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Just dropped against him with my AM list. Some observations:

* Ditch the meatshields. They don't work with the aura killing a small pile of them every fight phase

* Don't bother with traditional high-ap weapons. He has a high invul save so you aren't getting anything.

* He hates multi-damage shots. It creates descision paralysis in shifting the shots off on his death shroud

* Kill the Death Shroud. They can take shots from mort and can work up a 2+ armor save on those shots. You won't scratch the paint until you kill them.

* Spread out the guns. He wants to get into near melee range for his auras and having a couple guns outside of it is a good thing.

Just shoot him with the twin volcano cannon on a relic falchion super heavy tank destroyer. That cannon is heavy 2D6, S16, AP-5, D2D6. If he is still standing use the two quad lascannons.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
* He hates multi-damage shots. It creates descision paralysis in shifting the shots off on his death shroud

* Kill the Death Shroud. They can take shots from mort and can work up a 2+ armor save on those shots. You won't scratch the paint until you kill them.

Deathshroud only move 4" a turn, and Morty has to be within 3" of them to benefit from their bodyguard ability. Did they significantly slow him down to the point where you could get a lot of shots off on him?

I notice people aren't accounting for the fact morty will usually cast miasma of pestilence on himself, meaning a -1 to incoming hit rolls. Not a huge deal for armies hitting on a 3+ with rerolls, kinda an issue for 4+ guard.

Scions work, but also look at bullgryns. Their invulnerable save with the brute shield helps a lot, and they have ws 3+ with a 7 str and 2 damage, pretty good for hitting morty. Add a priest for added power.

Considering bullgryns are one of the units which might go down in cost while plasma scions will likely go up, ogryns might be an option to consider.

Brian888 wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:
* He hates multi-damage shots. It creates descision paralysis in shifting the shots off on his death shroud

* Kill the Death Shroud. They can take shots from mort and can work up a 2+ armor save on those shots. You won't scratch the paint until you kill them.

Deathshroud only move 4" a turn, and Morty has to be within 3" of them to benefit from their bodyguard ability. Did they significantly slow him down to the point where you could get a lot of shots off on him?

Or you fly in on your turn and deep strike the deathshroud to cover him from lascannon type things for a turn if not withing charging range

even though you could potentially charge on t1 no problems.

or deep strike them in later after he has taken a few wounds.

 Desubot wrote:

Brian888 wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:
* He hates multi-damage shots. It creates descision paralysis in shifting the shots off on his death shroud

* Kill the Death Shroud. They can take shots from mort and can work up a 2+ armor save on those shots. You won't scratch the paint until you kill them.

Deathshroud only move 4" a turn, and Morty has to be within 3" of them to benefit from their bodyguard ability. Did they significantly slow him down to the point where you could get a lot of shots off on him?

Or you fly in on your turn and deep strike the deathshroud to cover him from lascannon type things for a turn if not withing charging range

even though you could potentially charge on t1 no problems.

or deep strike them in later after he has taken a few wounds.

Without Warptime, I don't see Mortarion pulling off a T1 charge unless you deploy way too close to him.

Brian888 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Brian888 wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:
* He hates multi-damage shots. It creates descision paralysis in shifting the shots off on his death shroud

* Kill the Death Shroud. They can take shots from mort and can work up a 2+ armor save on those shots. You won't scratch the paint until you kill them.

Deathshroud only move 4" a turn, and Morty has to be within 3" of them to benefit from their bodyguard ability. Did they significantly slow him down to the point where you could get a lot of shots off on him?

Or you fly in on your turn and deep strike the deathshroud to cover him from lascannon type things for a turn if not withing charging range

even though you could potentially charge on t1 no problems.

or deep strike them in later after he has taken a few wounds.

Without Warptime, I don't see Mortarion pulling off a T1 charge unless you deploy way too close to him.

oh right 12" move.

still fantastic movement and some deployment types if or when you have the option to pick can allow for that easy.

but still doesn't change the T1 move up deep strike in the death shrouds for bonus defense then t2 move him up for that sick charge and send the death shrouds elsewere or with him slowly.

p5freak wrote:
Just shoot him with the twin volcano cannon on a relic falchion super heavy tank destroyer. That cannon is heavy 2D6, S16, AP-5, D2D6. If he is still standing use the two quad lascannons.

Sadly, it's over the 31 PL limit currently in place for a lot of ITC events.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
Just dropped against him with my AM list. Some observations:


* He hates multi-damage shots. It creates descision paralysis in shifting the shots off on his death shroud

It shouldn't. Shifting hits onto the death shroud is not a matter of choice. It happens automatically.

2 or 3 Rapier Laser Destroyers?

 crimsondave wrote:
2 or 3 Rapier Laser Destroyers?

Looks like you'd need 5 of them (marine version) to reliably get a single unsaved wound past his invuln. After which you're likely to do 7 damage and 2 of those get shrugged off by disgustingly resilient. 400 points to do less than a third of the wound pool on a 470 point model seems like a bad deal. That's also without the -1 to hit penalty from miasma.

Two xiphon interceptors will hit him on 2+ with quad lascannons each, unless he casts miasma of pestilence on himself. One interceptor is only 210 pts.

Just bring enough shooting. Mortarion is so dangerous you simply cannot afford to have him amidst your batteline wrecking havoc, deleting entire units each turn, and slowly killing off the rest of your battle line with his mortal wounds aura. So, just shoot whatever you can at him and bring him down. Even if you have to spend one or two of your entire turn shooting him, just do it.

its the same as Magnus. He is a pain to kill, but you just have to kill him.

If you have some really powerful CC which makes you confident enough to charge him and kill him in close combat, I would say go for it. But Mortarion is a beast in CC, so erm yeah, I think going the CC route to kill him is even less of an option than just simply bringing enough shooting and focusing it all on him to kill him.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Just bring enough shooting. Mortarion is so dangerous you simply cannot afford to have him amidst your batteline wrecking havoc, deleting entire units each turn, and slowly killing off the rest of your battle line with his mortal wounds aura. So, just shoot whatever you can at him and bring him down. Even if you have to spend one or two of your entire turn shooting him, just do it.

its the same as Magnus. He is a pain to kill, but you just have to kill him.

If you have some really powerful CC which makes you confident enough to charge him and kill him in close combat, I would say go for it. But Mortarion is a beast in CC, so erm yeah, I think going the CC route to kill him is even less of an option than just simply bringing enough shooting and focusing it all on him to kill him.

Agreed, just pray you can Seize the Initiative and blast him with everything you've got again and again until he drops. Another person suggested spreading out your firepower to make each unit lost not as much of a big deal. I agree, that's a reason I don't use Conscripts. Makes it far less punishing when a unit gets charged, or against anything that does mass wounds, and makes opponents waste shots overkilling a unit to make sure it truly goes away. Commissars and Medi-Packs do a decent job of keeping my guys fighting.

Things like Mortarion are a reason I use Yarrick in every list. Rerolling 1's to hit without an order is huge when you can tack on rerolling 1's to wound as well. Also makes me much more confident in Overcharging anything Plasma within 6" of Yarrick... And I overcharge everything with my Guard that isn't mounted on a vehicle. The damage the Guard are capable of with some rerolls is astounding against big targets.

Brian888 wrote:
Without Warptime, I don't see Mortarion pulling off a T1 charge unless you deploy way too close to him.

In the games i'm seeing, Morty is being followed by a CSM DP or Sorc (with wings or JP obviously) with Warptime to push him across the board.

So its not Morty by himself, but he is getting across the board turn one as long as the support character is getting the power off.

 Otto von Bludd wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
If you can't deal with mortarion what's your battle plan vs celestine?

Celestine is an assassin. There's literally nothing you can do to stop her from getting to her target, and she's good enough to kill anything anyone with half a brain would send after her. And then you shoot her to death because there's no reason not to and she does it a second time. But her targets are not meaner beatsticks, and they aren't heavy armor. Or even big mobs. She wants to kill small elite Heavy support, or a squishy support character

Mortarian is an army blender. There is not a unit in this game outside MAYBE magnus that he cannot wreck. He will, on average, one shot guilliman on a charge. You have to kill him fast because if you try and ignore him, starting on his turn two he is deleting any unit in your army a turn while slowly attritioning all the other ones near him.

This talk of Mortarion is starting to give me PTSD flashbacks of TWC deathstars in 7th. I sure hope Guard can keep up this time.

Mortarion is also worse than magnus and Guilliman as a model. He's slow, even with opponents cheesing in a heretic astartes detachment for warp time, he should, at most, kill one unit before he;s shot off the board. Your entire army might have to do it, but they will.

And he's not even particularly survivable in melee. A mob of boyz will hammer him down, as will gene stealers and berzerkers if they get a charge, and they should considering how the game plays out.

Mortarion's defenses for his point cost are not particularly high.

If you are a shooty army, the DG are NOT a melee army, and they are NOT a fast one. If your opponent built a fast deathguard army, they've sacrificed screens, and made their important units very vulnerable.

Magnus is a lot higher in utility because of his post turn 1 survivability. 3 up re-rolling ones with a 6 up FNP is better than 4 up 5 up FNP with a minus one to hit.

stratigo wrote:

 Otto von Bludd wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
If you can't deal with mortarion what's your battle plan vs celestine?

Celestine is an assassin. There's literally nothing you can do to stop her from getting to her target, and she's good enough to kill anything anyone with half a brain would send after her. And then you shoot her to death because there's no reason not to and she does it a second time. But her targets are not meaner beatsticks, and they aren't heavy armor. Or even big mobs. She wants to kill small elite Heavy support, or a squishy support character

Mortarian is an army blender. There is not a unit in this game outside MAYBE magnus that he cannot wreck. He will, on average, one shot guilliman on a charge. You have to kill him fast because if you try and ignore him, starting on his turn two he is deleting any unit in your army a turn while slowly attritioning all the other ones near him.

This talk of Mortarion is starting to give me PTSD flashbacks of TWC deathstars in 7th. I sure hope Guard can keep up this time.

Mortarion is also worse than magnus and Guilliman as a model. He's slow, even with opponents cheesing in a heretic astartes detachment for warp time, he should, at most, kill one unit before he;s shot off the board. Your entire army might have to do it, but they will.

And he's not even particularly survivable in melee. A mob of boyz will hammer him down, as will gene stealers and berzerkers if they get a charge, and they should considering how the game plays out.

Mortarion's defenses for his point cost are not particularly high.

If you are a shooty army, the DG are NOT a melee army, and they are NOT a fast one. If your opponent built a fast deathguard army, they've sacrificed screens, and made their important units very vulnerable.

Magnus is a lot higher in utility because of his post turn 1 survivability. 3 up re-rolling ones with a 6 up FNP is better than 4 up 5 up FNP with a minus one to hit.

I'm going to see both here. I've seen a MWing batrep where Mortarion got shot off the table, so it can be done. What do you do with Magnus, though? He can move so much Smite spam may be hard to accomplish. Would a Culexus play any useful role in taking him (or Mortarion for that matter) down? You can't take invul saves against a Callidus'es phase sword, but at S4 good luck wounding with 5 attacks.

p5freak wrote:
Two xiphon interceptors will hit him on 2+ with quad lascannons each, unless he casts miasma of pestilence on himself. One interceptor is only 210 pts.

Expected damage after invuln and resilience is 5.12 for the 8 lascannon shots. Statistically, less than one of the six xiphon missile shots will make it through and he'll shrug off one of the three damage. 7.12 damage total. So, better than the laser destroyers, but not by much and certainly a better option to bring in a list than five laser destroyers.

420 points to do 33% of his wound pool.

Edit: my math looks wrong as according to the mathhammer calculator, you should expect 11 damage to morty from two xiphons. Not bad at all.

So far it's looking like 600+ points in plasma scions/elysians is the way to go without crippling the rest of the list during a tournament where you still have to take on other lists.

Yeah Morty is going to cream my superheavy tank companies. We just don't have enough bullets / pt.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah Morty is going to cream my superheavy tank companies. We just don't have enough bullets / pt.

Again cyclops demo vehicles 40pts 10in movement and 6in aoe that hits everything in range including his death shroud for 2d6 str9 auto hitting ap-2 and d3 damage.

If they try to kill them and are still within 6in they also have a 50% to explode for d3 mortal wounds. Create a small wall on your deployment line of 5-6 of them so anything has to deepstrike 9in away. Spread them out 6in from each other and the rest of your army 7in behind so they don't get hit by the exposion. Move explode and take out the death shroud and over his half of morties life thus dropping his invul to a manageable 5+.

gungo wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah Morty is going to cream my superheavy tank companies. We just don't have enough bullets / pt.

Again cyclops demo vehicles 40pts 10in movement and 6in aoe that hits everything in range including his death shroud for 2d6 str9 auto hitting ap-2 and d3 damage.

If they try to kill them and are still within 6in they also have a 50% to explode for d3 mortal wounds. Create a small wall on your deployment line of 5-6 of them so anything has to deepstrike 9in away. Spread them out 6in from each other and the rest of your army 7in behind so they don't get hit by the exposion. Move explode and take out the death shroud and over his half of morties life thus dropping his invul to a manageable 5+.

I'm not sure I want to bring cyclopses though, considering I've only got about 440 points to spend after the tanks themselves, and I'd like to finegle it to get some Trojans in.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/09/21/tactical-toolbox-mastering-mortarion-sep21gw-homepage-post-2/

p5freak wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/09/21/tactical-toolbox-mastering-mortarion-sep21gw-homepage-post-2/

GW's advice is to run models with high invulnerable saves versus mort. Do we have that in-faction or will we have to soup to survive?

54 Wound Mortarion: Take Mortarion, and spend the rest of your points on Deathshroud. This effectively means your opponent will need to remove 54 wounds before Mortarion is dead – all in a 2000 point list. Will you win games? Maybe! Will Mortarion die, ever? Almost certainly not!

By the Emperor. I know that's not a practical list, but that's terrifying.

What about assassin support? They bypass invulnerable.

I find it really interesting how most of the death guard discussions seem to revolve around how Morty is barely worth it and it'll be hard to survive turn 1... while the opposing side seems to despair about killing him at all.

I don't really have the idea that hellblasters or massed guard heavy weapons will have much trouble perforating morty.

 argonak wrote:
What about assassin support? They bypass invulnerable.

Callidus, 5 attacks, hit on 2's, wound on 5's, morty then gets a 6+ armor save and a 5+ FNP. Yeah, you're going to need a LOT of Callidus to make that work.

A culexus might help to block miasma from going off which would be very helpful in terms of gunning him down with the rest of the army. But i think the casting value is 6, so making it an 8 still gives him pretty good odds.

Eversor shouldn't even bother.

Vindicare one shot, hit on 2, wound on 5, morty gets a 6+ armor save and 5+ FNP on the D3 wounds.

Comedy option, morty's points in Ratlings. 3 normal wounds after saves and 4 mortals.

I wonder if nullzone helps against mortys disgustingly resilient rolls ?

Against T7 3+/4++, the Autocannon becomes more effective for its points than any other standard heavy weapon AM/SM can field (not that SM can field Autocannons).
It is more effective than the Lascannon, the Heavy Bolter and the Assault Cannon, point per point.
That knowledge may help in building a shooting list against Mortarion.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Against T7 3+/4++, the Autocannon becomes more effective for its points than any other standard heavy weapon AM/SM can field (not that SM can field Autocannons).
It is more effective than the Lascannon, the Heavy Bolter and the Assault Cannon, point per point.
That knowledge may help in building a shooting list against Mortarion.

Doing it without compromising the rest of the list might be tricky though. Maybe a pair of hydras or hydra platforms?

Or you can wait until you get codex. Gap between codex and index armies isn't even funny. Ad mech went from "how we gonna stop this monster" to "lol, he died because Dakakastelan looked in his direction". Stratagems make day and night difference.

Qantity over quality. Shoot him with more but weaker weapons. Lascannons may or may not get through, but 4 out of 8 overcharged plasma will pass 4++ and hit him.

Get snipers and drop whatever wants to cast warptime on him if it isn't in DS.

Or just wait for codex, it will be next one so not very long time of waiting.