Morty, the Killable

[McElMcNinja]

I had 2 games today and Morty did not fair well. DAs and 10 DW knights took him out in turn 2 of my first game while 2 C’Tans took him him by turn 3 of the second. Lost the first game 64-57 and won the second 87-79. Will have to tweak my list some, but he doesn’t seem over powered to me.

[Iron Sage]

Interesting report.

 

Yeah, I don't think he is overpowered, hard to balance a 490 model anyway I reckon, but seems to me like they have done a decent enough job. But I do think he will cause some armies massive problems.

 

What kind of list did you use ? Kind of curious to know :) Also, would you describe your opponents as decent ?

[jgascoine011]

Yea DW Knights are terrifying.

470 points for WS2+ TH/SS terminators that dont suffer penatly to hit with permanant transhuman on them. Also they can DS with a chaplain and get a 7" charge on 3D6 picking the 2 highest.

I am hoping these get a slight nerf as its too much.

[McElMcNinja]

The DA player had a strong list, I did fail an 8” turn 1 charge with Morty (rolled a 7 both times). I also let him do a couple “take backs”, but I was more curious on how much punishment Morty could take. My real downfall in this game was I brought a bunch of just bolter PMs, had they been properly equipped I would have destroyed units I got locked in combat with.

The Necron player is very good, but he did say he only took 2 c’tan cuz he knew I was bringing Morty. I eventually killed both c’tan, well most of his army save a 20 man warrior unit and a character.

 

My first list wasn’t optimized, again tried plain PM’s for bodies. Second list was more terminators and no Rhino.

[USNCenturion]

At least he made it past turn 1 which is where he was getting murdered last edition lol.

 

I’m glad he’s not swung too far one way or another; maybe he’ll survive past round one of FAQs and nerfs. As long as he’s not busted, more books can come out and the edition can have time to breathe and settle in.

 

What warlord trait did you give him?

[McElMcNinja]

He had Gloaming Bloat both games.

[jgascoine011]

Yea at least he is making it past turn 1.

 

I think he will be very matchup dependent.

Eldar with guide, doom and jink will be able to deal with him.

Necrons are also quite a decent match up with high strength, attack/shots and AP, with low damage.

 

I think as more codex's come out he will become more managable.

[McElMcNinja]

I’m the first to admit I was very careless with him, but again I wanted to see what he could handle. When I play him again I will be more conservative with him. Both games he was out by himself begging to be killed. I don’t think that’s the best use of him, hold him back and make people worried about what he can do. Better screens and more fire power would have been better for me.

[tangoalphatwo]

Interesting. So plain bolter plague marines are no good? What would you recommend them?

[Heretic]

Bolters with -1T -1AP and plague weapon looks good on paper, but it's not so cool on practice. I'm tested Inexorable 10xBlightlords. First game vs salamanders (and I was wiped out on turn 3), second against Necons (lost this game too, but not dramatically). Blightlords ate ton of CPs and kill ~15 necron warriors. 

[Marshal Loss]

Bolters with -1T -1AP and plague weapon looks good on paper, but it's not so cool on practice. I'm tested Inexorable 10xBlightlords. First game vs salamanders (and I was wiped out on turn 3), second against Necons (lost this game too, but not dramatically). Blightlords ate ton of CPs and kill ~15 necron warriors. 

Hmm. Appreciate the thoughts on this. I really need to get some games in because a lot of my test lists had been working around this sort of thing.

 

With regards to OP: this is in line with what I've been reading from others. Now that the "OH MY GOD HE'S SO BROKEN" fever has started to break, the consensus seems to be shifting to "he's great but is actually quite balanced"

 

My first list wasn’t optimized, again tried plain PM’s for bodies. Second list was more terminators and no Rhino.

How are you using the Terminators - footslogging or deep-striking?

[Special Officer Doofy]

Morty's offense was slightly nerfed with the dttfe loss, but he gained some staying power, which was needed. The more I read on about Mortarion now, the less I agree with my initial knee jerk reaction that he is too strong. Keep being our Guinea pig McElMcNinja and getting those games in for us

[jgascoine011]

Bolters with -1T -1AP and plague weapon looks good on paper, but it's not so cool on practice. I'm tested Inexorable 10xBlightlords. First game vs salamanders (and I was wiped out on turn 3), second against Necons (lost this game too, but not dramatically). Blightlords ate ton of CPs and kill ~15 necron warriors. 

 

 

Thats interesting as I was also looking at Inexorable with 10xBL 

I suppose the big thing is contagion range. Any necron player with a brain would make it count as being in cover for turn 2, expecting your BL deepstriking.

So assuming thats 40 shots, hitting & wounding on 2's, reolling 1's, would say maybe 36 wounds. Assuming the necron player is in cover, and isnt using the +1 armour save legion, thats 18 wounds, and 6 should stand back up.

[McElMcNinja]

The first game I went 5 Deathshroud and marched them up the center with all my characters. Having the surgeon to heal came in very handy. I also used the start to heroically intervene.

The second game I ran 4 Deathshroud starting on the board and 5 Blightlords in deepstrike. The Deathshroud worked great as I kept them out of line of sight while my characters were standing in the open, but in range of the bodyguard rule. The Blightlords failed their initial charge but as the enemy wasn’t willing to move off the objective, they made the charge next round. After 2 rounds of shooting and the charge they took out a unit of 20 warriors.

[CastellanDeMolay]

Morty's offense was slightly nerfed with the dttfe loss, but he gained some staying power, which was needed. The more I read on about Mortarion now, the less I agree with my initial knee jerk reaction that he is too strong. Keep being our Guinea pig McElMcNinja and getting those games in for us

I don't really have any experience with or against Mortarion myself, but It sounds like he's getting smoked by top-tier units at the hands of competitive players. I expect that in a more laid back setting he'll work a lot better. Nightbringer's Entropic Strike (I think it's also available to Void Dragon as a Stratagem) is OP because Necrons have such underwhelming choices elsewhere in their Codex. They need crutch-units like that in order to be competitive, so I think it's mostly a case of bad internal balance within the Necron Codex that's harming Morty in that case. 

[McElMcNinja]

When the c’tan are turning off invulnerable saves and ignore wound abilities, then do a lot of MW and great damage in combat. I should have screened better, lesson learned.

[Special Officer Doofy]

 

 

Morty's offense was slightly nerfed with the dttfe loss, but he gained some staying power, which was needed. The more I read on about Mortarion now, the less I agree with my initial knee jerk reaction that he is too strong. Keep being our Guinea pig McElMcNinja and getting those games in for us

I don't really have any experience with or against Mortarion myself, but It sounds like he's getting smoked by top-tier units at the hands of competitive players. I expect that in a more laid back setting he'll work a lot better. Nightbringer's Entropic Strike (I think it's also available to Void Dragon as a Stratagem) is OP because Necrons have such underwhelming choices elsewhere in their Codex. They need crutch-units like that in order to be competitive, so I think it's mostly a case of bad internal balance within the Necron Codex that's harming Morty in that case.

Ignoring his psychic powers and pistol, he doesn't even mathematically kill a 5 man Intercessor squad with the Trans human strat. He can be contained, it's not just about killing him. It's not just threads on this forum, it's elsewhere I'm reading about how people are managing against him and it's not too bad. I think time will tell more in the long run once everybody gets a whack at him. And of course the biggest issue is that only loyalist marines, necrons and DG have their new codexes. Others will get their new mono bonuses and new toys in due time.

[Iron Sage]

 

 

Morty's offense was slightly nerfed with the dttfe loss, but he gained some staying power, which was needed. The more I read on about Mortarion now, the less I agree with my initial knee jerk reaction that he is too strong. Keep being our Guinea pig McElMcNinja and getting those games in for us

I don't really have any experience with or against Mortarion myself, but It sounds like he's getting smoked by top-tier units at the hands of competitive players. I expect that in a more laid back setting he'll work a lot better. Nightbringer's Entropic Strike (I think it's also available to Void Dragon as a Stratagem) is OP because Necrons have such underwhelming choices elsewhere in their Codex. They need crutch-units like that in order to be competitive, so I think it's mostly a case of bad internal balance within the Necron Codex that's harming Morty in that case.

Ignoring his psychic powers and pistol, he doesn't even mathematically kill a 5 man Intercessor squad with the Trans human strat. He can be contained, it's not just about killing him. It's not just threads on this forum, it's elsewhere I'm reading about how people are managing against him and it's not too bad. I think time will tell more in the long run once everybody gets a whack at him. And of course the biggest issue is that only loyalist marines, necrons and DG have their new codexes. Others will get their new mono bonuses and new toys in due time.

 

Very curious as to what mono-bonuses Dark Eldars will get. I have a friend who plays them. In7th and 8ed, he had more units to choose from than I had in my collection, and his list absolutely crushed my Iron Warriors. I couldn't field a truly competitive list though, my Iron Warriors collection have a lot of holes in it with mostly just single unit choices, so there is that. But all that poison and the ultra high movement, man,it was ugly. He ran circles around me and made me taste some real humility.

It went better with Death Guard but , however, I now in 9th have a far bigger Death Guard collection, enough to make real lists. My only glaring holes in my collection is lack of Plague Burst Crawlers and mower drones, as well as Death Shroud. Everything else I own and can field multiple squads of Plague marines and blightlords, and way too much HQ (considering Infernal Jelousy)

 

But yeah, going to be exciting to see Dark Eldar. Looking forward to that.

 

Edit: I got a bit enthusiastic, sorry for going OTT:

Edited January 24, 2021 by Iron Sage

[McElMcNinja]

Losing almost a 1/4 of your army leaves a big void to fill. I would almost rather have 2 PBC and another mower drone. Still going to play around with him and I won’t feel so bad bringing him more often. He can be dealt with and isn’t that impossible threat we were led to believe.

[Iron Sage]

Yeah, I don't think sending him forth alone is the best option really. Thanks for your reports btw !

[McElMcNinja]

Yeah, I don't think sending him forth alone is the best option really. Thanks for your reports btw !

Agree 100%, won’t be doing that again.

[Dark Legionnare]

Two games I played today, one at 2k, one at 3k. test his viability in both.

At 2k, I would've rather had the more firepower than him being a 1/4th the army.  It got REAL dicey when opponent got two super smites in one psychic phase and Morty suddenly lost 8 wounds to just smites alone, even with the 5+++.  He lived through both games, and his threat presence was good. But if said player hadn't immediately missed 3 ven dread lascannons (on 2's) right after that psychic phase, he wouldn't of been alive.

 

At 3k, he was hella fun and didn't detract.

I think at 2.5k and up, he's not a big detriment, and hella fun!  Even if he dies, you have enough other stuff to hold the line.

I feel like at 2k, even with the fun buffs he got, he still has the "eggs in one basket" syndrome that baneblades, etc... have.  They're fun, powerful, but without a cap like Ghaz or C'tan, ONE lucky phase for your opponent (or unlucky saves for you) means those eggs get smashed pretty quick; heaven forbid if they have two.

It's a lot of points to be tied up in a single model where all the big dmg items like anti-tank don't "go to waste" against him as it were.

 

Definitely not OP, and depending on your meta, probably more than usable casually without issue.

Just my two cents, in no way definitive.

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by Dark Legionnare

[Balerion84]

I had my first game with the new codex yesterday, with Morty against TS with Magnus. I was pretty rusty, since my last game was in August and we didn't had super optimized lists. More of a testing game. Score was 43-5 in turn 4 for DG at which point TS conceded, since there was no point continuing.

 

Morty was good, but died in T4 from Magnus' Smite, after which Morty exploded and took Magnus with him, so that was a nice trade.

 

I was running Morty, LoC, Plaguecaster, 4x7 PMs, 1 unit of 3 Deathshroud, 1xPBC and 11 poxwalkers.

TS had Magnus, 2x Heldrake, 2x10 Rubrics, 1 rhino, 10 Scarabs, Laser v indicator destroyer and 2 sorcerers.

1 Heldrake took at 1 point 2 deathshrouds with his flamer (one was on 2W), which sucked.

I went first and PBC took vindicator to 3W with mortar and entropy cannons which was nice (got 6 attacks on mortar, used the strat for 3d and only managed 1 hit :D)

 

In T4, the only things left standing were 7 Scarabs, 1 sorcerer and 1 Heldrake with 1W engaged with LOC, while I had left 8 poxwalkers, 3 units of PMs with 7,6 and 3 models, PBC with 7W, Plaguecaster, DS champion and LOC with 3W.

 

PMs didn't do all that much offensively, mostly holding 2 of 4 objectives. They are nice, but smites and Scarabs did quite a bit of damage.

 

Morty killed 1 unit of Rubrics in 1 swing, sorcerer on disc and Magnus.

 

That -1T aura is so good. Canceling rerolls with Morty helped too.

 

Overall, the game went a Lot better than I expected, considering it was first try with the codex and first game in half a year :D I'm pretty sure it wouldn't go so nicely for me if I played against his necrons. Will see another time.

 

Positive feelings so far.

[jgascoine011]

Could you take Morty as supreme command in a Nurgle daemons list? His -1T aura does not really benefit him that much and you could then heal him up.

[templarphoenix]

Look at those eradicators running around (and they get new seperate box...) I am not running morty until drowning them with zombies for 2 or 3 months.