So its on the front of the rulebook but I put forward that you are more likely to see vindicators in a marine army or griffons in a guard army than ever see this.

Why? And if you agree depending on the reasons why you think you would never field it do you think it could ever become a viable choice?

Currently pretty much the only use I can think of for it is putting the blitz in a corner of the table and sitting the warlord on it to deny bts and blitz. On overwatch, since it will be able to do bugger all else first turn.

It's simple; it's only sucky because activations are king. It's completely worth its points, but the side effect is that you end up cutting 3 or 4 activations from the list in the process.

An easy solution is playing games with an activation cap. Lowering the cap makes bigger/more expensive units more viable. It won't work in a standard tournament enviroment of course. But meta game tweaks like this can be used to good effect to introduce variations to the game.

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Honestly, I think it shows Army lists scaling poorly at 3k points. I think in a 5k point situation this seems to be less of an issue.

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MadMagician
Epic Tyranids

I still wouldn't take it at 5000 points (did you know you could get 6 warhounds then? ). It just can't do enough damage to be anything other than a tough bts and blitz guard. In fact warhound wise what would you rather have - a warlord or 3 warhounds?

You have a great point, unless you absolutely need one, there is not enough power in a Warlord to justify it compared to 3 WHs 3 activations and 6 weapons beats 1 Activation and 4 weps any day.

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MadMagician
Epic Tyranids

I agree with the activations and even 6 weapons vs. 4 weapons, but I still think you'd need more than 6 warhounds to make it a fair fight...

Now just using the standard Titan configurations (not the AMTL list), I think the Warlord has the Warhound beat in weapon range, weapon potency and armor save. You'd more than likely wipe out a formation of Warhounds in one round before you'd drop all the void shields on the Warlord. I'd like to see that fight.

The problem with big units and large formations is more a consequence of the activation mechanism than anything else, I think.

It bothers me too.

Ork Great Gargants are the same price and taken reasonably often though, despite the activation lowering, so a unit that expensive can't be inherently bad. I have tended to see less Warlords fielded though, more in bigger/scenario games.

It is odd as I happily take Great Gargants (my best showing is here http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/t5x.php?tid=21 - if I had painted my orks as well as daves I'm not white white scars would have come first ).

GG's can either be blood impossible to shift BTS/blitz guards or as I use it an unstopable engine of take and hold contesting. What makes them different? Higher resilance? Do they have more firepower? IT somehow feel like it mayhaps?

Warlocks to are popular for their very high lethality and high move.

I never took one yet. I have only played 4 games of E:A yet, having recently switched from Netepic. So most of the armies in our group were pretty conservative, so that we didn't encounter any problems with activation difference yet.

In Netepic, however, you have a similar problem, the difference in activations is even worse. We tried some different approaches to cope with it. The following worked really well, at least for us:

1) At the beginning of each turn, count your total activations (on- AND off-board). The difference between the 2 Activation counts has to be activated as soon as possible.

2) Roll for initiative. The winner chooses whether he wants to go first or not as normal.

Example:

3k points battle

1st turn:

Eldar activations: 12 (2 are offboard)
Marine activations: 10 (4 are offboard)

Marines win the initiative and choose to go first.

The difference between the activations is "two", so the marine player has to activate 2 formations in his first go.
Note that it doesn't matter whether formations are offboard or not, so that you cannot tinker with this.

2nd turn:

marines have killed 4 eldar formations.

Eldar activations: 8
Marine activations: 10

Eldar win the initiative and go first

The Eldar activate one unit, after which the Marine player activates 2 units. After that players again alternate one activation after another as usual.

It's actually not as clumsy and complicated as my attempt to describe it .
I would be interested to hear feedback, should anyone want to try this out, too.

cheers

sanjuro

Seems to be that Orks aren't that handicapped by low activations than Space Marines.
And the Warlock is just fast enough to actually reach it's target.

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A combination of factors I guess. Compared to a Great Gargant...

- Their firepower isn't any better than a Great Gargant's, possibly actually inferior (Everything the GG lobs out is MW or TK, plus if it takes the Lifta-Droppa it has a short range Volcano Cannon and a TK close combat weapon).

- Great Gargants are better in Firefights and Close Combats

- Both Titans generally want to Double move most of the time anyway to get into range, so the GG being forced to double most places isn't a massive loss.

- The Warlord is specialised at AT, wheras the Great Gargant is a solid generalist. Often a specialised role is good, but for a big and slow activation like a Warlord it can prove a hinderance if it cannot come to grips with a suitable enemy each turn. Even the Reaver Titan is a better generalist than the Warlord.


Overally, I think a different weapons configuration or two might help boost the profile of the Warlord Titan.

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Switching the Turbo-Lasers for Apoc.Missile Launchers could do the trick.

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In a point and shoot who can kill the most men scenario the warlord might be worth it's points. In the GT scenario, for which the 850 cost is supposed to be for, it ain't worth it - at least in 3000 point games. This is surely down to activations and low speed as well as the fact that it simply doesn't gell well with space marines fighting style. Dunno about guard but it seems something similar applies.

Taking orks into account a 3000 pt Ork army with a Great Gargant is much more doable - (though not the optimum ork army)
I guess that's cause orks can do the slow grinder type of battle.

Here are the costs I'd give the Titans for Codex Marines list. Other lists that have the same titans might have different costs

Warhound 350
Double Warhound 500
Reaver 550
Warlord 650

In guessing the costs I'm using the double warhound as a solid centre point - few people argue that this figure is wrong - at guestimating the prices of the other titans around this. I do not believe a reaver is worth much more than 50 points more than 2 warhounds and I do not believe, for space marines, that a warlord is worth more than 100 points than a reaver.