I've played in plenty of tournaments that allowed use of a super heavy. I ran my Pylon against a Baneblade and a Revenant Titan back in 5th in a 2500 point tournament and things were fine. There were only 6ish people in this tournament, and one guy didn't have any super heavies. He ran 2500 points of Salamanders specifically to kill them (and it was hilarious when he seized, dropped in, and exploded the Revenant Titan top of 1). Strength D worked slightly different, and so did superheavies, but overall I expect the experience to be similar with how it would be now. As long as there's not a Reaver or a Phantom on the other end of the table (in games under say 5,000 points), I don't see a problem (also note - none of those are in Escalation as approved for 40k use). The book even gives another Warlord traits table for your opponent to roll on and every trait on it gives the warlord + his/her unit a huge boost against super heavies.
I think only the thunderhawk, revenant titan, and flying gargantuans might end up being too disruptive for regular play, but guess how you find out? I'm looking forward to the next 1850 singles tournament at BG, I've got a Transcendant C'tan who'd like to shake hands with things and stuff. I agree 100% with Chase on this one, we're like e-besties now.