Horus Heresy Review: Mortarion the Reaper

Mortarion. Of all the primarchs, Mortarion had the toughest time before rediscovery by the Emperor. His time on Barbarous shaped him, his scions, and something of his adoptive homeworld's darkness seeped in to his very soul somewhere along the way.

In the background to Warhammer 40k, Mortarion is portrayed as the toughest of the lot of them. He is readily able to shrug off injury. And just to prove how darn tough he is, he has a greater that emits whisps of Barbarous' atmosphere wherever he goes so he can always smell home. (Yeah, I think that's a bit odd as well).  On top of this, he is also shadowy and rather sinister. With his scythe, he looks like the embodiment of Terran death myths.

Do these facets come across in the rules for Mortarion in 30k? For me, they do.

Starting with his stat line, he has a high toughness that we've come to expect from Death Guard and some select primarchs (T=7), coupled with more wounds than a Great Unclean One (W=7), and a 2+/4+ save. But more than this, he re-rolls any failed "it will not die" rolls! That means that 55.5% of the time, he's regaining 1 wound per turn ... assuming that he somehow managed to take *any* wounds in the first place. On top of this, his immunity to poisons ensure that rules that score wounds on him based on a flat stat line only activate on a 6. So if you want him dead, I hope you've got a titan to tread on top of him. He is also able to employ his shadowry reaper fluff via redeploying a whopping 10" in a shooting phase, lining up his next assault. With The Lantern and Silence, he will slay many a marine who stands in his way.

But more than that, he is a minor force multiplier, adding poisoned to certain weapons (most excitingly for me, havoc launchers and frag missiles!), as well as spreading stubborn to his sons.

In all, this means that Mortarion is a strong assault orientated primarch (not quite Angron, who is a pure melee specialist), and is a minor force multiplier (nowhere near the potential of Alpharius for instance). But he is also going to last the entire game in all probability. This means that defensive manoeuvres can be successfully employed and "Take and Hold" strategies will become very easy. But to be honest, if you're taking Mortarion, he should be getting in to close combat rather than just sitting on an objective inside a land raider. Team him up with some of his body guard (heaps of sweep attacks if possible!) and go hunt anything in the game you like. And see if he can outlast a titan. (Let me know how that goes).