Leviathan Dreadnought - Good as it looks?

[t-dog1996]

Evening Brothers,

 

I've recently been lucky enough to acquire a Blood Angels Leviathan Dreadnought with two Storm Cannons, and it should be arriving in the next couple of days. It's such an awesome model that I'm happy to have it just for that, but on paper at least it appears to be absolutely brutal on the battlefield. 20 S7 AP-2 D2 shots at BS2+ is no joke at all, not to mention its durability which looks awesome. Its high point cost is giving me pause for thought though. Is it as good as it appears to be?

[Zon]

Blood angels can't really milk it to the levels of cheese that chapters like Iron Hands can, but yes, it's still very good. I would suggest building your list around it so its the centerpiece of a slower advance with intercessors, aggressors, and some characters. If the rest of your list is just a normal blitz assault list with huge sang guard and death co bombs as the main recipients of your buffs and resources, it'll likely get left behind and killed off relatively easily. But alongside a primaris firebase and maybe even redemptors and invictors for target saturation, it should serve you fine.

 

Long story short - it doesn't mesh particularly well with any of the things (stratagems, savage echoes, etc) that make BA unique compared to any other chapter, but at the end of the day it's still a strong, tried and tested unit. As long as you don't expect it to perform like an iron hands leviathan, it probably won't disappoint.

[Indefragable]

What @Zon said is not wrong.... it dual storm cannon Levi’s are the type of unit that kinda doesn’t need any chapter tactics to be good. It’s just that solid. The best description I’ve hard for them can t be said in polite company. 
 

Now they can’t do it all....they are not going to one shot knights nor are they going to delete 30 gaunt hordes in one go. But they will compliment both efforts and everything in between. That’s their beauty: they are the closest thing to all-purpose in the game: mid-strength, good AP, multi-damage, and high rate of fire. Put that all together and there are few lists that can’t benefit from that. 
 

One person I know who regularly used one described it as “The Finisher” because he would always have it shoot last: any enemy that was not destroyed by a more specialized weapon would go down after a finishing volley from one.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Indefragable

[tychobi]

Levi with stormcannon is an iconic unit in competative play and well worth the points. For some it is a poster child for underpointed forge world cheesy waac overturned brutality. It out gun duels knights. It is one of the toughest single models in the game due to the halve all incoming damage strat and built in 4++. It kills anything that wanders near and only has 2 weaknesses. Range and tarpits. Awesome eh?

 

Levi is great in experienced hands and inexperienced ones. Savvy generals know to dodge or swamp it but new players often fail to comprehend the danger it poses and feed the stormcannon victims while bouncing lascannon off its 4++ and feel really salty as the realization that getting tabled without killing anything is actually happening. Problems of balance compound in lower point and low experience games so warn casuals and expect experts to formulate their plans around how and when they plan on dealing with your Leviathan. It is going to be the focus of the games you field it in and deserves a list that supports it.

 

Enjoy your badass centerpeice!

[Panzer]

The Levi Dread is basically what the regular Dread used to be a long long time ago. A big scary center piece threat for your army similar to the role of a LoW these days. ^^

[Subsided]

Considering Dev Doc just took a HUGE FAQ hit, even less useful for us than he was.

 

BA got a pretty big indirect buff from all the other Doc users getting nerfed however.

[Panzer]

Considering Dev Doc just took a HUGE FAQ hit, even less useful for us than he was.

 

BA got a pretty big indirect buff from all the other Doc users getting nerfed however.

 

The Doctrine change barely, if at all, affects how good the Leviathan is for us. As Blood Angels player you never wanted to stay with the Dev doctrine for more than one turn anyway.

[Karhedron]

The only thing that saddens me about the BA Leviathan is the fact that the kit comes with a pair of assault cannons on the torso but these are only for 30K, not 40K.

 

Maybe bringing the FW codices into the main design team will see us granted access to that weapon loadout in 40K too. I would buy one like a shot if I could put out 2 ACs worth of firepower on top of the 2 SCAs.

[Spagunk]

Magnets. Magnets all the time, every time.

[t-dog1996]

Thanks guys, looking forward to its arrival even more now :)