LVO 2018 summary

[WoollyMammoth]

Had a great time at LVO this year. 





TOP FINAL RESULTS


Winner was Vanguard Wing. Half of the top 10 are Tzeentch. ..

SCORING
The tournament was 7 games. The scoring was unique, you received only 7 points for a major scenario win.

They gave a set of cards out with secret objectives. You received 4 points for starting the objective, then you had to notify your opponent (so they might have a chance to stop you from completing it). If you fully completed your objective, you received 6 points.  The cards were things like "kill a specific hero with your specific hero" or "reduce a specific unit to 0 wounds". They were diverse and interesting. As the games went on, you were running out of cards that were easier for your army and it became more difficult to select a card. This made you think a lot more, and made the games more engaging when you are losing. I managed to get all 6 in all 7 games!

Each scenario also had 2 set objectives, such as kill one enemy wizard or have more models in your opponents territory then them. These were pretty simple and were often repeated between scenarios.

With the 7 + 6 + 2, the maximum score per round was 15 points.

MY GAMES
I went with Flesh Eater Courts and placed 46 .. I expected as much.  There was a very sad death turnout (with good reason). Maybe 4 players? Regardless, my games were diverse and interesting. My worst game was probably against Ironjaws, and that was because I failed a major gamble. I struggled against the "-1 to hit everything" Nurgle list, and an Aetherstrike Force, but both were interesting games. I Manged a major win against horror-heavy Tzeentch, Murderhost+Gore Pilgrims Khorne with 90 bloodletters, and a Ancient/Durthu/Drycha Sylvaneth. Overall the games were a lot of fun.

THOUGHTS ON THE TOURNAMENT
The feel was different this year. I felt GW's presence last year, this year they were behind a black curtain. Chris from the painting videos was the only person I saw in a GW shirt. 7 games was a bit much, not sure why they added a game. I have to note that the loudspeaker was insanely loud and annoying - there would be regular intervals where you had to pause and wait 30 seconds for them to stop announcing 40k stuff so you could communicate with your opponent. Because of the 7 games and the unique scoring, it felt like a more laid back kind of tournament like you would expect from a narrative event, but the painting competition was like an arbitrary thing where they quickly picked out 10 armies while everyone was scrambling to eat lunch during the one hour break we would get between all day non-stop gaming. I saw many armies on beautiful displays which could easily have been on a best painted table but were not picked. 

With all the extra complexity, I think we needed a longer games, a lot of people were strapped for time tying to balance all the stuff at once in 2.5 hours. I think they should stick to 6 games and give a little bit more time. I enjoyed the narrative aspect of the scoring, but I'm sure a lot of competitive people found it annoying. As a painter, I wish they would start doing more of an organized and properly judged painting competition to make the tournament have more of a draw to hobbyists. Right now the event seems like its trying to not be to overly competitive, while not being a great hobby event either, so it kind of feels like it dosen't know what its trying to be.

40k had a trophy for the best placing in every army. I feel like AoS could do with the best placing in each Grand Alliance at least. Again they made an amazing 'wooden spoon' trophy (a beautiful carved wooden axe signed by everyone), leading some people to deliberately throw games to try and lose the tournament, which is unfortunate.  

Overall, it was just good fun. All the games were enjoyable. They did a great job organizing it. I appreciate all the effort they put in to make the tournament more unique and interesting, and all the hard work to make it work out.
 

[svnvaldez]

13 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Right now the event seems like its trying to not be to overly competitive, while not being a great hobby event either, so it kind of feels like it dosen't know what its trying to be.

Lvo is my favorite event of the year. I had a blast. agree with all of the above but this quote could not be more accurate.

[Killax]

5 minutes ago, svnvaldez said:

Lvo is my favorite event of the year. I had a blast. agree with all of the above but this quote could not be more accurate.

I think this might be the current case for the AoS side of LVO because a whole lot of rules within AoS arn't that clear and in events like this nobody will truely enjoy rules disputes. 
What we both know is that even if this FAQ came a week earlier the outcome of LVO would likely have been very different.

It's both a blessing and a boon in my eyes. If AoS would have more watertight rules the game could be easier played more competitive. But time will tell.

At the same time what I think LVO did highlight very well for both AoS and 40K is to highlight flaws in their system and because of that I think it remains a very functional way to alter both games a little with the outcome. With this in mind though I also think that ultimately LVO-like games are still not great for the growth potential of AoS. It just doesn't function equally just yet on a ultra-competitive level. What I mean by this is that the power balance isn't scaled the same way for all available factions/Allegiances/Batteltomes.

[Stevewren]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

. It just doesn't function equally just yet on a ultra-competitive level. What I mean by this is that the power balance isn't scaled the same way for all available factions/Allegiances/Batteltomes.

It never has been and never will be. What you will start to see is a more rigorous internal play testing. The Maggotkin book has allegedly been tested and reviewed better, which, when you look at the warscrolls, is easy to believe. It lacks the obvious pure power build of Tzeentch and KO, which will hopefully make the lists better and more varied. However it doesn't solve issues with earlier books. 

Also the rules are never written with the tournament scene at the fore. One of the great things about AoS for me is that the rules are written with the theme of the army in mind. This is why Fyreslayers are such a disappointing army for me. 

[Killax]

51 minutes ago, Stevewren said:

It never has been and never will be. What you will start to see is a more rigorous internal play testing. The Maggotkin book has allegedly been tested and reviewed better, which, when you look at the warscrolls, is easy to believe. It lacks the obvious pure power build of Tzeentch and KO, which will hopefully make the lists better and more varied. However it doesn't solve issues with earlier books. 

Also the rules are never written with the tournament scene at the fore. One of the great things about AoS for me is that the rules are written with the theme of the army in mind. This is why Fyreslayers are such a disappointing army for me. 

The thing is that it has the ability to go that route. This isn't fixed with playtesting but instead adapting core rules who magnify where the 'issues' lie within the game. Note that they arn't really issues but they are highlighting the strongest rule assets.

I like the Maggotkin of Nurgle book, it's a nice army and has some great design. One thing that is highlighted for me though is that becuase other as the Plagueclaw there is no real ranged offense so great as the army is it too skips on the strongest phase of the game. 

Lastly, and I am suprised by this last notion, I don't really know why Fyreslayers are dissapointing for you. A faction with a small model line will logically lead to less army build flexability because there simply arn't that many units to choose from. So when you filter for example factions who are made up of two model lines you still basically see the same effect. There is a very narrow selection of ultra-competitive units and or Battalions, the latter is sometimes non at all.

[SeanMaguire1991]

6 hours ago, Killax said:

I like the Maggotkin of Nurgle book, it's a nice army and has some great design.

The Maggotkin book in my opinion is the best of the battle tomes so far because made improvements on out of date warscrolls and everything felt better for it. 

I hope this is a sign of more tightly constructed works in future.

[Drofnum]

I had a good time at LVO(minus one opponent), did okay for my first tournament with a list i knew wasnt super competitive.  I didnt really enjoy the amount of objectives to keep track of though, they seemed to really slow the games down, I think I may have had 1 game all weekend that actually finished all 5 rounds and I definitely had at least one opponent purposely slowing a game down to avoid playing turns 4/5 as he was in a really bad position for those turns but up on points.

I think if they had just had the secret objectives that would have been plenty, 7 games was a lot and 6 with a bit more time would probably be way more reasonable.  All in all a very enjoyable weekend though, I got to meet some cool people and play some new armies I hadnt seen before, It's just too bad there arent more events near me!

[Stevewren]

9 hours ago, Killax said:

Lastly, and I am suprised by this last notion, I don't really know why Fyreslayers are dissapointing for you. A faction with a small model line will logically lead to less army build flexability because there simply arn't that many units to choose from. So when you filter for example factions who are made up of two model lines you still basically see the same effect. There is a very narrow selection of ultra-competitive units and or Battalions, the latter is sometimes non at all.

Its nothing to do with the army competitively but all to do with what you read in the book and what happens on the tabletop: 

"Charging into battle without hesitation, screaming war cries at a cowering foe while hefting enormous war-axes, the Fyreslayers are the descendants of the shattered warrior god Grimnir. They bear runes of shining ur-gold hammered into their flesh – ur-gold which, they believe, contains the very essence of Grimnir himself, giving the incredible strength for which they are notorious. Their fury in combat and unbreakable oaths are legend, and their axes are feared – berserk warriors born for war, the Fyreslayers burn with Grimnir’s fury!"

What you get instead are huge unbreakable blocks that soak up more damage than a Nurgle unit, not berserk furious dwarfs with lots of attacks and not much save. 

To me they are the equivalent of 7th/8th Ed Orcs. An army that was supposed to be a charging fighting mass of bodies that was actually the finest gun line in the game and couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag 

 

[generalchaos34]

1 hour ago, Stevewren said:

Its nothing to do with the army competitively but all to do with what you read in the book and what happens on the tabletop: 

"Charging into battle without hesitation, screaming war cries at a cowering foe while hefting enormous war-axes, the Fyreslayers are the descendants of the shattered warrior god Grimnir. They bear runes of shining ur-gold hammered into their flesh – ur-gold which, they believe, contains the very essence of Grimnir himself, giving the incredible strength for which they are notorious. Their fury in combat and unbreakable oaths are legend, and their axes are feared – berserk warriors born for war, the Fyreslayers burn with Grimnir’s fury!"

What you get instead are huge unbreakable blocks that soak up more damage than a Nurgle unit, not berserk furious dwarfs with lots of attacks and not much save. 

To me they are the equivalent of 7th/8th Ed Orcs. An army that was supposed to be a charging fighting mass of bodies that was actually the finest gun line in the game and couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag 

 

I guess that really depends on your definition of Beserker, I would see them as being tanky because they are able to take massive amounts of damage without falling.  Others would see it as a that barbarian conan-esque human blender. If you're going by the traditional historical view its the Nordic or Germanic Bear Warriors, who fought in battle without armor and would shrug off damage in their trance like fury, mostly because they rubbed a toxic plant on their skin that would kill their nerves, and they donned bear skins in battle so that their comrades would know to stay away and not get accidentally killed. I personally like the way Fyreslayers play, I just think they would be a bit more interesting if they shifted them slightly less hordy.  Also artillery would be nice (lava cannons anyone?)

 

Back to the topic in hand though. From people I knew who went they said that slow play was a nasty cancer that has grown in both AoS and 40k, especially with the way ITC missions are run for points. Also apparently some guy was using loaded dice. It would appear after the 40k top table debacle and everything else that everything was weird at LVO this year, maybe the booze was tainted....

[WoollyMammoth]

AoS is absolutely a competitive game. I had zero rule disputes all weekend, only GM questions were about how the scenarios work. There are a few things which are confusing, a lot of them are already clarified in a FAQ, but they are few and far between, compared to WHFB where the rules were legit undecipherable and left forever to be unsolved.

There is no better case than the fact that Andrew Standiferd won two years in a row with the same faction (Stormcast). He is a brilliant player and beat out the competition to take first two years straight. 

I'm not going to say there is not imbalance, obviously Andrew was blessed with his faction getting a broken battalion this year. Even so, there was A LOT of Vanguard Wings at the tournament, but he was the only one in the top 10. 

Games are not so simple as "I bought the overpowered net list, ha ha i win". In my opinion games are 50% skill 30% list and 20% luck. The list issue is that sometimes you are just at a disadvantage do to a bad match-up. Broken lists are ones that blanket most armies into a bad match-up no matter what.  When I was playing against Aetherstrike Force, I was at a massive disadvantage that felt like I was trying to beat down a brick wall with my bare hands. I wasted a turn becasue I had never played that battalion before and I didn't quite understand it. Regardless, at the end of the game I nearly tabled him and achieved all my objectives. Because of the particular scenario, he got more points and got a major over me. In a lot of other battlelplans it would have been 15 points, but I got 8 points due to getting a bad scenario and a bad matchup at once. My best games were against Tzeentch, 90 bloodletters and unkilalble treelord sylvaneth, which I never would have expected to do well against. My worst games were against Ironjaws and Ogor allegiance, and mostly due to my own decisions. 

Nurgle is extremely good. They have so many tools at their disposal, and with all the 5++ they are a clear contender to Tzeentch and their obscene mortal output. There were several Nurgle players who didn't quite know what they were doing yet. I played one list, and it was horrific, and even so he forgot to make me do a lot of stuff. Nurgle is going to be a big thing for a long time. As far as shooting, they have some solid options. The Plagueclaw Catapult might be their 'only thing' but it is incredibly good. they have the death heads thing or Marauder Horsemen at a shorter range. Allied Ungor Raiders are horrific option that I think is going to get big. How about just a list of  300 marauders protected by 5++ from a hero you cant see behind a great unclean one? What if all those marauders were also -1 to hit in combat? It took some time for people to figure out how to ruin peoples lives with Tzeentch ...... the time of Nurgle is right around the corner.