Hey everyone, I am back home safely from the LVO. Taking at-home covid tests like they’re candy but, hey. That’s where we are at, right? I previously wrote about my list and the build-up to LVO in my Road to LVO article, and today I’ll be talking about how everything turned out.

So.

Spoilers: First off, congrats to Gavin Grigar for winning the entire thing, and the Age of Sigmar ITC season at the same time! Hella proud of you. Also, congrats to my friends James O’Brian, Jiwan Noah-Singh, and Nate Trentanelli for all making the top 8, what legends.

I wrote about my list building process previously but as a refresher this is what I brought:

JoeK's list - click to expand

Round 1: First Blood vs. Josh Bennett – Morathi and the Bowsnakes Ft. Gotrek

Josh's List - Click here to expand

I won priority for round 2. Dropped Fulminators in and tried to charge into some snakes, failed. Did 3 damage to Morathi, and got ready for her next charge.

Gotrek got stuck around a hill and Morathi wasn’t able to finish her intended targets in the shooting, and so had to charge back in, ignoring the Fulminators.

I won priority turn 3.

Dragon-shot Morathi’s final 3 wounds off, and she finally went down. The Fulminators finally connected on the charge, tagging 1 Fulminator into the 15 Blood Stalkers, losing 1 to unleash hell, but with their attacks, even 1 Fulminator brought down 14 out of15 Stalkers. Gotrek was still running in circles around the center of the table, trying to punch off a bunch of dragons in the middle, doing angry dwarf things. While the Fulminators and dragons kited around him for a few turns.

I lost priority turn 5 and he had no way to get a secondary at this point. I ended the game killing his general, and keeping 1 last dragon unit alive, giving me my grand strategy, and losing him is, gaining me the win. All weekend, I had to explain how tight our game was, and how clenched we both were the entire time.

(He then went on to 4/1 placing above me as he rampaged through the lower bracket submarining himself back to the surface. Morathi and Gotrek were angry and needed 4 rounds to vent I heard… I am sorry to all his other opponents for revving that chainsa) 

Round 2: Power Struggle vs. Stuart Myers – Fight!

Stuart’s list - click to expand

My round 2 was into Ironjawz. (I forgot to take a photo of deployment, but i got one at the end of my first movement phase.)

This Ironjawz list was a bit off as it wasn’t ALL pigs, though the additional Rogue Idol was a neat add. This may have also been one of Stuart’s first events, and one of my local sparring partners has been running Ironjawz, so most of my practice games have been against them.

I outdrop him, and deploy on the line. Stuart deploys with everything on the line, and we begin.

I take “Slay the Warlord” secondary, and the draconic onslaught begins. Every dragon burns each of their once-per-game Herophase move. The knight burns her once-per-game hero phase “shoot a dragon unit” ability.

The Fulminators drop in along with Gardus Steelsoul.

After the dust clears from all the dragon fire in the shooting phase, The Maw-krusha is dead, and the Rogue Idol had some of its moss burnt off.

The charge phase happens and the fulminators fail their charge, but the rest of the Stormdrake Guard connect into the pigs. The dragons kill 3/6 pigs, 3 Ardboys in the back right hand corner, some more scrapes off the rogue idol, and the warboss on foot.

The rogue idol punches off a dragon or two he was fighting, and gets ready for his turn 1.

His army for the most part is stuck in combat at this points, so those stuck in, continue the fight, and the rogue idol clears the last dragons he was touching.

He wins priority, goes after slaying my warlord, and charges in the rogue idol back into my general. After Finest Hour, All Out Defence, and the 5+ ward from Gardus she doesn’t go down. The rest of the dragons continue their grind. My turn 2, my dragons flame and claw the rest of his army, ending the bottom of turn 2 with 2 of his ardboys left running along the back right hand side of the board, who is now staring down 5 dragons and 4 Fulminators.

We call it.

Round 3: The Vice vs. Collin Venables – New Maggotkin

Collin’s List - click to expand

I believe I gave him first turn. He moved up his board space more to the middle, executing the Ferocious Advance battle tactic. On my turn, I ferocious advance with 3 monster units. Deepstrike only the 4 fulminators, and they fail their charge with a re-roll.

He wins priority turn 2. He chooses Savage Spearhead , drops in his 2 flys into the gap behind my dragons after moving in the first turn, made in the backfield. Then charged the 4 fulminators that were left in the open after failing their charge, with Orghotts and 5 Blightkings. Orghotts kills 2 Fulminators and I pull the models that were closest to Orghots and the most Blightkings, allowing them to survive this endeavor.

On my turn, I take Bring It Down and the draconic onslaught begins. Gardus drops drown, and the dragons move up, ignoring the flies in my back field to go support the fulminators and steal one of his objectives on his objective in the bottom righthand side of the table from 5 Blightkings. The dragons burn and claw down Orghots and remove the 5 Blightkings in my face.

I believe I won priority here, and charged my fulminators into his 3 Rotbringer Sorcerers and the dragons start to fan out in more board control, 2 of which finished off one of his flies in the back field and the Nurglings he had summoned. More Blightkings make their way up and charge the fulminators, and we start to grind it out.

The objective moves to the center and he attempts to steal the objectives back from a Dragon and Gardus while trying to snipe a weakened dragon behind them, both objectives fail and I slay his general. With everything from his starting army dead, the game is over.

Round 4: Tectonic Interference vs. Jeremy LeFebvre

Jeremy’s list - click to expand

He fights with 2 units of Guard back to back. The dragons go next, kill some Guard, and the Guard fight on death. Assassins go and kill a dragon. It blows up, killing another model, when then promptly fights again. He activates, fights another unit.

Anyway, you get it. By the end of the battle round, 4/7 dragons have died, and 3 fulminators are dead. I won priority, retreated to score some objectives on turn two, and try to rally now that I am out of combat.

His turn 2, his entire remaining army shoots and charges mine. 1 dragon survives. I win priority and it looks like I can score no secondaries. Thinking about it now, i may have been able to do a SCE specific secondary, but I haven’t looked at them, and didn’t use them all event/ever.) he begins his 3rd turn, I fail to rally, and I tell him that we will roll priority. He would have probably tabled me this turn, and if he doubled me, I was for sure tabled before i get to go again. He agrees, and wins priority roll for turn 4, and we call it.

Round 5: Survival of the Fittest vs. Ben Riddle

Ben’s list - click to expand

Against Seraphon, Thunderlizards. So all my army reduces damage by one and has a lot of shots when he can get close. Fighting over 3 objectives, he set up far enough away from all the objectives that he would have to run to get onto the objectives and lose out on shooting. My first turn, my dragons almost mirror my Game 1 actions. Ferocious Advance, nothing dropped in but birds to land on an objective. My dragons retreat into/ and behind wildwoods terrain to gain cover, and since they can hide behind it as they are under 10 wounds and so cannot be targeted through the woods. We both take Ferocious Advance with 3 monsters.

My Knight-Draconis is safely far enough from any Stegadon to save herself behind her Mirrorshield, avoiding being targeted as well. His first turn, and so I avoided almost all damage that round. One of his Stegadons did shoot off the 3 Aether-wings.

He wins priority into round 2 and doubles me. His skinks move even further up into the middle, to target one of the dragons that was targetable but fully in cover. And the rest of the dragons still safely behind the wildwoods from further shots.

My turn 2 i pick “broken ranks” on the 20 skinks and drop in Gardus and the Fulminators. For the 4th /5 games my fulminators fail their rerollable 9” charge off the deepstrike,but with a pretty successful round of dragon fire, and combat, my dragons clear 20 skinks, and 20 summoned Saurus warriors that were summoned in rounds 1 and 2.

He wins priority again round 3. 2 Stegadons charge the fulminators and his Engine of the Gods charge into an injured dragon and 2 clean Stormdrake Guard. The injured drake goes down and the guard tear into the engine. My secondary for round 3 I pick Slay the Warlord and turn my dragon fire on the engine. The remaining fulminators shoot off one of the 2 Stegadons they’re currently battling. And the Knight-Draconis joins the fight against the last Stegadon fighting them and splits it in half, rend 3 dealing some solid work on said Stegadon.

The general falls to another squad of guard barreling into them and the last Stegadon, locking them up along with the squad of 5 saurus.

I win priority round 4, Rally 2 fulminators back into the unit (back up to 3) and chose Bring It Down as my secondary, and march the new fulminators up to croak, the last Stegadon and 5 Saurus Guard.

The dragon fire light up the last Stegadon, and after the last dragons charge it the fulminators connect into Kroak. The only surviving Seraphon are kroak and a skink in his pyramid tower in the back, and the game is all but over. Ending my round 5 of LVO and my 2021 ITC season.

Recap of the Season

My season started in AOS 2.0 with a local 4 round league. I met some people that were new to the area and new to the hobby while playing my old tried and true Disciples of Tzeentch. 4 great games, and ended up taking 1st going 3/1, Losing to a friend who ended up 2nd place also going 3/1 with his Ogor Mawtribes. (He doubled me and the mammoth stampede just went to town on all my frail tzeentchy bois…)

Then as covid restrictions started to ease, the Foxes released and I ran to an out of state RTT about an hour away and ran my Lumineth at their first event. Played against old Stormcast, old Ironjaws and Ogor Mawtribes. With 2 of the players fairly new and one a bit more experienced but had played me a handful of times in the past, knowing his Ogors couldnt do much against the fox-shaped terror, They cleanly carved their way to 3/0.

My Bugeater experience was also in this lineup but i cant seem to find my BCP information on it. I recall losing round 1 to Morathi and snakes, then running through Nighthaunt, Grand alliance order, Giants and Ogors. Ended the event at 4/1

This paved their way to my first Major event since Flying monkey the year before, with almost double the number of players since that event. It was my first time that far east since Serbia 2019. With a crazy Lineup of Nurgle, Knights of the Empty Throne, Sons of Behemat, another Knights of the Empty Throne (and the beginning of my round 4 rivalry with Anthony Trentanelli..) and Seraphon, Taking home the Best Order Hardware with a solid 4/1 (losing only to Anthony.) and finishing out Age of Sigmar 2.0

Age of Sigmar 3.0 has so far been a wild ride and I jumped off the deep-end with Saga of the Flame Cult (a Renegade event in Minnesota/my home town.) With some list altering since 2.0, my foxes ran through their first 3 rounds with relative ease. My first opponent brought Tzeentch, an army I know almost front to back. Round 2 was Ogors with no mammoths and Trolls for round 3. Day 2 however, pairing was done the night before but not all lists were submitted and I paired into a list I hadn’t played before. I mis-deployed and was could never quite get off the backfoot from an alpha by Teclis.  After going into round 5 with a 3/1, i paired into an old friend who had been reading my articles and asking around to find out what i was bringing so he could build to counter. I again mis-deployed and mis-played and he rightfully punished me for it, ending my first AOS event at 3/2.

Following close behind that I flew to Pennsylvania for a wild time at Summer Slaughter GT. After learning my lessons from Saga and another month of practice of 3.0 under my belt, My round 1 for my first endeavor in 3.0 versus Morathi, went swimmingly as the Foxes and sentinels took off her ranged shooting to counter me in the first turn and then danced around the remainder of the game with the foxes. Followed by one of the closest games ive had in all of AOS 3 against Deepkin with like.. 8-10 sharks. I do not like sharks, who shoot lots of guns hitting on 3’s rerolling 1’s and wounding on 2’s. LEAVE MY FOXES ALONE… as some might have said. 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds being against Fyreslayers and back to back giants, respectively. They were more combat armies that struggle to pin down wind spirits, and was able to end my first major of the season with a clean 5/0. (This event also kept track of “total units killed all event” for a separate trophy, and the foxes were hungry for it, killing all but 3 total units my 5 opponents had all weekend, but with back to back giants couldn’t quite catch back up. Still a great alternate trophy!)

As soon as i got back there was a local RTT I played in with the same list i just ran at Summer Slaughter, and the foxes weren’t tired yet. Still, I will probably never forget my round 2. Severith on finest hour and a fox splitting his shots into 2 mammoths. Out of the 8 shots hitting on 2’s, they missed 7, and Severith who was wounding on 2’s, failed to wound. He really has an attitude problem sometimes, I gotta be honest. But being 8-0 after 9 days I was Feeling IT.

This is when the Stormcast book released but there were no dragons yet, GW US Open: New Orleans. And the continued Rivalry of Anthony Trentanelli catching me in round 4 and pulling off some crazy nonsense and putting me into the dirt… That Belt of his he totes around these days is gonna be mine one of these days… After losing round 4 and the event having 3 undefeated players, My last round I didn’t feel I needed to take too seriously, and, after it was announced I was gonna play my old friend Scooter Walters and his Ironjaws… I think we had the loudest table that entire event. If you ever have a chance to play him, I would highly recommend it. But prepare for orruks to get as close as possible as fast as possible. Ending my first GW event with a 3/2.

Renegade Open, The primary event from Saga back in July, saw my first endeavor into the territory of the SCE Dragons. I converted 12 total from Creature Caster, Dark Elf, High Elf, Warpfire, Carmine and Reaper dragons, with Tzeentch-corrupt stormcast skimming along the next to them on Discs of Tzeentch. This was the first event I had played against a mirror of my old Lumineth list (4 foxes), Morathi finally taking me down in round 4, and a crazy game versus Deepkin in the last round. A decent 4/1

And all that leading up to the LVO that you just read about.

All in all, a pretty successful year. It was unfortunate that at least 4 of the events were never submitted to the ITC potentially losing me a Top 10 spot for the season and None of my RTT’s made it in potentially losing me best in faction: Lumineth for the season. That has me pretty bummed, not gonna lie, but the time at each event spent was still well worth it and I am ready to roll this season. My first event this season will actually be as the TO for FrontLineGaming’s Cherokee Open on the Cherokee Reservation in NC February 25-27th. So currently I am prepping for that, but we shall see what nonsense I’m rocking this year. Dragons? The return the Foxes? Fall back even more into my roots of Disciples of Tzeentch?… SkAvEn?!? The world may never know. 

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