LVO: The Age of Sigmar Top 8

LVO is the largest event of the year for many wargames and AoS is no different. With 175 total players this year’s Las Vegas Open was particularly special for Age of Sigmar. The first LVO of third edition and the culmination of many months of speculation and smaller events that shaped the current meta. From the Stormdrake Guard of the Stormcast Eternals Battletome to the recent December 2021 FAQ we finally get to see how the speculation behind these changes play out on a large stage.

LVO was a 5 round event, with the top 8 lists being placed in a bracket format for the final day. There ended up being a fair amount of diversity in the lists, with 2 of the players utilizing Stormdrakes and some representation from factions we really havent seen so high up in a while like Mawtribes and even Nighthaunt! I’m going to go through the 8 lists in the order they ultimately scored during the finals and talk about what makes each of them so interesting. The lists are ranked ultimately by battle score but I will note whom they lost to in each writeup.

8th Place: Russ Tanner’s Bloodgullet Ogor Mawtribes

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A pleasant surprise to see here. Ogor Mawtribes have done pretty decent this edition, as the new rules favor the Beastclaw Raiders with some monster-centric abilities to make them hit even harder than before.

Russ made the unusual choice of going Bloodgullet instead of Boulderhead. Bloodgullet isn’t a bad choice, it’s the second most common, but often seen as a distant second. He put it to good use here, as the primary boon of the faction is the extra spells. Between Molten Entrails to reduce saves of tougher units and Ribcracker on mounted Heroes to pile on the damage.

The Icefall Yhetees pair well with the warlord trait Nice Drop of the Red Stuff! which gives them a total pile-in of 9″! While they still need to get within 6″ it gives a lot of room to maneuver and tie up enemy units.

Ross ended up being knocked out in the first round by Gavin’s Cities of Sigmar but it’s genuinely impressive a Ogor Mawtribes list hit the final bracket. Good job Ross!

7th place: Jiwan Noah Singh’s Ironjawz Orruk Warclans

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A standard – but extremely effective – list that we see a lot of, ever since the Battletome for Orruk Warclans hit. The dual Mawcrushas create two nasty threats to deal with, and they only get stronger if you attempt to slow them down with chafe as they get an extra wound an attack any turn they killed a model.

The Gorge-gruntas create an extremely mobile threat that can chain Mighty Destroyers back to back fairly easily, destroying multiple units in succession. It’s a great beatdown list that combines fast agile cavalry with not one but two massively dangerous Monsters.

Jiwan would end up losing to Mrigank’s Stormcast in the first round by an extremely close margin, 2 points.

6th Place: Nate Trentanelli’s Emerald Host Nighthaunt

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Now this is a surprise. Nighthaunt are widely regarded as one of the weakest armies in the game right now, Nate probably shocked a lot of people here.

As of the most recent FAQ, Nighthaunt are able to ally in Nagash which gives them a bit of a leg up in a faction lacking monsters and filled with far too delicate Heroes. Taken as a whole, this list is an excellent anti-dragon skew list. Nagash himself can ignore 66% of the Mortal wound output, kicking them back on a 6. The rest of the army has ethereal and a 6+ ward which helps their ability to shield themselves from harm.

The spell lore for Nighthaunt is honestly pretty solid and since Nagash knows all the spells of whatever army he’s put into he gets serious dividends from it. Reaping Scythe lets Nagash reroll all hits and wounds on his sword attacks, while Shademist causes -1 to wound against a unit. When applied to the Spirit Hosts they become extra tanky in addition their usual bonuses of being Ethereal and their Ward. Soul Cage allows you to lock down a tough target so that they cant escape, and are left punching at a unit they can’t hope to kill.

Taken together, Spirit Hosts become next to impossible to kill. With Nagash’s new +1 to wards and bonus healing, you’re looking at 4+ Ethereal, 5+ Ward unit that can bring back 4 models a turn, -1 to be wounded and you can’t retreat from. Nasty stuff.

Rounding it off, the Spirit Torment provides extra healing while the Hexwraiths can be bodyguards and generally useful objective grabbers.

Anthony barely lost in the first round too going 37-39 against Jeremy’s Cities of Sigmar.

5th Place: James O’Brian’s Hallowed Knights Stormcast Eternals

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I think this list symbolizes a lot of what we expected going into the event, being a dragon-centric Stormcast Eternals list but still manages to surprise. It’s mostly dragons but the choice of Hallowed Knights is unusual, though not entirely without merit. Gardus grants a 5+ Ward to all Hallowed Knights wholly within 12″, which is a bit tough to do on something with such a large base, and with Gardus being much slower than much of the list.

With Scions of the Storm, James could drop in the characters where they needed to go for maximum efficiency once the game begins. Gardus grants the 5+ ward while the Lord-Castellant hands out a +1 to save to a unit. Durable stuff, going to be near impossible to kill.

James would lose by a very thin margin (38-41) of 3 points in the first bracket to Levan’s Soulblight Gravelords, putting one Dragon-centric list to bed early.

4th Place: Mrigank Jha’s Knight Excelsior Stormcast Eternals

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What an unusual list here. Knights Excelsior doesn’t see too much competitive play since the bonus relies on Paladins. Now Paladins aren’t bad, Retributors do see play, but rarely do you see someone lean in on Annihilators! I can see the appeal, with their command ability one can hit with 2+/2+ Rend -2 D3 swings against many hordes. Pretty nasty stuff, and thats not counting all the mortal wounds when they drop in (7″ Away thanks to the Lord-Imperatant). With Translocation you can compensate for their poor movement by just dropping them elsewhere.

There’s a few recognizable staples, the Vanguard-Raptors backed up by a Knight-Incantor of course can shred almost any unit it wants turn one with judicious use of Translocation. Lightning Blast and Thundershock on the two casters do yet more mortal wounds to anything that survives.

A pretty devastating, slightly off-meta list that made it into the semi-finals but ended up losing out to Levan’s Soulblight Gravelords, 10-20.

3rd Place: Jeremy LeFebvre’s Phoencium Cities of Sigmar

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A real strong Skew list that is tailor made to deal with the arms race of Dragons. We don’t see Phoenicium as often as Hallowheart or even Living City but the work put into this is really genius.

The workhorse of the army is the Phoenix Guard. With their 4+ Save and 4+ Ward they’re already pretty tough, but with the stacking buffs it becomes even harder to dislodge them. With dual Annointed on Frostheart Phoenix there was basically board wide -1 to wound against the Phoenix Guard. Being in Hunters of the Heartlands keep them from being affected by Dragons.

The list is no slouch in combat, either. If you can break through all that, the Phoenicium battle trait Vengeful Revenants adds +1/+1 Wound army wide, and the Annointed grant a Reroll wound rolls within 12″. That many hits are inevitably going to wear down something. Annointed can do decent damage in combat and usually survive quite a few hits.

Shadow Warriors and Assassins round out the list with some very cheap damage dealers with a Scourgerunner Chariot doing some impact wounds for a cheap 80 points. Extremely well done skew list but Gavin managed to outdo him in the Semifinals and he lost 10-20.

2nd Place: Levan Sichinava’s Soulblight Gravelords

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Editor’s Note: There is an error with this list, that the Necromancer knows 2 spells from Lore of the Deathmages when it shouldn’t. This is the list as it was uploaded to the BCP app and was presumably fixed for the event itself. As I don’t know which one Levan actually kept, I kept the list as reported by BCP.

A slightly off-shelf Soulblight list but extremely effective. Levan went all in on Zombies, to a degree that would be considered A Bit Much by most people’s standards. Deadwalkers may be delicate, having no save of their own but get a 6″ pile-in, do mortal wounds on 6s and get to add to their ranks on a 2+. The Corpse Cart grants -1 to wound against them, slowing down the damage coming their way. If you chew through it all, Gorslav the Gravekeeper he can return a unit back at half strength when it perishes. In short it’s a lot of wounds to carve through even if they have to rely on a 6+ Ward to stop any of it.

Supporting them the Necromancer has the reliable Danse Macabre spell to let them fight twice, and with the Arcane tome they can throw out a debuff spell. A Vampire Lord grants them an additional attack and the Vengorian Lord reducing Rend by 1. So if you cast Mystic Shield on a unit, if the Rend is -1 or less they can still get a save.

The real surprising pick here is Big Drogg Fort-kicka. In short, Gargants are not considered very good outside of Sons of Behemat as they lack a lot of the abilities that make them powerful, such as counting as more than 5 models on an objective and they steal a CP the first turn of the game which can be deadly in the opening turn when you most need it. It seems it worked to great effect as a beat stick because Levan managed to make it to the Finals but he still fell to the champ…

Champion: Gavin Grigar’s Cities of Sigmar

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So there was another dragon list, but what a unique approach. This is nominally a Cities of sigmar list but more than half the coalition is Stormcast so it’s more like a hybrid. The Fulminators and Stormdrake need no introduction, they’re among the best hammer units Stormcast Eternals has to offer. Living City lets them maintain Deep Strike capability even without Scions of the Storm. Doralia is certainly an interesting choice but supports the Crossbowmen who shoot down everything they can from range.

I don’t want to go too into the mechanics of his list because we actually have the man himself to tell us about it! We have an interview with Gavin himself on Friday so stay tuned as he goes into the logic behind why he built this list the way he did.

Conclusions

1.The Skew is In – There was a lot of discussion about how much Dragons would rule the meta. While everyone’s opinion on what is too many dragons is going to vary, it is this author’s opinions that it is a lot lower than I expected. It’s not from lack of dragons at the event, there were several Dragon lists at LVO but because people knew it was coming there was time to prepare. There were multiple skew lists that were delibrately designed to counter them and they paid off.

It’s not to say that dragons are out, of course. Gavin did bring 4 after all, but he wasn’t likely to win if he had brought nothing but them and called it a day. A healthy counter-meta is good, though it remains to be seen if it holds up. LVO is a big event and draws people from all over, it’s not going to replicate what you see in your local store or smaller GT. Dragons may yet still dominate those.

2.Faction Variety – We still saw an extremely healthy faction variety. Although there were two Cities of Sigmar and two Stormcast Eternals list they were very different. Mrigank’s Knight’s Excelsior list was very off brand and it was great to see.

We also saw some real lost armies come into the fold. Nighthaunt , generally considered one of the worst armies in the game at present came tearing in, along with an Ogor Mawtribes list which usually don’t do quite well enough to get this far. Kudos to these players for thinking outside the box and playing well.

3.Missing Suspects – Some of the usual suspects are shockingly absent. Notably Seraphon, Daughters of Khaine, Lumineth Realm-Lords and Disciples of Tzeentch, armies which would consistently top the lists of most events didn’t make the cut.

Tzeentch naturally lost in a big way by not being able to fully utilize Archaon, but good Tzeentch lists have worked without him. Seraphon, Lumineth and Daughters of Khaine are much more surprising as they hadn’t taken any significant hits lately. I’m not saying to count them out, as I still expect to see them regularly top lists at other events, but it is surprising not one made it to the top 8 here.

We close another exciting year of LVO (and the ITC) and look forward to another year in the Mortal Realms. Things are looking up for the competitive scene and it will be exciting to see how the next few planned books affect things.

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