My gripe with mortal wounds

[The Unseen]

The same Aeldari psyker who smited your terminator has just done executionior on that unit of boyz... on a 7+* has done D3 MW then because he killed a model did another D3 MWs..... so has removed average of 4 but likely to remove 6 boyz.

 

*before modifiers so can do it on a 6+ easily and if its Eldrad then a 5+.....

 

And smite doesnt care if your a terminator or an ork it kills everyone equally.

That's both an army specific power, possibly the best source of Mortal wounds in the game, and still doesn't kill as many points as smite does against said terminators.

Way to totally miss the point.

Even if executioner rolls max, and kills 6 ork boyz, that would kill 3 terminators instead.

6 Boyz is 30 pts, 3 termies is almost a hundred.

 

The fact that MW don't care what you are is entirely the point, some models pay a lot of points for increased value for their wounds by being tougher or having a good save, but MW don't care about that.

Nothing else in the game does to cheap wounds what mortal wounds do to elite ones.

[MARK0SIAN]

The same Aeldari psyker who smited your terminator has just done executionior on that unit of boyz... on a 7+* has done D3 MW then because he killed a model did another D3 MWs..... so has removed average of 4 but likely to remove 6 boyz.

 

*before modifiers so can do it on a 6+ easily and if its Eldrad then a 5+.....

 

And smite doesnt care if your a terminator or an ork it kills everyone equally.

So he’s needed a higher warp charge and on average has still removed less points than against the terminator. Plus if he made the same attacks against the terminator squad then even more of them would die. So basically a single smite from the cheapest psyker in the game does more damage to a terminator than the best smite power by one of the best psykers in the game does to a horde.

 

And smite killing everyone equally is the main complaint because it just outright ignores key game mechanics and punishes elite armies. Bottom line is, someone who has invested their points in tough, elite models can have their investment completely bypassed and ignored whereas someone who has invested their points in cheap hordes doesn’t have anything to worry about. It’s fundamentally unfair.

[Kastor Krieg]

It's fundamentally bad design. An unnecessary solution to an obsolete problem, creating a new problem altogether now.

[Beams]

...that's the whole point of smite - to handle elites.

 

If you want to kill hordes, invest in Bolters. If you want to kill elites invest in psychic or plasma.

 

Also, maybe don't let psykers get closest to Terminators.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

...that's the whole point of smite - to handle elites.

 

If you want to kill hordes, invest in Bolters. If you want to kill elites invest in psychic or plasma.

 

Also, maybe don't let psykers get closest to Terminators.

So that big nasty assault unit that by fluff spearheads teleport attacks and cracks the enemy front open for Tacticals to exploit...should *not* be on the front lines where they're easily Smite-able? I fail to see the logic here.

[MARK0SIAN]

...that's the whole point of smite - to handle elites.

 

If you want to kill hordes, invest in Bolters. If you want to kill elites invest in psychic or plasma.

 

Also, maybe don't let psykers get closest to Terminators.

But it shouldn’t be there to handle elites. Elites should require some more killing, more effort to bring down. None of them are so tough that concentrating an appropriate amount of resources doesn’t kill them. People should be forced to concentrate those resources to kill the elites, not have a cheap delete button against them.

 

I think at this point we are just going back and forth with the same points. I don’t want to put words in your mouth but you seem to argue that people should have a cheap way to easily kill really elite models. I disagree and think that hard to kill units should always be hard to kill if they’ve had a lot resources invested in them. To make it worse, elite armies are not offered cheap and easy solutions for dealing with armies that rely on hordes.

 

No unit in 8th edition is hard enough to kill that it justifies the existence of mortal wounds, certainly not the ease and quantity with which they are available.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Maybe Hammernators, but Smite is a big part of why people don't take them so it's a Catch-22.

[Panzer]

It's fundamentally bad design. An unnecessary solution to an obsolete problem, creating a new problem altogether now.

 

I guess that's the bottom line of the thread.

 

However I have to say I don't mind Mortal wounds per se. I just don't like that they are so spammable.

Weapons with a low volume of shots which deal mortal wounds on a wound roll of 6? Perfectly fine.

Psychic powers that cost a slot and aren't no-brain casts? Also perfectly fine.

A power with low cast threshold which doesn't cost you a slot and everyone in the game has? That's just unnecessary. I'm sure psyker could have something more interesting as their default power.

Any and every exploding vehicle causing mortal wounds? Also unnecessary and on top not very fitting unless it's loaded with explosives or some huge reactor or whatever.

 

 

Also about Mortal wounds being supposed to kill elite units easily ... well yeah but guess what else does that. Plasma and mass shooting. Two things the game has more than enough of already. No need for Mortal wounds there either.

All it really does is giving Marines a hard time. They're elite-ish but with only one wound and basically no protection against Smites unless you ally in some AM to screen them. I can't think of any army that suffers so much from Smite and other easily accessible MW generators. T'au? Please, I have my important stuff surrounded by Drones and Firewarrior anyway. AdMech? Skitarii everywhere, you guessed it. Orks? Don't be riddiculous. Daemons? You really need Mortal wounds against them? Damn... Necrons? Yeah probably not. Eldar? Nu'uh. AM? How many Guardsmen did you want to smite again? Knights? Maybe you can kill one while the rest stomps your army I guess.

You don't see smite spam lists being successfull in the meta because against the top lists smite spam doesn't work and against Marines you don't need to spam it to give them a hard time.

[Brother Casman]

I think you're right, sfPanzer, this is the end of the line for this particular thread. We're not going to be able to fix things by griping about it here, so I would suggest that you send GW a message instead.