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The melee warlord is severely limited when fighting non-titanic Heavy targets due to needing to get its massive base into melee range. Any significantly antitank - skewed weapons will take it down if fielded en masse. I think in a previous thread we talked about storm swords vs warlords.

Its a big center piece unit and in any 150-200pl game if you took it you'd lose on objectives while killing roughly half the opposing army over 5 turns.

Getting into melee range is not difficult at all, the thing has 18" of normal movement. It can take a 36" charge and then spend the rest of the game Advancing in the enemy lines. Titans don't technically even have bases, if somebody starts moaning about it.

 Sherrypie wrote:
Getting into melee range is not difficult at all, the thing has 18" of normal movement. It can take a 36" charge and then spend the rest of the game Advancing in the enemy lines. Titans don't technically even have bases, if somebody starts moaning about it.

No, it can get into range, but you dictate what it gets to fight for the most part. Its so big that I'd be surprised if you were able to get it past screening units and into something more in the back field.

Each claw cam target one unit and does 26 blasts of damage. To be effective you need to have two things in b2b that require 13 big blasts to kill each turn. That's really hard in a smaller game.

I think my problem is that the Warlord seems unstoppable. Even as if you would have an invincible unit dishing out a lot of damage each turn.

 Astmeister wrote:
I think my problem is that the Warlord seems unstoppable. Even as if you would have an invincible unit dishing out a lot of damage each turn.

If the invincible unit was a single model, and you played with any kind of objectives, and the invincible unit did not do enough damage to table your enemy, you would lose every game you took the invincible unit.

The warlord is indeed EXTREMELY difficult to take out with 154 points of anything balanced between anti-infantry and anti-tank in 5 turns. If you have all anti-tank, like say nothing but lascannon HWTs or an equivalent points value in Stormlord tanks, you can do it in 2-3 turns. but a 2x belicosa 2x AML warlord is not going to come anywhere close to tabling any 154pt army.

250 points of units vs a 250pt or one of the other expensive warlord builds, on the other hand, I would say most armies could bring down a warlord easily within 5 turns.

IMO, that is the best way to have a hugely expensive model like a warlord able to exist in a low-points game: It never dies, but it never wins because it can't table. Compare to 40k, where a single knight in 500pts easily tables 500pts of almost anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
if you told me to break apoc at 150pl, it would not be with one Warlord titan.

It would be with 150 Krootox.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
Getting into melee range is not difficult at all, the thing has 18" of normal movement. It can take a 36" charge and then spend the rest of the game Advancing in the enemy lines. Titans don't technically even have bases, if somebody starts moaning about it.

No, it can get into range, but you dictate what it gets to fight for the most part. Its so big that I'd be surprised if you were able to get it past screening units and into something more in the back field.

Each claw cam target one unit and does 26 blasts of damage. To be effective you need to have two things in b2b that require 13 big blasts to kill each turn. That's really hard in a smaller game.

Melee attacks can be split against multiple targets. Each claw does a lot less than 26 blasts (12-16, to be precise), though, even if you include the bolters. Brushing past screens isn't necessarily that hard, considering you can wipe multiple units per turn with all the other guns. Megabolters are damn effective infantry killers. Also, card support with bombardments and such helps.

Then there's house ruling, like titans stepping over infantry and using 6 mm models that decreases gamey screening shenanigans, which obviously doesn't count for RAW discussions but absolutely matters for how folks actually play the game and make better of it.

 Sherrypie wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
Getting into melee range is not difficult at all, the thing has 18" of normal movement. It can take a 36" charge and then spend the rest of the game Advancing in the enemy lines. Titans don't technically even have bases, if somebody starts moaning about it.

No, it can get into range, but you dictate what it gets to fight for the most part. Its so big that I'd be surprised if you were able to get it past screening units and into something more in the back field.

Each claw cam target one unit and does 26 blasts of damage. To be effective you need to have two things in b2b that require 13 big blasts to kill each turn. That's really hard in a smaller game.

Melee attacks can be split against multiple targets. Each claw does a lot less than 26 blasts (12-16, to be precise), though, even if you include the bolters. Brushing past screens isn't necessarily that hard, considering you can wipe multiple units per turn with all the other guns. Megabolters are damn effective infantry killers. Also, card support with bombardments and such helps.

Then there's house ruling, like titans stepping over infantry and using 6 mm models that decreases gamey screening shenanigans, which obviously doesn't count for RAW discussions but absolutely matters for how folks actually play the game and make better of it.

True, each claw can attack a different target, but you need to have two units in B2B simultaneously that are worth killing with your claws, each turn. And brushing past screens is pretty tough in Apoc where you literally cannot wipe a unit during a turn no matter how definitively you kill it.

I guess if you're just going to handwave and say "Stopping any melee-focused unit from picking the target it wants to kill and just allowing it to kill it is 'gamey shenanigans'" then I guess..yeah. While you're at it, just play an entirely melee-focused army, they do more damage on average than shooting-focused units because they're balanced around having a harder time getting into combat. If you're classifying any effort by your opponent to stop you from getting into combat with what they want as a shenanigan, then melee units are just better.

Any game against a titan is going to revolve around one player scoring basically any objective that doesn't involve killing units while trying to A, keep from being tabled, and B, keep the titan away from whatever their most expensive units are. I guess if you're playing a clawtitan that gives you like 250PL to play with in which case you can definitely try to take the titan out if you have the right army makeup for it, but for the most part I feel like it'll be a game of cat-and-mouse. Maybe you try to crit the titan to chop its offensive output in half, but that's probably a turn 1 and turn 2 effort and after that you don't have your most dangerous units alive anymore and you just play to objectives.

I don't have the book at hand right now, but I recall there being a rule that allowed you to split one melee weapon to multiple targets if you have multiple attacks. That's what I meant with melee splitting, thus injuring more than only two targets as you crash into their lines. Or do I misremember?

And no, I'm not using shenanigans here to mean there shouldn't be anything one can do to stop the pain train from hitting you. If folks enjoy playing the core rules only and using daisy chaining screens (still very much possible, though clearly not encouraged by the writers) that can stop titans, more power to them. For me that falls under silly and gamey, whereas using those same lines of infantry to block other infantry, normal tanks or such stuff is a lot less strenuous on the ability to suspend disbelief and have a good experience with the game. Nothing a little chat in the beginning wouldn't solve, really. Do note that this is in case of the giant titan, it is about the large thing passing over smaller things and not about some weasely personal advantage being sought for melee in general. That would be distasteful and most unsporting.

(Why isn't there a mention of moving huge enough units over smaller ones? Why titans don't have a super ObSec of their own where one absolutely takes the objective it sits on? Nice things for the "Apoc 2.0" desk drawer project )

Buuut, without straying from the core rules, the point still stands that screens can be handled even though they are effective. Five turns equals quite a number of dead units and eventually you get to some good parts, whether that's enough depends on the opposition and so on. They sure will try to make you take bad moves, as is only proper in a good game. Playing objectives is assuredly the way to go against titans, though I doubt an army vs. one engine is very enjoyable as a format. An engine supporting an army, now we're talking about interesting. Or maybe a light maniple of titans, like three or four Warhounds versus an army. Those autohitting 8 dice Inferno Cannons are tasty~

Checking the rules, indeed on page 32 it says a melee weapon with more than one attack can split them however you like, so theoretically a clawtitan can hit 20 different units in melee (counting the feet) if an absurdly large scrappy dogpile happens