LVO, Day Three

You vs. the guy she tells you not to worry about.

I am so tired. This city is exhausting, and so strange, and so full of people. A lot of those people are playing 40k! A lot! One of them is me.

Today was the second day of the LVO Friendly. Also I turn thirty tomorrow, and we're in Las Vegas, so last night we all went out and got very drunk. We woke up at 7:00 this morning and bought a couple of seven dollar coffees and went to the top floor of Bally's to play some more 40k, hungover as shit.

My first matchup was against Sisters of Battle! Which was very exciting to me! They were all old pewter models and the guy playing them was super into them. He brought along a foppish inquisitor and some old-ass Vindicares, as well. Playing against this army was a very good time.

I was the Attacker so I deployed pretty aggressively, which has been working out pretty well this weekend so far. I pushed into his line immediately. His two Exorcists were what worried me the most--those things fire 3d3 shots at strength 8 and do 1d6 damage each. That was going to rip through my Dreadknights like paper. I needed to clear them out before my Paladins touched down.

"Saving on 2s"

Fortunately (but tragically for my opponent), both Exorcists whiffed entirely on his first turn of shooting. I think I lost, like, two Terminators. It gave me an extra turn to rush his forces and start engaging his troops.

When my Paladins did finally hit the table they did so in cover to secure an objective. I'm not sure why, but every army I face always aims their snipers at my poor Brotherhood Ancient. Grand Master Simandus and Brother Captain Zar Nayal are always right next to him, but my opponents never shoot them! They always go for the banner. I think it's because I describe him as having a "smite that always does a d6 damage." Or maybe Simandus' battle colors just really piss people off. Whatever the case, my Brotherhood Ancient took two Vindicares to the face the moment he hit the board.

Look at that foppish Inquisitor back there.

We killed Celestine.

Then we killed Celestine again.

"STOP SHOOTING MY FRIENDS."

The audacity of this woman.

My opponent made one really fascinating play here. He heroically intervened his Dialogus into my GMNDK and I was like, "what?" I thought he had some secret stratagem or something, but the Dialogus just smacked me with a stick and I said, "okay, cool, I guess. Here's 23 damage from a Nemesis Greatsword." Then he revealed his hidden objective.

Clever bastard.

I ended up killing the majority of his army aside from a little conclave of Battle Sisters and a Canoness hiding in a ruin, and some Seraphim that had split off to claim Linebreaker.

I won this one, but just barely. He played his objectives really well. It was a jolly game where I got to see a lot of cool new tricks from an army that I don't know well at all, and both of us had a ton of fun. It was that relaxing, chill kind of game where we were helping each other out with each other's strategies and abilities. You know what I mean by that? When you're having such a good time that you just want to see your opponent use all of their neat tools, even if it means your own destruction? At one point he went to roll damage from an Exorcist onto my psychic VenDread and I stopped him and reminded him that he had a miracle die showing a 6. He was like, "ah! Right!" That six damage killed my Dreadnought and we both felt good about it.

After this game we took a break for lunch. While grabbing a gyro I learned that Derek actually vomited his guts out after being force fed Eldar Forge World soup. Vegas is weird and hot and you never eat or drink water and everything feels stuffy and uugghh. Derek took all his clothes off and closed the blinds and just passed out in the hotel room at like 2:30 in the afternoon, which I guess should illustrate how sick he was. We all handle hangovers differently.

The lunch break was only like 45 minutes and the Friendly is held on the 26th floor of Bally's, which is a lot of fucking legwork. Also the elevator to our floor doesn't go up to the 26th, for some reason, so we have to go down to the lobby first if ever we need to head back to our room to grab some dice or see if Derek died or whatever.

I got back up to the Friendly and found my pairing. At this point, I was feeling super confident. I checked Best Coast Pairings and was elated to see that after the third round I was first, out of eighty-two players!

GREY KNIGHTS

What a day! Only one round to go! I was running a bit behind so I quickly looked up my pairings and went to my table. Then I saw this.

Oof

OOF

Somebody brought double Executioners and nine goddamn Eliminators to the LVO Friendly. This is an Imperial Fists (not a successor chapter, mind you, but straight Imperial Fists) meta list being run in the same event where my friend John is running fucking Corsairs. On top of that, our table looked like this:

His Executioners had line of sight to literally everywhere on the map. And I couldn't take cover because, you know, Imperial Fists. This was essentially a completely open battlefield, and he was going first. So I decided, YOLO.

There was no point in hiding so I figured I'd just deploy as close as I could to him and try to play objectives and engage him in melee.

There is a Chapter Master and a Master of Sanctity with the Eye of Hypnoth tucked in with those Executioners, because why ever miss any shots or wounds ever.

At the end of round one, I only had my GMNDK and four Terminators left on the board.

I dropped in my Paladins and my characters. There is something so crushing and just depressing about knowing that you can't take cover from your opponent and that they get additional AP against you just for playing the game. I knew full well that any model I placed on the table was going to die--there was no question about it. All I could do was hope that my 5++ saves kept me around long enough to score objectives.

It was honestly so brutal that I forgot to take a lot of pictures or take any notes. He would just point at my units and I would remove them from play. At the end of turn 4, Simandus was the only Grey Knight standing. I had killed a total of seven Space Marines.

There was a long discussion about whether or not he is technically out of line of sight of those tanks back there. He is.

I realized, though, that despite the cataclysmic loss of life on my side, we were actually neck and neck in points. The way the mission works I had successfully prevented the Fists player from drawing cards that he could play, and I had done a good job of scoring objectives myself. He was at 9 VP and I was at 7. On my fifth turn, I played Behind Enemy Lines and Big Game Hunter. Simandus was back in my opponent's deployment zone already, so if the game ended after this turn I would score Linebreaker as well.

I could actually win this.

Grand Master Simandus stepped out of the ruins into a hail of gunfire. He hefted the Blade of Doom Mons and charged one of the tanks that had coldly annihilated so many of his brothers. But in that last fateful moment his rage had blinded him, and the tinted machine spirit of the Astartes tank erupted in a vengeful fireball. Simandus fell, and the battle was lost. We rolled for continuation, and the game ended after round five.

I was this close to beating a meta Imperial Fists list. Gah! If my opponent hadn't rolled a 6 to explode,  if Simandus had survived just a few more seconds, I would've snagged 2 VP and gone undefeated the entire weekend. All in all, I was happy with that loss. After the battle my opponent told me that was the toughest fight he had had all weekend, and that he was really sweating there for a minute. He went on to be awarded "3rd Best General" and got the prize that accompanied such an accolade.

wait a minute, what the fuck

LVO, Day Two

Our Warlords: Jon's Autarch, my Grand Master, and Derek's Phobos Librarian

The second day of LVO! Wow, wow wow. This is an exhausting weekend. We woke up at 7:30 and scarfed down some eggs before heading upstairs to the tournament.

First and foremost, we had to look at all of the beautiful armies that were on display.

That's just a bunch of birds in the lower right!

Mind controlled Genestealers in an Orks list.

I saw this silver shine and at first I thought there was going to be another Grey Knights player. But I realized those were Repulsors and not Land Raiders and became disappointed. Then I looked closer...

What the hell?

This guy was running Space Marines, themed as Grey Knights! His army was full of conversions and symbology of the 666th but he was using the Space Marine Codex! At first I was offended, but then I saw his Draigo/Guilliman.

Look at how absolutely gorgeous that is. What a phenomenal hobbyist. I hope he does really great.

At 10:30 the first round started.

Sparse!

My first matchup was against Imperial Soup. He was running Knights, a Loyal 32, and an Ultramarines detachment.

We rolled up Search and Destroy on this board. My deployment zone was absolutely barren. Fortunately I was the Attacker so I was going first. I decided, "fuck it. I'm just gonna pressure him right out of the gate. Fuck Knights."

It worked.

Dropped his Knight on turn two.

No more Guardsmen. Just a Lord Commissar in the way of those juicy Space Marines.

Simandus moves in and makes a charge against a Thunderfire Cannon.

Dead Armigers.

I just pushed into his my opponent's backline and brachiated from unit to unit with my Paladins and my Grand Master. His units kept having to fall back and I kept taking ground.

Clearing everything out around his Warlord.

Simandus personally handles the Vindicare that was picking off my HQs.

Everything went my way. I made charges, I scored objectives, I denied him his objectives. I didn't let up the pressure and it worked. My opponent's Gravis Captain had a 3++, though, and he was proving especially tricky, so I surrounded him with units to smite him to death.

My GMNDK went to smite, and he Perils'd and killed himself. His head exploded and he killed both Simandus and my opponent's Warlord, which was fucking hilarious. We both had a good laugh.

This game was really fun. A very good match that really boosted my confidence. I won 22-5.

We were then exhausted, so we got some lunch at a place called "La Pizza."

My next matchup was against Imperial Fists. I walked up and saw green marines and asked the guy, "cool, what's the name of your successor chapter?" And he responded with "I don't know. Nothing yet."

Man. Imperial Fists. They are some motherfuckers. He had two squads of Suppressors, two squads of Eliminators, and a ton of Stalker Bolt Rifles. And Hellblasters! I felt genuinely nervous. I knew I was screwed if I tried to take cover, or if I tried to charge him. I resolved to play cagey.

Spearhead deployment.

He aced my two Dreadknights turn one. I hid.

He screened me really well. I saw this hole in the middle of his line and thought, "man, if this were next week I could use Dynamic Insertion and land right in the middle there." I'm very excited for Ritual of the Damned. Anyway, his guns tore through anything they looked at. I knew that this mob of guys was going to go up into my line and ruin everyone. So I threw my GMNDK into his backline and hoped that he would turn around and engage him.

3++, baby.

But he didn't! He kept going forward and shot my Dreadnought to death. But I didn't mind. That just meant I was deep striking my Paladins in his backline, as well. I kept staying hidden and taking objectives, picking off whatever units I needed to score points.

Meanwhile my dead-pile continued to grow.

I kept playing cagey, and pushing deep into him to hope that I could draw fire to my survivable units. Simandus performed like an absolute weapon and killed three characters and two Intercessor squads. I drew his ire--he wanted Simandus dead.

Simandus' last act in this game was to Gate the last living Paladin into a ruin on the other side of the map. We went into round seven. My opponent had 1000+ points left on the field, and I had one model hiding behind a wall.

"Shh, I'm not here."

My dead-pile.

I won.

24-17, guys. I was all but tabled, and I won. I played the shit out of the objectives denied my opponent as much as I could. He was a little salty about it at the end there.

I won! I won both of my games today! As Grey Knights!

I have to end it here because it's my birthday and it's Vegas and my friends are drawing me out to the Strip.

Talk again tomorrow.