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For anyone that's read the Escalation book, are there any gargantuans available to Chaos? Greater Daemons, the various Forgeworld buggers, that sort of thing. I have this sweet Bones Cthulhu all painted up and was considering buying the book if there were any monsters in there worth using him as.

Also, not having played Apoc or been exposed to its harmful rays, how do gargantuan critters stack up in terms of making other players shriek and shield their faces in weepy horror? I keep hearing how awful and unfair Titans are, but not a peep about gargantuans. What's their deal and what's great/less great about them?

Nope. Just Skulldozer.

It's the D weapons really. Titans tend to be armed with them, so people get all edgy around them. Gargs can be nasty - a transcendent C'tan can do ungodly (or is it godly?) amounts of damage - but D weapons tend to kill them in 1 shot.

They really should have just made invuls rerollable...ignoring all saves is just too much.

There are four chaos gargantuans. Tney are not technically legal lords of war yet, but forge world will release an FAQ in the next few days to specify all of the lords of war. There are already four more added by the most recent imperial armour.

As for the big beasties, the main problem with gargantuan creatures is the fact that they can be one-shot killed by destroyer weapons. In the original 4th/5th edition apocalypse rules, gargantuan creatures were very good, but they recieved a ton of huge nerfs in 6th edition that have made them much less effective. That said, some of them are still very effective if correctly emplyoyed. The better two are Aetoas'rau'keres and An'ggrath because they are flying gargantuan creatures and can therefore dodge almost all detroyer weapons - only those without a blast can hit them while they are flying. They are both toughness 8 so you are at least bolter-immune but it would be really nice to be 9 like the Heirophant so you were immune to the common strength five as well. An'ggrath has a token shooting attack but it's not much, assault is, as you'd expect, where he really excels. He can potentially have thirteen attacks on the charge at strength 10, which means you will eat anything you can get into combat with, with the exception of tarpit units. He also has a TH/SS termie save and eight wounds, which makes him fairly resilient against conventional shooting. However, he must charge if there is something in range, so he's very easy to tarpit and vulnerable to overwatch from carefully positioned units. There aren't many things that can eat his fury comfortably but you can potentially feed him blobs of IG and he'll likely never makes his points back. Not bad, but not fantastic either.

As for Aetaos'rau'keres, he's a mastery level 4 psyker, which is nice, but despite being the favoured of tzeentch and the most powerful psyker in the universe besides his master, he doesn't get to choose his powers - you have to take two from the tzeentchian powers and generate the other two randomly from any discipline. He can spawn pink horrors, has no armour, the same invulnerable save as his khornate brother and a small chance to reflect hostile psychic powers back at their caster. He also has a staff he must be stationary to use that requires a leadership test (otherwise the other player targets it) but is an apocalyptic barrage with the potential for a lot of hits and is poisoned and haywire, but only ap3. It seems a bit weak given you can't use it while flying and the fact it can potentially backfire, but it's probably a super-heavy eater if you get good haywire rolls. He must fire all his shooting attacks the nearest daemon lord, greater daemon or daemon prince if there is one within 18 inches, so he's not really a team player (i suspect this would be really annoying when he's flying around) but he is also pretty impressive in close combat - strength of a thunder hammer terminator with five attacks base and initiative nine. Unfortunately that super-high initiative doesn't come into play often, but he does have nine wounds, and being a tzeentch daemon can reroll his 3++ on a 1, so he's damn durable. It's just a shame he doesn't shoot very well.

Overall, neither is amazing but both are very flavourfull and VERY expensive - An'ggrath just short of a Revenant and Aetaos'rau'keres more. A good way to cheaply increase your points total and they look badass on the tabletop. Just watch out for Necron Pylons, they'll eat you alive.