Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Leviathan Detachment (Solar Auxilia)
Warlord Titan - Laser Blasters (2850) (Warlord)

Allied Detachment (Word Bearers)
Zardu Layak

Tactical Squad (20), Dark Channelling, Artificer Armour on sgt
Tactical Squad (20), extra CCWs, Dark Channelling, Artificer Armour + Power Weapon on sergeant

Contemptor Mortis, dual Kheres

Sicaran, lascannons

Total: 4000 exactly.

Would you face this list? I wouldn't bring my Titan to face anyone who doesn't agree, of course, but I love that the Leviathan option exists rather than having to bring 11400+ lists to field it, and it is a true challenge I can bring to bear!

Leviathan games are always good fun. Hell, I've seen people have great fun with "pure leviathan" games where one side has nothing but titans.

Unit1126PLL will (hopefully) poke his head round the door - I believe his army is an Ordinatus battery...

List wise, it's fair enough. To be honest, I'd probably rather play a 3,000 point game without the word bearers than a 4,000 point game with - in the former you actually have to manoeuvre your titan; it's your only scoring unit, so you actually have to move up and take objectives instead of just standing at the back world-burner-ing the enemy army off the board with eight destroyer shots a turn.

The list looks simple enough. I might suggest taking 10-15 man squads for the tacticals and trying to save enough points to get a third squad - it'd have to be fast attack, so I guess Seekers? - just to have an extra 'game piece'. On the other hand, it's not going to be scoring, so maybe sticking with two big tactical squads is a better call.

Maybe trading a few bodies for apothecaries might be good? The squad's only real job is to survive the game and check the las-burned craters in the enemy's deployment zone for loose change and wounded survivors, after all.

I do not have any apothecaries yet, but it is true that I plan to get ones in the future.

Well that's titan the star of the show. The infrianty just need to clam objective or protect it from cc attacks.

Cover its close range and let the big guns do there worst.

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.

We are using the D rules from the Crusade army list.

The Dark Channelling thing is just 16.7%

Generally my tactic would be to just rush the Warlord ahead down the center as the mother of all distraction Carnifexes and focus fire on enemy scoring units. The Warlord has little fear of dying from even a Knight army as 30 AV15 5++ hullpoints with six regenerating void shields is hard enough to kill even before Towering Monstrosity is counted in.

As for the size of the allies detachment, I can fit in at most one scoring unit more (Terminators instead of the Mortis) but the Mortis has always been super useful!

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?

Isn't killing those last couple of guys or stripping that last hull point what the Ardex-Defensor weapons are for?

IMO your biggest problem is that games are going to be very binary. With 75% of your points invested into a single model that is capable of annihilating multiple entire units each turn and absorbing massive amounts of return fire without worrying you're going to find one of two things happens: your opponent tailors to beat a titan and tables you in a turn or two, or they play a "normal" army and spend 6 turns removing models from the table until a final desperate attempt to move a scoring model onto an objective at the end of the game. IMO leviathan armies are better when the special FOC is used to bend the 25% limit, not break it entirely. For example, playing that Warlord in an 8000 point game would still be a leviathan army but would make the game about more than "did I bring enough anti-tank weapons to kill a Warlord".

You can't really do that though. 8000 is not enough to fit a Warlord the normal way, and when running Leviathan it'd require fitting 5150 points into a single allied detachment!

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.

It broadly makes them better - certainly more reliable. Not having the 'deathblow' potential means you're unlikely on one-shot a superheavy (or near-superheavy like a spartan) but ignore cover and reroll invulnerables more than makes up for it.
Certainly it'll obliterate knight formations.

I'm not convinced the 'heresy' destroyer rules are really intended for use since destroyer was updated in this edition (remember the books with that rule in predates this!) - they're not mentioned in the more recent red books, and since forgeworld keeps putting machine destroyer on things they must be assuming you're rolling on the destroyer table....

Ah....forgot the option of veterans or terminators. Yes, a contemptor mortis is useful. Because you obviously need a tough, shooty walker to support those marines.....no, wait a minute....

Do you own the forgeworld emperor titan? I was thinking of getting one but it may be just to big to ever get painted lol. How is it to paint and build?

Warlord, not Emperor.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/690239.page

As for the Contemptor, it also provides AA and can deal with smaller units that the Warlord shouldn't bother with.

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.

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

 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.

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.

 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.