Deathstars getting you down? Try new Deathstar-OFF!

EDIT: +1 slice of humble pie for me. As per the comments, on P45 the rulebook specifically says that the squads must stay in unit coherency, regardless. Oh well, you are now welcome to read the post and just laugh at me instead.


Deathstars getting you down? How do you deal with a Paladin block when you haven't got a pile of AP1/2 firepower that you can lay down into thes squad?

Note: I am using Paladins as an example here - TWC WolfStars, NobStars/Nob Bikers, TH/SS Terminators, anything that's not fearless.

Now, I have pointed out the cavaet "fearless" so you all know where I am going here, Tank Shock.

We all know the best way to deal with Paladins is to shoot them with triple-las Vendetta Squadrons and Melta vets. However, I play Orks, and the sum total of AP2 I get is Weirdboys and Kustom Mega Blastas, both of which arent at home in my lists. Thus, I have to resort to Powerklaws, which work just fine (for one round of combat then get back in their carry bag) or Tank Shock.

Before I get into tactics here, lets look at the standard scenario:
As the Paladins get towards my lines, I throw every vehicle at them in one turn in an unending wave of Tank shocks to try and get them to break.
Once the finally break, I then have to chase them off the board using probably about 5 Trukks (one dies per turn to shooting, at least. This means I dedicate a large percentage of models, and about 10KPs if the trukks still have boys in them, to the task of chasing off 7-900 pts of dudes. A good sell right?

What if I told you there was a better option?

As you can see here, I have a squad of 10 Pallies and Draigo all moving up.

You need to move a single vehicle or squad in behind their lines like this

From there, you Tank shock the hell out of them until they break. In this example, I got lucky and they broke after 1 Tank shock.

Now, the Pallies/TWC/Whatever fall back... the way that I intend them to fall back.
Note how the tank splits the squad.

At this point the Split Rhino/Trukk/Raider is toast, and will be dead next turn.
However, this is irrelevant. You can now take your forces off to fight somewhere else.

Note the blue line, that distance will be > 2".

Because the squad is out of coherency, they cannot rally.
The squad must move in a direct line to the long table edge, and cannot regain coherency.
Even run moves MUST be done in a direct line to the long table edge.
The only way your opponent can get out of this bind is to block his own squad's movement so that they come back into coherency.

However, in my experience, once you have shown your opponent the page on regrouping, and made them realise that they are screwed, they lose heart and that's game. You play cleanup and move on.

You can also pull this off if you stick your big long vehicles through a squad, and have them actually split the squad that way.

Anyway, I hope that this helps out someone when facing the big nasty non-fearless DeathStars that get around.