Warhammer 40K: What Is GW Doing With Chaos Mutilators?
Goatboy here to talk about what I think GW will actually do with the upcoming 40K Chaos Mutilators on the tabletop.
Goatboy here. Last week, we got a nice little model preview with the new Chaos Mutilators. It isn’t known if they are just CSM Mutilators or if they might be World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, or Emperor’s Children ones as well. I would hope the new Mutilators would hit all the CSM and Cult armies, as it would be great to see it used by everyone – but for now, let’s just think of them as CSM ones. Today I want to talk about what I think they might actually do in this game. We’ll see how close I get to their rules whenever they actually get released.
Chaos Mutilators – The Basics
First will start with the stats. It is interesting to see them as a 3-man unit, as their army counterparts – the Obliterators – are a 2-man unit. I would rather have them as a 3-man as it currently feels like the common build design in all armies is a 3-man elite thing. With that, we’ll start with the current Obliterator stat line and go from there.
This would give us the following.
M 4″ (Ugh)
Toughness 7 (Neat)
Sv 2??+/5+ Inv (Cool)
Wounds 5 (Interesting)
LD 6+ (Perfectly fine)
OC 2 (Would be neat to get 6 OC total)
Overall, all of these seem fine and most likely what we will see. The current points for Obliterators are 80, and I don’t think we will see these guys hit that level. I wonder if they will sit them at 60 ea as they need to get engaged to do any work, and this would leave them at the 180 points level to match having more wounds, higher toughness, and a better Armor save versus any of the other attacking elite like options.
This is all good and seems fine. I really don’t like the movement and would rather see it at 5″ as currently the Death Guard stuff is at 5,” and that feels more on the nose for what an assault element unit would have. I would really rather just have them at 6,” but hey – let’s see if they shift the Mutilator stats, based on having different data sheets for different armies. I just really do like the idea of a tough Elite unit that can be a scary bully behind walls and acting like the Deathshroud a bit.
Mutilator Weapons?
After all of this, let’s look at the weapons. So far, each of the models doesn’t appear to have any kind of gun aspect attached to them. I am not seeing some kind of weird flamer action, melta gun, or even an evil bolter strapped to them. This leads me to think they are just all assault and matching up to how the Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound are. With these two different units in mind and how Obliterators can shift their weapons, I wonder if these guys will get the same thing.
Let’s see about giving them 3 different shifts of weapons – from the Anti-Monster/Anti-Vehicle, a medium hitting weapon, and finally, some kind of horde option. I will sync them up based on the Obliterator options, as I would figure they would match up. It shouldn’t be too hard to get this figured out.
Anti-Vehicle/Anti-Monster – Crushing Grinder Fists of Doom
Attacks 4 hitting on a 3+
Strength 10
AP -3
Damage 3
Keywords – Anti-Monster/Anti-Vehicle 3+
Medium Attack – Exalted Fists of Chaos
Attacks 5 hitting on a 3+
Strength 8
AP -2
Damage 2
Keywords – None
Horde Clearing Attack – Warp Lashes of Despair
Attacks 6 hitting on a 3+
Strength 6
AP -2
Damage 1
Keywords – Sustained Hits
I don’t want to do a random number of hits, as that is annoying, and just a flat hit rate works. I think all of these would be useful in most things and allow you to pick your fight, even though I expect to see the medium one used a lot to get that damage 2. I wonder if they will go ahead and have them hit on a 2+, but we will have to see. Do you think all of these are too good? Or do they feel just right?
Mutilator Special Rules?
From there we have to give some kind of ability. The Obliterators can do a no LOS shooting attack once a game, so I wonder what we could do with these guys. I think a really good option to give a once a game Advance and Charge might be the right choice. This would be the idea of overcharging themselves to get into the fray and start wrecking stuff. You could even let them reroll charges when they do it. I would love the idea of overcharging themselves to get the unit mixed into combat.
Oh, and of course, they would have Deepstrike too for a fun Rapid Ingress unit.
What do you think? How close do you think I will be to the final Mutilators? How would you stat them out?
