Warhammer 40K: Is A Warlord Titan Worth Taking?
It’s time for a thought experiment – the Mighty Warlord Titan should dominate the Tabletop…But does it? Let’s find out.
Clocking in at 5500 points or 275 Power Level, the Warlord Titan is perhaps the single most expensive unit in the game. With that sort of a price tag, you’d expect this toddler-sized beast to destroy anything it sets its sights on and it probably will…up to a point. Today, we’re going to talk about some theoretical damage output and if this Titan is really worth the 5500 point price tag.
The Stats
Kicking things off, we need to know the stat block of one of these things. So here it is:
Sorry about the glare – but that’s a +2 armor save in case you’re wondering. While the stats of the Warlord do degrade over time, we’re still looking at a base of 120 Wounds on a Toughness 9 target. And the stats that get worse are it’s movement, WS, and BS. Oh and let’s not forget it also has 8 Void Shields to get through – each with 3 shield points. Those void shields also give it a 5+ invulnerable save vs ranged attacks. We’ll talk more about those shield down below.
The Weapons
For the purposes of this thought experiment we’re also going to go with the base load-out. Is it the best? That’s situational really. But it’s still a good baseline to work from. So what types of damage output are we looking at here?
As you can see – the Warlord has some truly impressive and terrifying firepower. We’re going to do some quick damage calculations based on the MAX damage for each of these attacks just to give us the absolute top end.
- Apocalypse launcher – 12 shots x 2 damage = 24 damage
- Ardex-defensor lascannon – 1 shot x 6 damage = 6 damage
- Ardex-defensor mauler – 6 shots x 2 damage = 12 damage
- Ariorch power claw (shooting) – 20 shots x 2 damage = 40 damage
- Ariorch power claw (melee) – 4 attacks x 18 damage = 72 damage
- Warlord feet (melee) 8 attacks x 5 damage = 40 damage
Now keep in mind that melee works a little differently than the shooting attacks and that the shooting attacks are basically doubled. We’re going to focus on the shooting part for damage output. It’s an impressive amount of raw damage for sure, especially when you are doubling all those shots (because it’s packing 2 of each). And we’re not even going to get into what stratagems you can use to amplify those numbers again.
The Numbers
All totalled from shooting you have a potential of 164 damage floating. That’s a LOT of damage you can dump on a single target from shooting. But at 5500 points, is a Warlord really shooting all that at a single target? Let’s assume not. For the sake of damage potential, let’s also assume that each shot kills 1 target just to figure out how many models a turn a Warlord could remove from the tabletop if it hit, wounded, and the enemy didn’t have or make a save.
The total number of shots per turn a Warlord can put out is 78 with this load out and no other stratagems. So, that should translate to 78 dead models (if each shot killed a model). Again, that’s pretty impressive! If you were gunning down 2 Wound models (like say Space Marines) this would be a very impressive tally. That’s just over 3/4 of an entire company of Primaris Marines in one turn.
What about melee? Well that’s a bit more complex. It all depends on which close combat weapon you want to spend your 4 attacks on. The Arioch power claw is perfect for those bigger targets while the Warlord feed will stomp the crap out of a unit. Since we’re looking at theoretical maxes here and pulling models, it boils down to between 4 and 8 dead models at turn. For simplicity sake, let’s just go with 8 dead models.
If we combined that total with the shooting count from above, that’s a total of 86 models in a round. That’s not counting any overwatch shots or extra stratagems either. So, based on the theoretical maxes for the situations outlined, we’re looking at a 5500 point model removing 86 enemy models in a turn.
So is that damage output worth it? Are there more optimized builds? What about Stratagems? All things to consider as well. But using this as a base line, the Titan is going to be pretty good at killing 2 wound models and any vehicle that gets in melee range is also going to have a really bad time.
But maybe it’s not all about the damage output. The Warlord Titan does have some serious staying power, too. Remember those void shields?
Ranged attacks are going to have to do quite a number on the void shields just to get to those wounds. And the weapon shooting at the Warlord still has to wound a toughness 9 target with a 2+ save and 5+ invulnerable. 8 void shields x 3 shield points each is 24 shield points to deal with. That’s a lot of ranged firepower to shrug off.
At the end of the day, it’s still 5500 points. If you took a Warlord against 5500 points of Marines, who would win? That’s a tough one to work out due to the fact the Space Marines have such a big pool of unit options. Even if you swapped it out with Grots, at the end of the day it’s going to come down to attrition. There is still the issue of attempting to score objectives, too…but that’s another topic altogether.
So what do you think? Is the Warlord Titan worth taking at 5500 points?
