It may not have escaped your notice that it’s the LVO this weekend – the world’s biggest Warhammer 40k tournament, and the finale of the ITC season. There’s everything to play for amongst some of the game’s top players (some of whom we interviewed earlier in the week), and the event also marks the final big event using the Warzone Nephilim mission pack (with the Q4 2022 Balance Dataslate in effect).

Because of this, we thought it would be good to take a look at the lay of the land as we go into the event – after six months of intense Nephilim play, which armies are best placed to seize the crown, and what factors will help or hinder them on the way?

Falcon: As of the time we put together this article, just shy of 1000 players had submitted their lists for the LVO, including 55 of the Top 100 in the ITC and 95 of the Top 200. Given that this was a season filled to the brim with massive super majors outside of North America it is intriguing just how many people are making the trek across the ocean to compete. Jeremy Curie of Stat Check put together the below faction breakdowns for us so we could compare what the entire field brought to those at the top of the ladder. You can check out his article on the overall meta here, where he also takes a more in-depth look at how some of the army’s featured today work…
Here we see the field as a whole:
And here are the top 100 players by ITC ranking (bringing us to #214, just enough that our own Shane Watts doesn’t feel left out):

Note the large differentials we see between the 2 graphics. Chaos, Tyranids, T’au and Harlequin representation all doubles at the expense of lower performing armies like Astra Militarum, Death Guard and the lesser played marine factions (7 of the 11 Space Marine lists in that top 100 are Blood Angels).

Wings: To win the LVO, you need to do two things – navigate your way through the Swiss portions undefeated and with the highest score possible (aiming to avoid the dreaded shadow round and get a good seeding for the top eight) then defeat three of the best players in Warhammer to take the crown. To do that takes exceptional skill, and also an army that can adapt to a wide range of matchups and emerge victorious, and bluntly that means that some factions are just more likely to pull the feat off than others. It also puts an unusually heavy weighting on the various armies’ capabilities in one specific mission – The Scouring, which is being played in round 6. A good plan for this mission makes it much easier to convert a 5-0 run into a place in the final eight, which boosts the chances of some armies and gives others a potential stumbling block.

With all that in mind, we think there are probably three factions/archetypes that stand out as the most likely winners of LVO, and eight that have a better than average chance of making an upset. Big events often do throw up big surprises, either a whole new build that a team has been tinkering with, or a breakout performance from a previously unknown player (as happened with Alexandre Sacco at this year’s LGT), so there’s always the possibility of an upset (or Boon deciding to win the whole thing to spite me for not including Craftworlds on here), but if you were a betting man, you’d probably pick your winner from one of the following – each with a sample list drawn from among the players who’ve submitted them for LVO.

The Big Three

Thousand Sons & Flamers

Sample List – Vik Vijay

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Thousand Sons & Flamers is probably the “best” list as Nephilim draws to a close. It has very few bad matchups, a great mix of durability and damage dealing, and tools to adapt to most situations – everything you want in an army if you’re trying to win the LVO. No surprise then that some of the game’s top players, particularly Dice Down from the UK, are fielding it as they gun for the trophy.

Falcon: Every LVO there are 1-2 ‘Big Bads’ in terms of units that show up in absurd numbers. Back in 2018 there were over 150 Blood Angel Captains running around with Thunder Hammers and Jump Packs and enough Knight Castellans to cause your average Tech Priest to die of priapism. In 2019 there were more Chaplain Dreadnoughts at the LVO than Games Workshop had ever produced and enough Thunderfire Cannons to blot out the sun. This year it is hands down Flamers. In the last list update we received just after the deadline, 99 players were bringing Flamers to LVO for a total of 1373 fiery fiends in attendance. The Thousand Sons package provides a really durable backbone with enough movement shenanigans to ensure that a skilled player can always dictate the flow of the game.

What Could Go Wrong

Two main things:

Blood Angels are strong into Thousand Sons, and there are enough good players fielding them that getting spiked by an untimely pairing is a realistic risk.
The Scouring is one of the weaker missions for the army – not bad, but not one that fully leverages their capabilities.

Kraken Tyranids

Sample List – Innes Wilson

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Early pressure from Raveners, despicable numbers of Mortal Wounds being thrown out by Zoanthropes, and two Flyrants able to do hit-and-run shenanigans all day thanks to the warm embrace of their Tyrant Guard. Also, Spore Mines – Innes’ build here only has Biovores to generate these, but some builds also pack Harpies and/or Sporocysts to really saturate the board with them. This list (and the double Flyrant builds in particular) also feel pretty good on The Scouring – opponents basically can’t build up any points without being in Flyrant threat range.

What Could Go Wrong

Falcon: T’au. Some big aggressive dummy with a lot of guns and enough speed that they can deal with the first wave of violence thrown at them and mostly ignore the spores as they pile up. Coming into the LVO there are only a small handful of factions with good matchups statistically into Tyranids and T’au have been doing it with a consistency the others lack, boasting between 60 and 70% win rates depending on the parameters you look at. Votann are another potential spoiler but there is less room for error amongst the kin.

Light Saedath

Sample List – Mike Porter

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Harlequins win rate through Nephilim was so consistently sky high that at the end of it, GW have thrown their hands up and dropped one of the most nuclear nerfs on them ever seen – and they still might be decent. Harlequins combine speed, punch, and one of the hardest to prevent “count to 100” scoring plans out there in the hands of a skilled player. The durability of Starweavers makes it very tough to clear them off at the pace needed to interfere with Harlequin Secondaries. Harlequins did slightly underperform in terms of converting win rate to event wins early in the season, but a poor matchup against the (now departed) Leviathan lists was a major contributor to that, and in the late stages of the season they’ve gone from strength to strength – and Mike Porter’s featured list above won the Nottingham supermajor a few weeks back. There are also some Twilight builds out there which could make a play for a top spot, but Light seems the more likely of the two to break through.

Falcon: Harlequins have always been a bit of a ‘veterans’ faction in competitive play and they’re showing it again at the LVO. While only a little less than 3% of the people in attendance are sending in the clowns, 7 of the top 100 players have pulled on their flip belts for this rodeo. It should also be noted that despite the small showing as a main faction there are enough people running Harlequin patrols and Troupe heavy Ynnari lists that there are still over 1300 Troupes gallivanting around the Rio and 144 Starweavers trying to cart them around.

What Could Go Wrong

The bane of Harlequins is running into a list that can bounce their offence while churning through them at speed, and the most likely candidates to pull that off are Armiger/War Dog-heavy lists like Freeblade Lance or Dogwalker, especially the former if they’re on the plan to get the Herald buff on lots of them quickly. The Thousand Sons & Daemons lists can also cause them some trouble, but not so much that they can’t pull off wins if pressed.
Falcon: Statistically mono-faction Daemons are the biggest threat to Harlies and there are a couple of big names that selected them as their spoiler of choice including the fastest man in Australia Matt Morosoli and former LVO winner Nick Nanavati. These lists bring enough weight of attacks and tools to shrug damage or ignore invulns that Harlequin pilots cannot afford to play sloppy and hope the sheer amount of rules they ignore will carry them.

The Wildcards

Farsight Enclaves

Sample List – Nassim Fouchane

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Farsight Enclaves Tau is probably the build from the wildcards closest to getting promoted into a fourth top spot. The killing power of this list is absolutely off the charts, especially if it goes first thanks to the reach the Sun Sharks provide. With Exemplar of the Kauyon to pull the planes into reserves if the army goes second against something that can kill them, setting up for this early punch comes at almost no risk, and the list can capitalise on that with lots of tools (e.g. Strike and Fade Crisis Suits, Nova Reactor Riptides) that can deal damage and avoid a counterpunch. Winning the number of consecutive games needed to take down the LVO is always going to require dodging a spike of bad luck, and that means the brutal truth is that the fewer non-games you get to play by annihilating your opponent with no reprisal, the fewer opportunities there are for that spike to come. From the perspective of just murdering stuff, no one does that better than Tau.

What Could Go Wrong

Tau don’t always have a great plan to score 100 on secondaries, often being capped at 97 thanks to picking Decisive Action. That means they’re probably a bit more likely to get dipped into the shadow round, giving them a tougher route to the top spot. As an army reliant on just bodying the enemy, they are also at slightly higher risk than some factions of just whiffing in a game where they don’t win out the gate, which could be disastrous if it was followed by getting tagged across the board by something like Harlequins.
Falcon: The thing that has kept a lot of the talk of T’au out of the ‘S’ tier of factions is just how poorly they play into armies like Harlequins and Daemons particularly if their first turn doesn’t go as planned. Their win rate is in the mid-high 30s against both. Custodes are another secret nemesis because sometimes the Golden boys just roll 4s and now there are 2 more dreadnoughts in your lines than you planned. While this could be said of any faction playing into Custodes it has shown to have a much bigger impact on T’au play than others as they’re generally reliant on only 1-2 commanders to do their heavy lifting in close quarters.

Bloody Rose

Sample List – Charlie Andre

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Bloody Rose is a strong all-rounder build, capable of doing damage both at range and up close, and with a strong, linear secondary plan that demands the opponent deal with it. Whenever they try, good trade pieces ensure they pay a high price.

Falcon: Much like I am with Henry Kissinger, I am consistently surprised to find out Sisters are still alive and kicking whenever they come to my attention. They have boasted some of the best win rates in the game since their codex came out some 400 years ago and it seems like that train just won’t stop despite what many of their players would have you believe. Like Votann, Sisters don’t really have any glaringly bad match-ups and actually play very well into Harlequins and Blood Angels.

What Could Go Wrong

Bloody Rose, brutally, is just a bit too “fair” compared to some of the lists here. It’s a good all-rounder, but to get through to the final it’s going to have to win some 40% matchups at some point. It can certainly do that in the right hands, but the odds are more set against it than others.

Falcon: A lot of Sisters games are coin flips and this isn’t Waiting for Godot. The coin is eventually going to land on tails over the 10 rounds any Sisters player is going to have to make it through to win it all.

Eternal Expansionist Necrons

Sample List – Alexander Fennell

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

The best Necron builds (which Alex’s list above is a good example of) have probably the strongest plan to maximise their Secondaries of any army, and are great at stopping opponents from scoring Primary while doing so. That means they can take an alternative route to successfully banking a number of “non-games” over an event – ones where the opponent looks at the score on turn three and realises they cannot ever actually catch the forces of the Dynasties. People have certainly gotten better at playing against Necrons over the course of Nephilim, but the scoring power still makes them a real contender – and The Scouring being one of their best missions gives them a great shot at converting if they manage to go 5-0.

What Could Go Wrong

Necrons extremely do not want to play Dogwalker or Freeblade Lance – they struggle to push through Armigers fast enough, and lots of ObSec + counts as 5 models is one of the few things that messes with their scoring plans. The shootier builds can still have a good go at this matchup, but if they get unlucky and shuffled into them a few times the odds start to look poor. Thousand Sons can also be challenging depending on the exact setup.

Falcon: This is a list that has fared progressively worse as weeks have passed for all the reasons Wings listed above (their win rates into IK and CK are abysmal) as well as the emergence of Votann. Necrons do not like beams and they particularly don’t like beams backed up by angry juiced up union workers (of both the squat and cult variety, really).

Daemonic Dogwalker/Freeblade Lance

Sample List – Steve Shields – Daemonic Dogwalker

Army List - Click to Expand

Sample List – Brian Jones – Freeblade Lance

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

We’ve grouped these together because they end up living or dying on a similar basis – they throw lots of ObSec Armigers/War Dogs at the opponent, and bet on them winning a damage and scoring race. Against opponents who haven’t brought enough anti-tank, or are relying on ObSec tricks to pick up points, that can be very, very effective. It’s worth noting that Brian’s list above is a bit non-standard, featuring a Forgemaster Castellan instead of more Armigers, but given his long and storied history with the lance, including his latest creation seemed only fair. The “default” option for the army is a Herald Errant with buffs to allow the handing out of extra Bondsman buffs, maximising the durability of the Armigers running at the enemy.

Falcon: These lists win via math. So much math.

What Could Go Wrong

Part of why we’ve grouped these together is that they have the same failure case – running into Votann or Tau and getting blown to bits. Bluntly, winning LVO with one of these is going to involve a pact with the dark gods that includes a stipulation of playing ten games of Warhammer without hitting either of those matchups, thank you very much.

Falcon: Arizona has a terrible math program.
Of the 57 current crusades Abaddon is leading at the LVO, only 8 feature his trove of best boys so perhaps others have caught on to the uphill battle the list faces this weekend.

Blood Angels

Sample List – Jack Harpster

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Space Marines are looking promising in Arks, but in Nephilim it’s really only been the Blood Angels keeping up appearences, and lists like this are why. The innovation of using enough Death Company and a Death Company Character (here Lemartes) to make Fury of the Lost a reliable high-scoring secondary gave Blood Angels enough of a boost that they’ve been winning plenty of tournaments. Combining that with the early game headaches from Forlorn Fury and their general high pressure play style gives them a fighting chance in most games (and makes them probably the biggest spoiler for the Thousand Sons/Flamer builds).

What Could Go Wrong

Winning with this list means playing aggressively, and that tends to carry a higher risk of a stumble in a game where the opponent’s counterpunch overperforms. Blood Angels can brawl with the best of them, but winning nine or ten consecutive games on the front foot gives them very little margin for error.

Falcon: This list in particular is striving to maximize its game into T.Sons + Flamers and to a lesser extent spore spam. 15 Infiltrators would normally be considered overkill and definitely means sacrificing some tools, but this is definitely a meta where having this much ‘don’t touch my stuff’ stuff is a necessity. I do worry about my poor sons of Sanguinius if they pair into Emperor’s Children, it isn’t an unwinnable game by any means but the amount of combat manipulation isn’t there for the Blood Angels if they just choose to smash models together willy nilly.

Ymyr Goodstuff

Sample List – Thomas Byrd

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

Votann are a reliable grindstone – they’re durable against all-comers (especially as Ymyr for the invulnerable save) and can push damage through most defences thanks to Judgement tokens. They’ve also got some decent “spoiler” units that open up a few matchups, notably from the trade-up potential of Beserks, and Hearthguard messing with enemy deep strike. Ymyr is our pick for a likely breakthrough, but Greater Thurian League (favoured by our own Shane Watts) has a fair shot too.

What Could Go Wrong

Votann’s faction Secondaries aren’t great, which gives them a failure case in matchups like Harlequins where the opponent might be able to log a 98 just by dying slowly in the right places, thwarting the Votann. They also tend to have a relatively low unit count, which can create challenges on The Scouring.
Falcon: Please bring more beams. 1 Fortress? This is a paltry amount of beams. Thomas, I beg of you as an acquaintance and brother-in-previously-liking-ultramarines, tell me where you left the rest of your beams. Jokes aside, Votann have proven to be very reliable in competitive play even with the strong series of nerfs. They are a faction that really only has 1 ‘bad’ matchup when you dig into their record against other factions and there aren’t too many right now that can say that. The problem is their bad matchup is Thousand Sons and the Rio is going to be really dusty this weekend.

Emperor’s Children

Sample List – Anthony Vanella

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

This list is just aggressively good at everything, generally playing an all-rounder shooting and melee game a bit better than Bloody Rose, but paying for it with weaker Secondaries. That didn’t stop it taking the trophy at the LGT, and it’s got several event wins to its name in the last few weeks.
Falcon: An abundance of mobile shooting with just enough punch that they can’t just be tied up by chaff, backed by some of the most effective close combat characters in the game and a stalwart brick of terminators. The list is good at just about everything and has been a proven commodity going all the way back to July. 4 of the top 100 players at the event are rocking mirror EC builds for a reason, and that forgeworld upgrade kit has obviously gone a long way given the 560 Noise Marines are in attendance.

What Could Go Wrong

Falcon: The Emperor’s Children Secondary game isn’t the most desirable right now and the proper application of T’au or Harlequin guns to character foreheads is a hill to climb.
Wings: It’ll struggle to pick up 100s consistently, so it probably has to play the shadow round, and the chances of dropping a game somewhere along the way seem pretty high.

Horde Orks

Sample List – Brian Seipp

Army List - Click to Expand

Why It Can Win

This is very much the sleeper build of those we’re looking at today – Brian came within a game of winning the Leicester UKTC major with a similar build to this as Goffs, and the pivot to Deathskulls considerably improves the Thousand Sons matchup, which was what got him in the end This army can put an incredible amount of ObSec pressure into the opponent’s face very rapidly, has pretty great Secondary game while the opponent is dealing with that, and is excellent on the Scouring, giving it that extra boost at making it through into the top eight without playing the Shadow Round.

Falcon: I am madly in love with this list. The scoring potential is incredible and it is definitely a DPS check most armies would rather avoid while still being far more interactive than the Necron builds of months past. Only 3 players elected to take Deathskulls to the LVO this year but Brian in particular is someone to watch.

What Could Go Wrong

It needs a very different kind of DPS check to Knights to put the Orks down, but there’s a definite risk someone turns up and does it – get unlucky and run into some residual Hail of Doom builds or something and it could be rough. Keep an eye on the lucky blue gitz this weekend though.

Falcon: On top of the DPS check, I do wonder how the list runs into other obsec heavy grinders now that the Goffs massive damage boost is being traded away. Time will tell for sure but I for one definitely favor this list to go deep.

So Who Wins?

Wings: It’s boring, but I’m just going to go with Thousand Sons and Flamers – it’s the game’s best list, and has two of the ITC top ten piloting it, giving it an extra boost to its changes. If they don’t make it? I think I’d actually tap Tau as my favoured wildcard to pull it off. I am reliably informed that Nassim intends to go first every game, at which point who’s going to stop him?

Falcon: Nassim? Talk about aggressive dummies with lots of guns…(much love, buddy). I definitely think our top 8 is going to look something like: TSons Flamers x 2, Tyranids x 2, Harlequins x1, Blood Angels x 1, Chaos Space Marines x 1 and either Orks, Daemons, or Sisters of Battle eking into the last position. I’d like to think enough high end players are teching for the Thousand Sons matchup that one of the other big bads will edge them out at the end so I’m going to say this is Kraken’s time to shine.

Competitive Innovations Editorial: Which Army Will Win the LVO?

The Big Three

Thousand Sons & Flamers

Sample List – Vik Vijay

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Kraken Tyranids

Sample List – Innes Wilson

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Light Saedath

Sample List – Mike Porter

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

The Wildcards

Farsight Enclaves

Sample List – Nassim Fouchane

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Bloody Rose

Sample List – Charlie Andre

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Eternal Expansionist Necrons

Sample List – Alexander Fennell

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Daemonic Dogwalker/Freeblade Lance

Sample List – Steve Shields – Daemonic Dogwalker

Sample List – Brian Jones – Freeblade Lance

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Blood Angels

Sample List – Jack Harpster

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Ymyr Goodstuff

Sample List – Thomas Byrd

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Emperor’s Children

Sample List – Anthony Vanella

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

Horde Orks

Sample List – Brian Seipp

Why It Can Win

What Could Go Wrong

So Who Wins?

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