Escalation is here, and I have spent quite a bit of time reading through it. We have been talking about super heavies and gargantuan creatures becoming a part of the standard game for about month now. While this is rather contentious, I do feel that people need to give the game a chance before jumping ship and declaring they wont play it.
So play it or not, Escalation is not an expansion that needs to be Ok'd by your opponent anymore than using any standard codex or codex supplement. That being said, there will be people that refuse to play against these units, and there is nothing wrong with that, just like there is nothing wrong with not wanting to play against a Chaos Daemons list.
Is there Balance?
Balance. If your opponent brings a Lord of War and you do not... you receive a +1 to your seize the initiative roll. Not to mention that it opens up a new Warlord chart for you to use with bonuses that we will discuss here shortly.
Victory points. Fielding a Lord of War grants your opponent an opportunity for more victory points. This can be a shattering handicap in many games with low victory point possibilities.
Does this balance work? From the start I will say that a normal list that you would be playing must take these new super heavies and D weapons into consideration during list design. I think only time will tell, as lists need to adjust to the possibility of a Lord of War. To not do so, means you can just get wiped.
When a large Lord of War is taken, the game will most likely hinge on it. D weapons will defiitely balance out the some of the deathstars we have been seeing, as a screamerstar just might be in a world of hurt if a Revenant gets a hold of them.
Escalation Warlord Traits:
Note that these are traits you can take if your opponent has a Lord of War in their list.
1. Maximize Firepower: Warlord and unit's weapons are twin linked when shooting at lord of war
2. Super-heavy Hunter: Warlord has preferred enemy (Lord of War)
3. Slayer of Giants: In close combat with a Lord of War, Warlord gains armourbane and fleshbane
4. Uncanny Defense. all rolls made on the destroyer table suffer a -1
5. Kill Mission: units in the army arriving from reserves do not scatter if placed within 6" of an enemy lord of war
6. Perfect Volley: shots from warlord and unit have rending are considered AP1 when targetting a lord of war.
In the book.
The options allowed are as follows
Imperial Guard:
Baneblade
Banehammer
Banesword
Doomhammer
Hellhammer
Shadowsword
Stormlord
Stormsword
Space Marines (including Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Grey Knights)
Thunderhawk Gunship
Forces of Chaos (Chaos Space Marines and Daemons):
Lord of Skulls
Necrons:
Obelisk
Tesseract Vault
Transcendent C'tan
Orks:
Stompa
Eldar and Dark Eldar:
Revenant Titan
Tau:
Tiger Shark
Tyranids:
Harridan
The rest of the book really follows the rules for Apocalypse regarding rules. I really think the most overpowered of these Lords of War is the Revenant Titan.
Now I really think that these should be given a chance, and no one with the possibilities of facing a Lord of War should not work their list together to battle one. Its like trying to play a 5th edition list in 6th edition. They can work, just not as well.
