Las Vegas Open (LVO) Friendly Tournament
I finally went to my first ‘national’ level tournament.
The Las Vegas Open!
Summary:
- I’m a total scrub at W40K games, only playing a few games a year
- I spend 99% of my energy on the hobby/painting side
- I only played 3 of the 4 games in the friendly tournament (the blending class overlapped game 3).
- Of the 3 games I played, I went 0/3!
- I played Eldar twice and Chaos Demons once.
Game 1: Chaos Demos – Shaun
- FateWeaver
- ~14 Chariots of Tzeentch
- I couldn’t get past the Jink Saves. Chaos can re-roll ones, and the Jink save was a 3up (night fight) and then a 4up… So each wound only had a 33% chance of landing, and each Chariot is both a armor 12 vehicle AND a multi-would model. Without ignore cover, I just couldn’t land any significant wounds.
Game 2: Eldar – Noah
- Farseer
- Warp Spiders
- 2x Wave Serpents
- Jet Bikes
- Eldar Scorpion Type II (super heavy)
- Super fun game. Noah is super cool, we we’re having beers, joking around, and had a great game. While I lost, I (barely) took out the Scorpion, and I ALMOST took out the Wraight Knight (got him down to 1 wound) right before the knight laid the assault beat down on my plasma-cutioner and punisher Leman Russ squadron.
Game 4: Eldar – Todd from TableWar
- Farseer
- Wraith Knight
- Wraith Guard with Warlocks
- Jet Bikes
- 2x Wave Serpents
- I couldn’t get past any saves. I think I removed maybe 3 wraithguard and 2 jetbikes by the bottom of turn 4. I still learned a lot… I definitely have to tweak my list!
My thoughts (as a total n00b, what I learned):
- Competitive W40K comes completely down to ‘dice management.’ Minimizing the incoming dice is the primary tactic I didn’t have a good answer to.Especially games 1 (Chaos demons Jinking like crazy) and 4 (Eldar with 3+ armor & invulnerable saves). Even though I was throwing a high volume of attacks/hits/wounds out with my gun line, all of those wounds were ignored one way or another (Jinks, cover saves, armor saves, invulnerable saves, many with re-rolls). These lists are all about ‘mitigating’ incoming dice.
- I don’t really enjoy games where my opponent is so effective at mitigating almost all of my dice… so I need to either build answers to this into my list or stop playing and just go 100% hobby.
And my ‘Dwarf Face’ from the faces and eyes class. Lyn from metalhead minis, thanks for a great class, I learned a ton!
All in all, LVO was great fun. It’s a well run tournament in a great location. I hope to go again next year.
30mm Madness! 
I think there were a few of us that made lists a little ‘harder’ than they should have been. perhaps they should have defined friendly a little better. in my opinion, I knew there would be lords of war and super-heavies so I had to prepare for that. in which case, it made the opponents without them a bit softer.
originally, I think that there was supposed to be a ‘team’ type event. it read as if there was to be imperial, chaos, and xenos. for those of us that prepared for such an event, it left others with a more flexible, yet perhaps underpowered army.
I had fun, but would totally adjust the army I took if I knew it was this format. I cant blame the guy that ran it (Darren?), as it was kinda dumped in his lap just before start time. I do wish to express that if they are going to have a friendly, or any other event at a tourney that a little more thought and prep go into it.
in my opinion, the championships were a big bite, and the other events suffered a little. I still had a great time, people had great armies, but no ‘one sided’ games are fun. a good hard fought battle is always more enjoyable.
Shaun, the demon player.
February 25, 2015 at 5:51 am
Heya Shaun! I know our battle was one sided, but I still had fun. It was the first game I had played in over a year and you were patient with me… so it was a good time!
Those were “Burning Chariots of Tzeentch” right? You were able to fire at full ballistic skill even after Jinking? What rule is that? I couldn’t find any jink/Chariot specific rules, and the base Jink rule is:
“If the unit Jinks, all models in the unit with this special rule gain a 4+ cover save until the start of their next Movement phase, but they can only fire Snap Shots until the end of their next turn.” Excerpt From: Games Workshop. “Warhammer 40,000 (Interactive Edition).” Games Workshop, 2014. iBooks. https://itun.es/us/kNVz0.l
February 25, 2015 at 12:14 pm
It is one of those quirky rules of 7th.
I’ll post my faq to reece about a month ago
Locally, we play that way… But it varies
………..
Hey Shaun, we do not play that passengers have to snap fire.
See you there!
Reece
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 6:01 AM, Shaun Gray wrote:
I looked on the faq council but couldn’t find anything addressing a jinking vehicle affecting passengers.
February 25, 2015 at 8:25 pm
Hey Fellas!
Been searching for friendly posts! I know people took tons of video and photos, but I haven’t been able to find much (adding the words las vegas into any search just compounds the issue).
I agree that the friendly suffered a bit due to the GT, but I still had a mega blast. I believe one fellow said it best. Friendly was like playing the most competitive lists at your local store. They were still hard, but not GT hard. I don’t know what the qualifications were for passing a friendly list…but to give you an idea (I was the rusty ork walker guy!), my original walker list had the custom stompa with some CRAAAZY dakka weapons that they approved. I decided to change it to a codex stompa closer to the date because I felt the original was a bit ridiculous. (it was something like 15d6 shots a turn).
March 8, 2015 at 9:30 am
I remember you! I played on the adjoining table for a round I believe. =)
I was hoping for a “n00b league” where I could show up with a poor grasp of 7E rules and not get rage from my opponents. The tournament definitely delivered on that. My second game in particular we didn’t even end up running Maelstrom as designed, we just drank beer, goofed, and dakka-dakka’d. PERFECT.
I’d be curious to know the motivations of the other “friendly” players… Why the friendlies and not the GT?
March 9, 2015 at 7:50 am
My particular modification came from NOVA, which was my first ever 40k experience. I watched the GT players get strung out and utterly exhausted from trying to fit in roughly 8 games in a three day period. I didn’t want to strain myself like that, so a nice 2 games a day seemed wayyyy more relaxed to me.
That and I wanted to play with ork walkers…and ork walkers are not resilient at all when it comes to a competitive GT, so friendly was perfect for me.
At Nova this year I’m in the narrative, and possibly the trios (I have the ticket just haven’t gotten all the players yet), which is a more relaxed style of play as well.
I really had a blast at friendly, I hope that style of event pops up more and more!
March 9, 2015 at 7:59 am