The "How Much To Kill Mortarion" Calculation

I'm really bored, therefore maths.

Mortarion is a bit of a beast.
Toughness 7, 18 Wounds, 3+ save (4++). Also ignore wounds on a 5+.
He's sick. Ba dum.

But, we can ingore the 4++ and the Toughness when it comes to good old Poison, so.....

To do 18 wounds to him, we need many shots.
He ignores 1/3 of Wounds taken, so to do 18, we actually need to do 27.
His save will prevent 2/3 of Wounds, so for 27 to get through his save, we actually need 81 wounds dealt! Yikes!
Wounding on a 4+ that then needs to be 162 hits against him, which at a 2/3 hit rate, means 243 shots total, if statistics are to be believed. All hail Statistics.

Thats 40.5 half-range Splinter Cannons, or 121.5 half-range SPlinter Rifles.
Or 11.05 Venoms with full five-man Warrior complement (with Rifles) within 12" of him.
Assuming three dead per turn at the most pessimistic, thats actually only 7 fully manned Venoms, taking only three turns to take Mortarion down.

Or 6.75 full three-man units of Talos, or 8.1 full ten-man units of Scourge with Shardcarbines.
The Stinger Pod has an average of 7 shots each, meaning 35 Stinger Pods shots needed. Thats only 11.5 full three-man units of Talos.

Note that this is of course taking into account a single turns shooting, rather than multiple turns.

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To briefly look at Dark Lances, we're again still after 18 wounds dealt, 27 when factoring in Disgustingly Resilient.
Assuming a pessimisticly average 3 wounds dealt per Lance, we can drop this by 3 to only 9 Wounds dealt through armour. Which is nice.
The Lance will negate his armour, but his 4++ will come into play knocking ut half, so we need 18 Wounds dealt.
Toughness 7 means Wounding 2/3 of the time, so we're back to 27, but this time as total Hits needed.
Hitting 2/3 of the time, 41 Hits needed.

41 hits needed statistically with Dark Lances.

Thats 14 Ravagers.
Assuming you stock up on nothing but Ravagers, and they have no other enemy units to worry about and its a straight Mortarion vs. Ravager fight, and that Mortarion can kill three of them a turn (being SUPER unrealistically pessimistic, and accounting for three offensive actions from him per turn), that could only work with 10 Ravagers, taking four turns to kill him and still having one left in turn 4 to deal the final blow.

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Maths is fun!

I haven't seen Mortarion's rules but what's his threat bubble and what's he capable of doing ?

He's awful.

You want to be careful not to get within 7" of him. At all. CHarging him is not really an option.
He has two rules with a 7" aura, one which reduces enemy unit's Toughness by one, and another which does d3 Mortal Wounds (on a die roll of 4+ to start, which degrades with wounds).

He also buffs Death Guard within 7" with a reroll 1s to hit.

He also has an 18" Pistol with a "Beam" effect, hitting every unit an 18" line passes over (which is also S8, AP-3, Dam3).

Theres also plenty of Strategems which can still effect him and make that worse - enhanced summoning, swap out psychic powers, extra Relics, or just randomly deal out Mortal Wounds!
And of course he can still be buffed by other models. If near Typhus or another Lord, he randomly dishes out a Mortal Wound each turn. If near a Noxious Blightbringer he rolls twice for Advance and discards the lowest. A Plague Surgeon lets him reroll 1s for his Disgusting Resilient. A Tallyman lets you reroll misses in the Fight Phase.

Looking at him, if I played Death Guard, I could see them bunkering around this guy. A blob of Death Guard, all with Mortarion at its juicy centre, all the while moving towards you surprisingly fast.
He's not as buffy as others (such as Guilliman) but he is a run at you and hit you with crazy powers kind of guy.

The grenade shenanigans DG can do is hilarious. How many mandrakes to take down Morty?

243 splinter shots/35 dark lance shots/122 dissie shots required but none of this takes into account the various buffs that Mortarion can get from psychic powers and stratagems or the fact that he can take bodyguards that take any hits for him on a 2+.

Wow, how many points is he and do folks who have encountered him think there's any hope to pull a win out against Death Guard by just avoiding the hell out of him?

24 PL or 470 pts. He's a chaos Imperial Knight and should be treated as such.

Which is not that much in a 2000+ game. He will reliably earn his points back.

So how would you deal with him in a casual game?

Bog him in an endless stream of wyches while you kill everything else ?

This probably won't work, but could be very funny.

Can he kill 52 wyches in the course of a game ?

He has the potential, between abilities and psy powers he can easily pull a dozen mortal wounds each turn, and he has a ungodly amount of attacks in CC plus the pistol.

Do not engage him in CC for any reason, be sure to be at least 18" away at the end of his turn and hope you brought enough dissies.

Against T7, Lances are superior to Dissies.

Dissies are for everything else, just ignore Morty. Especially if he has his bodyguards.

Sure, that's why i said earlier. The problem rises, for me, in game where there is not much "everything else". What do you do in a 750pts game where all he has is a huge Mortarion and a bunch of supp.

Answer : you spend a boring game rotating around him and trying to get some objectives before you die.

Mppqlmd wrote:

What do you do in a 750pts game where all he has is a huge Mortarion and a bunch of supp.

Answer : you spend a boring game rotating around him and trying to get some objectives before you die.

If you are playing 750 and the other brings Morty you are not playing competitively, presumably, just concede and play with someone else less boring.

The sweep attack from Morty on top of the mortal wounds means combat is a no go. He should easily kill 6-8 wyches a turn in combat plus the mortal wound aura and other effects. Unless you are 'fearless' you will be losing wyches to morale as well.

In return, 10 wyches with the +1A drug have a less than 50% chance of dealing a single unsaved wound to mortarion!

How many talos does it take to kill mortie? And in comparison, how many dreadnaughts?

And that's what we call pay to win kids!  

But I agree with Mppqlmd.  Anyone foolish enough to bring out a ~500 point unit means most of their army is wrapped around him and they will beg to play 'No Mercy' since that is the only mission they can reasonably win.... Don't let that happen.  

Play a tactical objective mission and just float around grabbing up points. Snacking on the lone units they have trying to hold objectives.

You need more models to hold the point and that is easily done.  

As an Ork I'd just let him choke on 30 boyz.

FuelDrop wrote:

How many talos does it take to kill mortie? And in comparison, how many dreadnaughts?

Talos to kill him?!

With Macro-Scalpels:
18 wounds taken requires 27 damage dealt, requires 14 unsaved wounds, requires 28 wounds dealt, requires 84 hits, from 126 attacks. Meaning 21 Talos with Macro Scalpels.

Obviously, as the Count points out, not taking into account any Psychic Powers, Strategems or buffs from other units.)

With Chain Flails:
18 wounds taken requires 27 damage dealt, requires 27 unsaved wounds, requires 42 wounds dealt, requires 126 hits, from 184 attacks, meaning 46 Talos with Chain Flails.

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By comparison, the basic Dreadnought:
18 wounds taken requires 27 damage dealt, requires 9 unsaved wounds, requires 18 wounds dealt, requires 27 hits, from 36 attacks, meaning only 9 Dreadnoughts!

Statistically.

Not counting buffs, psychic powers, strategems, etc.

Squidmaster wrote:

FuelDrop wrote:

How many talos does it take to kill mortie? And in comparison, how many dreadnaughts?

Talos to kill him?!

With Macro-Scalpels:
18 wounds taken requires 27 damage dealt, requires 14 unsaved wounds, requires 28 wounds dealt, requires 84 hits, from 126 attacks. Meaning 21 Talos with Macro Scalpels.

Obviously, as the Count points out, not taking into account any Psychic Powers, Strategems or buffs from other units.)

With Chain Flails:
18 wounds taken requires 27 damage dealt, requires 27 unsaved wounds, requires 42 wounds dealt, requires 126 hits, from 184 attacks, meaning 46 Talos with Chain Flails.

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By comparison, the basic Dreadnought:
18 wounds taken requires 27 damage dealt, requires 9 unsaved wounds, requires 18 wounds dealt, requires 27 hits, from 36 attacks, meaning only 9 Dreadnoughts!

Statistically.

Not counting buffs, psychic powers, strategems, etc.

I am not claiming to be a math protegee, but that seems like a non-trivial difference.

Mortal Wounds are almost certainly the best way to kill him as they bypass his Toughness, armour and invulnerable, leaving only Disgustingly Resilient to protect him. About 2300 points worth of Mandrakes ought to do the trick!

Count Adhemar wrote:

Mortal Wounds are almost certainly the best way to kill him as they bypass his Toughness, armour and invulnerable, leaving only Disgustingly Resilient to protect him. About 1500 points worth of Mandrakes ought to do the trick!

Clearly this is a job for... um. Hell, he'd curb-stomp an avatar like it was made of cardboard.

Okay guys, this fine gentleman kills our god without even slowing down. We might slightly be in a little bit of trouble...

I've amended the points of Mandrakes to 2300 as I forgot to take into account Disgustingly Resilient.

For a DPS comparison, how long does it take Mortarion to kill Mortarion? Or does he die before he can do it?

Yeah, i agree ignore him and kill literally everything else.