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I know in 3rd mortars in an IG unit were a waste of a heavy weapon, even after you could get heavy weapon squads with 3 mortars in it. But with this edition having lots and lots of cover-hugging (from what I've heard), I figured they'd be more useful. But, it seems that the new scatter rules might be contrary to this, with mortars scattering uselessly with their tiny blast.

So are they worth anything in this edition at all?

M.

Moving to tactics.

Infantryman wrote:I know in 3rd mortars in an IG unit were a waste of a heavy weapon, even after you could get heavy weapon squads with 3 mortars in it. But with this edition having lots and lots of cover-hugging (from what I've heard), I figured they'd be more useful. But, it seems that the new scatter rules might be contrary to this, with mortars scattering uselessly with their tiny blast.

So are they worth anything in this edition at all?

M.

Not particularly. It really comes down with the low number hits you get with them, and their killing power when you hit. That and the cheapness of upgrading to a more effective/flexible weapon.

They are certainly not the weapon of choice, but they are filthy cheap, they can pin and can probably reap more casualities against GEQ in cover than a heavy bolter (which is now the real useless weapon for infantry guard)

It is a cool weapon though, I wish infantry squads came with it standard, and then you could upgrade it to HB at +5, AC/ML +10, las +15. Should make all weapons more equal IMO

Heavy bolter, useless? I find this tragic / hard to believe (though I don't call you a liar).

M.

They aren't useless per say, but at the cost of a heavy bolter you could have an auto cannon, which is nearly as good at killing infantry, and much better killing light armor.

I think mortars are one of the better heavy weapon choices. (Aside from the autocannon)
But they work best when they are in bigger units and not in the line squads, the best as HWT. (If possible take 3...)
A single squad of mortars (often) won't cause pinning, so you need multiple squads to pin units.
They can be really devastating against horde players, but against MEQ, I wouldn't advise them.
Though they aren't useful against vehicles and such they make it up for anti-horde power.
But you shouldn't field mortars in squad, if you want that I would take an autocannon.

Here is a good article about them:
http://pathfinder-devilin.blogspot.com/2009/09/guard-heavy-weapon-tactica.html

depends...

For assualt:
In a 50 model Powerblob they are very much worth their points because with 2 mortars in BTB with an enemy on a charge they can effectively bring the entire Blob into the assault (aka 100 attacks at least).

for shooting:
Cheap area effect indirect anti-infantry, but you'd have to spam a lot of them to be effective. and spaming too much will leave you volunerable to Mech (which no one plays in 5th edition right?!?!? .

I think people that want to play mortars usually do it because of the point cost, but then go with the big brother to the Mortar, the Missile Launcher.

I've only used them a couple of times in small points games and were ok against foot Ork. Not Brilliant but ok, I wish they had the accurate bombardment rule like the griffon.

I have 3 painted up and have found they are effective in a Heavy weapon biased platoon.....

I'll also 2nd what Loner said....great against horde armies...

Just hide them away and chuck shell after shell at the enemy.....

Missile Launcher requires LOS to target mortars don't....

yeah think it comes down to the army you are up against orks, and to a certain degree (because the hide) tau mortars are great but there are better alternatives such as a griffon heavy mortar poits for points much better as the have the added ability of armour protectionand mobility added in to boot

I use the effectivly against enemy foot soldiers mainly Space Wolfs as it pins them when I need it the most. I suport them with my hvy weapon teams or auto-cannons and my special weapons teams. So my Assualt teams get the time they need to get to target.

Mortar teams are troops so they can hold objectives.

A well placed tank shock can cluster troops.

Infantry are clustered after assaulting vehicles.

Indirect fire is vital against squishy low av armies like geq, nids, orks, or de.

Cost is dirt cheap so a unit or 2 isn't a great loss against meq.

The real downside is 60 point units gives up too many kp.

Mortars aren't all that great in 5th with the move towards mech armies. Mortars are pretty useless against vehicles. If you see a lot of infantry maybe but most good infantry players spread out enough that small blasts aren't that good.

I'm still learning the in's and out's of the IG codex but they look like they can be a useful cheap addition.

Sure the Griffon is superior but it also uses up a valuable HS slot whereas 3 Mortars can bring an approximate level of firepower to the table and not have any negative impact on the FOC.

Put 1 or 2 of them into corners on the table and rain things down on your opponents. Its win/win because few people will dedicate resources to going after them (assuming they are denied LOS or at least buried in cover) and if they do, they'll kill off a whole 60 point unit and probably be out of position to do much of anything else.

Its true that they aren't super useful against mech armies but as Schadenfreude said, there are ways to expose infantry and/or group them up. You're going to be aiming to open up their transports anyway with all the other long range tank busters, this way you can thin out the unit from range and maybe get lucky with a pinning test.

Mortars are probably the most points-effective guard heavy weapon (which is why I used to take a bunch of them), and, as mentioned, they're filthy cheap.

The problem is that mortars, like every other infantry heavy weapon, have a pretty narrow band of things that they do. If you don't have a need for their niche, then they're not really worth taking (which is why I don't take any of them anymore).

Being out of LOS and the multiple barrage rules make it so that a mortar HWS is a relatively survivable unit that can pretty reliably drop a single small blast template on stuff, regardless of where it's hiding. The problem, of course, is it's stats stink. If your opponent is highly clustered, you can start throwing pinning checks down by killing off individual marines, but unless you're dealing with light infantry that you know chronically clusters up, there's no real point to them.

Of course, it's compatriot is the heavy bolter, which is exactly the same, except it's only good if you're dealing with lots of light infantry that chronically spreads out (like, say, my army).

If you do find yourself in the right situations, they can be gold. Oh, hello 8 wyches and a sybarite that just got knocked out of a raider...

:-) It's one I really wanted to work... But seeing so much Mech or just things in 3+ armor... I suppose you might get lucky and hit the odd lower AV vehicle, get the 6 to glance on things like Chimeras... Having a few of them I'll probably field them in a gun line army if I have the spare points...

pchappel wrote::-) It's one I really wanted to work... But seeing so much Mech or just things in 3+ armor... I suppose you might get lucky and hit the odd lower AV vehicle, get the 6 to glance on things like Chimeras... Having a few of them I'll probably field them in a gun line army if I have the spare points...

Armour saves dont matter - I hate mortars - a buddy of mine loads his guard with them , its not the AP its the QUANTITY of saves you have to make , i lost 2 x 5 man squads of termies to his frakkin mortars in one game he would just hand me a bucket full of dice and say here's your saves = boo
You get killed by the god of maths , the more saves you have to make the more chances you will fail , that is a mortars strength

Mortars aren't great, but as has been stated they're cheap as a HWS and can reach out and touch the enemy where he lives. They really don't kill enough to justify taking a lot of them, though. The also struggle to accomplish anything against MEqs and are totally worthless against vehicles.

darkangels_rule wrote:Armour saves dont matter - I hate mortars - a buddy of mine loads his guard with them , its not the AP its the QUANTITY of saves you have to make , i lost 2 x 5 man squads of termies to his frakkin mortars in one game he would just hand me a bucket full of dice and say here's your saves = boo

Wow, you do realise that you can spread your troops out to 2", right? Multiple barrage rules mitigate this, but they're still small blast templates.

How do you think mortars could be made better? Simply improving them to S5 AP5? My brother said he'd give them a Heavy 2 blast representing their rapid ROF (in real life anyways), but that's a bit much.

M.

If you're going with infantry heavy guard (or even just having a decent sized platoon) I would definitely reccomend taking a mortar squad. The pinning they inflict on lighter infantry is indispensable. They've saved my tush more than once. They may be utterly useless against vehichles and heavier infantry, and even when against light infantry they may not actually kill their points worth. However, the harrasment and pinning infliction more than makes up for it. You only need to kill a single marine in a devstator squad to get them to take a pinning check, or a single Dark Reaper or a single man from an opposing power blob (Hence making them useful against your enemies infantry firebases). If you're going up against anything but Mech then you should probably take just a couple of these bad boys.

Ailaros wrote:

darkangels_rule wrote:Armour saves dont matter - I hate mortars - a buddy of mine loads his guard with them , its not the AP its the QUANTITY of saves you have to make , i lost 2 x 5 man squads of termies to his frakkin mortars in one game he would just hand me a bucket full of dice and say here's your saves = boo

Wow, you do realise that you can spread your troops out to 2", right? Multiple barrage rules mitigate this, but they're still small blast templates.

Like i said before he loads out his army with mortars NOT JUST ONE SQUAD !!! 3 or 4 squads at least - 2" don't mean much when 16 small blasts hammer you 4 at a time ,each turn

If you have 2" displacement, 4 mortar squads should put down about 8 hits per turn, which becomes 4 wounds. On any given turn, you should lose zero terminators. That and the amount of damage goes down the fewer models you have. The only way that you could have lost that much if you were properly displaced was if the game did something like go to turn 40, and your mortars never took any damage (say, by being charged by terminators, for example).

That or you made some serious mistakes on the field involving displacement. Or your opponent was very lucky. Or you were extremely unlucky with your armor saves. None of these does much to boost mortars as good weapons against terminators.

I run one mortar squad in my catachan list. Alone they're meh, but you add a psy battle squad with the leadership minus and suddenly even one mortar wound becomes a pinning nightmare. Also in lump squads they rock cause you usually always have line of sight to what you're shooting, thus reducing your scatter.

They are good for adding more barrels to converted loota deffguns

lol, I actually used them to make a snazzgun for a Flashgit.

Anyways, in my guard army the mortars have proven most effective. I use them to smoke troops who have been forced out of destroyed transports (or who hopped out to shoot some exposed squad of mine), who just arrived from deep strike, or who have deployed to get a coversave from my heavier shooting. That and in my area most people don't play at max coherency: takes too much time and is just not worth it in a friendly game. I've always found the opportunity for a good shot, and at the very least I like having a troop sitting on an objective in the back corner, safely out of sight but still contributing to the battle.

anything that can pin is great. take one in every platoon command and watch marine players want to break stuff after they fail that third pinning test.

The greatest issue with Mortars in my group is that my group is both - A) Vehicle happy and B) Fearless-happy. We have 3 players who have fearless armies (myself included), and the other 3 either keep their guys in vehicles until they assault (Dark Eldar) or run nothing but vehicles (Guard Players).

Pinning is not that bad for most armies in my group. Orks are immune until they have less than 11, IG gets back in the fight, Marines have LD 9 at least, and Nids are fearless. In my group, you would have to drop a ton of pinning tests to make real use of that feature.

I'd rather spam Auto Cannons then Mortars.

Just my 2 cents. Mortars en masse could be decent if you fight nids or orks.