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While flicking through my Horus Heresy:Betrayal book, I noticed a crazy combination. There is a character called the Moritat. He has a special rule that gives him an extra shot for each hit he makes with a pistol weapon, each additional hit also generates additional shots. Loading him up with 2 plasma pistols, for a respectable 115 pts, he will average 10 hits, although he will suffer 2 gets hot result as he is BS 5.

Now, this may seem quite extreme already, but it gets better, as you can also take librarians with access to divination. If prescience is cast on the Moritat, he will average an insane 70 hits. Yes, that is 70 S7 AP2 hits.

What do you think of this? Is this too much of an overkill? And is there anything else in the game capable of delivering this amount of firepower short of a superheavy?


Edited for accuracy

That doesn't seem quite right, does it specify that each additional hit generated creates more hits? Does it specify that this keeps happening until he misses? Somehow I don't imagine this happening.

Seems to me he would only be able to do 4 hits in total, getting two shots from each pistol, at most 6 depending on what the rule says.

Just to clarify my first post, I should have written "each additional hit also generates additional shots", instead of "each additional hit also generates additional hits."

The book says, "For each succesful hit, they may make an additional shooting attack with the weapons against the same target, and may continue doing so until they miss with the weapon." I interpret that as each additional hit generates additional shots.

Moritat's are scary only on paper in a vacuum.

If you want him to survive into contact range of the enemy, he's got to be in a squad. The only squad he can be in is going to run you close to 300 points. Then there's this Librarian you want near him. That Librarian can't be in the same squad (because of the Moritat's rules on what he can join), so there's some other kind of squad the Librarian has to be in.

Now, for this mountain of points, the Moritat does get to evaporate one unit. But then he's very likely dead, since he's got to wait 2 turns to do it again, but he's also standing right next to the enemy army.

... might be worth it just to fire 70 plasma pistol shots

There is no such thing as Overkill, it is simply insurance that it is dead.

 IHateNids wrote:
There is no such thing as Overkill, it is simply insurance that it is dead.

Not even slightly true. One plasma pistol is plenty for a moritat, and he's a mediocre harassment unit at best.

A unit is overkill if two conditions are met:

1) The unit's average results against a single target greatly exceed "kills the entire unit". Key point being "greatly". A unit that averages 11 dead MEQs is not overkill against a tactical squad, it's just a degree of insurance against lower than average die rolls. On the other hand, a unit (or combination of units) that averages 100 dead MEQs is overkill against a tactical squad because four separate units averaging 25 dead MEQs would each be almost as likely to wipe out the entire tactical squad (99.999% vs. 99.99999999999999%), but you would have three other units each capable of killing a separate target at the same time.

2) The unit pays a significant amount of extra points for the ability, on top of a cheaper level of firepower that gets the job done. If you're getting that excessive firepower very cheaply then it isn't overkill. For example, the moritat: if you're setting up the combo in the first place, yes, a single plasma pistol delivers a ton of damage and probably kills the entire target squad with an average of 30+ plasma hits. However, once you've made that initial investment adding a second plasma pistol is only an additional 15 points. Yes, it averages way more than what you need, but it's just a cheap bit of insurance against bad dice wrecking your plan. On the other hand, if getting that extra 30+ hits meant paying 100 more points it would be a bad idea, since you could buy a non-trivial amount of extra units with those points.

So: dual plasma pistol moritat? Not overkill, because it fails to meet the second condition.

He simply has the ability to destroy units of MEQ at range. There are plenty of models capable of doing it in melee so I don't see how this is a huge deal.

What this ability is really cool for is his ability to kill vehicles with tons of shots. Even glancing to death is quite possable with him.


Its a niftly ability and well worth the points but given that you can't move to another target means its effect is limited by reality.

I can't actually find this guy in the book so I'm going to assume your reading of the rules is accurate; assuming that's the case, I'm not sure where your math is coming from, he stops 50% of the time by the third hit without the Divination power and by the twentieth with (assuming one plasma pistol, since not being a Monstrous Creature he shouldn't be allowed to fire two), I'm not sure an average is technically possible to calculate given that the number of hits is theoretically infinite.

There is one pretty glaring defect with this guy that nobody seems to have pointed out: With a normal plasma weapon, you have a small chance of getting a Gets Hot wound every Shooting phase, with this guy you have a 100% chance of a Gets Hot wound since that's the only way he stops shooting. Arming him with a plasma pistol creates a nasty, nasty guy that can only fire in as many Shooting phases as he has Wounds, as well as attracting goodness knows how much return fire since everyone knows how scary he is.

As for other people who could put out this amount of firepower, I submit Maugan Ra. He may not have plasma-quality shots, but they're a respectable S6/AP5/Rending, he's guaranteed to get them all off, he's got BS7 so you don't need to dump extra points into a Farseer to help him hit, he's got 36" range so he has a chance of hitting someone before they murder him for being too good at shooting, and most importantly, he doesn't commit suicide by firing his primary weapon.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
(assuming one plasma pistol, since not being a Monstrous Creature he shouldn't be allowed to fire two)

Everyone can fire two pistols in 6th.

Arming him with a plasma pistol creates a nasty, nasty guy that can only fire in as many Shooting phases as he has Wounds, as well as attracting goodness knows how much return fire since everyone knows how scary he is.

You get an armor save against "gets hot" wounds, and the Moritat will always have at least a 3+, and usually a 2+. So each shooting phase you take two wounds, and probably save both of them.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I can't actually find this guy in the book so I'm going to assume your reading of the rules is accurate; assuming that's the case, I'm not sure where your math is coming from, he stops 50% of the time by the third hit without the Divination power and by the twentieth with (assuming one plasma pistol, since not being a Monstrous Creature he shouldn't be allowed to fire two), I'm not sure an average is technically possible to calculate given that the number of hits is theoretically infinite.

There is one pretty glaring defect with this guy that nobody seems to have pointed out: With a normal plasma weapon, you have a small chance of getting a Gets Hot wound every Shooting phase, with this guy you have a 100% chance of a Gets Hot wound since that's the only way he stops shooting. Arming him with a plasma pistol creates a nasty, nasty guy that can only fire in as many Shooting phases as he has Wounds, as well as attracting goodness knows how much return fire since everyone knows how scary he is.

As for other people who could put out this amount of firepower, I submit Maugan Ra. He may not have plasma-quality shots, but they're a respectable S6/AP5/Rending, he's guaranteed to get them all off, he's got BS7 so you don't need to dump extra points into a Farseer to help him hit, he's got 36" range so he has a chance of hitting someone before they murder him for being too good at shooting, and most importantly, he doesn't commit suicide by firing his primary weapon.

The legion centurion can be upgraded to a number of different characters, e.g. Chaplain, Librarian, Moritat, Champion, Techmarine.

In sixth, anyone can fire 2 pistols at once, and you can take saves from gets hot wounds. As he can buy artificer armor for 10 pts, he is quite safe.

As for callculating the number of hits, rerollable BS 5 means that 35/36 shots will hit.

2*35/36=1.944 hits
1.944*35/36=1.89 hits

I continued this until it got to tiny numberss, added them up and it came to 69.99999 hits

Also, I do not see how Maugan Ra can pump out that many shots. As far as I can tell, he does not have a rule allowing him to chain shots together.

reddwarf54 wrote:

As for callculating the number of hits, rerollable BS 5 means that 35/36 shots will hit.

2*35/36=1.944 hits
1.944*35/36=1.89 hits

I continued this until it got to tiny numberss, added them up and it came to 69.99999 hits

This isn't entirely accurate, but it's close enough for napkins with one exception. It's not always 2 shots. Once one gun misses, you don't get to shoot it any more. That will bring the average down some.