AoS Countering ranged mortal wounds

[Canas]

Do we have anything good against ranged mortal wounds, besides the bastiladon? Against melee based mortal wounds at least we have some options to protect our more valuable units. Send in cheap troops, or shoot it down from a (short) distance and our big fancy monsters are safe. But what do we with ranged mortal wounds? We can't outshoot them given our limited ranged firepower, and charging at them with sturdy troops won't help since its mortal wounds. So what exactly are we supposed to do? Just suffer through it and hope our troops can get to them before being shot to pieces?

 

[Crowsfoot]

Get something to take it out quickly, Rippers, chamo skinks maybe.

 

[Canas]

Get something to take it out quickly, Rippers, chamo skinks maybe.

So basicly charge/teleport at the opponent and hope you can kill it before it kills you.. not entirely surprising but still I'd hoped for something better... especially considering that the stormforged I have already have 3 units that can reliably deal mortal wounds from ranged. So dealing with that with a single fast hard hitting unit is unlikely to work all that well.

 

[Crowsfoot]

So basicly charge/teleport at the opponent and hope you can kill it before it kills you.. not entirely surprising but still I'd hoped for something better... especially considering that the stormforged I have already have 3 units that can reliably deal mortal wounds from ranged. So dealing with that with a single fast hard hitting unit is unlikely to work all that well.

True or take an alliance unit to do the same, I've not played for ages so there could be a better tactic.

 

[Canas]

meh.. none of that is a counter in the same way that sending heavily armored troops that can shrug of missiles would be a counter to "normal" ranged damage. The closest to a counter would be sending in fast troops to minimize the amount of shots they can get in.

To be honest, I'm surprised at how easy mortal wounds are in general. The only ones that generally seem to sacrifice anything for the power of mortal wounds seem to be wizards in between being forced to choose between using different spells (they can't just cast all options they have) & not being particularly good in any other field outside of magic. And that's without the rule of one. But other units, like te stormforged judicators or a bastilidon with an ark of sothek, don't really seem to have much of a drawback to make up for their mortal wounds potential.

 

[LordRibbit]

Shadowstrike starhost or go for 2 EotGs

 

[Canas]

As said before, shadowstrike isn't going to be that effective once there are multiple sources of mortal wounds.

Also how exactly would 2 EoTG's counter this specificly?

 

[LordRibbit]

you roll 3 d6 average roll is a 7, 6-9 is 25 inch d6 mortal wounds. put them next to a slann and star seer you have a very good chance of rolling it. Not many armies deal with mortal wounds i'm afraid, i don't really know what you're hoping for, there isn't a magic answer!

 

[DeadlyRecluse]

Shoot them with many bastiladons and laugh as you watch them melt, use Lord Kroaks comets call to counter snipe threats( RIP jezzails), put your slann on a balewind vortex and just arcane bolt them to death from across the table, there's plenty of options but most of them involve you making the first move and snuffing out your biggest threats before they have a chance to start throwing out mortal wounds

 

[Killer Angel]

I don't know how much I can help ou, but i am keeping a tutorial on the ways we have to deal vs specific threats. Here's a post with my considerations about mortal wounds.

 

[Canas]

Counter snipe options fall into the same category as sending in assasins; both are essentially just "kill em before they can kill you" neither a real counter tactics.

E.g. Against powerfull melee troops you try to pick them off from a distance or you send in cheap troops to take the brunt of the attack. There's more options than just "nuke him into oblivion asap"

However against ranged troops that deal mortal wounds the only option you have seems to be "kill the guy asap". Obviously it "works", but calling it a countertactic would also make "just win the match" a countertactic.

 

[Killer Angel]

for more traditional tactics, there are:

the old "target saturation".
Back in 8th, one of the ways to protect your dinos from cannons, was to field 2 or 3 dinos. There is a limit to the number of units that can deliver a consistent number of mortal wounds an opponent can field

the new "target saturation"
sometimes, your most precious units are not the costly ones, but the cheap and fast ones that can threaten objectives. Force your opponent to concentrate on secondary targets.

 

[DeadlyRecluse]

I mean mortal wounds were specifically designed to be hard to deal with, and to make characters with good saves more balanced, if there was an easy surefire way to stop all mortal wounds then the game wouldn't run as smoothly. You can try and heal with a jade battlemage or some engines, but the easiest method of dealing with mortal wounds is still "hit them before they hit you". It'd be a different story if we had access to an invul save( feel no pain), but unfortunately we dont

 

[Bowser]

Add a jade battlemage, that gives one unit a 6 up save vs mortal wounds. A celestial hurricanum for some 18" range mortal wounds of your own. A couple of bastiladon. Engines as @LordRibbit said,
Luninark of Hysh for aura of protection same 6 up save. Plus some mortal wounds in an 18 inch line. Luthor Huss and Volkmar the grim can pray for shields against mortal wounds as well. Basically if you aren't satisfied with the options, pick up some order units that buff other order units. You might find some great combos.

 

[Canas]

meh, taking specific units to counter it wasn't what I was looking for. Was looking for what @Killer Angel shows in his tutorial post.

Basicly:

General mortal wounds counters: kill the source before it kills you, use a unit that specificly protects from mortal wounds (e.g. bastiladons, jade battlemages), target saturation works to a limited degree (depends on how many mortal wounds can be pumped out compared to how many are needed to kill the various targets)

Specific mortal wound counters:
Charging mortal wounds: use a screenunit to absorb the charge, get it stuck in melee first so it can't charge, shoot it down from a distance.
Magic mortal wounds: Unbind it, use magic debuffs (e.g. certain units make magic more difficult to cast)
Melee mortal wounds: use debuffs (e.g. summon starlight), shoot it from a distance, get it stuck in something cheap to absorb the damage.
Ability mortal wounds: nothing, though if it's short ranged the same general tactics that work against melee would also work here.
Ranged mortal wounds: nothing.

Anyways, I'm well aware of how mortal wounds are supposed to counter heavily armored troops, which is fine. But in nearly every game I've ever played mortal wounds mechanics end up rapidly spinning out of control when the only true counter becomes "kill the source" or "take specific unit X". This happens in general when this is the only counter, but mortal wound-like mechanics tend to be especially annoying to deal with. And depending on how easy it then is to pull of these basic "counters" you either get a lot of people abusing the mechanic or it is effectivly never used.

 

[Killer Angel]

meh, taking specific units to counter it wasn't what I was looking for. Was looking for what @Killer Angel shows in his tutorial post.

(snip)

Anyways, I'm well aware of how mortal wounds are supposed to counter heavily armored troops, which is fine. But in nearly every game I've ever played mortal wounds mechanics end up rapidly spinning out of control when the only true counter becomes "kill the source" or "take specific unit X". This happens in general when this is the only counter, but mortal wound-like mechanics tend to be especially annoying to deal with. And depending on how easy it then is to pull of these basic "counters" you either get a lot of people abusing the mechanic or it is effectivly never used.

Yeah, mortal wounds are a really stron tool that's hardly counterable. It's in the nature of the game, some mechanics are objectively stronger than other ones (in 8th, the counter to cannons was "cover" and "target saturation". Horray...)

That said, it is possible to plan a list that can soften the effects of mortal wounds, working as an all-comers army.

The concept is that mortal wounds excel against heavily armored elite troops and high profile targets.
Armies with basic, cheap battlelines (skinks, saurus warriors) are possible and can be effective, thus negating the valuable targets that are usually knights and guards.
Wizards that have spells that can counter mortal wounds, can be included in the army regardless (skink starpriest, jade mage to heal).
Bastiladon can negate mortal wounds and it's one of our best behemoth: you cannot go wrong if you inlude one of them, so its not a thing you use because of MW.
At that point, build the rest of your army: chama skinks are good to pop on objectives / kill warmachines so it's the same reasoning of the Basti.
For your general, a sunblood is an excellent buffer for your warriors, and with 7 wounds (healed by the jade mage) can sustain some ranged MW.

You are not explicitly countering MW, but you field an army that suffers little from them.



Thinking on it, I could expand my tactic thread...

 

[Tokek]

Ranged Mortal Wounds are a game mechanic; you do not really counter a game mechanic you counter the specific unit that has it.

As a lover of positional play (in any game system) the first question I would ask is what range does it really have.

If it has moderate range - equivalent to a bow shot for example - then it is just a deadly ranged weapon. I can counter it with screening units in the same way that I could counter a mass of archers - massed skinks with their low cost and high mobility are pretty much perfect for this style of counter and especially so against mortal wounds (because skinks die to almost anything so mortal wounds are wasted on them). In this case I would be using my units of skinks to deny space for my opponent to get in range of my more high value targets. Skinks which get to move 2D6" before the game gets going are even more perfect for this role - while I understand why everyone gets excited about the rippers in that formation I still think the bonus to the ordinary skinks should not be ignored.

If the attack has table-spanning range then I need to treat it like artillery regardless of what the model looks like. The definition of "table-spanning" will vary according to scenario and objective placement but essentially what I mean by it is that it can dominate so much of the table that I cripple my own chances of victory with any attempt to stay out of range even if my screening units were to prevent it from moving. This is where I must either just accept the casualties and find a way to win anyway or close the range with mobility and/or shenanigans and take it out as soon as possible.

Within a seraphon army there are going to be specific counters - e.g. a Skink Starpriest with Summon Starlight - and units harder to kill this way such as Bastilodons but I would always start with understanding the specific threatening models and also what weakness they might have.

 

[Seraphage]

Ranged Mortal Wounds are a game mechanic; you do not really counter a game mechanic you counter the specific unit that has it.

As a lover of positional play (in any game system) the first question I would ask is what range does it really have.

If it has moderate range - equivalent to a bow shot for example - then it is just a deadly ranged weapon. I can counter it with screening units in the same way that I could counter a mass of archers - massed skinks with their low cost and high mobility are pretty much perfect for this style of counter and especially so against mortal wounds (because skinks die to almost anything so mortal wounds are wasted on them). In this case I would be using my units of skinks to deny space for my opponent to get in range of my more high value targets. Skinks which get to move 2D6" before the game gets going are even more perfect for this role - while I understand why everyone gets excited about the rippers in that formation I still think the bonus to the ordinary skinks should not be ignored.

If the attack has table-spanning range then I need to treat it like artillery regardless of what the model looks like. The definition of "table-spanning" will vary according to scenario and objective placement but essentially what I mean by it is that it can dominate so much of the table that I cripple my own chances of victory with any attempt to stay out of range even if my screening units were to prevent it from moving. This is where I must either just accept the casualties and find a way to win anyway or close the range with mobility and/or shenanigans and take it out as soon as possible.

Within a seraphon army there are going to be specific counters - e.g. a Skink Starpriest with Summon Starlight - and units harder to kill this way such as Bastilodons but I would always start with understanding the specific threatening models and also what weakness they might have.

This answer is invaluable for newbies like me ! "Understand what.. " first is one of the best advices that could be given in my - pretty much unimportant - opinion. Thank you for this answer @Tokek and I hope that you will keep being active all around at the forum, spreading your strategic wisdom

 

[Canas]

@Killer Angel yea, I suppose that sort of works. But what annoys me is that it isn't a general tactic to counter ranged mortal wounds by disrupting your enemy. It's just an army that happens to not care that much about losses and can protect some of its more important units from getting hurt in general.

I think the list of counters to the various mortal wound sources I copied from your tactics post earlier sums it up best:
Other mortal wound sources have general countertactics that rely on disrupting your enemies attacks in some way, ranged mortal wounds only really have the general "minimize the effect of X and kill the source quickly" as a counter. Which isn't so much a "counter" as it is essentially telling you to "just win". Meh, once we get a larger collection it might become less anoying to deal with as there'l be actual variation in the armies we can field instead of (nearly) the same ones over and over again.

Ranged Mortal Wounds are a game mechanic; you do not really counter a game mechanic you counter the specific unit that has it.

As a lover of positional play (in any game system) the first question I would ask is what range does it really have.
....

I disagree with game mechanics not being what you counter, you take certain types of units to counter certain others because the mechanics counter eachother. But anyway that's mostly a matter of semantics.

Anyway, with respect to outmanouvring it. In principle I'd agree with that, just treat it like you would normal powerfull ranged opponents. However mortal wounds make several normal solutions (e.g. field heavy armor to march through the hail of projecticles) invalid. It doesn't help that abilities can't be interacted with & that archers don't get stopped by being stuck in melee (which is rather an odd choice) which leaves ranged non-magical mortal wounds with very little opposition. Especially with smaller armies on a smaller board. I have 8 stormcasts units, 3 of which can reliably do ranged mortal wounds. I can manouver all I want but I'm not going to be able to stop my opponent in that situation from being able to shoot at something valuable if I want to actually take some objective.