Total War: WARHAMMER Wiki

What a Mortar may lack in sheer stopping power compared to cannons, it makes up with pure vicious, explosive destruction.

Mortars are a Vampire Coast artillery unit introduced in Total War: Warhammer II with Curse of the Vampire Coast.

Recruitment[]

Description[]

Mortars are short, heavy weapons, designed to lob a hollow, explosive shell high into the air so that it drops onto its target. While a solid cannon ball may plough through several victims, a Mortar shell explodes with tremendous force, scattering razor sharp shrapnel over a wide area and scything through whole ranks of enemy warriors. Firing a Mortar is always a tense moment, for the quality of fuses is highly variable and it is not unknown for one to burn through before the crew have finished loading the shell. As a result, Mortar crews tend to be superstitious and carry a large number of good luck charms about their person.

Attributes[]

  • Siege Artillery
  • Anti-Infantry: Anti-infantry units have an advantage against targets that are smaller than a horse. This advantage can be a damage bonus against small targets, superior weight used to smash through lighter enemies, or an explosive attack from range that effects a large area.

Unit Abilities[]

Passive Abilities[]

Strategy[]

Mortars are inexpensive, quick to recruit and quick to unlock with ship building. They are the primary counter to "blobbed up" infantry and missiles in the early and mid-campaign as Zombie Pirate Gunnery Mob (Handgunners) trading shots archers will outright lose. Their high arc of fire make them very useful during siege battles since they can be outside of range of Defense Towers or use the enemy's own walls to block shots. Low armor, leadership, low accuracy, slow projectile speed and slow rate of fire are the weaknesses Mortar units. This makes it near impossible to hit anything faster than infantry, takes a long time to get damage in and very, very weak in melee and artillery duels.

Not advisable for multiplayer, a player will just shoot the front line to death while the Mortar can not deal enough damage quick enough and/or just flank with superior speed of Dogs or Light Cavalry.

Campaign Mortar battery; The natural companion to artillery in general is the Gunnery Wight that can keep the Black Powder Aplenty damage buff applied for longer by adding ammo to units in addition to their own ambient Dead Eyes damage buff. Four of them on a hill, in a cross formation with the Gunnery Wight in the middle and layered handgunners and blocking units Mortars can inflict truly disproportionate damage on approaching enemy infantry units.