Assessment of Mordrak

After a few games with him, and some thinking, here is what I got. First, I am taking him with a unit of 5 Ghost Knights at the very least (he can't do anything by himself really, so there is no sense spending the extra points over a normal Grandmaster otherwise. Also I am going to assume taking him with a librarian, because without psycannons or psyammo, there is not alot his unit can do on turn 1 (can't even pop a rhino unless you can actually get behind it). The librarian will at least have warp-rift and sanctuary, and a TP homer, which lets you bring in help.

Strengths - He is a decently equiped GM. By the time you give your Grandmaster a master-crafted daemon hammer, you are only paying 15 points for +1 wound and +1 attack, as well as the ability to deep-strike without error on turn 1. He is not an independant character, so he can not be singled out in melee (although this is meant to be a strength, it is actually a double-edged sword, because it also means that he can be killed by overflow wounds targetted at his unit - instead of forcing your enemy to decide how to split his attacks).

Weaknesses - Can't take psychotroke grenades (which are just cool). Actually I think his biggest weakness is the Ghost Knights themselves. They are the same price as a normal unit of 5 terminators, but cannot take psycannons or psyammo, which make me want to not take them (they are meant to be ablative wounds for Mordrak, but he is not SO awsome that I want to buy him extra wounds at 40 points each). I know they add shooting and melee attacks, so they are not complete ballast, but GKSS can get just as many shots, at higher strength, for half of the cost; if I can only fit 1 terminator squad in the army, I really don't want it to be these guys.

Tactics - My first instinct with Mordrak is to deepstike him as deep as possible and use his unit and the Librarian to do as much damage as possible. This instinct only served me well 1 out of 3 games:

If the enemy leaves an opening (like a unit of troops or artillery way off my itself), feel free to take advantage of it, as long as it is not so far away that you can't make it back to the fight (remember this unit is over 25% of a 2000 point army, and you can't afford to have it not doing anything for 4 turns while you march back from the far table edge).

If it is an objective game, be conservative - don't deepstrike 3 KP all by itself into the middle of the enemy army. The idea is to use Mordrak to cause enough damage that your ENEMY has to play catch up, not the other way around. Just the THREAT of being able to DS behind the enemy will mess with his deployment, you don't have to actually do it unless he makes a big mistake that you can exploit.

I am beginning to thing that the best place to deploy Mordrak's unit is mid-field, on the other side of cover. First, this will increase his chance of survival (he is not getting charged by your opponent's deathstar on turn 1). If you opponent tries to hang back and run a gun line, you can use the librarian to bring the rest of your army directly in at midfield (assuming an all or mostly DS army), so that they can start shooting as soon as they come in. If you opponent advances on you, you can DS some of your army behind his advance. This will let you get rear shots on his advancing elements, or isolate and destroy some of the support elements (forcing him to decide whether to press the advance or to turn around and rescue his fire support - at which time you DS some more units next to Mordrak, and THEY can take read shots on his vehicles).