This year’s Road to LVO series is sponsored by Frontline Gaming.

Welcome back to part two of my Road to LVO. For this entry, I attended the Games Workshop event in Tacoma Washington. I’ve tried to attend a GW event every year, because they put on a good show. I wasn’t going to go this year, as Edmonton would require more work than I felt would be worth it, and unfortunately Texas doesn’t feel very safe right now given the current political climate. I wasn’t even going to go to Tacoma due to Rob “The Chirurgeon” Jones informing me how damned expensive it was. However a few of my usual summer events fell through and if I didn’t go I would have a major GT from Adepticon in March to Nova in August/September so with time (and money) opening up I elected to head to Tacoma.

In a bit of serendipity, Rob had a room he put his money down on but didn’t have a roommate so we were able to share the place and I wouldn’t need to stress about that part since hotels for this event sell out notoriously fast.

Getting In

Shout outs to my dad for being willing to take me in and out of the hellish Logan airport in Boston. We have an almost regular ritual where I go down to my parent’s place after work, stay the night then we head in the next morning. I gifted him a bottle of Whiskey for his trouble and we shared a glass.

I got in early to Washington on Thursday, no real drama thankfully. The event didn’t start till Friday, and Sigmar was only Saturday and Sunday but I had another reason for going. I have a dear online friend, Cody, who I’ve known for over 25 years but remarkably was never able to head out in his area of the woods. So I got into the airport around 11 AM and met him and his boyfriend Hayden. At their suggestion we headed to the Museum of Pop Culture which is a blast and I highly recommend it to anyone who happens to be in the area.

It’s also conveniently right next to the Space Needle which obviously we had to go to so we hit that up as well. I’m terrified of heights but I try and work through it whenever I can so as to not miss out.

Rob didn’t get in until late so I hit up the GW event to grab my swag. I met up with Campbell “SRM” McLaughlin and pub crawled with a few other locals that night, started off in some very cool places, ended up in a place that smelt like cat piss so we got one drink and then headed back to the hotel.

Friday was pretty boring since there wasn’t any Sigmar event so I spent most of the day in the room getting caught up on stuff on my laptop. I

Age of Sigmar GT Day 1

So a refresher from last article. I’ve had a rough go with Bonereapers since 4th dropped, while at the tail end of third edition they were really strong and needed some tuning I haven’t really adapted to their new rules. They’re very punishing to making mistakes and I am far from a perfect player. You usually have very few models and they run for a higher point cost than average. You get what you pay for, they are great statlines, but a few bad dice and you really feel it. Every lost model means that it probably isn’t coming back, because the high wound count makes Rally impractical. Add on that the army doesn’t have access to teleportation or much in the way of deep strike, it’s pretty much good, honest Warhammer. I push my castle onto the objective and hold the line, and hope it’s good enough against you.

My List - Click to Expand

I eventually settled on this list basing it off my previous experience with the army at Adepticon. Katakros remains a mandatory must-take, as his toolkit of abilities (including the 18″ Relentless Discipline) and actually being a solid fighter in his own right makes him essential. The Soulmason is the best caster, being 2 casts and coming with his own incredibly good warscroll spell.

Then for units I settled on Archai and Immortis Guard. Archai actually went down in points in the new GHB and a reinforced unit probably does the most damage of anything in the book. Immortis Guard keep Katakros alive, letting him get a 4+ Ward in combat.

With the leftover 450 points I settled on another caster and reinforced Stalkers. I’m not terribly in love with Stalkers right now, but 4 attacks per model at Rend 2 Damage 1 before any boosts is solid. They also sit on points really well since one of their combat stances gives -1 to be hit.

Round 1 – Leo Rautonen (Nighthaunt) – Mission: Bountiful Equinox

Army List - Click to Expand

Leo was a great opponent, but this match was like going back to First edition Age of Sigmar. He gave me first go, and I figured with an objective in the middle there really wasn’t a whole lot for me to do but go set up camp on the frontline and try and make an early play. I got a really strong start, getting full score and 2 battle tactics. Underdog in this mission isn’t too bad, since it heals both players he never wanted to proc it.

After that though, it basically was just standing my ground hoping to deflect enough of his hits while taking out enough of his guys. I came close on a few tries, but because Nighthaunt don’t much care about rend (something OBR are good at) it basically was playing the slots. I could gin things a bit in my favor with the Bone-tithe Shrieker to skip past their Ward saves, but it still was just too many dudes. At Round 3 it was pretty clear I had lost enough he would be able to push right through so I conceded at that point.

Result: Loss 43 – 78

Round 2 – Kekoa Porte (Sons of Behemat) – Mission: Roiling Roots

Army List - Click to Expand

I don’t like fighting Sons of Behemat. Fighting them pretty much is a DPS check, trying to kill one a turn so you can make up the score in the back half of the match. OBR don’t have the highest damage output. It’s consistently good damage output, but its not always very high. Still there were a lot of things I have to chalk up to my own mistakes.

The biggest was figuring the far flank objectives were a waste of time so I focused on the middle two, which meant that he would certainly do the same thing. I tried to send my Archai up to tip toe onto the point, and he responded by redeploying onto the objective. An absolutely obvious move I somehow didn’t realize until after I finished my movement phase, so I only finished with 2 objectives.

That pretty much summed up most of the match, no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t seem to catch up. I’d come close to killing one (single digit wounds remaining) but that would mean I was stuck fighting for another round and not capturing objectives. Although the score looks pretty dismal it was pretty close up until about round 4. He only had Brodd left but I was completely out of viable ways to kill him and had to concede.

Result: Loss 27-72

Round 3 – Steven Morgan (Slaves to Darkness) – Mission: Surge of Slaughter

Army List - Click to Expand

Yeah I was um…quite confused by the list myself. Points for originality, he saw the new sub-faction Surge of Ghyran brought that gives +2 attacks to Chaos Lords and went “what if I ran nothing but those?”

The challenge with fighting all heroes is that damage allocation becomes a huge pain in the ass, if you’re in a huge melee you’re gonna need to break up attacks and do that damage on the fly. Luckily I had a pretty good idea of how much damage my stuff does so I broke up the damage pretty well. The huge downside for the player running a list like this, other than the free Command Point you’re giving them, is the fact that you don’t get to swing with many things. Slaves to Darkness do have a Strike Last spell which Steven used quite well, but OBR are pretty much designed to weather hits like that and I would dispatch a wave of them before sending in another. He did a last ditch effort with his Exalted Hero who transformed into a Demon Prince right into Katakros, and then proceeded to roll 4 1s on the hit dice. Ouch.

Result: Win 54 – 20

But with that I got my first victory, finally. Still didn’t feel great that I won against a meme list but that just meant I’d have to make up for it tomorrow. I waited for everyone else in the Goonhammer crew to finish up and we headed over to the Rock Wood. I had a Veggie pizza and a Pineapple Express (Mezcal, Pineapple Juice and Ginger Beer) and a Lucid Dreams (Tequila, Peach Liqueur and Watermelon Red Bull). Hell of a way to finish the night.

Day 2

Woke up, showered, met Rob downstairs for breakfast (Garden Omelette this time) and then dashed over to the event hall for my first game.

Round 4 – Benjamin Boardman (Skaven) – Mission: Lifecycle

Army List - Click to Expand

Oh Boy I was not looking forward to this one. Lifecycle requires you to constantly be on the move, since the “primary” objective Cycles in a clockwise direction. OBR don’t much like that, it’s a slow army that needs to move like a unit. I decided to try and focus on scoring high early and whittle down enough of his stuff.

I split Vokmortian along with the Stalkers to the right side and everyone else went to the left, capturing all the objectives I could from the outset for a full score first turn. Since Benjamin was underdog he chose the first Prime objective to be my left, since thats also where most of his stuff was. Probably the smart play, keep it in his territory on Round 3.

I knew Rat Ogor melee could be pretty terrifying, but I was rather surprised that their flamethrowers. Even OBR will get a little concerned when it’s rend -2. Luckily I was less worried about them in melee and I pretty handedly batted them away with the help of the Morghast. I then proceeded to rotate my castle to his back line while he shifted further ahead to try and anticipate me.

It mostly came down to the wire in round 5. When he used his Gnawholes to appear in my backline objective (the final Primary) I moved my Immortis Guard to the center. I Sent Katakros into the far right objective as a sacrificial lamb and managed to roll an incredible 10″ Charge with the Immortis Guard to catch those pesky clan rats. By killing them I finished his last  chance at catching up and clutched victory.

Result: Win 49 – 41

I honestly think I shouldn’t have won that. It was a poor mission for me and my opponent had some dogshit dice rolls. But I made the most of a bad situation and was pretty happy to try and at least clutch a winning record.

Round 5 – Nicholas Owens (Skaven) – Mission: Grasp of Thorns

Army List - Click to Expand

Another bad mission for me, another Skaven match up. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to handle this one, because the way the objectives are spread out makes it really difficult for me to grab 3 of them. This list had fewer ranged weapons, which was at least something, but those Jezzails can spoke pretty hard and he definitely has way more ability to move around the board than I do.

This was the first game where I got to choose priority so I gave it to him first, figuring he could blast me off the board early and we could go home and I’d weather the storm. He planted his Warp Lightning Vortex right in the middle of the board and moved up with his Rat Ogors, who actually made a long bomb charge into my Archai. This ended up being a mistake as between them and the Immortis Guard they quickly picked up both the endless spell and the Rat Ogors. I then pushed up on my turn and hoped to keep the momentum.

Round 2 was a crucial turning point as I managed to dispel a Skitterleap for his Bell and when he attempted to charge my Stalkers on the right with Doom-Flayers he rolled a 3, Kat was able to deny him a reroll which left them standing in the open. On my turn I charged the Doom-Flayers with my Stalkers and Katakros and the Archai took down his Bell and Brood Terror. On a later round the Immortis Guard managed to put down Thanquol thanks to the Bone-tithe Shrieker reducing his Ward, and Katakros again shutting down a Skitterleap cast in my turn. At that point he gracefully conceded and I managed to pull off a another victory despite having to very awkwardly finagle my army to all 4 corners of the board.

Result: Win 58 – 46

It felt pretty good to walk away with a 3-2 after such a bad record at Adepticon. I figured maybe I was on the upswing again. To finish things up the Goonhammer crew all headed out to Berliner Beerhall. I was able to get an Impossible Sausage and an excellent Cider cocktail to cap things off.

Looking Ahead

I took away a couple lessons from this event, in hindsight:

• My Battle Tactics Sucked: The First tactic of each card was a slam dunk, it’s why I picked them. Attuned to Ghyran just needs 2 units in the middle, very easy turn one. Similarly Wrathful Cycles just requires you have more objectives than your opponent. Generally doable if you’re made to go first (which my opponents usually make me do). After that they become quite difficult. I either need to learn to sandbag a little so I can actually complete Wrathful Cycles, or swap. Intercept and Recover seems like a good option, worst case scenario they keep 3 units out of the fight, best case scenario they send them to get picked off by my Archai.
• Which Army? I’m still debating if I want Soulblight or Ossiarchs for LVO. I’ve always been ride or die for OBR so I’m hesitant to give up on them now, when the army’s not even doing that badly. I feel like I got a better hold on them this weekend than I have all edition and it’s probably worth it to keep trying. If I stick with them I’ll probably pull some extra kits I have out of storage to paint up some new ones, as these guys have taken a beating in their constant flights.

Next up I’ll be preparing for NOVA before I head to LVO. I have a local RTT the first weekend of August so check back to see how that went!

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