This year’s Road to LVO series is sponsored by Frontline Gaming.
Hey that was a pretty fast turn around from one article to the next! In my last article, I talked about the Las Vegas Open, why it matters to me, and what I’ll be doing in this series. If you missed that first article, it’s worth a look.
With intros out of the way, it’s time to talk about the grind. I am going to do my best to give you little insight into a very busy couple of competitive weeks coming up – I’ve got the the NATC this weekend, followed immediately by the Games Workshop US Open Tacoma. And just to put this in context, we’re jumping into the middle of a five week road tour: Three weeks ago I was in Provo, Utah for the Mountain West Classic GT. Two weeks ago I won the Arizona Team Challenge (AZTC) 5-man teams event with my local team, Smite Club, and I attended a local RTT over the fourth of July weekend, going undefeated with a brand new army and faction.
So it’s a pretty busy month.
The NATC
For those unfamiliar with the NATC, it stands for North American Team Championship. It’s an 8-man teams event hosted in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I will be competing with Team Art of War in our quest to take down the NATC title. I’ve already spent quite a bit of time in hobby jail prepping my new army, not to mention the hours I’ve spent getting reps with the army and my teammates.
The Necessary Prep
First and foremost I have to keep all you wonderful readers updated. So I’m going to go ahead and mark that box checked. But on top of working under the baleful eye of Rob “TheChirurgeon” Jones (Rob: Be sure to take pictures at the event), I have a number of obligations to consider heading into the event, not all of which are good for my overall singles performance.
First, I have my real life obligations of my day job and my wonderful partner. And I have my 40k obligations to my coaching clients, Art of War and Team USA. And while those are voluntary, when you add those things together it can be hard to find personal time for 40k. What time I do have I tend to spend on local events and in the local Las Vegas 40k league. I’ve spent the majority of the latest mission pack playing Thousand Sons. They’re a terrific army that I’ve mostly kept on the shelf but with which I’ve had quite a bit of experience this edition. I’ve had a good time playing them, and I tend to feel like the losses with them are on me and not the army.
I’ve also been putting in reps with my Team USA teammates, playing armies I have experience with to help them grind out their final edits before list submission for the WTC. Right now is the grindfest part of the year for our starters. The good news is that no matter what faction you’re playing, practicing with the best players in the world sharpens your skills tremendously.
For NATC there was an added wrinkle: After a meeting with the rest of the Art of War team we decided I’d be playing Imperial Knights! They’re a meta pick but not an army I already had, so that means I’d have to hobby up an entirely new army for the event.
Truth be told, this is a bit of a distraction and not 100% something that will further my growth as a singles player with the goal of winning LVO, but I just want to have it all. LVO, while only a short few months away, is far enough away that I can’t fully plan for it yet. I’m certain it will be a different meta by then and I can make decisions and lock in more as we get closer.
Why Knights?
Did you see those points drops? Sorry, that was rhetorical. The overall story no matter how you break it down is that Knights in general received a very heavy discount for losing a pip of toughness while gaining wounds across all of their data sheets. Against some armies like Necrons with s14 guns this was, overall, actually a buff, and the extra wounds do even more for models with a Feel No Pain from the Noble Lance Detachment. While armies with large densities of S6 or S12 profiles, I think most people would say they’re a bit too cheap for how much beef you get.
And they certainly bring the beef now – 109 wounds at T11 and 56 wounds at T9 is a hard ask to handle if you are not prepared for it.
In our eight-man team we are bringing to NATC we did not have any dedicated knights players but we did have some more or less dedicated roles. One role I’ve taken on with Art of War this year is acting as an early defender with GUNS (Rob: Defenders generally get to choose the table and terrain layout they’ll be playing on, while Attackers get to choose their which armies to throw at them). Knights fit that role snugly, and as a less intricate army with a low floor, I should be able to pick them up and succeed.
After some deliberation, I landed on four big knights and four helverins. It’s lean mean and doesn’t require much thought:
Canis Rex
3 Atrapos
4 Helverins
The Atrapos is crazy at 365 points; It’s great in both melee and shooting, and has an invulnerable save in melee – something most knights don’t have. Canis is pretty self explanatory as one of the game’s most undercosted units. The Helverins are an interesting choice but they’re a bit of a teams pick here. I’m bound to run into the mirror match with either Imperial or Chaos Knights at some point during the event and the Atrapos Bondsman ability to give full hit and wound re-rolls against TITANIC or TOWERING units can really help give me the edge in that matchup. I also just like having OC 8 hulls to push forward before using my big knights.
The Team Composition for NATC
There are both 5- and 8-man events at the NATC, but I’m participating in the 8-man event with Art of War. Here’s our team comp:
- Ben Jurek – Imperial Knights- Noble Lance
- Jack Harpster- Aeldari- Warhost
- Michael Mann- Thousand Sons- Grand Coven
- Mike Muzeni- Death Guard- Virulent Vectorium
- Russel Tassin- Space Marines- Gladius
- Sascha Edelkraut- Chaos Space Marine- Creations of Bile
- Bryce Bennet- Astra Militarum- Combined Arms
- Tucker Rickey- Genestealer Cults- Host of Ascension
We chose these armies expecting a knights-heavy meta, and we’re prepared to walk right into it, arms open. We took a number of lists that don’t need protection from the titanic menaces or have outright great matchups into it. Even my list – which you can get cute with – just says “no thanks” and jams 3 Atrapos which, with +1 to hit and wound other knights, is pretty good in that matchup. There’s more to talk about here but it’ll have to wait until after the event – I can’t give too much away as opponents can likely read this before the event. But if you are, know that we’re ready.
The Prep: AZTC
I went into the weekend of June 27th with my Thousand Sons packed and ready for a five-hour drive south to Phoenix, Arizona. I was laser-focused on one plan: Reaching the podium with my four teammates. This was in addition to helping the other two teams operating under the Smite Club name get prepared for the event. I had just completed a six-round GT in Salt Lake City – the Mountain West Classic – the week beforehand, finishing 14th with Thousand Sons. And also while knowing that in just three weeks I’d be switching to Imperial Knights (an army I have zero reps on) for Art of War at one of the largest team events in the country.
No sweat, right?
The good news is that we went undefeated at AZTC, taking the gold. With that goal down, I needed to do two things the moment I got home:
- Assemble and paint the army.
- REPS.
Thankfully, I had a solid chunk of the army on hand and so it only took a small mix of borrow-hammer to make it happen. I mean we’re only talking about eight models here.
So the “have the army” part of my meta chasing goal accomplished. Did I go out on my own to over achieve and paint most of it on my own, in a cohesive paint scheme to possibly take to Tacoma the week after? You bet I did.
As for reps well, I definitely don’t have the WTC level of prep going into this, where you know your matrix inside and out into every army in the meta and how to play each match differently, but between some TTS and a local RTT I was able to scrap enough data together to grow to appreciate how silly powerful IK is. You can simply shoot the thing that’s the most points and charge the closest target through quite a few matches. Now it’s not invincible – and it certainly has its counters, but those are very face up, and you can see them coming in a teams setting. In singles this is a different story, and I’m not sure yet if I’m going to roll the dice with it.
This all being said, meta-chasing hasn’t always been my jam and a lot of my army choices are often influenced by team comp decisions and needs. Shouldering the army that we want in the comp but that we don’t have a pilot for. I look back fondly on the days of being a single faction specialist on Orks, where I could just tweak that list for each new meta. That was a different time, with different goals and a completely different path in the game. These days the team needs come first, so I grab the latest army and sally forth. It also happens that’s a more competitive option as well.
Lessons Learned from CA25 Missions
I have already played way too many games with the CA25 missions pack. I do have a few minor grievances with the pack but overall I’ve enjoyed the changes. I’ve learned you don’t need nearly as many action units in a list as you used to, as some of the new added missions are non-action and they’ve made some actions easier like Recover assets while removing Containment (RIP 6 free points). The mission pack is solid and I would rate it as the best one so far. Fixed is also somewhat a reality again with Knights crashing into the meta. Assassinate and Bring it Down often reward max points.
Now for the elephant in the room: Challenger Cards. I’ll give my flat opinion first. Catch-up mechanics don’t really have a place in a competitive environment. We can just do without them. But as long as we’re stuck with them, here’s the deal: They don’t recognize the game state or what the score of the game is going to be. They can be gamed at times and it just feels wrong when a player’s correct play line is to not do a secondary. I’ve had games tabling my opponents while getting challenger cards, and I’ve had the dreaded about 1 in 20 where you draw the nuts and the game ends on that. But thankfully most of the time the Challenger cards just make the score look closer. Do I enjoy this in teams? No. Does it sometimes fix variance of a card draw system for scoring points? I must begrudgingly admit that, yes. You barely notice them… until you do.
Next Week: Tacoma
After this weekend in Chattanooga – one which hopefully ends in success, it’s on to Tacoma, for the Games Workshop US Open, where I’ll be battling hundreds of other 40k players. Do I know what I’ll be playing at the event as of the writing of this article? Absolutely not. I have a few ideas, though. My goal at Tacoma is to score a high placing, which could set up me up with another top score and put me in a good place for a top ITC finish if I can finish strong at NOVA. I already have my golden ticket punched for WCW so at least that worry is out of the way.
See ya next week!
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