Warhammer 40K Hot Mess – Mortarion
Mortarion used to be one of the kings of 40K, but he’s gotten a little rusty… Let’s help the Death Lord out.
I actually like Mortarion a lot and think the lack of his power in the current game is a shame. He is a showcase model for Death Guard and a pillar of the old style of 40k. I really want him to be back being awesome alongsite the other big monsters as well. These things look a heck of lot cooler on the tabletop versus a tiny unit that looks like a scifi jerk. With that, let’s try to tweak him.
Let’s get the first thing out of the way – Mortarion’s rules in a vacuum are actually pretty good. He is tough, has defense abilities, movement options, and hits pretty hard. The bigger issue in all of this is of course – 40K is a heck of a lot different than when he first came out. This means that while he was 2021 tough – he isn’t 2022/23 tough. So what can we do to make him better?
Make Him Tough To Deal With
Currently, he is one of the few Primarchs that have multiple levels of toughness. The lack of reroll’s within a specific range, Feel No Pain, and damage reduction are all helpful in keeping him alive. You add on Armor of Contempt as well, and he is a pain to deal with. But 40K isn’t the same, and damage can stack up so much and so quickly that he just doesn’t sit on the table, unlike someone like Bel’akor. So first things first – all of these big monsters need to have a 2+ save, just like the upcoming Angron.
This tweak would allow him to ignore a lot of small arms fire that can start to stack up with multiple rules to get their wounding into something scary. When you have multiple ways to just ignore his toughness by rolling a 6 to hit makes this model need a 2+ armor save to just help keep him around.
Change Mortarion’s Auras to Straight Rules
The ability to remove reroll’s to hit and wound is powerful. While it is good to get him within range – he just normally dies before he gets there. Why not just let him have the aura to turn off when targeting other units when he is in range? Then when you target him he just turns off all reroll’s. This guy needs to be killed by a ton of bullets, lasers, gross grubs, and shards of glass – not a few that are stacked up with some many rules he just evaporates.
Let Him Auto-heal Wounds
I don’t like lock-in wounds taken per phase and instead would rather just stack his damage prevention with something like a heal every command phase. His body fixes itself amongst the droning of the flies that dance around him. There feels like a missing piece in a lot of these toughness abilities. Healing per turn is a simple way let someone be tough without removing your opponent’s ability to do damage. You are not just ignoring the opponent as you take the damage (which is no fun) – but you do heal some back each turn.
Have Some Tricks to Fizzle Long-range Fire
Maybe change one of his Warlord traits to make it where anything over 18” is now -1 to wound too. Make it only affect longer range as it still is effective when he gets close. But let’s give Mortarion a chance to get across the battlefield to drone on and on about the greatness of Nurgle.
Make Mortarion Worth It
The game is not just built on your guys punching the enemy to death – it is all about holding and controlling the battlefield. Making Morty a lot tougher is ok as he can only really control that one area. Thus a smart player can just ignore him. Just leaving him floating around makes the battlefield a heck of a lot cooler to look at. While I don’t think we need to make him more offensive – a few tweaks can make him survive a bit longer.
We all know how cool it is to have the lord bad asses on the table and watching them get zorched out by a few early-game shots makes me sad. Let’s bring back the fear of Mortarion floating across the table, getting close, and most likely giving you a cold.
Let us know how you would fix the unit, down in the comments!
