Deathstrike Missile Launcher

It may look a little phallic, but once it fires, your tarpit is in pieces.

"Oh... Your base has grown so large, General. A perfect target for my SCUD Storm!"

– Dr. Thrax

It's time. You need to give your foe the finger in defiance.

But not just an ordinary finger, oh no.

You want to go for a giant middle finger, one which will launch into the sky, then come crashing down and trigger an explosion of apocalyptic proportions. Well good news, Guard players: You have an option. This option happens to be the single most over-the-top thing in the Imperial Guard, and that's saying a lot for an army that fields tank battalions the size of small countries and batteries of artillery capable of raining death from across a table. You want to nuke the motherfuckers, and the Deathstrike Missile Launcher will allow you to do just that. It's time you brought in the frontline ICBM.

Overview

This explains everything.

The Basilisk Artillery Gun and other artillery used by the guard have budget.

the Praetor Armored assault launcher has sheer volume of fire.

The Manticore Rocket Launcher has its cluster-bomb effect.

and The Deathstrike Missile Launcher has raw, balls-out power.

Put yourself in the mindset of the commanding officer:

"Gunner, do you see that army?"

"Yes, milord."

"I don't want to."

"Understood, milord."

And there's the reason to bring one in a nutshell.

The first thing to note about the Deathstrike is that it has only one shot, and takes at least one turn to be suitably prepped to fire - so it cannot fire first turn. It also cannot fire if it has moved. It has the rule "The Hour is Nigh," which means that you need to roll a d6 every turn after the first for the Deathstrike, adding +1 for each round the Deathstrike has been on the table and stationary, and subtracting -1 for each weapon destroyed result the missile has taken. If the result is 4 or greater (a roll of a natural 6 is an automatic success), the Deathstrike may fire its missile.

Why suffer all these penalties for a one-shot weapon? Why bother going through all this for a vehicle whose drawbacks are easily eclipsed by the upsides of the Basilisk, Colossus Siege Mortar, and Manticore Rocket Launcher? The answer lies in the Deathstrike's overwhelming power. That one missile has unlimited range, is Strength 10, AP1, ignores cover saves, auto-hits everything in the blast, and deals its full strength of 10 to any vehicle caught even remotely in the blast area. Topping it all off, its blast radius is 10", which will make blob armies cry.

The most subtly hilarious facet of the Deathstrike is its unlimited range. You can literally fire it at another continent.

In short: Anything in that blast radius that doesn't have Eternal Warrior just had to roll for Anal Circumference. It has a Heavy Bolter, too, but no one cares about that.

Tactics

Sadly, the Deathstrike's weaknesses of only one shot, long ready time, middling accuracy (actually now fixed to a fucktastic Apocalyptic Blast), and variable blast size makes it a bit too chonky to be used effectively in a typical game. It's extremely effective when it fires, and it can utterly invalidate almost any enemy unit it targets, but it pays a lot for this. Getting the most out of the Deathstrike usually involves fitting it with Camo Netting to make it stealth, and a Hunter-Killer Missile, optionally, to let it do something when not sitting around waiting for the gun to fire.

Or you could just use it as the ultimate freak-out unit, like a distraction carnifex your opponent will focus a lot of effort and energy into getting rid of it before it has a chance to fire. Use 30 of them in an apocalypse game for the ultimate lulz.

Another use in apocalypse is to take it as the Deathstrike Vortex Missile formation (giving it "fueled and ready for launch", which reduces the number you have to roll to launch the thing). This can then be used to snipe off annoying enemy characters (or titans, or gargantuan creatures) as an amazing display of overkill.

Alternatively, phone up a distant Games Workshop, and tell them that you're targeting your Deathstrike Missile Launcher across state lines, to attack a randomly chosen game going on at their store. Even the Age of Skubmar ones, or the maybe three remaining Hobbit games on the planet.

As a side note, We all know that cockroaches are immune to fallout so Tyranid's big monstrous creatures (f.ex those that you WANT TO KILL with this thing) can shrug off deathstrike missile's effects with Feel No Pain, Regeneration or just not giving a fuk with 5 more Wounds to go on. However, when against spehs mehreens, this is the ultimate troll machine for instakilling everything.

Thanks to unbound lists in 7th e, you can legally field an army consisting of nothing but 15 deathstrikes at 2k. That is how you man-mode 40k.

++Thought of the Day: Know Thine Enemy, Prepare Thine Anus.++

Vortex Missile (prior editions)

For even more rape you could upgrade the Deathstrike launcher to be armed with a Vortex Missile. This monster had the same blast radius but it would instagib ANYTHING (except gargantuan creatures, super-heavy vehicles, and certain independent characters with special rules like Trazyn or Saint Celestine).

No saves of any kind. No eternal warrior. No rolls for damage. No reanimation protocols or other back from dead bullshit. Everything under the blast template was just thrown into the warp and destroyed. And the vortex blast would stick around as a 3" marker, scattering 2D6" at the start of both players turns with the same rules, only disappearing when a double was rolled. Taking one of these was a nice way to bring a game to a friendly conclusion.

8th Edition

The "accessibility" nerfbat has arrived, and as one of the most fun units the IG have the Deathstrike was hit the hardest.

An ordinary Heavy Support choice for 163 points stock, and the missile is 3D6 shots that inflict a mortal wound with every hit, no wound rolls required. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately there are a few other things to consider. It lost its unlimited range - even if it's still 200 inches it's now out-ranged by a Basilisk, and the Inter-Store Ballistic Missile is gone because that would be too much fun. Most devastatingly, as a result of the removal of templates, it now only actually lands half of the missile's 3D6 hits because it has BS4+ (and that gets even worse if the launcher is damaged when it fires) and only hits a single unit directly - although it is, at least, one of the few weapons to retain some form of splash damage, with any unit within 6" of the target suffering D3 mortal wounds on a 4+ (whoopee). Not exactly the machine of terror it used to be, considering its average damage-on-target is just 5 wounds (3D6->10.5 hits, halved by BS4+) to a single unit in an edition where most large targets have at least 12 Wounds and access to an ability (or even several stacked) that will let them ignore those on a 5+/6+, and hordes come in squads of 30. You might get the odd one that obliterates a tank or Terminator squad if you roll well, but generally these will now just kill a few Meganobz or scuff the paint on a Land Raider, and they actually have the real potential to miss altogether (don't question how one misses with a megabomb). Unless you spend a lot more points to stack a shedload of to-hit buffs and rerolls on it, it's unlikely to achieve more than mildly annoying a couple of squads. But there will be that one game where it will hit with all the shots. Just for witnessing that glory, it is worth it.

9th Edition

Welp, Blast weapons now deal max shots per attack to units with 11+ models. Although those shots still have to hit, this means that getting those potential 18 mortal wounds just became much more likely. For maximum hilarity be sure to use the Vortex Missile stratagem, which will on average deliver 13.5 mortal wounds to the target unit. This is ideal for obliterating large blocks of armored infantry such as power armor troops and Necron warriors. Rejoice, because for the first time in years the Deathstrike now has a very good chance of exceeding its own value in enemy casualties when used against the correct target. Huzzah!

Now, GW just needs to reintroduce the unlimited range, and the Deathstrike can truly reclaim its past glory!

New Codex

Well, GW has finally answered our calls and given us a Deathstrike that doesn't suck, it just sucks less. Gone are the days of the Deathstrike failing to kill 10 Boyz or just not firing at all You still need to roll D6s for MW, and 1 still gives you jack shit.

It's been reworked to instead require two steps to fire: First, a targeting marker is placed. Then, next turn, you can either move it or fire one of three warheads, selected after your opponent shows you their army: Godspear missiles have a microscopic blast radius, but can one-shot anything short of a Knight. Plasma warheads have a wider area of effect, but don't do as much damage. And finally, the dreaded Vortex Missile, which creates a mini Warp storm that sometimes hangs around for a couple turns. It's not going to surprise anybody like it could in the old days, but if your opponent sees that you have a marker on the objective they were eying they're probably going to change their plans very quickly.

But then again, you're still buying an artillery piece that 1) only fires once 2) takes 2 turns to fire 3) can be destroyed before it shoots 4) can be avoided. While you're no longer waiting 2-4 turns to shoot, you're also banking quite a bit on it still being on the field before it fires, which is hard on the smaller board. It's an amazing DISTRACTION CARNIFEX, but if you're expecting to play mind games with your opponent, remember that they'll be doing the same thing, leveraging everything from hovering land raiders to flying railcannons to blow up what is ultimately just a Chimera with a nuclear strap-on. Emperor help you if you're going second. Tl;dr: taking a Deathstrike is just playing The Hunt For Red October on the frontlines.

See Also

A fourth of July celebration in which a nuclear war is started between Britain and the USA, fought with Deathstrikes.