Treatise on Morghoul: List Architecture and Building

Now, after all this break down and analysis and rambling from last time, let's get to list building with him. I'll structure this at 35 pts.

He wants to run a lot of beasts despite the 5 FURY. We have the Beast Handlers mitigate fury to what ever we need, he can take any excess and take advantage of it with Maltreatment. Which, if cleverly used, can allow him to take his 14 attacks on max fury, and by stealing fury from beasts you've already activated, can give you even more attacks. Further, he has 7 Warbeast points guaranteeing room for at least one heavy, or in some cases, an essentially free one (X-idons).

                             

Starting off with the beasts:

Titan Gladiator. This is definitely recommended. It's animus is a good source of Pathfinder, and a free Movement buff in a typically SPD 4 faction is always appreciated.

Taking a Titan Gladiator makes it easy to take a Bronzeback and is a perfectly valid decision, as it helps even more with Fury management, by guaranteeing successful Frenzy checks if it becomes necessary. Further, there's just an inherent synergy between the two.

What we want to make sure is a couple things in this list, beyond two fantastic heavies.

1. How does our list keep Morghoul safe?

1a. What is Morghoul weak to?

2. How does a beast heavy caster deal with multiwound infantry (since Morghoul can deal with single wound just fine)

3. How do we make sure the fury on the table is being used efficiently?

4. How do we fit in even more fantastic heavies to all of this?

I ask these questions because with Bronzeback and a Gladiator in the list, we can crack armor open easily, so no need to worry too much about armor skews. Except for things like ARM 20 8 Box infantry thanks to Shield Wall. That will come later.

Morghoul's weaknesses though are as follows:

Knockdown: His DEF 17 is what saves him from most attacks. If his armor is all that protects him, our caster is dead. Period.

Ranged Attacks/AOEs: Blast Damage can kill him, and aiming on most ranged attack oriented models can lead to him being hit more often than you think.

His own Control area: 10" isn't much. It's easy for him to over commit and die due to his tiny control area.

So we need stuff to: Protect Morghoul from Knockdown, Ranged/Blast Attacks, and something that allows his control area to be expanded.

What first comes to mind as answers to these are:

Knockdown: Cyclops Brute

Ranged/Bast: Basilisk Krea

Control Area: Mortitheurge Willbreaker.

The Mortitheurge Willbreaker is almost an auto-include in my opinion, just because it lets the beasts we've gviven hilariously huge threat ranges to, the capacity to still be forced out of our control area.

If you keep the also Auto-include for Morghoul Pain Giver Beast Handlers at a good angle, then they can rinse off all the fury you need.

The Cyclops Brute is useful for the Animus to protect Morghoul from Knockdown, and Shield Guard is also a good ability for keeping Morghoul safe.

If you want to toss in another heavy to take in the Shield Guard role, you could use Tiberion, but the Cyclops is lower on points, more utilitarian, and while he can't be slammed anywhere, Morghoul is still vulnerable, despite hiding behind it. It could work, I'd just need to try a couple games with it to see if it works.

The Krea is a good Utility beast with her gun locking down Run/Charge on key Beasts, lowering DEF to 7, and has an Animus that can keep Morghoul alive during AOE heavy turns.

So with this in mind we have

pMorghoul       (-7)

Titan Gladiator   (8)

Bronzeback     (10)

Cyclops Brute    (5)

Basilisk Krea      (4)

Troops:

Max. Handlers    (3)

Solos:

Mortitheurge       (2)

So we have 25 out of our 35 pt. list done, and answered our first question.

Next, how are we going to deal with Multi Wound infantry?

This is answered in different ways at different times.

Is it Shield Walled infantry?

I like to put Admonition onto a heavy, and strike near the edge of Shield Wall lines, breaking a hole open in a unit, and having it swivel around when one of the members of the unit is in 6" during his turn, sticking a heavy  behind their lines.

Is it just normal High ARM, Multiwound infantry?

Then we either must combat with infantry of our own, or find a beast that can do that.

The last thing we want is our beasts to get caught in a tarpit, because what'll happen is what happened to actual Mammoths in the real La Brea tarpits. A slow, slow death.

So we have a couple of options:

Try to poke a hole in it

Find a way to ignore it, creating wasted points on his part, giving us an advantage

Fight Infantry with Infantry

Or find a way to smash it into paste.

We can Admonition/Beat Back our way through it

We can use an Archidon to fly straight over the multiwound infantry, and giving a heavy Sprint is a good way to get out of a tarpit anyhow.

We can toss out a unit of Nihilators to act as a screen for our beasts, and as a way to gain more board control. Possibly you could include a unit of Gatormen with a task master.

Or you could toss in a Rhinodon to deal with it.

The poor, poor Rhinodon. Dismissed by the community, but having a secret, masochistic use with pMorghoul. Since it can be Abused and Enraged to get good threat ranges, and suddenly get POW 17's and 18's, it can do a good job taking out High ARM infantry walls, plus it's Animus makes Slams easier to pull off for cheap amounts of Fury in comparison.

So we have the answers:

Movement tricks and Flying

Nihilators/Gatormen

or Rhinodon.

Some of this is a matter of taste. I like the idea of Yo-Yoing Bronzebacks to create a Molik Karn with tusks (what's not to love?), the Rhinodon is a cheap and simple answer while sticking to a beast heavy theme.

Nihilators/Gatormen w/Task masters are good self sufficient walls of churning death, and can easily take up a lot of board space.

So for this role of Screening Unit/Anti-Infantry we are definitely investing 7-8 points. Which is quite a huge sum. We need something that can keep our heavies safe for a turn, soak up some hits, block some charge lanes, while still providing utility.

Since most of our lights in this list are not exactly screening material, and more utility material with a key purpose later on, I'd recommend not screening with those. Therefore, I think we should take the infantry  route.

For 5 points we can get 6 Nihilators.

For 8 points, we can 10 Nihilators, or 3 Gatormen Posse w/Task Master.

One is a wall of Tough, Reach SPD 6 Infantry, that can die in droves and there is no regret. They can cover the board out to a lot of angles, and serve the purpose of either clearing up that first wall of infantry, or taking attacks from opposing heavies. It can be a total of 6-10 boxes of Warrior models.

The Gatormen, like most of Morghoul's list, brick up. They don't cover as many areas, but can hold a central position really well. They are conceivably 24 boxes of medium base, Tough infantry, with Reach and the capacity to take a shot and quickly move toward and eat infantry. They are much MUCH better under Rasheth, but they can still do work here.

If you really want to get in more Gatormen, you could drop the Krea to fit in a Max unit + Taskmaster, to get 40 boxes of centralized screening, but that's a lot of points put into a unit Morghoul can't interact with.

However, Gatormen can't be trampled, making them more effective against heavies and as a good meat grinder for infantry.

Morghoul has a lot of issues when it comes to board control, beyond his feat. He wants to brick up and walk a lot of the time, having a slow moving first turn, and then exponentially increasing threat ranges and speed on his beasts. However, you can't trust a wall of infantry to always screen your important beasts when heavies can just trample through them. In most cases though, if you spread out your infantry well, they'll be farther up the board relative to the rest, and your opponent can't trample through all of them.

So I'll say a max Unit of Nihilators for now, and definitely experiment around with the system to get everything worked out nicely.

With that, we have 2 points left, which can just have an Agonizer in it to help make life harder for your opponent.

So in total, my recommended pMorghoul list for beginners and new Skorne players is:

pMorghoul

Gladiator

Bronzeback

Krea

Brute

Max. Nihilators

Max. PGBH

Agonizer

Mortitheurge

All adding up to 35 pts.

I will be experimenting around with this format, while also getting to know eHexeris over the next couple of weeks. As I'll soon be able to afford some infantry.

So break out the pain whip, bring your beasts and have fun experimenting around with this list, and variations, in your games.