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Hi all,

Hoping you guys with Escalation experience can help me out.

I'm looking to play a mate this weekend with my Orks vs his CSM in a game of Escalation.

We have never played this type of game before and just having finished up my Stompa, we're looking at giving it a go.

Just wondering as he doesn't have a LOW, what would be the best game type to play?

I like the look of the the scenario where I bring my Stompa and he brings another 1000pts on top ansd see how many rounds we last..

I've never used a Stompa before, so curious to see that If I take it in the LOW FOC slot with a regular army, would it be fun for both of us or will it be a whitewash?

Are they competitive?

I know that there's a lot of questions here, hopefully you can all decipher it and provide me with some advice LOL

Its not about fun its about GW selling expensive model's, fun isnt possible only an empty wallet.

What you suggested is the right track when it comes to Escalation, Bones: Scale the armies around the LOW.

For example, since you have Orks, kit out your Stompa with less weapons, and let your buddy bring a larger number of points to the game. Or, conversely, you could shrink the amount of points that you get to play.

Other ways of making it fun is trying the old "Gogard's Last Stand" mission from an old WD: You get 1 Stompa with whatever upgrades you want, and the other guy gets 1000pts of his army to try and stop it. The more stompas, the more 1000pt additions to the other guy's army.


Try and treat it as a kind of narrative game, too. Like, his Chaos Marines are obviously trying to catch this Stompa off guard and kill it before it can get to the front lines and cause havoc, so try and theme your force around Mekboyz and lootas.


Alternate idea: Try using the above narrative, but the Stompa is immobile as it isn't finished yet. See if you can defend your budding Warboss' favorite toy.

They way to have fun is to bring the models that look cool, or you like the idea of, not whats the uber powerful.

A baneblade, or a hierodule, stompa or tigershark are not that over powered and can be a lot of fun in a big game.

To avoid drama, I will not list the ones that are OP....but they know who they are.....

Honestly there are only a few not fun LoW that will ruin the game even if you know they are coming. If your buddy comes expecting to crack open a stompa and you play the rules properly it won't cause any problems.

The not fun units are the ranged D weapon Revenant, Trans C'Tan, and Warhound. Without the ranged D weapon not problem.

Remember that for every 3 HP your buddy gets 1 VP. If you buddy sends some heldrakes to vector strike and hades cannon the rear, some oblits to melta, or some bikers with melta he will probably be able to take the stompa down after effort equivalent to it's points. He can also easily ignore it and focus down on the rest of your army.

Remember that the LoW walkers are 3d6 take the highest for terrain. Your buddy can really slow it down by throwing down a lot of terrain (or in my case let it devour some rhinos, etc. to create terrain)

Having fun is more about your attitude than game mode.

Thanks a lot for the positive feedback guys.

We are a couple of guys who used to play in High School and have gotten back into the hobby after a long time away.

As we are in it for the fun and fluff rather than being competitive and not caring too much about who wins, we may play a few scenarios to see how we go and then mix it up a bit if need be - I think that may be a lot of fun.

My problem was that I just didn't want to bring a Stompa full of Lootas/Meks, plus Meganobz and 3 Battlewagons in a 2000 point game and have it possibly be one-sided.

We will probably start off slow and work our way into it.

Thanks again!

play a few games see how it works, if it doesn't, hold off using the Stompa for the time being, and if it does, hey great!

as a CSM player if you're using or wanting to use your stompa, he might eventually even be inclined to take a looksie at the Khorne Lord of skulls to anwer it. a unit I think would make a VERY even match for a stompa

My first Escalation game I played against a Stompa and had no LOW myself, and I narrowly won. It was a fun game.

Since then, my wife had got me a Tesseract Valut box for Xmas, and I use the Transcendent C'Tan whenever someone wants to play Escalation, and its usually cool, but kind of devolves into a game of Godzilla vs. Godzilla. I honestly prefer games of "standard" 40k.


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One thing we do is increase the terrain to give more places to hide, and make movement harder on the LOW. That would probably make the game a bit funner to play for the non-LOW opponent.

How to make Escalation fun?

Play it as a one-off once in a while, or a special mission as part of a campaign with your buddies.

Bring a Revenant titan

w40k degenerated because of escalation very fast here. People who started buying casts of eldar titants , because it was one of the cheaper armies to get. Necron needed even less cash to up their army with a cheap D weapon models , while others could technicly get D weapons too , but on far less good units . Since I started playing in 5th this was the third time I see a core rule being changed . First one was to deploy fortifcations after terrain , second was to ban formation and third was to ban escalation/strongholds .

Escalation turns w40k in to something worse then the guy with the most cash wins , it turns it in to the guy who plays the same army as the design team wins .

Makumba wrote:
w40k degenerated because of escalation very fast here. People who started buying casts of eldar titants , because it was one of the cheaper armies to get. Necron needed even less cash to up their army with a cheap D weapon models , while others could technicly get D weapons too , but on far less good units . Since I started playing in 5th this was the third time I see a core rule being changed . First one was to deploy fortifcations after terrain , second was to ban formation and third was to ban escalation/strongholds .

Escalation turns w40k in to something worse then the guy with the most cash wins , it turns it in to the guy who plays the same army as the design team wins .

Easy solution, don't play Escalation .

When it comes to Escalation, I very much prefer games of LOW vs Non-LOW armies. A clash of superheavies is cool to watch from time to time, but in the end these tend to be simplistic battles won by sheer luck alone.

That said the Stompa is a very tame superheavy, to the point that a skilled player can easily milk it for victory points