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I'm a long-time Guard player, it is my first and favorite army. Most of my 5th edition games, however, have been with my new and growing Eldar army, so I saw 'Ardboyz as a chance to flex the Guard's muscles in 5th (and it was the only army I had with enough points).

I've been wanting to give the lowly mortar a shot ever since 5th had come out, and I figured the rock hard armies at 'Ardboyz would be a great testing ground for the red-headed stepchild of the Imperial armory. The following are some observations I had, that may be useful to you. I took 2 squads of 3 mortars in the HQ platoon. I didn't take any lone mortars, but I think the analysis applies to them also.

1.) The ability of the mortar to strike its target is better than any other weapon in the armory. 48" range with no line of sight requirement allowed my mortars to potentially hit whatever target they wanted. I found this especially useful in the Spearhead mission, where terrain and table-quarters deployment meant that heavy bolters would have extremely limited shots. My mortars were tucked away in the second line of troops, striking wherever I needed them.

2.) Mortars and Leman Russes make a dreamy combination. In my experience, people often huddle troops behind or in cover when advancing against a Russ, for obvious reasons. Often these troops are very close packed to deny a Battle Cannon shot. In this situation, mortars were extremely useful, because they could strike outside of LOS, and score many hits due to the tight packing of enemy troops.

3.) Mortars lack finishing power. To clarify, mortars are great at thinning out a full unit, but fairly poor at finishing off the last 3 or so squad members. They get much fewer hits against those numbers of troops, and so aren't effective when you need to kill small numbers of models. At these times I missed my Heavy Bolter's ability to put a bunch of wounds onto one or two guys.

Overall, I think mortars present a strong case for taking the place of heavy bolters in many places in the Guard army, but their lack of finishing power leaves an important role for heavy bolters, autocannons, and multilasers.


Other observations:

1.) Outflanking Veterans were largely better than deep striking veterans. Much more reliable, but I suspect some of their success came from people not being used to dealing with outflanking units.

2.) Outflanking Sentinels (mine used lascannons, I suspect any weapon can benefit) were fantastic. Unlike Veterans, their range means there are very few times where getting the side you don't want hurts them. The benefits of getting side and rear shots were nice. Almost as important was keeping mobile and high firepower, but vulnerable units off the table, knowing they would not be shot when my opponent went first.

3.) Not 5th or 'Ardboyz related, but I feel like every tournament I go to, I play one guy (usually first round), who expresses outrage, and shock that the Hellhound can orient the flame template in any direction.

The biggest problem was how long it takes to shoot them. Guard players are already notorious slow-players, due to gunline/msu syndrome. Now add in weapons that each take template rolls and its ridiculous.

5th has helped a lot with this though. Previously you had to place the first, scatter,count up models under it, roll for partials, roll to wound, saves, next one, repeat process, end with pinning test. In 5th edition at least you just scatter, count models, scatter, count models, until done, then roll all wounds and all saves.

On the other hand, 5th has also taken out a lot of their benefit, as there are far fewer ways to hide units out of LOS. Mortars remain obnoxious heavy-bolter equivalents.

Mortars are certainly a great base for infantry killing in the guard list. A couple concerns I'd have specifically when it comes to ardboys.

Short times for 2500 games. Mortars are notorious 'slow-play' machines. Mortars are one of the foot guard armies best answers to screening cover units, like the orks are wont to use. However resolving 9+ mortar groups can get a little time consuming.

As far as all of your other observations, I would agree with all of them.

I want my Griffon back. It was the perfect compliment to a pair of Russes, without the over-large size of the Basilisk or the minimum range handicap.

I still have my Griffon model in mothballs waiting for a chance to use it.

I used to dedicate the 3rd heavy support slot to a Basilisk for its ability to hit things hiding behind cover. I think that a couple mortar squads can cover some of the bases the Basilisk used to, and outflanking Sentinels can cover the rest. This leaves that nice 3rd heavy support slot open for a third Russ.

Time concerns are certainly an issue. It is a lot faster to pick up a handful of dice for heavy bolters.

Then again you are guard if the game only goes 3 turns it is in your favor. since the shooting is what you are good at.

Foot-slogging guard aren't going to be able to capture enough objectives to win games (in 3 turns), particularly in Capture and Control scenarios. Games that end early tend to result in draws from my experience.