I’m just dipping my toe with Exalted and trying to wrap my head around list building with them. More specifically, I’m wondering what to do with Mordikaar.
His higlights seem to be the spell Hollow, his feat and his leadership for Void Spirits. He also has a good gun with the nifty Void Walk ability.
Still, even if I know what he can do, it’s a bit hard to understand what he wants to do. Like, his feat adds 3 Def and Poltergeist, but all Immortal-type models have terrible base defense, so the bonus doesn’t help much. Then you could take the Nihilators and Bloodrunners, but the army has basically no support for them and they don’t do all that much on their own. As for the battlegroup, outside of Krea and Despoiler, I have no clue what could be nice with him.
So, I’m all hears! How do you build your lists with Mordikaar? What are the does and don’ts?
I caution you not to dismiss +3 DEF out of hand. It rather noticeably shifts to-hit probabilities. The typical “elite”-level MAT 7 goes from hitting DEF 11 Immortals on 4+ to needing a 7+, which is an increase from ≈16.5% miss chance to ≈42% miss chance.
That’s only the to-hit roll, mind you. The difference is not insignificant, and it can have a meaningful impact over a number of rolls.
Next, consider the more typical MAT 6: odds to hit drop from ≈83% to a pretty dismal ≈41%. Then, the attack still has to break ARM , which reduces the odds of a success even further, especially if you have Hollow in play.
(I know my switch from to-miss to to-hit is confusing; sorry about that.)
Find a way to increase that low base DEF in some way and things get interesting. Walls are good for melee, but concealment/cover/etc. against ranged is where this really shines! Odds go from 50/50 “might as well take the shot” to “very poor, don’t bother” rather rapidly!
As for the rest: I don’t know, it’s too late to do math and I ran out of thoughts after that.
(Edited: yes, I definitely can’t math at this late hour, especially once I recalculated because the Immortals are base DEF 11, not 10 like I thought!)
Immortals also get +2 DEF from the unit attachment if it has souls. That makes Supreme Guardians solid as you can distribute early souls as you like.
Despoiler/Krea/Shaman are fine models for a small battlegroup. Saves points also for not needing to bring beast handlers. This allows you to bring even more Immortals + support solos. It turns out a large horde is not easy to deal with for the opponent.
I typically assume my opponent has some way to get at least a +2 to hit or damage in their list, so even Def 14 goes down to Def 12 in my experience. But I understand what you mean. Has playing a lot of Immortals worked well in your playtesting?
I don’t play Skorne, but I have played against Immortals plenty of times. That +3 DEF, especially when you start stacking it with other abilities as others have mentioned, really can make a big difference!
I also wouldn’t automatically assume the opponent has some +2/+2 tech available. Attack roll buffs in particular are reasonably rare compared to damage buffs. When discussing reasonable DEF/ARMstat ranges, DEF is the much more valuable stat in almost all situations.
Do you have any exemple of a list you played with and/or against that gave you a good impression? Even if you only vaguely remember it would go a long way for me.
That +3 DEF, especially when you start stacking it with other abilities as others have mentioned, really can make a big difference!