Countering Mortarion

The internet is in a tizzy over the new hottness that is Mortarion.

As I under stand it he is -1 to hit, T8, 18W, 5++ and -1 Damage.

You guys face him yet? Obviously our Dissie Spam will not work against the new Death Guard -1 Damage mechanic, and even our Dark Technomancer will not like it.

But Poison doesnt care about T8, because he is 18W he cannot be Obscured behind terrain, and we generally dont have elite units that are obvious targets to his mind-melting abilities.

What is the opinion in Commoragh on this king of the disgusting Mon-Keigh?

He’s not innately -1 to hit. It requires Miasma to be cast on him. I’m playing against DG with Morty tomorrow. I’m bringing Yvraine for the +1 Deny to try and stop Miasma and TOS Wych Cult units to wound him on 3+ with poison. I’m rounding out my list with 40 PoF Wracks and 12 Grotesques to clog up objectives and hold his terminators up in combat for a while at least.

Poison will take him off the board in pretty short order. Venoms filled with warriors should do it.

Yeah, Mortarion isn’t the real problem for us as long as you running lots of poison. The real threat is the Terminators and Demon Engines which we have no good way of dealing with.

You are mistaken, he is 3+ and 4++.

Regardless, Poison really seems to be the most effective weapon type. It takes 162 shots to kill him normally and 216 points if the -1 to hit was used. When using a Venom full of standard Kabalites, this will deal 2.22 or 1.6 points of damage.

Darklight does 0.44/0.33 damage per shot and Shredders/Heatlances do 0.38/0.29 points of damage.

If you are using Flayed Skull, remember that you can use "Masters of the Shadowed Sky" since he has FLY.

I'm inclined to ignore him and focus on the rest of the army. At 490 points, he makes up a significant chunk of the army that is bound to one place. But if you pull of killing him, that's a big chunk of points that are gone.

I’m not sure you can ignore him. He’s the fastest thing in the Army and unless you’re playing hammer and anvil he’ll probably be on you by turn 2, turn three at the latest. By that time attrition will most likely leave you unable to threaten him at all. And most competitive DG lists will probably be deep striking 2-3 units of nigh invulnerable terminators in your lines right as Morty comes crashing into you. But maybe I’m wrong as it’s all just theory crafting at this point.

Terminators die in droves to dark techno reapers.
the -1 to wound don't mean squat when you do 5 wounds minimum.

Sadly, I don’t own three Reapers

The terminators might die to Drazar and incubi pretty easily too though I know it isn't ideal to get close to them

I would imagine that Wracks charging into him would be pretty painful.

Is there anything a 20 man Wrack squad cant do

20 Wracks beating on him should deal 3 wounds to him (if they all can attack). Mortarion shouldn't be able to kill the 20 of them in a single turn, even with Psychic and his 21 sweeping attacks.

160pts stopping 490pts for a couple turns is pretty good if you ask me. When the unit is almost dead, you just BC them to the other side of the board to get an objective and have another expendable unit prepared to tie Mortarion. We are not killing him, but if he can't do his stuff for half the game, it's a good way to deal with him.

Wracks at 8 with nowadays rules are close to broken.

How to counter a nearly 500pts large hard to kill unit.... Ignore said unit and win on objectives.

Played Morty today. Can concur that our best bet is to ignore him. I’ll write a batrep for it, but will say that against new DG, bring w every piece of gear, strategem, and obsession that does MWs. With our points decreases this is actually a pretty decent match up for us now.

Luckily we have the movement to be able to ignore models like that. I get the feeling that marine death-balls will not like him very much XD

@Fisheyes
Our movement will be our biggest attribute against them. Except, I can see an overwhelming majority of DG players taking the 1/2 movement trait. I really think this will kick our butts and we will need things like Wracks and Grotesques to counter balance this because they both do not need transports.

I'm not playing the army with these points, but it's hard to belive something will going bad when you have Wracks at 8 points and Reavers at 10.

SCP Yeeman wrote:

@Fisheyes
Our movement will be our biggest attribute against them. Except, I can see an overwhelming majority of DG players taking the 1/2 movement trait. I really think this will kick our butts and we will need things like Wracks and Grotesques to counter balance this because they both do not need transports.

My opponent used the half movement trait. It can only be on either Morty or another HQ (I think?) or there’s a strat to put it on one unit. But it had very little effect in my game against DG. Like Morty, we can play around it to mitigate it’s effectiveness since we’ll most likely outnumber DG list by a fair bit and we don’t need to form a death ball that just wants to move up and sit in the center of the table.