Mortis Engine VS Terrorgheist

[Archamedius]

So I am planning out my army and looking at what I need to plan on buying over the next couple of months. I am new to VC so I have no models yet (just ordered the battalion and the restless dead boxes to start the core of my army off). I am playing in an escalation league at FLGS store, which is starting at 500 points, no magic no ethereal. (I am being allowed to run my wight king as the general (so crumble happens when he dies instead of a caster) until magic is allowed at 1000 points). But I am looking to take the core foundation I am building for this league and turn it into a competitive tournament style army. Given that, I was considering whether to invest in Mortis Engines or Terrorgheists. I occasionally have to deal with Swedish Comp, so keep that in mind.

I personally like Grave Guard and Wight Kings, I think the models are cool and want to use them if possible. I think between the banner of the barrows, corpse carts and VDM from magic that Grave Guard can be a strong hammer unit. Am I correct in thinking this? I like the idea of marching hordes of renewable infantry across the board at my enemy. Should I consider Terrorgheists or Mortis Engines to support this style of play, and can it be competitive?

EDIT: I'd love to have one of each, but I am lead to believe its take two or go home for both. Is that true?

 

[najo]

Its not take two or go home. I use one when I run either of them and win plenty of games. Currently I don't use a TG, I am running a ME right now.

Also, I run infantry armies. They do quite well with IoN and VHDM.

 

[Archamedius]

Its not take two or go home. I use one when I run either of them and win plenty of games. Currently I don't use a TG, I am running a ME right now.

Also, I run infantry armies. They do quite well with IoN and VHDM.

What about blasphemous tome? Is it worth it?

I am considering running a somewhat combat oriented vampire lord that is a level 1 and a master necro level 4 with the black periapt in my lords. Then running 2-3 level 2s (vampires or necros) to get a few other arcane items and invocation spam. The thought would be to keep the lord out of 12" unless its super important and run the rest inside the aura of the Mortis Engine to benefit from the tome. That way if I miscast on one of them (unlikely since I will throwing 2-3 dice at most towards spells). Is that a good idea? Or is it just a bad play?

 

[najo]

I always use blasphemous tome. +2 to cast lore of vampire spells? Hell ya!

Besides, you can cast with fewer dice and thus lower your miscasting chances and then stretch your power dice further. Statistically it's a no brainer. Should also point out, the double roll on miscast table affects your enemy too.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

It is certainly not take two or none at all, as @najo said they operate very well on their own. However many players like to go the optimal route, and yes in such cases two ME working in conjunction are extremely effective. But either one can have a place in a well balanced list.....plus they are fantastic models

 

[Pirate Robot Ninja of Death]

I'm doing quite well with one terrorgheist. It lifts its weight when I need it to, and I appreciate having the extra 225 points in games where terrorgheists are useless anyways. You just have to be VERY careful not to lose it unnecessarily (leaving charge lanes open to it, etc).

One mortis engine, though, I'm much less sold on. They're cool, but not 250 points cool. I can see building a list around two of them with lots of zombies and crypt horrors, but one seems to me to be a really inefficient use of points.

 

[najo]

I'm doing quite well with one terrorgheist. It lifts its weight when I need it to, and I appreciate having the extra 225 points in games where terrorgheists are useless anyways. You just have to be VERY careful not to lose it unnecessarily (leaving charge lanes open to it, etc).

One mortis engine, though, I'm much less sold on. They're cool, but not 250 points cool. I can see building a list around two of them with lots of zombies and crypt horrors, but one seems to me to be a really inefficient use of points.

I'm running a list right now with one mortis engine and it's working great. First off, blasphemous tome has made my magic phases very deadly. Second, the synergy with crypt horrors is amazing. But the mortis engine has some other pluses:

1) it moves 8" as an ethereal model.
2) it's a chariot with impact hits.
3) it draws fire and deals with it well because it has T5 and 4+ regen.
4) it's got a banshee scream
5) the reliquary makes your army more durable early game and then starts wiping out enemy units late game. Does d6 S(turn) to all enemy within 2d6". Pretty good from turn 2 on.
6) its easy to keep alive with all the lore of vampire spells you get off.

It's got a lot of hidden value. I find the more I play with it, the more effective I'm getting to. You want to be offensive with it but keep it alive. Eventually, by mid game is scares your opponent once it is in the thick of things and harming him.

I am using the mortis engine in place of my terrorgiest at this point. Its good.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

I ran dub Tbats last season. This time around if my VC go to tournaments (pending new Skaven by next summer) it'll be dub Engines so I can shake things up. @najo I'm actually taking a lot of your Magic Phase posts to heart and playing around with Tome/Periapt/other shenanigans to see if I can Magic dominate.

 

[Archamedius]

I ran dub Tbats last season. This time around if my VC go to tournaments (pending new Skaven by next summer) it'll be dub Engines so I can shake things up. @najo I'm actually taking a lot of your Magic Phase posts to heart and playing around with Tome/Periapt/other shenanigans to see if I can Magic dominate.

For a new guy, mind sharing some links? A lot of the tactics stickies are dead links here.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

Might take some tracking down, but I'm stuck at work for the next 13 hours. I'll see what I can around up tonight unless najo weighs in before then.

 

[MageoftheBones]

I must note I have been playing in non comp tournaments but its been over a year (I think 14 Counts armies total) since I have seen a Vampire list at a tourney that didn't have at least 2 Terrorgheists and sometimes 3. I haven't seen the Coven Throne fielded yet at a tournament in the midwest United States.

Now that's just tourney stuff not everyone has a desire to make a tourney list so if that's not your bag take the above information with a grain of salt and I have no idea what comp rules there is against such builds...

 

[Pirate Robot Ninja of Death]

I'm running a list right now with one mortis engine and it's working great. First off, blasphemous tome has made my magic phases very deadly. Second, the synergy with crypt horrors is amazing. But the mortis engine has some other pluses:

1) it moves 8" as an ethereal model.
2) it's a chariot with impact hits.
3) it draws fire and deals with it well because it has T5 and 4+ regen.
4) it's got a banshee scream
5) the reliquary makes your army more durable early game and then starts wiping out enemy units late game. Does d6 S(turn) to all enemy within 2d6". Pretty good from turn 2 on.
6) its easy to keep alive with all the lore of vampire spells you get off.

It's got a lot of hidden value. I find the more I play with it, the more effective I'm getting to. You want to be offensive with it but keep it alive. Eventually, by mid game is scares your opponent once it is in the thick of things and harming him.

I am using the mortis engine in place of my terrorgiest at this point. Its good.

The ME is definitely good. My question is whether it's 250 points good?

On its own, even with BT, I don't think it is. The perks are all kind of cool, but even together they don't add up to 250 points of value. For the same price you can get 4 vargheists and a spirit host, or half a unit of grave guard, or a terrorgheist, or all sorts of other things.

It's a synergy piece, though, meaning the right choices can squeeze a lot more value out of it. That's why I said you need to build your list AROUND it. One ME means your CH are taking 25% fewer wounds. Two means your zombies and ghouls are taking 33% fewer wounds. One is chipping a bit of damage here, but two is causing significant attrition. The BT too wants lots of casters, spamming lots of spells, and wants things like the Periapt to fuel a stronger phase.

 

[najo]

I ran dub Tbats last season. This time around if my VC go to tournaments (pending new Skaven by next summer) it'll be dub Engines so I can shake things up. @najo I'm actually taking a lot of your Magic Phase posts to heart and playing around with Tome/Periapt/other shenanigans to see if I can Magic dominate.

I'm honored I think there is a lot of potential in a magic strong, dual list army.

I do know you'd want crypt horrors, potentionally 2 units of 6-8. At least one unit of 8 though. Hexwraiths and ghouls in that army would have a 5+ regen, which is sick.

This is untested, but a corpse cart with balefire would push them to use more power dice and potentially miscast more. I don't know if I'd go that route but it's worth running numbers on to see if the cart is worth it points wise to do it.

If you need any pointers or want to bounce ideas around, hit me up.

 

[Archamedius]

I am not sure what you put in the army to deal with Skull Crushers if you go double mortis engine and no terrorgheist though. How would you deal with ridiculous units like that?

 

[Adam_Barrow]

Frenzy bait and tarpits. Or Hexies riding through them. S5 autohits are nice.

 

[Patrunkenphat7]

I don't understand why a lot of people suggest double ME in heavy Crypt Horror lists. The 2nd suffers a lot from diminishing returns. I'd rather have 1 TG to supplement the ME CH list rather than a 2nd ME.

 

[najo]

I don't understand why a lot of people suggest double ME in heavy Crypt Horror lists. The 2nd suffers a lot from diminishing returns. I'd rather have 1 TG to supplement the ME CH list rather than a 2nd ME.

2 MEs give you a back up buff and crypt horrors synergize really well with MEs. But the double MEs is to give 5+ regen to everything else, like zombies, ghouls, hexwraiths etc.

Some lists do run two units of CH too, and the two ME give you a wide area of effect for the regen buff, making sure that both units are in the buff at all times.

 

[najo]

I am not sure what you put in the army to deal with Skull Crushers if you go double mortis engine and no terrorgheist though. How would you deal with ridiculous units like that?

Redirect them with Raise Dead or Fell Bats then engage with your Blender OR run over them with Hexwraiths OR cast Curse of Years on them.

Engine can scream too.

 

[The Sun King]

Here's how I play, and this is not the only way (as najo pointed out): Two engines or none at all, and very rarely Blasphemous Tome. The reason is redundancy and security. The Tome makes my miscasts even worse (which I REALLY dislike) and the regen stacks. 6+ Regen doesn't do much but 5+ wins games. I never field my beautifully painted Terrorgheists because they make me lose (so they stand in my display of shame).

 

[najo]

Sunny is big on death magic so blasphemous tome is a risk for the style of armies using it. But his defensive, bunker style play benefits from the stacked regen bonus. He is letting you in and using engines to create obstacles and buff his army. I run only Vampire lore most the time, so the +2 to my lore means I can two dice all my spells with minimal miscast risk. Mixed in with periapt, my style is very aggressive and my magic phase is just over powering my opponent with sheer number of spells (I occasional have games where I cast everything, have a dice or two left and throw them into the periapt to use in an upcoming turn). This makes mortis engine with tome very synergistic as my army ends up in your deployment zone, throwing vampire spells around, and controlling the fights with well timed redirects and blocking.

So essentially there is a defensive Mortis Engine style and an offensive one. Very versitle unit. Might even be higher up on the food chain than our buddy TG.

Sound about right Sunny? And welcome back by the way!

 

[Banat]

Clarification, when does the Regen save work? Is it only in close combat? Or is it against any wound taken? If the former then you would benefit more from a more aggressive play style in order to keep your MEs in range of your units in combat.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

Regen works against any Wound unless:

Flamming
No Saves of any kind allowed
You opt to use the model's Ward instead

Hope that helps.

 

[Skittelz1981]

I frequently use only one rare as well. lately often relying on 1 ME+tome to be able to spend more points in rare

i do say that both TG and ME are a must-have in your collection and preferably 2 of each so that you can play around with lists.
Im still a fan of TG+ME with tome combination.
It works very well.

 

[The Sun King]

Actually I also move across the board and hit people in the face Najo But yeah, sounds about right. At the moment I've switched away from Death since it's comped into hell at Danish Tournaments.

 

[HERO]

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the whole double-or-nothing ideology. The only time that works is if you need to stack specific things like Regen in this case, or absolutely need target saturation.

The latter part of the argument can be voided with correct points expenditure. Let's say that you're using 2x Terrorgheists and the only explanation you can provide for taking 2 is target saturation for your opponent, then I would say that's a fallacy. With the 200+ points you're spending for another giant bat, you can take more units which can be applied in other ways. This can be chaff, Vargheists, Hexwraiths, more knights, the list goes on. As long as what you're adding to the list increases the amount of threat, gives it more utility, or offers more chaff and units.

I've dropped my 2nd Terrorgheist in my 2500 list and I've been doing much better. I don't feel as bad as committing one Terrorgheist vs. 2 from a points perspective.