Legion of Night Mortis Engine Army

[themortalgod]

So been playing around with an interesting concept, not sure how well it would fair in a game but it would certainly be a different army than most death armies. The overall idea is to put all the engines and the Palanquin in reserve to hopefully set them all up to be able to fire off a devastating turn of Reliquary + wail of the damned. 

Black Knights are in the list to zip up the board and get as much stuff in the -1 bravery bubbles as possible. (as it will both help with the wail of the damned and the fact that if things go well I will be causing battleshock tests across a huge portion of the enemy army)

Skeletons + Necromancers will then mop up. 80 skeletons with "The Bait" should be near unkillable. 

I quite like the theme of the force as Mortis Engines are such cool models. Also the narrative idea of these massive ghostly icons all blowing up at once is a pretty cool visual as well. The combo will utterly devastate MSU armies. Against hordes, it won't be as nasty but skeletons can bring a lot of pain vs hordes so the list should still do ok imo. 

1x Bloodseeker Palanquin - General, Above Suspicion, Overwhelming Dread,  Shard of Night - 320pts

1x Mortis Engine - 180pts

1x Mortis Engine - 180pts

1x Mortis Engine - 180pts

1x Necromancer - 110pts - Decrepify

1x Necromancer - 110pts - Fading Vigour

40x Skeletons - 280pts

40x Skeletons - 280pts

5x Dire Wolves - 60pts

5x Dire Wolves - 60pts

5x Black Knights - 120pts

5x Black Knights - 120pts

2000pts

I'd love to hear opinions.

[Dracothjay]

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, but there’s no real bravery focused spellcasters to help your engines achieve what you want them to. A couple of necro’s marching up and debuffing enemy units with overwhelming dread and other spells could be a big help here. 

Another worry is 1 turn of reliquary spamming. Although it should do some damage, after that turn you’ll just be left with the wails, and if your up against an army with decent bravery you won’t do much. 

[themortalgod]

19 hours ago, Dracothjay said:

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, but there’s no real bravery focused spellcasters to help your engines achieve what you want them to. A couple of necro’s marching up and debuffing enemy units with overwhelming dread and other spells could be a big help here. 

Another worry is 1 turn of reliquary spamming. Although it should do some damage, after that turn you’ll just be left with the wails, and if your up against an army with decent bravery you won’t do much. 

I have Overwhelming Dread on the Palanquin for that, though perhaps this army would be better as Legion of Blood to get an additional -1 to bravery? I'd lose the ambush but could swap the palanquin for a 4th mortis engine freeing up some pts to add something else, perhaps more knights to provide more bravery debuff coverage.  Or rework a bit to squeeze in some morghasts for another source of bravery debuff. 

Though, even against reasonably high bravery units the wail is still decent due to its AOE. Against bravery 8 that becomes 7 due to the -1 from banners thats still a 42% chance to do the wounds per mortis engine, which is pretty decent since it is AOE and not single target. Against Bravery 10 I could see it being more of a challenge, but 80 skeletons can help with that too, the army isn't "just" mortis engines.

[Honk]

The palanquin is a vampire and is not able to cast OD, so that needs to go on a necro.

double turns might kill you, as usual, but otherwise this might work. Of course against undead, deamons and seraphon it is not really effective I think...

14“ movement should get them somewhere , the wail does d3 in 9“, his turn to do damage, your herophase, open 1/2 reliquaries, d3mortals /heals, reposition if needed, wail d3 mortals...

so in high vacuum in two rounds you might do... (no real statistic) 3xd3+3xd3+3xd3 (3x3x2) that’s 18 mortal wounds when beating the moral. Let’s say against a moral of 7 in 21/36 that’s 7/12 meaning slightly better than 50:50 chance, roughly halving your damage output to 9... dropping to 1/6, 3 wounds by bravery 10, healing 6 wounds

i would go 4 engines (add vamp or necro general), together with legion of blood, opening 2 reliquaries 2. round, the rest 3. round...screening with 10 black knights for -1 bravery.

That’s an almost 1k wreaking ball, fatal for everything with bravery <7

 

try it out with proxys and please share your experiences 

[Honk]

After considerations you might want to keeping them for a counter charge, they do give a +1 to cast... as posted above, roughly 9 wounds is not really wiping units and you don‘t want to get stuck with 3 engines in 6 brutes or 30 plaquebearers so you need to weight your chances carefully

[grungolah]

This has been tossed around a couple times, but I haven't seen it used yet.    The Terrorgeist adds a different type of bravery attack to add to the theme.  

Here was my version.  Might help.  

Edit to add:  The list under the Warscroll Builder comes up to 2030 points, so it still requires a little tweaking.  I had previously calculated it by hand.

 

[Honk]

before all of you read through 3 pages like I did...

 

OK, not sure how nasty this is, but I call it "Bravery Bubble of Death."  

*Legion of Blood

Necromancer General  (*Overwhelming Dread, *Soul Crushing Contempt)

Mounted Vampire Lord (Oubliette Arcana, Blades of Shyish)

3x Mortis Engine 

Terrorgeist

2x *Morghast Harbingers

40x *Skeleton Warriors 

10x *Skeleton Warriors

10x *Skeleton Warriors

5x *Black Knights

2x Tomb Banshees

 

1990...

 

[grungolah]

I would have done that, but on my screen, the upper right arrow goes straight to my post.  Now I know!

To get the list down 40 points, I switched 10 zombies in for 10 skeletons, both units.  Zombies have the DEATH banners as well, so only some survivability loss.