No, this has nothing to do with Hive Fleet Leviathan from Warhammer 40,000 10th edition, and nothing to do with Tyranids. Tyranids don't show up in the Horus Heresy, after all. So what exactly is Leviathan? Well, we might need to delve a bit into the past to find out. First, though, let's establish that Leviathan here doesn't refer to any Tyranid Hive Fleet, but rather super-heavy vehicles that dominated the battlefields of the Horus Heresy.
In the first edition of Horus Heresy, we had something called a Leviathan Force Organization Chart. I don't think it carried over to 2nd edition, but fret not, for it has returned in another form in the third edition!
First, what is Leviathan Force Organization Chart? As you can see, it's built around a single Lord of War, with the option to take two more! Or you can take an optional allied detachment, or both! It's meant to allow you to use your huge centerpiece models like Titans, or super-heavy tanks. Knights had their own Questoris Force Organization Chart, so they didn't use this.
Obviously, this was meant for narrative play, and you had to ask your opponent for permission to field this. So it wasn't something you could cheese. Anyway, you'll notice some similiarities here, especially the option to take up to three Lords of War.
Enter Leviathan missions from the Journal Tactica Mailed Fist.
Leviathan missions are ideal for multiplayer battles, but you'll need to form teams, and each team is treated as a single player for Rules purposes, such as sharing a single pool of Reaction Points. You have 3 different Leviathan missions (I'm not covering the Legendary mission), which are: Clash of Behemoths, Rolling Bastions and Break the Lines.
So if you have two players or two teams, one has to be the Attacker and one is the Defender. The Attacker has a new Apex Detachment called Leviathan Armored Fist, which gives you three Lord of War units, and don't count toward the 25% of total points limit restriction. I'm not sure, but it seems you can potentially take up to four Lords of War if you want. The Defender, on the other hand, has the Leviathan Bastion of Fire, which is also an Apex Detachment, but gives you three support slots.
Everything else seems the same, from deployment, terrain, etc., so I won't cover them. Instead, I'll look at the Leviathan Mission Objectives that's specific to this game mode. Apparently, we divide the battlefield into Sectors, and we have something called Armored Dominance, which you calculate by totalling the remaining Hull Points of each Vehicle you control within that Sector. So let's say I have a single Questoris Knight and Cerastus Knight standing in a Sector (a quarter of the battlefield), and they haven't been damaged yet, I have 22 Armored Dominance value. If my opponent has an undamaged Spartan with 10 Hull points, a Predator with 6 Hull points, and an Araknae Quad Accelerator Platform with 3 Hull points, that's a total of 19 Armored Dominance value, which means I control the sector with my Knights!
The Secondary Objectives are Break Their Strength, which requires you to destroy every vehicle in your opponent's army to score the points, Last Man Standing, which requires you to have more units that aren't Routed than your opponents to score the points, Overrun, which requires you to have your guys in your opponent's deployment zone to score the points - and if any of your guys is a Super-heavy, you double the points you score - and finally, Slay the Warlord, which obviously requires you to kill your enemy High Command choice.
For Clash of Behemoths, both players must include at least one Lord of War unit in their army, and you fight over four Sectors. This alone makes it my favorite mission, because I love to see super-heavies clash against other super-heavies! The attacker's goal is to get into the sector, which allows you to score a number of points equal to the sector number - the sectors are conveniently labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4, so if you get into Sector 4, you score 4 points. If your guy in that sector is a super-heavy, than you get 2 extra Victory Points. But you only choose one sector you have units in, you can't select all the sectors...and I think Armored Dominance comes into play here.
The defender, on the other hand, has to hold objectives. The attacker doesn't appear to score any points by capturing the objective marker - that's for the defender. The secondary mission objectives are Last Man standing and Slay the Warlord, and Overrun for Attacker and Defender for Break their Strength. Which makes sense.
Honestly, this is an ideal mission for massed super-heavy tanks versus an army of Knights! I would love to play as the Defender and bring my Knights against three or four super-heavy tanks! This would be so cool!
Rolling Bastions is similar in that the Attacker also seizes and controls sectors while the Defender hold objective markers across four equal sectors. The objective markers' points vary depending on who controls it - if the player scoring controls it, it's 3, if neither player controls it (equal Armored Dominance value), it's 2, and if your opponent controls the sector, the objective marker is only worth 1 victory point. Ouch.
Attacker also scores 2 Victory points for each sector they control at the end of each of their turn. Defender, on the other hand, scores Victory points for each objective marker they control, as described earlier. Secondary Mission Objectives are Break their Strength and Slay the Warlord, while Attacker gets Overrun again, but the Defender gets Last Man Standing this time.
This one seems more balanced, and technically, there's nothing stopping the defender from bringing a Knight army or a single Lord of War like in Clash of Behemoths, so you can still do this. I was considering more from a thematic point of view.
The final mission, Break the Lines, again involves the Attacker controlling Sectors while Defender holds objective markers. Four Sectors again, and the Attacker scores 2 Victory points for each Sector they control. Defender scores Victory points for each objective marker they control, but take note - each objective marker has a value equal to the sector they're located, Sectors 1, 2, 3 and 4. That's the number of Victory points you'll score accordingly.
The Secondary Mission Objectives are Last Man Standing and Overrun, while Attacker has Break their Strength and Defender Slay the Warlord. I kind of feel like you can do a thematic battle where three Legiones Astartes super-heavy tanks roll forward to break the lines of a defending Imperial Knight army. Would be cool to see, too!
There's also a bunch of Battlefield Assets, but those are like...whatever. It's reminiscent of Adeptus Titanicus, and adds a complex new layer to the game, so I'm feeling iffy about it. I would rather focus on fielding super-heavies versus super-heavies! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this and will play a few games of Leviathan Missions!
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