Defeating Mortarion

[Captain Idaho]

I've been thinking that defeating armies with Mortarion in them will require some quite specific methods, to the extent I considered Frater would want to access that information directly.

 

In this topic we will discuss 2 aspects to the same problem in an aid to winning a game against a Death Guard army - killing Mortarion and beating an army with him in it.

 

I consider killing Mortarion to be quite difficult to do. He's got a monstrous amount of wounds and a nearby sorceror can heal him D3 wounds a turn I believe. Added to Disgustingly Resilient and we have a character that will likely last to the end of the game.

 

So what ideas to players have to kill Mortarion?

 

I'm considering people need help when not using Guilliman or an Imperial Knight.

 

Bracketing him with a Devastator squad for a few turns can drag down his wounds regardless of how tough he is, but it might require some guts to finish him off. He's coming for you! He won't stand there and let you shoot him!

 

Maybe a Terminator squad counter attack would help? Whacking him with power fists is going to hurt but can they survive back? I'm thinking it's Cataphractii and Assault Terminators only who can counter charge him to hold him up.

 

On that note, holding him up whilst we punish his army is the other side of that coin. He costs a lot of points so if he is fighting 5-10 Terminators all game you're still up!

[Frater Cornelius]

Funnily enough, an Imperial Knight will not win this one. the 4++ is very potent against them. Guilliman himself will win a duel only if one certain condition is met: Mortarion does not damage him with psychic powers, charges him and does not kill him. That way Guilliman can attack during the DG phase, attack in his own phase, die in his own phase, spend 2CP to attack again. This should kill him, bar some dice anomalies. The strength of Guilliman is that he will enable even a whole lot of different units to bring Morty down.

 

But were talking about armies, that do not rely on Guilliman. This one is tricky. I will let Idaho speak for the miniMarines, as I do not play them, bar a few auxiliary units (Scouts, Dreads, Tanks). I can only speak for Primaris. Multidamage weapons are the key, as they will reduce the effective of his 5+++ against each shot. You will probably need to dedicate a sizeable chuck of your army to do so. For example, 6 Hellblasters within 15", re-rolling 1s to hit and wound, overcharged will knight away 5W on average. That is not much, considering that these guys can kill most big Tyranid Monsters in one volley. Running two units of 5 certainly helps. Running a full LC build on a Repulsor can really explode in damage, but the average is really not impressive. 4 LCs with re-rolls on 1s for hits and wound will do 3 damage on average. This is also about the point where shooting him will become inefficient, as most other things are small-arms fire. A Redemptor in melee will perform a whole lot better with 3.5-4W with the same re-rolls. Consider also that if a D6 damage attack gets though, you can manipulate the damage with the 1CP re-roll.

 

What this comes down to splitting fire effectively. Primaris have the advantage of low drops, so the first strike may be yours. You need to approach it sequentially. Put the LCs from the Repulsor, potentially Plasmas from Hellblasters and the Dread into him, while putting the smaller arms fire elsewhere. This will become extremely effective when Guilliman is on the board. Without him, you will need to make tougher decisions, as your LCs can not shoot his tanks if they shoot Morty. Over the course of 2 turns, he shoud be weakened enough for the Redemptor to charge and kill him. You can also supplement this tactic by playing VenDread(s) with a melee weapon and Twin LC.

 

There are Deathshrouds to consider, but they do not worry me much. They are very expensive and they either need to Deep Strike once Morty moved, giving you one free turn of shooting, or they deploy with him and make him increadibly slow as a result.

 

Forge World can also help. Things like the Leviathan can really punish him with Grav Flux

 

One tactic that can work is to lure or force him into a Nullzone. Morty will most likely want to charge. By keeping a Librarian with Nullzone close to his most likely target, or by simply running/disembarking this guy close to him, you can really hurt him. The issue is that is that Morty can attempt to deny it. It isn't fool-proof, but it is an option.

 

In the end though, Primarchs break the game. Guilliman is the most efficient way to kill him off. Beyond that it is combined arms and a bit of luck. There is no reliable way to kill him, unfortunately.

[Kastor Krieg]

Mortarion can take the Deathshroud as "bonus Wounds", basically. This will make him even tougher.

[Frater Cornelius]

Mortarion can take the Deathshroud as "bonus Wounds", basically. This will make him even tougher.

And slower. They can not keep up indefinitely. They either deep strike later and give you a turn or two to shoot Morty, of they deploy and fall behind.

[greatcrusade08]

I guess the same answer to everything, mortal wounds and lots of them, snipers, and hellfire shots?

[Kastor Krieg]

 

Mortarion can take the Deathshroud as "bonus Wounds", basically. This will make him even tougher.

And slower. They can not keep up indefinitely. They either deep strike later and give you a turn or two to shoot Morty, of they deploy and fall behind.

 

If morty is Infantry of some kind, he can also benefit from the pestilent cloud or whatever was it called.

[The Unseen]

Even without Deathshroud, or a Sorcerer healing him, it still takes 35 Krak/Lascannon shots at BS3+ to put Mortys 18 wounds down. I can't think of anything actually able to efficiently put him down. Meltas in half range still need 27 shots. Bolters take 360 shots, 81 autocannon shots, or approximately a THOUSAND lasgun shots fired at BS4+, 55 Thunder Hammer swings, just a hair over 16 Reaper Chainsword swipes, 120 Grav Cannon Shots, etc. By The Emperor...

 

Basically, either you have a way to spam a whole lot of mortal wounds, you have Gman, or you aren't going to kill him. And even with mortal wounds it takes 24 of them, with disgustingly resilient giving him effectively 6 more wounds on average. So 12 smites, plus however many he denies.

And I can't think of any unit on hand who could tie him up for more than a few rounds of combat at best other than maybe Hammernators. Lets see, they lose about 5 wounds per round of combat with morty using his Reaping Scythe, with its 18 attacks if he isn't injured. So, he'll mulch a squad of 5 hammernators in 2 rounds of combat. or 10 GeQ equivalents, which means cultist blobs and the like have a chance as long as they have morale mitigation, to hold him up. But he does have high movement and Fly, so he probably won't stay where you want him to if hes swamped by chaff. He kills Imperial knights with just 2 fight phases, and could conceivably take on 2 knights in combat at the same time and maybe win.

 

I'm going to go ahead and call him "OP". So if you can tie him up, great. If not, try to ignore him, kill his supporting troops as fast as possible, and outscore. AKA, the thing you always do when you fight unkillable deathstars. It's just that this time its a 1 model deathstar, so you can't get cheeky and snipe out what makes it work.

[Captain Idaho]

I was assuming it's a situation where we just concentrate on his whole army as best we can. That is my consideration. If there are spare missile launchers and Lascannon then we should not be afraid to drop it on him.

 

By the way, when I suggest a Knight or Terminator squad fighting him in close combat, I'm suggesting it's a charge. He'll not want to sit there and eat fire so a screen of Tactical Marines (or whatever) will bring him in close enough to a counter charge. Plus we would have (presumably) shot his face up a little that turn.

 

Here's a thought - Mortarion either hits us with his super strong scythe or his super sweepy scythe. He can't do both. A squad of Terminators in Cataphractii or with Thunder Hammers, or Vanguard with Thunder Hammers, that charges him alongside a decent fighting Dreadnought or character can tarpit him up for a while at least.

 

Not that hopeful but it's worth a try.

[Lord Blackwood]

Does anyone know the math on a Falchion pouring everything into Mortarion ?

[Gulltramarine]

I wouldn't even bother trying. He's not meant to be killed but, luckily, he can't move 32" like Magnus and probably won't have the same amount of ludicrous output that Magnus has. Kill the rest of the army 

[Captain Idaho]

I personally would want to cut his army as my go to strategy but I don't think it's as scary to kill him as people think.

 

I don't like Math-hammer. It might take 3 Lascannons to kill Mortarion, it might take 10 shots, it might take more.

[The Unseen]

Does anyone know the math on a Falchion pouring everything into Mortarion ?

Well, the falchions main gun is 2d6, str 16, ap-5, 2d6 damage.

So, an average of 7 shots, 2/3 of which hit, 5/6 of which wound, 1/2 of which go through his 4++, and 2/3 of which go through is 5+++, multiplied by an average damage of 7, gives you an "average" of 9 wounds caused to morty with a twin-volcano cannon.

Impressive, it's roughly equivalent to 16 lascannon shots.

An additional 2 quad lascannons, which if I'm remembering correctly, are just 4 lascannons firing together, 8 lascannons on average cause an additional 4 wounds.

The twin heavy bolters are statistically unlikely to cause any additional damage.

(.44 wounds on average)

 

Id like to add an addendum, a falchion also let's you kill morty fairly quickly.

 

 

And Idaho, it's fine to not like math or mathhammer, but pretending it doesn't exist or isn't useful is pretty facetious.

The odds that you kill mortarion with 3 lascannons are so astronomically tiny that you shouldn't ever expect or plan on that happening, despite it being technically possible.

[Captain Idaho]

Hardly facetious. Practical experience taught me that averages don't occur in a game very often. Dice do not care about the average.

 

Sure I won't expect 6 Lascannons to kill Mortarion in a game, but I'd sink a Devastator squads fire into him for a turn to strip him of wounds.

 

The problem with relying on maths is 1) Dice don't care 2) there's no such thing of rolling a fraction on a die despite the maths and 3) when rolling hundreds of dice a game, any average is taken at the end of all the dice rolled by both players. That means I could roll all 1,2 and 3 and my opponent roll nothing but 4, 5, 6 and the average is still there.

 

This sounds absurd but consider it like this - Mortarion rolls a 3 for his invulnerable save, suffers 3 damage to a Lascannon then rolls two 4s and a 5 for his Disgustingly Resilient. The average tells us that he should make his next invulnerable save right? Well no you've continued to roll dice so any average is taken from all 4 dice the player rolled.

 

Math-hammer is a loose guide at best but I'd take genuine experience over it any day.

[Brother Captain Ed]

I hardly consider my experience to be definitive, but I have noticed in 8th Edition you really don't have the option of ignoring whatever demon/death star/uber character/primarch and carrying on with a partially amended game plan. Everything is just too killy.

 

Anytime I've tried to ignore a model in favor of hitting softer targets, all it did was put my own Heavy Hitters out of position and or caused unnecessary casualties. I just don't think "ignore them" is a truly viable plan anymore. Even if your plan is a bad one, models like Mortarion will eat your lunch.

[Captain Idaho]

I wouldn't say completely ignore him. I meant that Mortarion takes a couple turns to get to you so you have time.

 

Check out this link for an example of dealing with Mortarion:

 

https://youtu.be/-5VEG9wJyds

 

Okay neither army is particulary dirty (excuse the pun) but that just goes to show just how well the Salamanders did against Mortarion.

[Kallas]

3x Destructor Killshot plus Guilliman averages 19 (well, 19.92 :P ) wounds after Invulnerable and Disgustingly Resilient, assuming he's got the Monster keyword (which should be pretty reasonable - Guilliman has it, and he's much daintier!)

 

Plus, they're actually pretty solid against Death Guard in general: Predator Autocannons do solid anti armour work with Killshot, and with Guilliman along even more so; Heavy Bolters can use Killshot to drop lighter vehicles hard (Drukhari Raiders will burn!), add support damage to heavier targets, and bring volume of decent Strength AP-1 guns for anti infantry.

 

For 477pts (excluding Guilliman) that's some pretty good firepower regardless of what you're shooting at.

[Captain Idaho]

If I had 3 Predators I totally would use this Stratagem on any army that needed a beating!

 

I was looking at the rules for a Culexus but aside from tying up Mortarion for a turn (he'd need to fall back which stops a charge) I don't see one killing Mortarion. In fact, just causing some wounds is unlikely.

[MasterDeath]

Just to give a little input from the other side:

 

If I would play Mortarion, I would make sure he has his personal Herald of Nurgle attached to him. Fleshy Abundance can heal the big boy.

 

How I would deal with him:

 

Feed him Plaguebearers and hope for the best. I would not engage him seriously.

[Mr. Shine]

MathHammer 40K 8th Edition comes up with 17.5 damage caused for three Predator Annihilators with Chronus and using Killshot. Seems a good option.

 

EDIT: I feel like that can't be correct, but I'm not good enough with the numbers to try and calculate it myself.

 

Switching to autocannon/heavy bolters comes up with a result of 36.667 damage inflicted.

 

Perhaps there's something I'm missing that's inflating the numbers. Or are they actually just that good an option against him?

Edited September 13, 2017 by Mr. Shine

[Captain Idaho]

Things die in 40K. Quite often and fairly easily. Mortarion is not invincible. The numbers probably aren't wrong but I admit I can't be bothered to check myself.

 

You can't put 17.5 wounds on anything. It's an abstract way of looking at unit capability which does nothing to reflect reality.

[greatcrusade08]

am I right in saying you get no inv save against mortal wounds right?

 

otherwise I agree with Idaho, dice don't care for averages, sometimes you get that one off 6+, others you roll eight 1s in a row.

averages only work over thousands of dice rolls

[Kallas]

MathHammer is useful because it gives you a rough impression of how a unit/weapon/thing will perform in a given scenario.

 

It's not really about being perfectly accurate, but having the information that X does Y on average to Z means that you can allocate your resources more efficiently.

 

Sure, dice will foul things up, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't/can't improve your odds by putting the right shots into the right targets.

 

Edit:

On average an Annihilator Killshot plus Guilliman does 15 wounds.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Kallas

[Captain Idaho]

That's right - no invulnerable save from Mortal Wounds. However, Disgustingly Resilient works however, though only on a 5+.

 

We can potentially hurt him in a single turn with a Mortal Wounds assault. Smite and Psychic Scouring from a Librarian can potentially give you 2D3 wounds off the bat, then we can hit him with Hellfire Shells and Flakk missiles Stratagems.

 

That's 4D3 Mortal Wounds.

 

The Chapter Tactic of Ultramarines is useful for Psychic Scouring I'd add.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying a single method is going to work. Hitting Mortarion with a Devastator squad one turn, Mortal Wound assault next then maybe a counter charge with a Terminator squad and Dreadnought might be enough to tip the balance and topple the fallen Primarch.

[greatcrusade08]

I think killing sorcerer's first to prevent him gaining wounds back, and then just war of attrition, if there are no more characters left. use a sniper squad to go for those handful of MWs each turn, fire the occasional melta/lascannon if theres nothng else to shoot at

[Frater Cornelius]

I think killing sorcerer's first to prevent him gaining wounds back, and then just war of attrition, if there are no more characters left. use a sniper squad to go for those handful of MWs each turn, fire the occasional melta/lascannon if theres nothng else to shoot at

 

You won't be able to. A Sorc has less than 10 Wounds and will most certainly be behind Morty. You will need to kill Morty to reach the Sorc.