done well against Tau….except Paul McKelvey….PAUL MCKELVEY!!!!!!!
“For Psychic powers, I’m actually leaning towards Biomancy with the Grey Knight librarian” Grey knights actually can not roll on Biomancy
Bah! Rules! Guess I should reread them….been a while.
I think that Loth has to pick a psychic discipline and then pick all 3 powers from it; he can’t cherry pick across disciplines. That’s how I *think* it works, from the last time I read his rules. If so, I’d go with Invisibility, Terrify and Shrouding.
Hunter’s Eye is crazy good with the Imperial Allies table, though. It’s amazing within the SM book with HnR Centurions, and I’m sure there are a bunch of other good applications (Imperial Guard, certainly, as it frees them up to receive a different Order – Tank Hunter, natch! – and they love them some Hit and Run).
With regards to Loth, that is correct.
Giving an entire IG blob Ignores Cover with their guns (including four Lascannons and whatever specials you want, natch) is a pretty big thing. Cents are an almost blindingly-obvious choice. There’s lots of others as well, from artillery pieces (Earthshaker Batteries, anyone?) to Mechanicum and more.
I had a tournament game against a dual-blob squad + Sisters player with 4-5 lascannons on each blob squad. I ran Tyranids with Flyrants. He then gets Skyfire for both of his objectives. Along with the Ignores Cover order (or was it re-roll successful cover?), that was an interesting game indeed.
As dirty as the Hunter’s Eye is – and it is dirty – it’s no more dirty than the Tau signature wargear that allows the unit to ignore cover as well. Back then, you had the Farsight-bomb that could split-fire thanks to Target Locks and shoot 7 different units with no cover saves allowed. In contrast, the centstar only allows you to hit 2 targets (and massively over-kill the 2nd unit). Nowadays, the Farsight-bomb can split-fire at 9 different targets and ignore their cover!
I think the Hunter’s Eye is noticably better than the Multispectrum Sensor for a number of reasons- for one, Marines are natively BS4. For two, it comes on a cheaper platform (a Librarian is 65pts, a Commander is 85 and you still have to pay to give him the Command Node to get what the Librarian gets for free with Prescience.) For three, it isn’t “wasting” the potential of the model carrying it- you can give the Libby a Combiweapon if you want and have him go to town. And lastly, it comes in a faction that has Grav, which far outclasses most all of the shooting weapons that Tau can combined with the MSSS.
yes, Tau can make a huge Crisis Bomb and give the buffs out to a larger number of models, but there’s a reason that strategy never caught on- it is VERY vulnerable to shooting, morale, and assaults. Deathstars cannot afford to be glass hammers.
I’d have to disagree. The buffmander is worth every penny and then some. He becomes even more stupendous if played with the intepretation that his wargear buffs affect other units as well a la the Hunter Contigent. As a pure shooty platform, the Farsight-bomb is much more efficient than the gravstar. Rarely will it overkill like the centstar does, which makes it a much better platform against MSU builds which normally give the centstar problems (i.e. Battle Company) nor does it have problems against particular builds (i.e. Daemons, any army with a Void Shield Generator). Tau BS3 is mitigated by auto-reliable twin-linkage (whereas there is always a chance of failure for Prescience) as well as Markerlights in the army. And giving a libby a combi-weapon? Say what? The only thing good about the +1 BS is for Psychic Shriek, not for any combi-weapons.
Stubborn, Hit-&-Run and Shadowsun’s Stealth/Shroud can be used to mitigate some of the other weaknesses of the bomb. Against most other armies, usually the Farsight-bomb (or crisis-bomb) does a better job due to its ability to target more efficiently. It’s only when the crisisbomb goes up directly against a gravstar (with the Hunter’s Eye or Perfect Timing) does the gravstar come out slightly ahead due to its better resiliency.
I’m not saying the Buffmander isn’t amazing- he’s a great guy and he can fill lots of different roles. But taking the MSSS versus the Hunter’s Eye is a different type of comparison.
Again, the issue with the Crisis Bomb with Buffmander is that it’s _vulnerable_. You can’t get Stealth/Shrouded when the game starts (as Shadowsun can’t start with the unit) and there are tons of things that get around it these days, not the least of which being assaulted. You have to specifically pick Stubborn (rather than Tank/Monster Hunter, etc) so you’re unlikely to have it up when you initially get charged- and that is probably the turn you will get swept and die.
It really is powerful but like you pointed out nothing we haven’t been dealing with so far. It has kind of gotten to the point where if you are purely relying on cover saves you won’t last very long anyways,
Yeah, it isn’t anything that we haven’t experienced before. The problem is, many races – Tyranids, Tau, Orks, etc. – don’t really have much Invuln’s to fall back on once their cover is blown, so to speak. And hence, wargear like the Hunter’s Eye or Multi-Sensor Suites will always be considered OP as such.
Great article, loving all this writing action CaptainA, keep it up!
The Hunter’s Eye is ridiculous, but so are Wraithknights, invisibility, and a whole list of other things.. even just grav weapons, for goodness’ sake, haha those things are ridiculous.
Still, take it as it comes and prosper! I like the attitude.
But the big one you mention is blowing away your opponents — it’s really true, I do not find that to be a pleasant experience and would much rather play close games. Not much to be done about it other than play to your opponent and “let” the game be closer than it might need to be sometimes, i.e. the gentleman’s agreement not to seize, or to give the other guy first turn, etc. That is the route I am choosing around here these days, but like you say, once you hit the top tables, prepare to see your army crumble into oblivion!
In friendly or casual games, don’t even take the Hunter’s Eye at all. I’d save it for tournaments or if someone challenges me to a competitive game.
Yeah, solely for tourny play for me…or tourny practice.
Thanks!
Who said tau don’t have that many invun saves? Every single model bar their basic troops has one? Broadsides, riptides, crisis suits, stealth suits, and with the ubiquity of shield drones and just drones in general tau are very resilient. I think it must be a meta thing, the group I play with in the uk (30 odd regulars) tau are ruinous and come out of every match looking op as hell.
The Shield Generator is horribly overcosted. Seeing one in the opponent’s list is basically a “guess what this person isn’t very good” flag for me.
Shield Drones are likewise not very good, because they typically have the same save as other drones (4+ cover and 4+ invuln roll just the same) but can’t shoot or do anything else.
I never use shield generators on my tau models.
In general for the price of two of them, you can nearly buy another model that the generators go on.
I think it’s time you let this list go, man. You play against a Battle Company and you come down and pop some transports, then get blasted by 40 grav shots and you’re out. I love this low model count stuff myself, but in a tournament system that is largely about taking and holding objectives it just doesn’t work.
I wouldn’t come down and pop some transports. I’d work one side and move through the rest. Also depends upon the mission. If I’m lucky I could be wrecking 4-5 units a turn.
Also, the main reason I’m doing the Centstar is to be going for Best Grey Knights. I’m the type of person that needs a goal in mind to shoot for. If i just take whatever I know I’m A) not going to compete against many other top players in that field. Top Necrons players have like 400plus points or something. Same for Space Marines and many others. B) just going to a tournament and getting 3-2 or 4-1 is nice but not something that is going to hold my attention. I HAVE to have a goal or doing tournaments will get old and stale for me.
I’m playing Centstar this year and will reasses next year. You can’t plan for everything because you won’t face everything. There will always be bad matchups. Playing Battle co? Hope you don’t face a Pentyrtant list. That army will mess you up wholesale.
the weakness of this army is going first.
Not necessarily. With the Drop Pods and against an alpha strike army, I have the ability to null deploy often. Especially if the terrain is good and has good LOS blocking terrain.
Any good army should able to go beta strike if needed. Also it should be able to go null or nearly null. But of cause the main problem is not alpha or beta strike but territories.
I see a hard time to come around once you had your army on the ground. re-positioning will be an issue to overcome against your peers. Play a non confrontational game, territories positioning game.
Awesome. I’m super stoked to add a WS librarian into my IG army! 😀 PEW PEW PEW.
The Eye has definitely made me a little happier about running a cent star again. I didn’t even get to take my first iteration of it to a major GT before the new GK dex got released so I’m playing more of a silly version of it when I goto Renegade in a few weeks. Had a tech marine with the eye at first, but then realized that 15pts for a psyker that can cast malefic powers in case I get into a bit of a pickle could come in handy (I know, it’s heresy…).
Nemesis
Librarian: Psyker (Mastery Level 3)
4 Strike Squad: + 1 Justicar
9 Purifier Squad: + 1 Knight Of The Flame
9 Purifier Squad: + 1 Knight Of The Flame
Kaldor Draigo 245
White Scars
Librarian (Hunter’s Eye, ML 1)
4 Scouts: + 1 Scout Sergeant (melta bombs)
• Land Speeder Storm
4 Scouts: + 1 Scout Sergeant (melta bombs)
• Land Speeder Storm
Drop Pod: locator beacon
Drop Pod: locator beacon
Drop Pod: locator beacon
3 Devastator Centurions: 3× grav-cannon and grav-amp; + 1 Centurion Sergeant (twin-linked lascannon; missile launcher;
Inquisition
Inquisitor Coteaz 100