Surprise! The GOAT is at LVO

Welcome back, dear reader! If you read our LVO preview article yesterday, you may recall that we had gotten news that Richard Siegler was not going to be at LVO this year. Well it turns out that after lots of back-and-forth he booked a last-minute flight to the venue and decided to go ahead and sneak into the event to play without telling anyone. Well, except probably his teammates and the hotel concierge, and all the judges he needed to check in with, and… you know what? It’s not important. What’s important is that Siegler is going to be playing.

So that adds a fourth key narrative to our “LVO Stories to watch”:

4. Will Richard Siegler Claim His Second ITC Title?

This potentially dramatically shifts the narratives for this year’s LVO. A win at LVO will likely lead to Siegler jumping from 28th to 1st place and winning the ITC for the second time. That’s because a player’s ITC score is the sum of their top 6 event scores and, unlike the other top competitors this year, Siegler has only played in 5 ITC events:

1. FLG Atlantic City Open (4th)
2. FLG Las Vegas Team Tournament (1st)
3. GW US Open Orlando (1st)
4. GW US Open New Orleans (1st)
5. GW US Open Austin (1st)

Siegler’s currently around 220 points behind the current #1 ITC player, Mani Cheema – whom he beat to win Austin – but a win at LVO will likely award more than 300 points. The real question is: How many more points will it be than 2nd place? If Siegler wins LVO and Mani or John Lennon finish second, they’ll likely improve their scores by 60-80 points, which may make for a photo finish. If Siegler loses, he may end up regretting taking T’au to the Atlantic City Open back in April.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of all of this is that if Siegler wins LVO and the ITC, he’ll have won the ITC by playing in the minimum number of registered events (6). That’s absolutely insane, and for context Mani and John each have 17 ITC events they’ve played in this year. Most of the players in the top 30 have more than a dozen scoring events this year.

Siegler’s LVO List

What’s also interesting is the list Siegler is bringing: After switching up to Thicc City at Austin to take advantage of the sheer bustedness of Drukhari, Richard opted to bring a Veteran Skitarii Cohort list to LVO. That’s potentially a gutsy move and it’ll be interesting to see how the list fares.

Richard Siegler's LVO list - Click to expand

Gone are the fliers that marked the list the last time around, and the list no longer packs Sterylizors and Serberys, instead opting for additional support here from Skorpius Disintegrators – which give the list some indirect fire punch – and Ironstrider Ballistari, which will help take out vehicle targets. There’s also just a ton more bodies here, and the list looks to go heavier on melee. It’s not as degenerate as the list that won in New Orleans and Orlando, but there’s plenty of power here and while it’s more challenging than Drukhari to play, that’s also something Siegler’s looking for.

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