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Oh god. Just... oh... god... Well, let's begin, shall we?

The Mutilator

Le sigh.

Mutilators are a special breed of Chaos Space Marine. If I asked if you wanted Terminators with even better weapons, two wounds a piece, and the ability to be toughness 5 or have a 4+ invul save, you'd probably say "what, like Assault Terminators with 2 wounds?", and I'd say, "Yeah, but... well.. yeah that's pretty much it. Well kind of worse, because they can't get 3+ invulnerable saves and cost a lot more."

Okay, so you'd tell me to go stick it some, rather uncomfortable, place.

BUT you'd also be even LESS inclined to take it after seeing these things on the battlefield!

Mutilators have a fine unit profile. High save, two wounds, health number of attacks, and those attacks will rip things to shreds. Unfortunately, the rules of 40k make these things nearly useless provided you have any ability to move pieces of plastic around a board. It's not just fast models that can "kite" the Mutilator - it's everything. If you get into close combat with these guys, it's really your own fault. Since moving and shooting can be done by just about everyone and everything now, there's very few situations in which you're not able to just move away from these guys while continue doing whatever it is you were doing. And for their price tag, that's just a mess.

However, I'm LOATHE to give these guys extra movement options. It'd be a simple fix, but it'd be absolutely against everything in the game. Fundamentally, I think it'd be one of the worst design choices in the game. I'm also not going to give them an "assault after deep strike" option, because that could easily jump-start them to broken. What, oh what, could we do?

The Y-Mod

WS;4 - BS;4 - S;5 - T;5 - W;2 - I4; - A;2 - Ld;8 - Sv;2+

Unit Type: Infantry

Wargear:
Mutilator Weapons; At the start of each Assault Phase, a unit of Mutilators must choose to manifest a different pair of weapons until the next Assault Phase:
- Power Mauls
- Power Swords
- Chain Fists
- Lightning Claws
- One of any of the above, in addition to a Warp Field

Special Rules:
Deep Strike
Daemon
Warp Field; Mutilators and Obliterators can manifest a Warp Field Generator instead of a weapon, archaeotech long since lost to the warp. A model manifesting a Warp Field has a 3+ Invulnerable Save.

The Breakdown:

As a first, I can't really change the Mutilator without changing something else. While I don't know how Obliterators would manifest it, as they tend to manifest just one thing at a time, I figured the most important change to make to the Mutilator was to give it a 3+ Invulnerable save. This is the only thing that keeps Terminators in the game, and the same thing applies here. 99% of the time, this will mean that the Chaos player will manifest the warp field on their turn, then switch to something else on their opponent's turn. This is extra important, because usually you don't want a close combat unit to kill too many enemies on your own turn, because you get stuck out of combat on your opponent's turn and become more vulnerable to shooting. Switching to something deadlier (a pair of weapons for +1 A at least) on your opponent's turn is a great way to help get you out of combat for when it comes back to your turn. Obliterators would be given this option too, but I'm not sure how yet.

You'll also notice I increased the base strength and toughness of the Mutilator. This makes those Chain Fists extra deadly even against big stuff like Wraith Knights and Imperial Knights - something Chaos just can't really do on their own right now - and also helps shield against the next big change.

Notice how I didn't include anything about taking Marks of Chaos? Yeah, that's on purpose. If you're switching around weapons to get a 3+ invulnerable, you don't need the Mark of Tzeentch making it a 2+. If you're already Toughness 5, you don't need a Mark of Nurgle making it Toughness 6. If you're already unable to get a charge off with these guys, you don't need a Mark of Khorne or Slannesh mocking you for doing so.

Out of curiosity, why do you think that giving them extra movement options would be such a terrible thing? I get a possible objection to power creep, but to me the ultimate flaw of Mutilators is that you can't hardly get in position to charge with them, unless you use some cheap or fast units to staple your target down first. These guys don't die quite so easily as the current incarnation, which helps a bit, but I can't help but thinking that they'd still mostly just function as a fire magnet or a form of soft board control (by creating a "keep out or get charged" bubble).

Though, if the price is right, maybe that role alone is good enough: being able to create a roving area of "come here and die", that's strong enough and has enough volume to threaten almost anything.

One possibility that does occur to me is Hit & Run, so they can't be trivially tarpitted by some numerous but cheap unit, because that would entirely defeat the purpose of a unit that's consuming a healthy dollop of points.

What if they get rampage, but in every turn and not the charge turn?

I actually like the change you proposed here. Choose between increased killing power (pair of weapons) or durability (1 weapon plus warp field)

Seems fine if not a bit strong but I don't play chaos so I have no deal basis to compare it to. The real question will be the points cost for the model. Even then its still gonna suffer its biggest issue which is a lack of a proper and cost effective assault vehicle. If its really undercosted then it will do alright as a deep strike "deal with it" kind of unit or as a means to justify bringing a Land Raider. Again with my lack of Chaos experience I don't know how well these changes will play out given the lack of affordable assault transports for them.

Meganobz is a good example of how a similar model design (2+ armor and 2 wounds with worse leadership and no invuln) can work because it has 3 things going for it. It swings a lot of Power Klaw attacks, its relatively cheap, and it has access to a dedicated transport that is a cheap, fast, and an open topped vehicle to zoom down the battlefield. Even with huge weaknesses like lack of invuln save, leadership 7, slow and purposeful, etc. It works because it serves the purpose of "how to bring lots of power klaw attacks into combat to turn my enemy into red mist and kibble in a practical manner".

I like the warpfield thing. Not sure about the stat buffs.

I would rather they had the ability to redeploy by deep strike (perhaps within 12" of an enemy unit to prevent them from just being used to bounce between objectives).

For obliterators, I am not sure why one would ever choose to manifest a 3+ invul instead of fire a weapon when there should almost always be a useful weapon option to fire.

jade_angel wrote:Out of curiosity, why do you think that giving them extra movement options would be such a terrible thing? I get a possible objection to power creep, but to me the ultimate flaw of Mutilators is that you can't hardly get in position to charge with them, unless you use some cheap or fast units to staple your target down first. These guys don't die quite so easily as the current incarnation, which helps a bit, but I can't help but thinking that they'd still mostly just function as a fire magnet or a form of soft board control (by creating a "keep out or get charged" bubble).

Though, if the price is right, maybe that role alone is good enough: being able to create a roving area of "come here and die", that's strong enough and has enough volume to threaten almost anything.

One possibility that does occur to me is Hit & Run, so they can't be trivially tarpitted by some numerous but cheap unit, because that would entirely defeat the purpose of a unit that's consuming a healthy dollop of points.

40k is built on the tension between movement, and range. You move to get into a better position than you just were, and this better position is determined by the range and whatever is in-between you and your goals. Often, moving has a cost to it, which further increases the tension. Almost all of what makes Scatter Bikes so annoying is that they break this tension - they move with impunity far distances to always be in a good position at no cost, then even get to move again to avoid retaliation. There's no tension in that.

Infantry are the core of 40k, and suffer most from this tension. It's why we try to give them transports, jump packs, bikes, and all other kinds of movement options. We try to solve this tension problem. Eliminating the problem is not enjoyable. To me, this is why Drop Pods are not fun for opponents - they just solve the problem, rather than lessening it. Mutilators are definitely Infantry, and should stay as Infantry. What's more, they're Heavy Infantry. Leaving the tension in for them, but making them able to just demolish anything they touch, is very cool. Their ability to change weapon options to really have the best tools available at any time rather unique, so I think this should be kept. If they were able to naturally engage enemies better, then they stop being a "boogeyman" unit, and start being just another "point and click" unit.

Once you do that, then the "keep out or get charged" bubble analogy is pretty good, and they need some help in surviving that. As such, higher tougher, and access to a 3+ Inv save should make them be a "decent" area of denial unit that punishes someone that moves into them.

Tactical_Spam wrote:What if they get rampage, but in every turn and not the charge turn?

Making them simply more deadly doesn't solve their issue. It's always a nice bonus, and that'd be a cool one for sure, but it's not tackling the real issue.

Vankraken wrote:Seems fine if not a bit strong but I don't play chaos so I have no deal basis to compare it to. The real question will be the points cost for the model. Even then its still gonna suffer its biggest issue which is a lack of a proper and cost effective assault vehicle. If its really undercosted then it will do alright as a deep strike "deal with it" kind of unit or as a means to justify bringing a Land Raider. Again with my lack of Chaos experience I don't know how well these changes will play out given the lack of affordable assault transports for them.

Meganobz is a good example of how a similar model design (2+ armor and 2 wounds with worse leadership and no invuln) can work because it has 3 things going for it. It swings a lot of Power Klaw attacks, its relatively cheap, and it has access to a dedicated transport that is a cheap, fast, and an open topped vehicle to zoom down the battlefield. Even with huge weaknesses like lack of invuln save, leadership 7, slow and purposeful, etc. It works because it serves the purpose of "how to bring lots of power klaw attacks into combat to turn my enemy into red mist and kibble in a practical manner".

Very true! But it does go a bit further than that. With Orks, only Meganobz fill that design hole. With Chaos, you have Chaos Terminators as well, and they can shoot in addition to fighting with multiple weapons in close combat, making them just such a better option. But you're right in that the Chaos army as a whole lacks delivery methods in their own codex.

WangoFett wrote:For obliterators, I am not sure why one would ever choose to manifest a 3+ invul instead of fire a weapon when there should almost always be a useful weapon option to fire.

Well, I'm not sure how it'd be implemented. I imagine it'd be something like choosing to have a big heavy gun, a twin-linked small gun, or a small gun and 3+ Inv. Still, that's a design for another Y-Mod, but one I'll not likely do as I still think Obliterators are used widely enough amongst Chaos Space Marines that they don't justify a Y-Mod (yet).

I think this is a fantastic fix for mutilators.