Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War Lord of Skulls

On Steam, this is the only Gladius DLC that has had reviews disabled and from which the publisher, Slytherine, has removed their name. It is difficult not to see that as a public disowning. The Lord of Skulls is one of two things, depending on how random it actually is, which is a matter of some disagreement: It is either the blue shell on the final lap of a Super Mario Kart race, knocking the front runner out of a spot on the podium, or it is the bonus round of a game of Mario Party, ignoring the events of the game and awarding victory arbitrarily to a lucky player. Either way, it doesn't have a place in a strategy game, and certainly not as paid DLC, no matter how inexpensive. I don't know how I ended up with this thing. I can't imagine that I bought it by itself; maybe it was part of a discounted bundle at some point? Let's get some things straight about the Lord of Skulls. It's not a "powerful" neutral unit. It is a neutral unit with - heavy hero armor - ten times the hit points of any other unit in the game (that increase with level) - regeneration - increasing damage with HP loss - an AOE melee attack that one-shots leveled hero units - a passive aura that zeroes out the morale of nearby enemies in a few rounds And this is on the easiest possible difficulty. All of the details are here, although they read as very sterile on paper: https://gladiusrelicsofwar.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_of_Skulls . You really have to be on the receiving end of this thing to appreciate what a giant middle finger it is to players. The Lord of Skulls feels like nothing so much as a poorly executed joke. It's bad. It's real bad. I'm sure someone out there likes it, but if that's not damning with faint praise I don't know what is. Don't buy this. I think what annoys me the most is that it is classified as a walker, despite clearly having enormous tank treads, and despite having the Moves Through Cover trait that makes the Walker trait irrelevant.

Fun to kill it the first time. Then it just becomes annoying on later games. It appears too randomly. If you are unlucky and didn't spot it and your unit runs right in its melee range, it's 100% dead. If you are a bit luckier and encounter it at range 3, your unit is still pretty dead, because it reduces its movement by 100%. It's not that hard to kill as others mention, but it requires bringing the entire army and you'll still lose a few units. But if the army is busy fighting on the other side of the map, then I obviously won't bother. Especially because it disappears in 10 turns, so it's even hard to get there with ground units. Then it appears at a random place at a random time again. If you manage to kill it, it gives all of your units a permanent 10% feel no pain damage reduction buff. Even for units created afterwards. Anyways, I think I'll disable this DLC forever, because one time it spawned right next to my newest base while my army was away, so it was quite scary. More annoying than fun :/

If you are unlucky, this guy can come into your army flank and destroy you. Or your enemies flank. Its random, if you like the hot potato late game fun he brings, get this dlc, its cheap. I never killed it, despite finishing multiple campagnes and multiplayer matches. So I cant comment what happens when you do. People just run away from it. I hope you get it as a unit. If you can get this thicc boy as a unit upon defeating it. Its a 5/5 for me, because it adds another way to end the game. Via quest, via domination, via super chaos boy.

Yes, this monster is irritating, as usually we're the best player. But Warhammer IS randomness, and you have raged for beginning on a bad spot of the map, you're happy that the Warlord of Skulls attacks the happy sucker. :)