Jstove’s back, and he’s got 5 ways to get cheap & easy mortal wounds. What are cheap and easy mortal wounds? Models that can reliably dish out the hatred without busting your points or your wallet open.
Specifically, vehicle or monster models that work autonomously without a lot of support just by dumping them out of the box onto the table. A $60 model doesn’t sound very cheap, but it is when you compare it to all your character models and your infantry squads that all need transports.
The Smite battery is a great play for anyone who has access to it, and the cheaper the better. However, loading up on psykers and going for the Smite lock can be an expensive and cumbersome way to get your fix.
Psyker Spam Weaknesses
- Lowered reliability. With incrementally increasing smite difficulty, the ability to get the juice off diminishes after every successive cast, unless you’re a Grey Knight or Thousand Son.
- Cost inefficient. Pretty much every wizard in power armor isn’t cheap, and wizards in terminator armor or Primaris fancy pants or with jump packs aren’t a deal either. The more crap you want your Psyker to do besides Smite, the less efficient he becomes because Smite is his real moneymaker. The best Smite batteries are dirt cheap mutant chumps in t-shirt armor.
- Target priority. Psykers have trouble reliably smiting whatever you want, because smite must target the closest enemy in LOS. This tends to equate to spending more points on things like bikes or jump packs since you’ll want your Smite battery to maneuver to a priority target.
- Bad times in the wallet. Character models are costly in hobby dollars. A single Librarian, Sorcerer, or equivalent single model Psyker HQ can often be $30 or more, which is usually 50% or 75% of the cost of any other large vehicle or monster model you might want in your army.
Despite these weaknesses, anything that gets you mortal wounds is big money, and you’re probably not going to skimp on psykers in list building. However, let’s look at some other models that are cheap on points or on cash that can reasonably add more directed and more cost-efficient mortal wound spam to the army.
Hellforged Contemptor, The Baby Decimator
Forgeworld decimators are sweet as hell and dish out the mortal wounds, but they are costly and resin. The little cousin of the decimator is the Hellforged Contemptor, who has access to Soulburners.
These Soulburners live in the Contemptor’s fist and do not replace his melee weapons, so you are given a model that can not only dispense mortal wounds in the shooting phase but can also happily run in and punch something expensive. The best part about Contemptors is that ever since Betrayal at Calth, they are plastic and reasonably cheap, albeit with limited weapon options out of the box. But with some extra Daemon parts, some Greenstuff, and a dream, an old Calth Contemptor can easily find his way into a chaos list to lay down some mortal wounds that are easy on the wallet.
Sun Sharks, Voidravens, & Dark Talons
The Tau, the Drew Careys, and the Dark Angels all understand one thing- That you should be able to use a model just by dumping it out of the box and throwing it on the table, and that’s what all of these models do. all of these models have the same bomb attack- fly over an enemy unit in the movement phase, and roll a die for every model in the unit. Every 4+ is a mortal wound.
This will absolutely cut any infantry unit in half, and then take another chunk out of them in the morale phase. No roll to hit required. The real difference between them comes down to choice- The Sun Shark can drop an infantry-deleting mortal wound bomb every turn, but the dark talon and the Voidraven can only do it once. However, the Dark Talon has a gigantic S10 AP-3 D3 gun on it that does an extra D3 mortal wound on every hit, and it can get a 4++ jink save by advancing. The Voidraven also has some pretty sweet can openers on it too and has an always-on invulnerable save.
Wack A Mawloc
A favorite big bug in competitive Tyranid lists who we might see even more of now that nid players can only grab 3 Flyrants, the Mawloc is a high utility mortal wound battery. He’s actually not that fighty or mean despite being huge, but he does reliably pop up right in front of your opponent’s army to close off crucial charge lanes, dispenses mortal wounds, and then does it again every other turn.
All for 104 points.
Harpy
Up until Flyrants got nerfed, the Harpy was a tough sell. It’s not as tough as a Flyrant, it can’t smite, no invulnerable save, no sweet choice of stabby or dakka, it’s just a giant flying bug that a bigger, better, giant flying bug made irrelevant. The Mawloc was at least cheap, reliable, and annoying. The Harpy was just a low-calorie Flyrant.
But now that we can only have 3 Flyrants to a list, a low-calorie Flyrant is looking pretty great, especially if you use him as a wingman to one of your 3 Flyrants, so that the harpy is largely ignored in the face of the bigger threat.
The Harpy, like the Sunshark and Dark Talon, has a bomb attack that can dispense mortal wounds. When it flies over a unit, it can dispense up to 3 Spore Mines, exactly like a Biovore. The Harpy also has a decent melee weapon, but only 3 attacks, so it is best suited for bullying light vehicles, especially other flyers that normally won’t be caught by ground units. It can also take heavy Venom Cannons, adding more boom to an army that has historically struggled with high-strength shooting options.
Which is the most useful way to get cheap and easy mortal wounds for you?
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About the Author: Jack Stover
