Age of Darkness-Warhammer 30k/2.0 Tactics/Zone Mortalis

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"'Thirty-eight meters. Two hundred and thirteen of us fell to gain just thirty-eight meters of that wretched ground, and less than half the bodies were able to be positively identified without referring to gene-code tags. The rest were reduced to a slick of gore and vitae that covered every surface of the corridor in just eighteen minutes of sustained enemy fire. Command told us there was no other path through, no way round, no way back, we had to push until their guns were starved of ammunition.'"
– Post action recollections of Pvt. Maldon, E,. XVIIth Vharkan Auxilia. Executed for dissention.

This is the current set of Zone Mortalis rules for Horus Heresy 2.0, as found in The Siege of Cthonia campaign book. These rules are meant to represent the desperate close-quarters fighting found in the voidships, caves, hive underlevels, and confined spaces of the Age of Darkness. Zone Mortalis is most often played on a smaller 4'x4' board, at a lower points level than a regular game of Heresy. Additionally, players are restricted in what types of units they can bring, when they can enter the battlefield and how they engage enemy units.

What You Need[edit]

  • 2.0 Age of Darkness Core Rulebook
  • Campaigns in the Age of Darkness: The Siege of Cthonia
  • Liber for your desired faction

Key Differences between Base Heresy 2.0 and Zone Mortalis[edit]

Zone Mortalis is typically played on a smaller board (4 feet x 4 feet, as opposed to 4 feet x 6 feet) than a standard Heresy game and features a number of bespoke rules to represent the unique dangers of fighting in claustrophobic, enclosed spaces. Some key rules are as follows:

  • Measuring Range: Ranges are measured on the shortest path between affected units or points as usual. However, if the battlefield has a ceiling, then ranges cannot be measured through Walls or Closed Doors, and instead must be traced around such features (such as going around corners and through open doors). Additionally, no attack may be made with a weapon with the Barrage, Guided Fire or any other rule that allows attacks to be made without line of sight. Effects and rules that do not require line of sight (such as buff bubbles) are unaffected.
  • New Reactions: Armies playing Zone Mortalis may choose to substitute the following reactions for the normal Core reactions found in the BRB.
    • Movement Phase - Suppress: When an enemy unit ends a move within line of sight and within 12" of a friendly unit. The Reacting unit may make a shooting attack as normal, but must fire snapshots. The reacting unit may not fire any indirect weapons (without line of sight). All shooting attacks made as part of this reaction gain the "Pinning" special rule if they do not already have it.
    • Shooting Phase - Displace: During the shooting phase, when an enemy unit declares a shooting attack against a unit you control. Each model in the reacting unit may move a number of inches up to the highest unmodified initiative characteristic of any model in the unit. The shooting attack is then remeasured to the reacting units new position. The active play may not choose a new target if this move results in all of the reacting models being out of sight.
    • Assault Phase - Brace: During the assault phase, when an enemy unit declares a charge targeting a unit that you control. The reacting unit immediately makes a morale check, and if it passes, it automatically passes any morale checks it is required to make as a result of losing an assault this phase. If it fails, the reacting unit falls back D6" (but will immediately regroup if they end up 1" from the battlefield edge).
  • Deployment and Reinforcements: At the start of each game players gain a number of reinforcement points according to the mission, and will gain more reinforcement points over the course of the battle. Reinforcement points must be paid according to a units role on the Force Org Chart in order to place a unit on the battlefield during deployment, or to bring it on as reinforcements. Reinforcements may be brought on from different battlefield edges for increased cost in reinforcement points. Units with the Deep Strike rule have their reinforcement cost reduced by 1, if deployed as part of a "counter assault."
  • Barrage Weapons: Barrage weapons may not be fired without line of sight, but may be fired normally if line of sight to the target exists.
  • Firestorm & Shrapnel: Attacks from Blast and Template weapons get +1 to wound. Additionally, if the battlefield has a ceiling, then blast weapons may not scatter through walls or closed doors, but instead will stop their scatter role once the center of the marker is on the edge of the wall. If line of sight cannot be drawn from the center of the blast marker to a model within the radius, that model is unaffected.
  • Nowhere to Hide: When determining assault results, the winner adds +1 to Sweeping Advance rolls until end of phase. When a unit fails a morale check, it will make its first fall back move directly away from the enemy, then towards the nearest access point.
  • Blind Panic: If any model that is falling back ends its move or passes within 1" if a model from another friendly unit that isn't falling back or pinned, that unit must immediately take a morale check. Fearless units are immune.
  • Controlling Objectives: An objective is only under a player's control if at least one model from a scoring unit is within base contact with the objective, and there are no enemy scoring or denial units within 3" of the objective.

Army Building[edit]

Building an army for Zone Mortalis Games will be much different than building an army for a regular Heresy game. The points limits will be lower, many units will be restricted or banned, some weapons are buffed directly, and some will just do significantly better in Zone Mortalis conditions. Army Building is as normal, with the following caveats:

  • Points limit is suggested to be between 1,500 and 2,500 points, although ZM games can play very well with fewer than 1,500 points.
  • Ceilings should be designated before the battle. Many consider this a core rule, and will be in play most Zone Mortalis games.
  • No unit may consist of more than 15 models, before being joined by independent characters, apothecaries, techmarines or the like.
  • No Fortifications, Armigers, Vehicles, or Cavalry may be taken.
  • No units with the anti-grav subtype may be taken.
  • No units may have designated transports.
  • No Dreadnoughts, Automata or monsterous units may be taken if they have 8 or more wounds. Remember how Leviathans were designed for Zone Mortalis? The writers didn't.
  • No units can be placed in reserves, and models that must be deployed as reserves may not be used (and are counted as destroyed).
    • ZM uses the reinforcement system instead of reserves.
  • Regardless of RoWs, each army may only take one Dreadnought per 1,000 point limit, and each Dreadnought Talon may only take a single model.
  • Warlord traits may only be taken in games of 501+ points.
  • Primarchs may only be taken in games of 2,000+ points, and must adhere to the 25% limit as usual.
  • Only the Zone Mortalis Engagement Force Organization Chart may be used. No Allied Detachments or Lords of War Detachments may be brought.

Zone Mortalis Engagement Force Organization Chart[edit]

As previously mentioned, this is the only allowed FoC in Zone Mortalis Games. Each of these will cost reinforcement points to deploy to the battlefield as indicated. Depending on the scenario, you may start with different amounts of reinforcement points, or gain a different amount each turn. The standard (unless otherwise noted) is 6 reinforcement points before battle, and +2 reinforcement points per turn. This will significantly limit your ability to deploy major units such as Characters and Primarchs, and in larger games you may not get to place all of your units during the battle. This is intentional to force players to think strategically about bringing on units. [Though in fact it does nothing of the sort, instead creating clear, objectively superior and inferior choices. With Pride RoW, the "free retinue" deployment with a 2RP HQ, and the help of Indomitus from Legacies you can easily deploy an entire 1500pt army all in Terminator armour on the first turn and be bringing on more Terminators every turn or two as the game goes on; no amount of clever tactical play is going to overcome that advantage if you make the mistake of bringing a varied, thematic, interesting army that puts down half as many points 1st turn and can't even get all of its units out before the end of the game. Meanwhile in smaller point games you're even further incentivised to go Pride and single HQ+Retinue since you can have your entire army on the field at the start of the game while a more creative opponent will only have a fraction of their force. Where the original Reserves setup for ZM was absolutely fair and allowed people to develop interesting and unique army builds and focus on modelling first, the RP system results in either one player having a distinct advantage or both players limiting themselves to cookie-cutter lists designed to gain maximum advantage from deployment, and all of this in service of GW cynically trying to push people towards larger point value games because too many were happy playing 1K ZM games instead of collecting big 3K+ ones. Of course there's no reason you *must* use the RP system, the game remains perfectly functional using the original approach.] Your Required picks are:

  • 1 HQ - 4 RPand
  • 1 Troops - 1 RP

Your additional optional picks are:

  • 1 HQ - 4 RP
  • 5 Troops - 1 RP
  • 4 Elites - 2RP
  • 2 Fast Attack - 2 RP
  • 2 Heavy Support - 3 RP
  • 1 Primarch - 8 RP

Retinues do not cost any reinforcement points as long as they are deployed with their leader. Additionally, the RP cost of deploying your Warlord is halved if he is deployed during Deployment before the start of the battle.

  • Yes, this does mean that you can deploy your Primarch and squad of 10 terminators for 4 points total on turn 1.

Zone Mortalis Terrain[edit]

Terrain is what makes a good Zone Mortalis game and is what turns your boring empty board into the guts of a voidship undergoing boarding action, or a desperate fight through the caverns under a hive city. Different terrain has different rules, as follows:

  • Ceilings: While technically an optional rule, ceilings are what makes Zone Mortalis so interesting. No more shooting without line of sight, no climbing over walls, and all of a sudden, doors play a very important role in the game.
  • Corridors and Chambers: No special rules, these represent your generic 'open space' that your armies move through.
  • Ladders, Stairways and Hatches: These represent the only way that models may move vertically in Zone Mortalis, since they can't climb walls. That being said, most matches will be on a single level, since it takes a huge amount of time and energy to build a multi-level Zone Mortalis board.
  • Walls: Models may not move or draw line of sight through walls. A model that is 25% obscured by a wall gets a 5+ cover save. Special rules, war gear, or other effects that affect models within a specified distance may not affect models through walls if LoS cannot be drawn.
  • Doors: Oh Boy! Rules! Doors, including frames and mountings, give 5+ cover saves to models 25% obscured. Unless otherwise noted in a scenario, doors begin the battle in the "Closed" State. Doors block line of effect as walls do, as long as they are closed. There are two types of doors in ZM: standard doors, which are regular access hatches and airlocks up to 2" wide; and Wide doors, loading docks or bay doors more than 2" wide. All doors are affected by two conditions: state and control. A door may be destroyed at any point, and is treated as a building with AV10 and 3HP. When it suffers a penetrating hit, the door takes D3 HP of damage, but do not roll on the building damage table. A destroyed door is removed from the battlefield.
    • State: A door is either open or closed. As previously stated, all doors start a mission closed, unless otherwise noted.
      • Closed: A wall, for all intents and purposes.
      • Open: Does not block line of sight or line of effect, and models may move through it except models with the Dreadnought or Automata type and starting wounds of 4 or more, and units with bulky(4) or higher may not move through standard doors (though they can still move through wide doors).
    • Control: Depending on the Mission, a door may be accessible, locked or controlled. Unless stated otherwise, all doors are accessible at the start of the battle.
      • Accessible: These doors may be activated once per turn to change their state closed<>open by a unit with a model in base contact. Models that have run or activated a movement effect (wings, jump packs, etc.) may not open or close doors. If the unit that has opened a door still has movement remaining, they may continue moving after opening the door.
      • Locked: These doors are closed and locked, any may not be opened except by being blown open.
      • Controlled: These doors are controlled by one or more players. These doors are considered to be accessible by units in the controlling player's army and locked to units in all other players' armies.
    • Crushed: If a door closes while a unit is on it, or if a door closing would result in a unit losing unit coherency (for example, if half the unit is trapped on one side, and half on the other) then that unit suffers an automatic S8 AP- wound, with no saves or mitigation of any type allowed.
    • System Override: Once per movement phase, before any models are moved, the active player can expend one reinforcement point to attempt a system override. Roll d6 and add +1 if any models on your board have a cortex controller or auspectre (Clade Vanus gear), on a 3+ all doors are now controlled by you, and you may immediately open or close any doors that are not destroyed.
  • Barricades: Barricades grant 6+ cover saves to models 25% obscured by them, and may be moved over, counting vertical inches as well as horizontal. You cannot end your movement on top of a barricade.
  • Debris: Debris grants a 6+ cover save to models 25% obscured by it. Debris is not difficult or dangerous terrain, but does influence movement and charges.
    • Players must declare before movement if a unit will move into debris. If they do, that units movement is at -2 for that turn. This penalty applies until the unit moves fully out of the debris.
    • Models charging through debris get -2 to their charge rolls, in addition to any other modifiers. If any models in a unit charge through debris, the whole unit fights at I1 for the ensuing fight.
  • Hazardous Debris: Hazardous Debris grants a 6+ cover save to models that are 25% obscured. Hazardous terrain is not difficult or dangerous terrain, but does influence movement and charges.
    • Hazardous Debris applies all debris penalties to units declaring movement through or moving through it.
    • Additionally, whenever a model moves or charges through Hazardous debris, each model must make a "Hazardous Debris Terrain test" as soon as it enters, leaves, or moves within Hazardous Debris. Roll D6, on a 1 that model suffers a wound, against which only invulnerable saves can be made, not armor, cover or damage mitigation saves. This check need only be made once per model per phase.
    • Models within Hazardous Terrain get -1 to hit while shooting, unless they are a primarch or have night vision.

General Tactics[edit]

  • Zone Mortalis tends to be a close range beatdown, but don't underestimate the power of laying down a load of templates on a squad charging you down a long corridor.
  • Your ability to bring reinforcements in from different battlefield edges, including your opponent's, opens up a crazy amount of options when it comes to flanking.
Warhammer 30,000 Tactics Articles
General Tactics
Legiones Astartes
Mechanicum
Imperial Army
Agents of the Emperor
Agents of the Warmaster
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