In our Road to LVO series, we’re following several different players and hobbyists as they prepare to play in one of the largest wargaming conventions on the planet. In this article we’re continuing Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson’s journey to LVO – Dan is a regular writer here at Goonhammer and an organizer in the Houston Warhammer scene.
This year’s Road to LVO series is sponsored by Frontline Gaming.
Welcome back to part two of my Road to LVO series, sponsored by the good folks over at Frontline Gaming! In my last article, I introduced myself and my history with Kill Team, and set some pretty clear goals for what I wanted out of my LVO experience. Now that all of the goal setting is done, it’s time for me to actually take steps to make it happen. Before I do any of that, of course, I need to pick a team.
Hobby Hopping
Last article, I spoke about how there were a few teams I was considering for LVO. Much of this decision depended on the dataslate, and how much that would shakeup the meta. I didn’t want to really commit myself to a team, only to start painting in earnest and find out that that team had been nerfed with extreme prejudice.
All of this to say that I felt rather restless at the painting table, which is not something I’m used to at all when it comes for event prep. But truthfully, what was I going to prepare? It could be one of several teams! What, am I just going to mostly paint one goober from several different teams, bouncing between them once I get even a little bored?
Yeah, actually. Exactly that.
While pinballing between all sorts of models is fun, it also serves an important purpose in my final team decision process. If I’m trying a scheme and I don’t like painting that model with very little outside stress, then painting a whole team for that model in the early morning hours in a hobby event crunch is going to be all the more miserable. Plus, I’ve always got Nemesis Claw in the back pocket, who I’ve got in a mostly completed painting state aside from rocket gunner guy. Unless the team is just truly miserable after the dataslate, I can always have Nemesis Claw as my backup plan.
I went ahead and put paint on models from Battleclade, Goremongers, and Yaegirs while I waited for the Dataslate. For Battleclade, I decided to paint the Underseer, since it would be the most familiar match to the scheme I already use for my Ad Mech 40k army. The blue cloak looks good and is fun to do, but painting all the little mecahdentrites here wasn’t really sparking joy. I liked how the model was coming together as I got a little further along, as especially once I added eyes, but all the metallics here was an unexpected slog.
Next, I tried my hand at a Blood Herald for Goremongers. I think these models rule, and I love that within the greater fiction of Kill Team, Khorne’s most dangerous operatives for subterfuge and sabotage is a band of raving psychopaths with cyber legs. Khorne stuff usually doesn’t resonate with me, like Slaanesh and Undivided stuff does, but I find these dweebs rather swell.
I have a sticking point with the studio theme for Goremongers, it’s the helmets. The studio scheme is all brass, and I think that causes the masks and helmet to get lost with the skin on the model. So for my Blood Herald, I decided to paint the mask bright red to more directly evoke the imagery of a Bloodletter, and I really liked it! I do think I might be flying close to the sun with the caution striped weapons here, but If I pull it off I think it will make their vicious weaponry really pop, rather than blend with the model.
I ended up also not finishing the Blood Herald either, for two reasons. First, I felt pretty confident in my thought that this team was absolutely going to get nerfed in the dataslate. They’re very strong into most teams, can do okay even in bad matchups, and present some teams with basically an unwinnable matchup. Goremonger’s being knocked down a peg is the safest bet in the world.
Secondly, like many others who walk this strange and wonderful earth, I cannot resist the siren song of cool jacket.
I’ve honestly never been a fantasy Dwarf guy. I’ve always fallen on the Elf side of that conversation, I see them as kindred spirits, since I’m over six feet tall with a build that could be best described as “giving Gumby”. But the Wild West frontiersman vibe of Yaegirs is slick, and it’s an aesthetic a stupidly easy sell for someone whose favorite movie is Tombstone. The Votann reveals last Friday were enough to push me over the edge to try painting a Yaegir, which I’m still in the early stages of. I’m taking inspiration from the Trans-Hyperion Alliance orange scheme, but discarding the brown jacket to a cool blue jacket. So far, these guys are really fun to paint, but damn they weren’t kidding about painting orange, it’s rough. It’s going to need patience and thin coats to get good coverage.
Friday was also a chance for me to host a game at my house with frequent Goonhammer article special guest Andrew, aka the Hero of the Imperium, who decided that he’d carried enough water for mankind and wanted to big bust with Wrecka Crew. I’m sure this will be a normal experience where nothing weird will happen.
Hell of Squigs
If you’re unfamiliar with Wrecka Krew, then let me paint a picture. Has anyone ever told you “you can win, if you just roll sixes. Easy!” followed by a hearty knee-slapping laugh? Wrecka Krew is that, played straight. Just roll sixes, the team. If you do, you’re an unstoppable murder monster. If you can’t, the game will run away from you faster than your dice luck.
I’d played Wrecka Krew once before, in Dallas, so admittedly I underestimated them going into our game, especially when Andrew said he’d like to try to play against Goremongers. Ah, I thought to myself, this will be fun, I can experience this team at the height of its power before being cast down to earth, and there’s nothing Andrew can do to stop me. Oh, the hubris.
There were, of course, two things about Andrew I fatally hadn’t considered: Andrew’s a very good player at tabletop games in general and had done his homework, and that his dice luck in my house is just hateful.
The ensuing ass-kicking that went down is hardly even worth talking about, I frankly learned more about Wrecka Krew than I did about Goremongers. We were playing Power Surge, and I aggressively staged TP1, and I figured I could use my Runes of Khorne to negate his shooting and just win combat encounters. In case he got some chip in, no problem I’ll just boost my defense with Augmented Endurance.
Well, Andrew got chip damage in, and then he got lots of Wrecka points, and it turns out Wrecka points are amazing for just pushing through damage on key attacks when you need them to. Especially if you’d already rolled three hits! No rerolls can save me!
And then the Squigs. The goddamn Squigs.
Andrew learned before our game that the real trick with Bomb Squigs wasn’t just to blow them up at the first opportunity, but instead to charge them in to fight and force your opponent to kill them and risk explosion or waste APL falling back. Andrew put this lesson to incredible, if not absolutely infuriating, use in our game.
In TP2, he killed my Skullclaimer with one Bomb Squig, and then tied up my Inciter in a stronghold with the other. I’d moved my Blood Herald close to contest the objective where the fight was happening to help safely deal with the squig next turning point, too late to realize I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d messed up my spacing, and my Herald was two inches away from the Squig. Andrew buffed his blast to 2” with a Tankbusta and shot my Blood Herald, pushing 8 damage through and forcing me to use my damage negation, and then killed his own Squig which exploded, and took down both the Inciter and Herald. All through obscuring, and it’s not even TP3.
At that point the game was done, there was no coming back, so I threw my hands up, conceded, and heated as I’ve ever been asked if Andrew wanted to rerack for a quick round two. This was a patently bad idea, it was late and I had to be up for work the next day stupid early, but it was such a one sided non-game that I was chomping at the bit for an actual game. I didn’t even need to win, I just needed to not get face rolled and I would stop being more salt than man. He said sure, took the key lime pie he’d brought over from the fridge, and I swapped out the Goremongers for Yaegirs while being the most pissed off anyone can be while eating pie.
Game two ended up being much more of a game, even though I still lost. It was my first game with Yaegirs, so I wasn’t really surprised by the result, but what did surprise me was how much I liked the team. Resourceful is a handy tool if you can keep yourself out of control range, and the team has great survivability and defensive tools thanks to ploys like Tough Survivalists or Stalwart Defenders. Even though Andrew could still force through huge shooting attacks, I’d sometimes have operatives walk away from them, stunned I was still alive. Plus, the Bombast is just such a fun operative, his pistols are a great gun and Wroughtlock Negotiation is a rad ability. It makes me think of that one Calvin and Hobbes noir comic, particularly the panel where Calvin’s is monologuing about how his gun argues.
I also killed the Bomb Squigs as soon as I could. Fuck those little guys, I hate them.
I learned quite a few lessons the hard way in my first game with Yaegirs. This isn’t an aggressive team like my beloved Nemmy Claw, I do much better letting the opponent come to me in carefully set up engagements. And boy, 5” move is hard, even with the pre-game reposition. When the dust settled, the score was 12-17 Andrews favor, and I was left with a much better taste in my mouth. We finished the pie and our coffees, chatted for a bit about both our teams, and then I went to bed far later than I should have. The next day was awful, but such is the price we pay for good hams and hangs.
The Balance Dataslate
A few days after my game night with Andrew, the eagerly awaited Balance Dataslate dropped, which meant it was time to see how the teams I was interested in playing at LVO fared. If you’d like to read more about my thoughts on the July Balance Dataslate, you can find it here.
I’m a big subscriber to the notion that you should play whatever team you think looks cool or appeals to your playstyle, especially if you’re just getting into the game. But I’m also realistic about the fact that a teams relative strength will likely have an impact on performance at competitive event. It’s not the end all be all for how you’ll do, and I’m not playing at the highest tier of skill where something like team selection will make or break me. But a team that’s strong in the metagame will be easier to pilot than a team that’s overall weaker, which means that its probably also going to be a more fun team to play.
I had several teams pique my interest, alongside my go-to team, Nemesis Claw. Those teams were Battleclade, Yaegirs, Goremongers, Exaction, and Mandrakes.
Full disclosure, I’d expected for Nemesis Claw and Goremongers to get absolutely clobbered by nerfs this slate, and was honestly surprised that both of those teams walked away with only mild to moderate nerfs but still in a very strong state. I’m not as hot on Goremongers anymore, I think the Squigs exploded that excitement out of me as well as Nemesis Claw already being a melee-centric team I know and have fun with. Plus, I really enjoyed my time with Yaegirs, both painting the models and playing them. Mandrakes and Battleclade are neat, but both require lots of brainpower I don’t have after long days playing games at events, and Exaction plays similarly to Yaegirs but frankly don’t appeal to me as much. Sorry, space cops, you aren’t as cool as space cowboys.
With that, I’ve got two choices for LVO: Nemesis Claw and Yaegirs. This decision makes the next steps I need to take pretty clear. I’ve got quite a few reps with Nemesis Claw, and the team is almost fully painted to a high level, but I’ve only got one game under my belt with Yaegirs and no fully painted models. If I want to take them to LVO, I’ve got to get this team painted and get some practice in.
Next time on my road to LVO series, it’s an extra special Votann bonanza, as I’ll give updates on my painting methods and progress for Hearnkyn Yaegirs, as well as my thoughts on getting in practice with the team. See y’all then!
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