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Seems the hype is over Mortarion because he is so hard to kill. I would caution about getting too excited over him though. If he is too good, he will get faq or eventually have his points adjusted. Or players will start to factor his appearance in the meta and plan for it. either find stuff that can tarpit him, or bring enough shooting to kill him. Its like how the meta adjusted to the Castellan knight.

Blastaar wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hang on... we know that the DG Combat Patrol doesn't provide a legal army because you cannot use 10 of the Poxwalkers thanks to the 20-man size limit on Poxwalker units.

Except, each of those Poxwalker sprues hasn't been recut, and comes with a partial Plague Marine.

Did GW think that, because of those 3 partial Plague Marines, the box actually has 10 Plague Marines, therefore 2x5, therefore the extra 10 Poxwalkers are legal?

They know you can't actually build the partial Plague Marines, right?

That is the most likely explanation. What idiots.

It doesn't seem all that likely:

GW wrote:This 243-piece plastic kit makes the following models:

– 1x Typhus
– 1x Biologus Putrifier
– 7x Plague Marines
– 30x Pox Walkers

I really don't get this 'gotcha'. GW haven't stated anywhere that a Combat Patrol is meant to be a 100% self-contained legal army. It's for beginning a new Death Guard force or adding to an existing one.

The extra poxwalkers can be used after adding literally 3 Plague Marine models, right? It's not like you have to throw them directly into the bin the minute you open the box.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Seems the hype is over Mortarion because he is so hard to kill. I would caution about getting too excited over him though. If he is too good, he will get faq or eventually have his points adjusted. Or players will start to factor his appearance in the meta and plan for it. either find stuff that can tarpit him, or bring enough shooting to kill him. Its like how the meta adjusted to the Castellan knight.

Well, the Castellan Knight was pretty broken (by pre-Marine 2.0 standards) and just because the Meta adjusted to it (out of necessity), doesn't mean the hype wasn't justified.

Even units that would only end up half as broken/meta-shaping as the Castellan of old would deserve a good bit of hype (and a nerf down the road). Trying to find "the next Castellan" is pretty much 70% of the "competitive 40K hobby".

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Seems the hype is over Mortarion because he is so hard to kill. I would caution about getting too excited over him though. If he is too good, he will get faq or eventually have his points adjusted. Or players will start to factor his appearance in the meta and plan for it. either find stuff that can tarpit him, or bring enough shooting to kill him. Its like how the meta adjusted to the Castellan knight.

Well, the Castellan Knight was pretty broken (by pre-Marine 2.0 standards) and just because the Meta adjusted to it (out of necessity), doesn't mean the hype wasn't justified.

Even units that would only end up half as broken/meta-shaping as the Castellan of old would deserve a good bit of hype (and a nerf down the road). Trying to find "the next Castellan" is pretty much 70% of the "competitive 40K hobby".

It is true we won't know the effect of Mortarion on the meta and the game, but the Castellan's power came from their board domination via their ranged firepower which Morty doesn't really have. Morty will blend anything that he managed to rush into, but he won't do much long distance damage.

The thing with Mortarion seems to be just the absolute amount of damage he can soak up, but also the absolute effect he can have on an opposing army, not just in an offensive stand point but also passive effects, the ferryman company for example... He can put himself in a position to make take objectives very difficult due to making movement halved, is extremely difficult to kill and can take out most things in one round himself.

Personally, I think if he was blocked from having miasma cast on him in addition to all his current defensive buffs, then it would go a long way to neutering him in part.

I'm worried about how to kill him with marines (and I don't buy ignoring him, he has to be dealt with just because of the impact on my ability to take and hold objectives), let alone BS4 and BS5 armies without an abundance of at least D3 weapons (because D1 weight of fire is not doing it).

I think people are over-reacting to mortarion. For me, he regularly died with vastly less than an entire army shooting at him before the codex, despite 3+/4++/5+++ and -1 to hit, and my opponents didn't exactly tailor for killing him.
The extra toughness and -1 to damage is not going to make him unkillable - especially not if you have two turns to do so before he actually affects anything, similar to Thrakka or C'Tan shards.

Essentially, there might be no efficient way to kill him outside of the-unit-that-derails-threads, but eventually a lot of inefficient fire and some melee hard hitters to finish him will also cause him to end up dead.

Seems interesting so far! I'm liking most things and think Morty is perfectly fine in terms of the current meta (makes me interested to see where they'll go with Greater Daemons, The Avatar, Abaddon and Magnus).

If we're going to talk about things hitting the meta and worrying then probably need to look at the C'tan (im looking at the nightbringer's effective strength D melee attacks, 3-9MW shooting attack and insane invulnerability) or Space Marines too rather than just a LOW £70+ primarch model that's a quarter of the standard army's points and must be the WL...

I also think this obsession over killing a Primarch level unit in one turn is a bit unhealthy. Because when you take him out you have taken out a significant proportion and force multiplier of the army out of the game.

It is a good thing that he can't be killed in one turn, no doubt. The rules seem suitable, but the points don't quite match up. Typically the challenge with these scale of units is you can't price them too high as they die to easily; in this case that doesn't apply - he simply is too cheap.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Seems the hype is over Mortarion because he is so hard to kill. I would caution about getting too excited over him though. If he is too good, he will get faq or eventually have his points adjusted. Or players will start to factor his appearance in the meta and plan for it. either find stuff that can tarpit him, or bring enough shooting to kill him. Its like how the meta adjusted to the Castellan knight.

Hard to kill indeed. About triple knight combined.

But many already have him and besides people are accumusted to going for broken combo and shifting to next. Hell that's GW's strategy. Shift imbalance this way and that way and third way so that people buy new models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

It is true we won't know the effect of Mortarion on the meta and the game, but the Castellan's power came from their board domination via their ranged firepower which Morty doesn't really have. Morty will blend anything that he managed to rush into, but he won't do much long distance damage.

In 8e it was about long range firepower. 9e is about midfield domination. If enemy tries to stay out of range of Mortarion he's giving up the midifeld objectives which generally means you are toast in vp's. So opponent might be able to win by kills but loses on vp's because he gave Mortarion the midfield uncontested.

You know to the people complaining about the Combat Patrol being illegal, you could just kitbash the 3 plague marines on the poxwalkers sprues for a total of 10 and run 2 5-man squads there are enough arms/heads/chests.

As for the Morty discussion I love forward to putting him into Strategic Reserves for 5 cp and poping out on turn 2-3

The people complaining about the combat patrol being illegal are just being weird. Nobody buys those boxes and uses just them on their own. Nobody.

Trouble is, the store page says

Combat Patrol is the smallest sized game, and this Death Guard force is a great way to start – regardless of whether you want to play an open play game, forge a narrative with a Crusade army, or compete in a matched play mission.

They're selling it on the basis of it being "a way to start matched play"

Billicus wrote:
Trouble is, the store page says

Combat Patrol is the smallest sized game, and this Death Guard force is a great way to start – regardless of whether you want to play an open play game, forge a narrative with a Crusade army, or compete in a matched play mission.

They're selling it on the basis of it being "a way to start matched play"

Can you read? It doesn't say what you think it says. It says a 'great way to start'. It doesn't say that it has everything you need to play in those ways (although it does - it contains a legal army).

Umbros wrote:
The people complaining about the combat patrol being illegal are just being weird. Nobody buys those boxes and uses just them on their own. Nobody.

Wasn't the whole point of replacing Start Collecting's with them that you would, infact, have a legal out-of-the-box force?

Can you still increase a Poxwalker unit above its starting size using reinforcement points?

If so, the combat patrol comes with 10 reinforcements.

 Arbitrator wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The people complaining about the combat patrol being illegal are just being weird. Nobody buys those boxes and uses just them on their own. Nobody.

Wasn't the whole point of replacing Start Collecting's with them that you would, infact, have a legal out-of-the-box force?

The Combat Patrol kits are an entire army in a box. As the name implies, each one contains a complete Combat Patrol-sized force of 25 Power or 500 points. That makes them perfect for getting started with the smaller-sized games of Warhammer 40,000, which are full of fast-paced action and a great way to learn the rules for your new army.

Considering it speaks out PTS and PL implies a full legal matched play army...

Which it ain't but strictly speaking they didn't call the mode out. Just 500 pts and 25 PL.

Umbros wrote:

Billicus wrote:
Trouble is, the store page says

Combat Patrol is the smallest sized game, and this Death Guard force is a great way to start – regardless of whether you want to play an open play game, forge a narrative with a Crusade army, or compete in a matched play mission.

They're selling it on the basis of it being "a way to start matched play"

Can you read? It doesn't say what you think it says. It says a 'great way to start'. It doesn't say that it has everything you need to play in those ways (although it does - it contains a legal army).

Um, yes, I can read thanks, no need for that. They're selling it as "a way to start matched play", when you cannot in fact use the contents for matched play without either leaving a third of it out or also buying *other* things. What part of that point isn't clear?

Billicus wrote:

Umbros wrote:

Billicus wrote:
Trouble is, the store page says

Combat Patrol is the smallest sized game, and this Death Guard force is a great way to start – regardless of whether you want to play an open play game, forge a narrative with a Crusade army, or compete in a matched play mission.

They're selling it on the basis of it being "a way to start matched play"

Can you read? It doesn't say what you think it says. It says a 'great way to start'. It doesn't say that it has everything you need to play in those ways (although it does - it contains a legal army).

Um, yes, I can read thanks, no need for that. They're selling it as "a way to start matched play", when you cannot in fact use the contents for matched play without either leaving a third of it out or also buying *other* things. What part of that point isn't clear?

Technically, you could use the 10 extra Poxwalkers for summoning or Typhus reinforcements (don't you have to pay points for those?), I think. So I think they might have a technical escape hatch.

GW: "Death Guard armies should be composed mostly of proper Death Guard models. We don't want to see any more poxwalker hordes!"

Also GW: "Come buy this complete Death Guard army in a box! It has 39 models and 30 of them are poxwalkers..."

Mortarion feels busted to me - but I guess there is a spirit of wait and see. I feel much like Ghaz and the Ctan's though, you can't ignore him because he's standing on the objectives, chopping anything vaguely expensive into little bits. Doing 200-300 points a turn worth of damage isn't going to be an especially high bar unless your opponent is running extreme MSU.

Killing him with with average rolling MMs is going to be the equivalent of doing about 50 wounds on a regular Knight. The problem is going to be that if you do throw all your heavy guns/attacks into him for say 12-14 wounds, its effectively a waste of a turn which may cost you the game. Meanwhile I'm not sure you can go "I'll deal with him in turn 3 I guess" because you need that huge amount of firepower to really do anything.

An MM expects to do something like 0.58 damage in 24" - rising to a mighty 1 damage in 12". Obviously you can roll above average, but I think it indicates just how many guns you'd expect to have to bring to bear. Unlike other units you also can't just chuck a load of D2 weapon shots in and hope some go through. (Well, you can but its very inefficient.)

As said, I guess we'll see.

It's an ongoing problem because of all the points concentrated into a single model unit when the game is predicated on multiple model units. The currently solution of gradually reducing a model's abilities as it loses wounds doesn't really work to balance units that lose things like footprints or additional models.

Um, yes, I can read thanks, no need for that. They're selling it as "a way to start matched play", when you cannot in fact use the contents for matched play without either leaving a third of it out or also buying *other* things. What part of that point isn't clear?

Technically, you could use the 10 extra Poxwalkers for summoning or Typhus reinforcements (don't you have to pay points for those?), I think. So I think they might have a technical escape hatch.

While probably not the intent, the box actual does contain a legal Combat Patrol if you disregard the extra 10 Poxwalkers:

Typhus 165 points/9 Power Level
Biologus Putrifier 65 points/4 Power Level
7 Plague Marines 147+ points/8 Power Level
20 Poxwalkers 100 points/6 Power Level

Totals: 477+ points/27 Power Level

This doesn't excuse the oddity of a whole unit being unfieldable, but it does make a good start to a collection and ensures the expected discount percentage.

Hmm, someone confirm this? It seems like daemon engine no longer regens that 1W each turn? Which I am honestly ok with. Because I saw some battle reports and it doesnt seem like they regen 1W each turn anymore. Or is this only for some DG vehicles and not all ?

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Hmm, someone confirm this? It seems like daemon engine no longer regens that 1W each turn? Which I am honestly ok with. Because I saw some battle reports and it doesnt seem like they regen 1W each turn anymore. Or is this only for some DG vehicles and not all ?

Yeah, none of them have that rule.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Hmm, someone confirm this? It seems like daemon engine no longer regens that 1W each turn? Which I am honestly ok with. Because I saw some battle reports and it doesnt seem like they regen 1W each turn anymore. Or is this only for some DG vehicles and not all ?

None of the DG daemon engines ever did that. Only the defiler had that rule, and still does.

Tyel wrote:
Mortarion feels busted to me - but I guess there is a spirit of wait and see. I feel much like Ghaz and the Ctan's though, you can't ignore him because he's standing on the objectives, chopping anything vaguely expensive into little bits. Doing 200-300 points a turn worth of damage isn't going to be an especially high bar unless your opponent is running extreme MSU.

Killing him with with average rolling MMs is going to be the equivalent of doing about 50 wounds on a regular Knight. The problem is going to be that if you do throw all your heavy guns/attacks into him for say 12-14 wounds, its effectively a waste of a turn which may cost you the game. Meanwhile I'm not sure you can go "I'll deal with him in turn 3 I guess" because you need that huge amount of firepower to really do anything.

An MM expects to do something like 0.58 damage in 24" - rising to a mighty 1 damage in 12". Obviously you can roll above average, but I think it indicates just how many guns you'd expect to have to bring to bear. Unlike other units you also can't just chuck a load of D2 weapon shots in and hope some go through. (Well, you can but its very inefficient.)

As said, I guess we'll see.

Really no 490pt model should be capable of defeat in a single turn. That's the large problem with 40k. I take 500pt model and end up going second. That model dies turn 1 and I start the game down 25% of my army. That's dumb.

Aside from the Defiler (which does still regen in the new codex) the Death Guard Daemon Engines never did. I guess because that and DR would have been a bit obnoxious.

Anybody spotted the Helbrute's movement has reduced to 6". I'm actually quite gutted about that. Does make MBHs more attractive again however...

Still trying to decide what makes the cut as far as support for my infantry. We have a lot of ~130pt options now that are all pretty well balanced with the various flavours of drone, helbrutes, MBHs etc. Liking the movement of the drones to offset the slow grind a little even if they perhaps arent gonna lay down quite so much fire support

 mokoshkana wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Mortarion feels busted to me - but I guess there is a spirit of wait and see. I feel much like Ghaz and the Ctan's though, you can't ignore him because he's standing on the objectives, chopping anything vaguely expensive into little bits. Doing 200-300 points a turn worth of damage isn't going to be an especially high bar unless your opponent is running extreme MSU.

Killing him with with average rolling MMs is going to be the equivalent of doing about 50 wounds on a regular Knight. The problem is going to be that if you do throw all your heavy guns/attacks into him for say 12-14 wounds, its effectively a waste of a turn which may cost you the game. Meanwhile I'm not sure you can go "I'll deal with him in turn 3 I guess" because you need that huge amount of firepower to really do anything.

An MM expects to do something like 0.58 damage in 24" - rising to a mighty 1 damage in 12". Obviously you can roll above average, but I think it indicates just how many guns you'd expect to have to bring to bear. Unlike other units you also can't just chuck a load of D2 weapon shots in and hope some go through. (Well, you can but its very inefficient.)

As said, I guess we'll see.

Really no 490pt model should be capable of defeat in a single turn. That's the large problem with 40k. I take 500pt model and end up going second. That model dies turn 1 and I start the game down 25% of my army. That's dumb.

But losing 25% of tanks and infantry is fine?

tneva82 wrote:
But losing 25% of tanks and infantry is fine?

Tanks can be obscured and protected by dense terrain. Infantry can be obscured and protected by all sorts of terrain shenanigans.

Most tanks and infantry can deal damage in turn 1.