Las Vegas Open 2016 Day 1 Blog

Hello everyone! Petey Pab here bringing you all your mustache media desires in the LVO’s first ever live blog!

Edit Friday 9pm Round 3 ITC update 

Round 3 has come and gone and now we find ourselves with around 50 players all vying for just 8 spots. The way this is all going to shake out is there are going to be somewhere around 4-6 players getting in with undefeated records, 2-4 players getting in with 5 wins and a tie, and maybe if the chips fall into place, one 5-1 player. That’s a whole lot of broken hearts!

Now the top players still haven’t been whittled down enough for me to start typing about everyone but, there are certainly people we have to keep an eye on, starting with the ITC frontrunner, and a lot of people’s favorite to win the tournament, Alan Pajamapants Bajromovic. I pinned down Alan after round 3 and got his list, so come join me as we take a peak into the mind of a mad genius.

CAD

Fateweaver

D-thirster (bloodthirster of something rage)

11 x pink horrors [x2]

8x Screamers

CAD

Be’lakor

Tzeentch Herald; Disc, Reward (or grimoire) Lv. 3

Tzeentch Herald; Disc, Reward (or grimoire), Lv. 3

11x Pink Horrors

Nurglings

So, Alan decided to bring out the double CAD deamons list. In my opinion this list is not a surprise. He has done well with Chaos in the past and has won at least one GT with this style of list. This list let’s PjPants do all sorts of things to both his opponent’s army, as well as to win the objective that most players wouldn’t think of. He is also able to pilot it well, and hi system for book keeping the psychic powers is clean and practiced. Alan has three dominating performances against quality opponents and he is showing why he is the favorite to win.

A couple of other interesting things to note this round is the amount of battle companies that fell out of the running. By my count, I think there were 8-10 battle company lists in the top 30 tables (or the top 60) and of those I only saw two of them win. I may be missing someone but the two battle company wins I witnessed were mirror matches! Now this does not mean that ITC nerfed battle company, or that people will stop playing it. I’m sure that a lot more battle companies won in the lower tables, and I know at least one battle company gave their opponent a run for his money. I would just like to highlight the ITC’s ability to make a metagame diverse with just simple mission changes. If Alan’s list above teaches one thing about meta’s and lists, it’s that the player’s skill does matter as much as factions or lists chosen.

For the ITC results currently 5 ITC players in the top 10 are undefeated, Alan PjPants, Cooper (with a tie and 2 wins), Steve Sisk, Julio from NWO, and Jim “JY2” Yeh. The rest of the players in the top 10 of the ITC rankings have only 1 loss, and all of them have the potential for a top 16 finish. As we progress through day 2 we will highlight all their lists and showcase exactly what kind of lists you could bring to help get you to the top.

Meanwhile, while you are (hopefully) waiting for round 4 results to be posted here are some amazing pictures taken from this year’s Knight Joust.

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See you guys tomorrow morning bright and early for round 4 of the 40k championship!

Edit: Friday 5pm Round 2 ITC update The ITC race is on! Our frontrunner Alan PjPants had a dominant 11-0 victory over Karl Payne’s Pod-laden battle company, it’s hard to find any other player hotter then him right now. Our number three ITC player Cooper tied his opponent 4-4 in what looked like a brutal game against NWO’s Alex Gonzalez and his wraithless necron list, let’s see if he can keep up his high level play and maintain his number three spot. Geoff “Incontrol” righted the ship with a round two 11-2 victory, he now needs maximum points in all his games to have a legitimate chance of making the top 8. Rounding out the rest of the ITC top 10 Steve Sisk, Julio Rodriguez, Jim Yeh, and Wesley Pauley are all currently 2-0 while Jeremy “The french overlord”, Trent Northington, and Mason Moore are all 1-1. None of the ITC players in the top 10 started the day 0-2 which shows just how good these players are. I imagine most of them are going to post winning records and at least 3 are going to make the top 8.

Currently Sean Nayden, last year’s LVO winner is 2-0 and also going strong. We will keep an eye on him as the tournament goes on.

Stay tuned for Round 3 results as well as the LVO’s first ever streamed Warmachine and Hordes live stream report!

Edit: Friday 3:30 pm Here are the lists for our round 2 featured match up Nick Nanavati vs. Israel Sanchez. These guys are both top players in the competitive 40k world. Israel went undefeated at the BAO last year and Nick Nanavati who has won three Adepticon tournaments and made it to the top 8 last year.

Update: Israel wins on turn three 9-0. On turn 1 the Tau jumped on the relic early due to a couple of key failed charges and maelstrom rolls Nick conceded on turn 3 due to time constraints. Rounds are short, and this shows that sometimes you have to be aggressive early and play for turn 3-4, especially with big lists.

Israel Sanchez’s List

Tau Formation-Based Detachment (Farsight Enclaves)

Core: Retaliation Cadre

Commander; Fusion Blaster x2 Early Warning Override (EWO), Drone Controller, WARLORD

Crisis Suit; Fusion Blaster x2 [x3]

Broadside Suit; EWO, Plasma Rifle, Missile Drone x2

Riptide; Fusion Blaster, Ion Accelerator, EWO

Auxilary: Firestream Wing

Piranha; 2x Gun Drones, 2x Seeker Missiles [x 7]

Auxilary: Drone Net

MV7 Marker Drone; [x16]

CAD

Commander; Fusion Blaster x2, EWO, Drone Controller

Crisis Suit Troop; Plasma Rifle

Crisis Suit Troop; Flamer

Tetra Scout Speeder Team [x2]

Y’vara Battlesuit; EWO, Interceptor

Wall of Martys Bunker; Comms Relay

Nick Nanavati’s List

Fateweaver

Herald of Tzeentch; Disc, Grimoire, Lv. 3

Herald of Tzeentch; Disc, Lv. 3

Herald of Nurgle; Lv. 2, Greater reward, Locus of feel no pain

Herald of Nurgle; Lv. 2, greater reward,

Nurglings

Nurglings

Plague Drones x7; Champion with greater reward

7x Screamers

Chaos Knight Paladin of Tzeentch

Edit: Friday 12am Round 1 is well underway! Oh man there are some insanely good players with cheesy lists. There are a lot more chaos players here then I anticipated (we will have raw numbers later). Some first impressions I got were everyone is having a great time, we have no broken hearts yet everyone is bright and full of hope, also I feel like there is a lot of diversity, I saw every kind of army. Tyranids, Orks, Dark Eldar, Chaos Space Marines there are so many players playing from so many different areas of the world that you kind of have a chance to catch players off guard and win more games then you normally would.

Three knight lists are a very real thing, at this LVO, I must have spotted at least 5, add in the new Chaos Knight and the Knight Joust and it’s looking like everyone’s favorite superheavy is here to stay. I feel like three knights is the perfect balance especially if you pair them with Admech, Space marines, and even Tau. This is a list I will keep tabs on throughout the day to see if it is a real contender or pretender.

Notable Round 1 Matchups

Alan Pajama Pants Vs. David Cutts

Update: Pajamapants wins, 11-1. Alan knows how to pilot his list and he pulled off a seemingly easy victory. We will keep an eye on the ITC frontrunner throughout the event.

PJ pants needs to win every game and in order to do that he needs a great list. Luckily he brought a vinatage Pajamapants list featuring plenty of squishy demon bodies, psychic powers, and one very angry Bloodthirster. Let’s see if he can pull off the win against a very mean looking Dark Angel, Space Wolf Librarius Conclave Deathstar piloted by a very competent SoCal player.

Geoff “Incontrol” Vs. Aaron Towler

Geoff is of course calm and focused like he always is and he needs to be because round 1 he is facing off against another war convocation! I’m not sure how the mirror match goes in this kind of game, but Geoff is going first and I think he knows the army a little better then his opponent Aaron.

Update: Aaron beats Geoff 6-2. This is our first big upset of the day. Geoff was the number 2 ranked ITC player and now this round 1 loss hurts his chances. He isn’t out of the ITC championships yet, but he does need to win every other game to maintain his top 8 berth.

The Featured Matchup

Sean Nayden vs. Andrew Dedios

Update: Sean beats Andrew 11-1, Sean Nayden has another crazy MSU list, and I can tell right now, he wants to win this tournament.

For our Twitch stream featured matchup we have defending champion Sean Nayden piloting an Eldar CAD and Dark Eldar allies versus New World Order member Andrew Dedios and his Ravenwing, Wolfstar army.

Sean Nayden’s List

Autarch; Wings, Banshee Mask, Scorpion Chainsword

3 Guardian Jetbikes; 3 Scatter Lasers [x 3]

5 Warp Spyders – exarch (Warlord)

5 Swooping Hawks

Warp Hunter

Void Shield Generator; 3 Shields

Aspect Host Formation

8 Swooping Hawks – Exarch [x 3]

Corpse-Thief Claw

5 Talos Engines; 3 Ichor injectors

Andrew Dedios’ List

Company of the Great Wolf

Battle Leader; Fist, Thunderwolf, Runic Armor, Fellclaw’s Teeth, Storm Shield, 2 Wolves

Battle Leader; Fist, Thunderwolf, Runic Armor, Storm Shield, 2 Wolves

Battle Leader; Fist, Thunderwolf, Runic Armor, Storm Shield, 2 Wolves

Battle Leader;Wolf Claw, Thunderwolf, Runic Armor, Storm Shield, 2 Wolves

Servitor [x2]

Drop Pod [x2]

Quad Mortar Rapier [x2]

Ravenwing Strike Force

Librarian; Lv. 2, bike, Eye of Hypnoth

Librarian; Lv. 2, Bike [x2]

Ravenwing Command Squad, Apothecary

Ravenwing attack bike; Multi-Melta

Ravenwing Bikes; 2 grav, combi-grav

Ravenwing Bikes

Cullexus Assassin

I can’t wait to see who wins this matchup, Sean is running a really mobile Eldar list, and Andrew is running a list we are going to see a lot of in the tournament.

Dropzone Commander is well underway!

We also have our Warmachine event well underway, we have reporter on the spot Greg Buron working on announcing WarmaHordes updates about our main Warmachine tournament on our Twitch Stream http://www.twitch.tv/frontlinegaming_tv

Warmachine Pictures

Warmachine Update:  This is Greg giving you a quick update of the Warmachine / Hordes Iron Gauntlet tournament.   We just finished Round 1 of the tournament at around 1pm Las Vegas time (pretty much right on time).  Speaking with the TO’s, it looks like Round 2 is set to start close to 30-45 minutes after that, so around 1:45pm.  I got a chance to speak with Trevor Christensen and Josh Wheeler from Chain Attack podcast.  Trevor’s first round match up was his Lylyth 2 list vs. a Haley 1 list with double collossals.  Trevor won by scenario by applying pressure to zones after taking down his opponent’s Storm Wall.  Josh played his Circle Orboros Bradigus list into Exulon Thexius.  Josh felt pinned into a bad position early in the game, but was able to build up a synergy chain of 8 with his list, and got a crazy assassination angle on Thexius in bottom of 2 for the win.  Other match-ups of note this round were Michael Puryear vs. Michael Ireland (Puryear won by assassination) as well as Tom Guan vs. Chuck Elswick (Elswick won also by assassination).  When asked about meta and what they’re seeing in the field (note that its hard to see all lists but just a general feeling) that we’re seeing a lot of Legion this year.  Stay tuned for more in round 2 coming up shortly!

Edit: Thursday 10pmWe all had a blast setting up the day before the event and I want to thank everyone who volunteered. I’d like to also give a special shout out to Mark, the FlyingMonkey GT guys, and Reece and Frankie for being absolutely awesome guys and making the startup of the LVO that much smoother and funner.

My original terrain setup for table 1… Reece didn’t approve.

Some cargo boxes from our sweet new ITC terrain line.

[Insert your own caption here]

The funniest one gets a shout out on the stream!