Mutilator

RIP AND TEAR! PROMOTIONS!

The Mutilators are massive horrible abominations of flesh and metal, who live only to RIP AND TEAR. They are often called melee-oriented Obliterators, but though crunch-wise (and model-wise, to the extent of having the exact same torsos and legs) they are practically identical, fluff-wise they are nowhere near.

Fluff

Mutilators were once Terminator champions, who were so obsessed with close combat, that they merged with their weapon into one being. Apparently, spending 90% of your time in the fucked up hell-dimension of the Eye of Terror you can do such things without any daemonic techno-virus help. So now their bodies are covered in grown-in terminator armour, power weapons, chain weapons, lightning claws, and various other sharp objects, as well as their souls, which have merged in all of the machine-spirits of all the weapons they have absorbed. Unlike Obliterators they still can speak non-binary language, but being absolutely batshit-insane butchers they rarely have anything to tell.

Crunch

The guy that wrote this codex has some interesting ideas when it comes to internal codex balance. For example, his most celebrated work, Codex Dark Eldar in 5th edition had a handful of units that were generally to almost entirely useless versus transparently better choices. Mutilators certainly give off an aura of the former - let's take a closer look at them:

PROS

• 2 wounds and attacks (Stocky and an alright number of strike per turn)
• 2+ armour save from Fleshmetal
• Daemon (5++ and causes fear, but vulnerable to Grey Knight shibozzle)
• Deep Strike
• Come with the following weapon pairs: Power sword/axe/mace, Chainfist, Lightning Claw, which cannot be used twice in a row (the Chainfist is straight-up better than the axes and the Claws for the swords, so they're just back-ups for protacted combats)
• Fairly inexpensive at 55 pts./model
• Access to the full gamut of Marks of Chaos, at a slightly more expensive cost than the norm. While Slaanesh is useless, Khorne and Tzeentch are alright and Nurgle is *amazing* as it prevents Krak missiles and lascannons from IDing them

CONS

• They have Slow and Purposeful, which robs them of running and sweeping advance to grant them Relentless, which they don't need because...
• They have no ranged weapons - so ...
• Deep-striking these guys will will open them up to a volley of fire without any sort of counter-attack, compounded by the fact that . . .
• Unit size is capped at 3 models max!
• Additionally, they have to change weapons every turn. Thanks to the aforementioned weapon redundancy this isn't too much of an issue unless the best weapon against a target, in a protracted combat, is power mauls (low armour save, highish Toughness, Initiative vital? when will this happen) in which case Mutilators will be screwed on the off-turn
• Much like Warp Talons (and a plethora of other units [Possessed, certain Tyranids), they also lack assault grenades, meaning they may have trouble tackling cover-camping foes that they aren't attempting to Fist (although they can handle it better than most examples due to their tougher armour). Bear in mind of course that Mutilators generally go after high armour save targets, who are less likely to bind themselves to cover than most.
• They take up an Elites slot, which has both cult marines (if the army isn't led by a correspondingly marked Lord, which is a given for armies planning to use one sort - basically this is only an issue for armies with multiple cult units) and options such as Possessed (that bastion of reliable design) and the versatile but often suicidal Chaos Terminators.

Conclusion

On the whole, a unit that is very limited in its combat usage but for it's cost pretty dang tough, and outright solid with the Mark of Nurgle. If used as a typical combat threat, the unit will generally perform poorly - it lacks speed, it has no shooting for pre-combat and it doesn't even have grenades. Instead, by making the most of its Deep-Striking capacity and combined great tough-to-cost ratio and combat flexibility, a a single Mutilator with the Mark of Nurgle can act as a cheap, easy-to-deep-strike, annoyingly-tough-to-kill distraction.

Does your enemy waste plasma and las fire, railguns, Vindicator rounds et al removing a single two-wound model? Or does he ignore it and let it get away with grarbling squishy backfield units in melee and/or ripping and tearing fortifications and Basilisks new anuses? Does your enemy disrupt it's carefully layed-out battle lines, possibly wasting turns of fire for units with heavy, salvo and ordnance weapons to avoid this one guy? And as for the potential user, one must ask: is this cheaper, more disposable and just as effective as a trio of Terminators? Will your opponents allow you to use an Oblit with the guns magneted off as a counts-as? Why not find out for yourself?

(seriously though, they are quite suitable to bastion-breaking, being able to lay in with multiple chain fist attacks and can be thought of as a kind of "Chaos Assault Centurion" in that regard. They are also useful as bodyguards for HQ units that aren't directly supporting another, lesser unit.)

Counterpoint: It's the MURDER SWORD all over again; a DISTRACTION CARNIFEX isn't a distraction if your opponent was planning to shoot it in the first place. Yeah, those buckets of plasma-weapons your opponent brought were expressly for shit like this! Also, it's going down like a $3 whore if properly assaulted because the same problems obliterators have in CC are shared by mutilators: they are very vulnerable to tarpitting. On top of that, you better pray that whatever it is ignored your mutilator gets charged and butchered. If you don't kill it, you must switch your weapon to something less useful; if you didn't get into CC, you are very likely gonna have a wasted elites slot.

Now, this particular Negative Nancy will concede that they can be great distractions against artillery pieces, super long-ranged stuff, the occasional building and whatever else hangs out in the backfield. Trouble is, would not a termicide squad have been more useful? Sure, it's more expensive but you get a shooting attack per model and more bodies for more wounds, attacks, shots.