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So my local group is doing a Zone Mortalis campaign-ish thing in the near future, and I'm very excited about it! It finally gives me a reason to get into the marine models I've had sitting around. What are your experiences with ZM? Any major pitfalls I should avoid when list building? Any jerk moves I should avoid? I'm planning on running Raptor-tactics marines with a mix of kitted out 5 man tac squads and terminators. Thoughts?

Also, I love the new harlequin rules, and they seem like they could be a lot of fun to use in ZM. Would treating a single elite harlequin as your hq for a combatant detachment be unbalanced for such a game?

I would love to do Zone Mortalis, but my wallet would sadly eat gak and die within moments.

All luck to you.

Where is Carl Tuttle? You're slipping...

It seems like a fun alternative way to play. Short range/Melee units become much better. blast weapons are more devastating as the explode when they hit walls. Jump shoot jump is even better than normal with the hallways.

Zone is a lot of fun and can even be made into great 4 player games of everyone taking a corner of the zone. If anything terminators really do shine in the zone mortalis since you don’t have to worry about them getting shot to pieces over long open spaces. Also can be pretty fun to run deathstars in them. Ran a crazy Space Wolf deathstar with Njal, Ulrik, Arjac and a bunch of terminators and just walking down the halls killing everything they came in contact with. Had even more laughs with Yarrick in a ten man Bullgryn squad with power mauls and slab shields being backed up with 2 priests and another commissar. It was in that game where my gaming group truly learned how a 5+ invul with re-rolls is the greatest save in 40k while watching my bullgyns fight a great unclean one with iron arm and the murder sword.

Also if you are going to play it you have to play the game type will “Blips”. Instead of putting your guys on the board you put a dice down for each squad and you don’t reveal what it is until two blips come into LOS with one another. Lots of crazy encounters with that rule.

If someone plays a power armored it is ok, but for something like IG it is horrible. Tanks can't go anywhere, normal dudes die even faster.

Makumba wrote:
If someone plays a power armored it is ok, but for something like IG it is horrible. Tanks can't go anywhere, normal dudes die even faster.

Well you can’t take tanks in zone (unless you are doing some story type campaign). Dreadnaughts are really about the biggest thing you can have in them but be aware that they will be stuck to a small section of the board since not all doorways are big enough for them to get through. IG works fine in zone as you can either have numerous small squads running around the board or one big mob roaming the hallways. I've even run pure storm trooper list in the zone with great success.

Just be aware that flamers are beast in the zone since they gain the Shred special rule. Same thing with blast weapons. Blast pretty much never scatter since if they do they blow up once they touch a wall. If you have and people playing Eldar and they bring D-cannons just forfeit and find some else to play with since that is the only weapon that ignores walls and can hit anything in it range.

ZM is my favourite way to play. Everything becomes faster and more tense, and units that don't normally work shine beautifully.

Template weapons and blasts are definitely your friends, and Terminators are much better in ZM seeing as they automatically count as Void Hardened (if you use the shipboard rules). And speed. Oh god, anything that moves fast is an absolute godsend. Because the board is usually really dense, you need to plan out movement ahead of the game, because you won't be able to throw units around where they need to be like in a normal game. Assault marines aren't bad, because a 12" move is godly, and they aren't going to get shot to bits. If you can get a hold of beasts (Spawn rock so hard), even better.

Regarding the Harlequins, I wouldn't think so. Just check with your opponent before hand. And a word of warning: overwatch in ZM can be brutal, due to Reaction Fire. So, yes, Harlies can probably avoid all the other shooting, but whatever you'll be charging will likely get a decent round of firing at you before you sweep them off.

EDIT: I just remembered that fleeing units who flee into or near other units cause that unit to flee, or something along those lines. Shadowseers with the Mask of Secrets and Death Jesters are a whole lot meaner, if you aren't playing against something that laughs at morale checks.

Played it a couple of times and it is alot of fun. Here are things to watch out for:


- Watch out for Wraiths

- Eldar Battle Focus (Being able to pop in hallway fire and get out of the hallway is a major advantage).

- Fire Dragons (On a Ini test they will reaction fire meaning Overwatch with 5 meltaguns at their full BS. Yeah that's going to hurt).

- Terminators are good

- Watch out for Wraiths

- Heavy weapons suck if you do not havw relentless or slow and purposeful. The hallways make it impossible to have a full field of fire on the board.

- Tau... If you are running down a hallway they will hit you first. Their range means in close quarters if they can see they can probably hit.

- Melee units are very risky due to reaction fire. Best use is to charge a unit that is pinned in order to deny them their overwatch.

- Watch out for Wraiths...seriously those are scary when you can't run.away.

- Infiltrators/Scouts are always nice if you can deploy them to secure a chokepoint and hold it long enough for backup to arrive you can better control the board.

- Look into using the 'No escape' clause to wipe out difficult units.

Fast moving units are extremely important. Moving from one end of a ZM board to another is damn near impossible unless you move more than 6" per turn.

Be mindful of anything on a base larger than 40mm. They'll run into problems reaching some areas of the board.

On that note, be mindful when setting up the board that you don't block off entire sections for models with bigger bases. Also watch out for blocking off whole deployment zone table edges...that almost happened in one game I had.

Flamers...my god, flamers. Also, plasma cannons.

 Panzer1944 wrote:
If you have and people playing Eldar and they bring D-cannons just forfeit and find some else to play with since that is the only weapon that ignores walls and can hit anything in it range.

D-cannons are not the only weapon. DKoK Engineers have access to mole launchers which have subterranean barrage, strikedown, and ignore walls. A couple of those would ruin your day in ZM.

ZM is great fun, it definitely turns up the kill volume! With two squads of DKoK PG Grenadiers w/ HFs I easily wiped a SM scout/tac/termie army. When range isn't an issue, Hellguns shine! Reaction Fire is great!

Zone Mortalis is a ton of fun. Be careful not to get surrounded, also, Flamers are very powerful due to getting Shred. Overall, just have fun!

we played a game today and I filmed it so ill get that up soon.

it was a lot of fun though.