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The biggest problem I have encountered running a Leviathan detachment (with my Ordinatus army) is scoring objectives.

Your allied detachment is relatively small - I know 41 marines with upgrades is scary, but Dark Channeling IIRC gives you a certain chance (33%? 16.7%?) to be non-scoring. Also, I don't know many heresy lists that have trouble killing 41 marines and some tanks.

The Warlord is a whole 'nother ball game, however. Depending on what weapon loadout you choose, it could be a beast. Much like the Ordinatus engines, it has the firepower to wipe out entire enemy units in one go.

Just be wary of units that can endure multiple D-strength blasts, such as some GMCs (such as the Tau'nar one), the Ordinatus engines, any high-hullpoint vehicle, or even an army of Knights. These are likely to be able to wipe out your scoring units and then simply endure - they only have to endure for 6 turns, on average, so a Knight army at 4,000 points, for example, should endure the shooting of the Warlord unless you get really lucky with D-weapons.

I guess what I am saying is don't count on your D-weapons for much - they have a higher chance of doing nothing or only 1 hull point than they do of doing d6+6, and that's before saves.

I absolutely would play against this army with my 3000 point Ordinatus army plus 1000 points of something, perhaps a Turbolaser warhound and some more Thallaxi for deep-strike scoring.

Right, the Warlord, much like an Ordinatus engine, is hard to kill...

...which is why everyone will ignore it, like the Ordinatus, and also focus-fire right back on your scoring units.

The Leviathan's crippling weakness is that if the objective your Leviathan is on is contested by a denial unit (like, say, 10 Tech-Thralls you couldn't be assed to shoot a D-weapon at earlier), then you have 0 objectives. In most Heresy missions, the last man standing rule means that even that situation will be a 1-0 victory, because the enemy will probably have more than one unit left.

By the end of it, with D-weapons, the enemy will likely have a few badly damaged units sitting around, like one or two marines left in a tactical squad or an immobilized rhino, but things like that are the curse of the Leviathan, because even the Warlord Titan has insufficient weapons systems to engage and kill completely (because simply crippling a unit doesn't cut it) 4000 points of enemy, and a couple of Dreadnoughts and some tactical marines aren't going to help much.

Paradoxically, in my experience the best thing the Leviathans are good against are other Leviathans and deathstar type units, because then having the ability to engage more than, say, four units at a time is not necessary, because engaging one enemy 1500 point unit (or whathaveyou) is all you need to do to even the points up a bit.

Does that make sense?

Yeah I have found out with my Ordinati that there is very much a hard cap on the maximum playable points in a Leviathan before you run out of slots.

As for the Ardex Defensor weapons... sure. They can. But two point backwards and I don't know if two Mauler Bolt Cannons are the most reliable weapons in the game. They can work, yes, but I still think only having four weapons, even D weapons, just means that one had better be quite lucky on the D chart.

Now if you are using the Crusade Army List optional D rules, D weapons get considerably better against certain things and considerably worse against others. I can't comment on that, because my local meta uses the D chart for everything.

The optional D rules make the guns considerably worse against other large superheavies. Heck, a technomancy'd Aquila Strongpoint or other Warlord Titan is basically immune to them.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Technomancy does not exist in 30k as far as I know.

I know. I meant as a general concern about using D-weapons with the optional rules. I, for one, do not have access to them, owning only the Taghmata Omnissiah Army List and Book 4: Conquest. So I've never used them. The Ordinatus Dispersion Shield wording and the Machine Destroyer special rule indicate to me that Forge World isn't really using their own optional rules anymore.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Machine Destroyer rule can just be treated as allowing you to re-roll the 1 on the D3 for the number of hull points dealt.

Yeah you could houserule it. I just took it as an indication we were supposed to use the Destroyer Damage table like it says.