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Against things like Skaven obviously, I want some peoples opinions on wether warmachines are a good way to deal with Skaven and Vampire Counts, or whether I should invest in more troops.

take 3 mortars in games under 3000 and 6 mortars in games over 3000. They always make up their points for me. Every template that hits a goblin unit pretty much makes up its points. You know that GW hoard of marauders, it wont be there very long with 3-6 mortars laying around, and at only 75 points a piece along with being counted as a stonethrower they are well worth their points.

Looks like I will be taking a artillery battery of 3 mortars with a engineer to save them from the misfires. Bye bye Counts and Rats.

Honestly, I'm not even sure the engineer is worth it. I have this ongoing problem in my games where, because of the engineer, I have to camp all of my artillery together in one great big pile, which hands the first unit of dark riders, harpies, or chameleon skinks that happens by a cool 290 points.

I don't take the engineer, I just take 3 mortars at 2200, spread them out enough that the enemy has to really try if he wants to kill all 3, and hope they work. That's an average of about one direct hit per turn, and against the things mentioned (slaves, marauders, that other guy's dirty treacherous empire state troops), one hit per turn for the two turns you usually have to shoot in is plenty to tip the balance decisively in your favor.

I don't play Empire, but I just checked out the book. Am I reading this correctly that the mortar uses a large template, has a -1 to armor saves, and is 75 points? Is that a typo?

I thought most stone-throwers were around 80-90 points, used the small template, no save modifier.

Is there some bad thing about the mortars? Random chance to suck your general into the warp or something?

Nope, 75 pts to just use a large blast template with -1 to AS

Ok so 3k and over 6 mortars 6 cannons and a couple of hellblasters and a steam tank or 2 muahaha (can you tell i like artillery )

Under 3k I dont see why you wouldnt take 3 mortars and a couple of cannons.

I almost... well i thought it was awesome when I saw the empire war machine points cost.

DavetheGreen wrote:I don't play Empire, but I just checked out the book. Am I reading this correctly that the mortar uses a large template, has a -1 to armor saves, and is 75 points? Is that a typo?

I thought most stone-throwers were around 80-90 points, used the small template, no save modifier.

Is there some bad thing about the mortars? Random chance to suck your general into the warp or something?

Mortars are only Str 3, most of the rest are Str 5. This means mortars are deadly against low toughness, minimally armoured troops, but considerably less effective at taking out higher quality troops compared to other stone throwers.

But despite this mortars are still excellent value, and a cornerstone of most strong Empire armies.

Well combined with some toughness reducing magic.

Aye, force them to take enough wounds, and one will eventrally get through. As said, at 75 points a hit, it's extremely cheap for what it does. Clearing out weak anvil units or picking off pieces of tougher ones.

sebster wrote:Mortars are only Str 3, most of the rest are Str 5. This means mortars are deadly against low toughness, minimally armoured troops, but considerably less effective at taking out higher quality troops compared to other stone throwers.

Actually the standard stone thrower is S3. Only stone throwers I know of of different values are trebuchets, poison wind mortars, hellcannons, and plague claw catapult and technically only two of those have higher than S3

Hellcannon is good times but you can take magic that reduces toughness and etc use that on the unit you are going to mortar and problem sorta solved.