The SoCal Open is coming up this weekend and so we wanted to give you all some breakdowns of what’s going on at the event, what armies are being played and what lists we’ll be seeing throughout the weekend.
For Warhammer 40,000 we have a large spread of armies with a select few having more entries than others.
| Armies | Showings by Percent | Armies | Showings by Percent |
| Tyranids | 12.90% | Ulthwe | 2.30% |
| Daemons | 9.80% | Black Templars | 1.50% |
| Chaos Space Marines | 8.30% | Aeldari | 1.50% |
| Orks | 7.60% | Death Guard | 1.50% |
| Sisters of Battle | 6.80% | Dark Angels | 1.50% |
| Blood Angels | 6.80% | Leagues of Votann | 1.50% |
| T’au Empire | 6.10% | Astra Militarum | 1.50% |
| Harlequins | 5.30% | Space Wolves | 1.50% |
| Imperial Knights | 5.30% | White Scars | 0.80% |
| Necrons | 4.50% | Thousand Sons | 0.80% |
| Genestealer Cult | 3% | Chaos Knights | 0.80% |
| Custodes | 3% | Deathwatch | 0.80% |
| Grey Knights | 3% |
Other than Leagues of Votann showing up a bit as people start collecting them. As a note, SoCal Open is accepting League of Votann armies but are not allowing any models released after Oct. 18.
Tyranids continue to bring the pain with the new Chaos Daemons coming up the rear followed by Chaos Space Marines. I find it interesting that there’s so many Orks showing up at the event, but if you look at the track record for the SoCal Open for the past couple of years – Orks always show up with good representation at the event.
Looking at the past month of events according to the stats Goonhammer’s 40kstats provides, the record for Chaos Daemons have skyrocketed since the book released sitting at a pretty strong 61.57% being in the new king of the meta with an unkillable Be’lakor and Bloodthirsters.
BREAKING DOWN THE PLAYER PACK
Just like any event, understanding your player pack is vital to your success at the event. Practicing the missions, knowing what terrain does what, it’s all important to making sure you’re fully prepared for the event. We’ll be doing a brief rundown of the player pack, however if you want to know more and read them even more thoroughly you can get the player pack yourself here.
This year for the SoCal Open we’re looking at a 2 day event with 3 games being played each day.
REMEMBER THAT THIS IS PLAYER OPTIMIZED TERRAIN
So you will be moving your terrain around the board fitting your armies playstyle. If you do not know how player optimized terrain works here is the rundown.The defender chooses their table side and players split the terrain as shown in the Player Pack. To place down your terrain, you have a total of 10 minutes off the clock to do any pre-game actions and setup the table.
STEP 1: The Defender chooses their table side and players split the terrain as shown in the Player Pack.
STEP 2: Starting with the Defender, players alternate placing 1 piece of terrain from their half of the terrain in their table half until ALL PIECES OF TERRAIN ARE PLACED. You can find what your table half is in the Player Pack.
THE MISSIONS
Day 1 – Round 1 – Mission 12 – Tear Down Their Icons
This is the mission where you have to prime and defuse explosives, one of the more difficult missions in the pack because in order to gain points on the tertiary you need a lot of action monkeys. So if you’re already doing actions for a secondary, you might find yourself thin on maxing out your primaries more. It’s also a huge swing in points considering each primed explosive is 4 points each at the end of the battle.
This is a great map however for things like Oaths of Moment or creating a triangle of death around your home base objective, the middle objective and the closest one to your deployment zone giving you options to do counter charges and set ups.
Be mindful however, that if you do receive the Ork or Urban table, there will be terrain in the middle. These are both terrain pieces your models can go inside of, so use that to your advantage when running infantry. Going against Monster Mash Daemons? Tuck your infantry in the middle 1″ away from the walls and sit there nice and pretty the whole game.
Day 1 – Round 2 – Mission 21 – Abandoned Sanctuaries
Another great mission if you have a secondary where you need to hold the center of the board. More so because if you control the center of the battlefield or kill an enemy unit near it you also gain points for the tertiary Secure the Sanctuaries.
This mission however, prohibits you from doing any kind of pre-game move, which is bad news bears for Necrons trying to get their scout move up the table.
Day 1 – Round 3 – Mission 22 – Conversion
This is an incredibly bloody mission, or a SUPER cagey mission for round 3. You’re awarded points for the tertiary for controlling the objective marker in your opponent’s deployment zone, controlling objectives in no man’s land and losing points if your opponent controls the objective in your deployment zone.
18″ of separation for deployment is going to hurt when going against Monster Mash Daemons being able to be in your face incredibly fast. Setting up for turn 2 or a turn 1 counter charge is going to be very important in this mission and so you should save your energy and really think for this mission because it can throw you off your game.
Day 2 – Round 4 – Mission 31 – Tide of Conviction
I hate this mission because it’s setup is annoying, but that’s just a personal preference. Day 2 kicks off with our first Hold 2 mission but it’s honestly one of the easier ones considering the objectives are so close to your deployment zone. It’s also the ONLY hold 2 mission at the event.
You can also gain points by being in your opponent’s territory for the tertiary, however it might be a bit difficult to do for some armies if you’re not fast enough or start to get move blocked.
Day 2 – Round 5 – Mission 32 – Death and Zeal
We go back to a hold one mission and possibly my favorite mission out of the grand tournament because it’s just so simple. This is the first STICKY OBJECTIVE mission as well, so you’ll control objectives even if you leave it as long as you controlled it at the end of your command phase with an OBSEC unit.
Gain points by killing something on an objective, gain points for controlling a new objective for your tertiary. Literally gain points for just playing the game, awesome. Give me more please.
Day 3 – Round 6 – Mission 33 – Secure Missing Artefacts
For the final mission at the event, we’ve got the one that takes extra time to set up because you have to move your objectives marked A or B. It’s a hold one mission, and the tertiary is pretty easy to get throughout the game that makes the “move objectives” mini game for the mission almost arbitrary. Move objectives out in the open or move them into cover, whichever way you want to play it you’re probably going to score the tertiary every turn.
Well, that’s it for this player pack for the SoCal Open! Hopefully this helped you prepare a bit more, and if you want to know more about the player pack (which you should) you can go check it out here.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
No one is showing up with Codex Space Marines?
Broke them into armies like White Scars, but yes – marine show up is pretty small unless it’s Blood Angels.
Thoughts on the article:
Assuming this was using pre-balance dataslate rules, the army spread is pretty much exactly what I thought it would be. Orks being so highly represented seems strange until you see the missions, which are an Ork player’s dream. Harlequins, even without the nerf, don’t see that much play.
The winrate of the Daemons stated is off, but the graphic shows the real winrate anyway so eh, whatever.
I have a love/hate relationship with player-placed terrain. I love the concept of it, where skill and decision can influence the game even at the terrain level, thus allowing for dynamic and unique games on the same mission based on player and matchup preference. However, most of the time it’s a struggle to get the terrain to fit, and defender has an enormous advantage in their first placement (exact opposite of set terrain, hilariously).
For the missions: they seem to be very aggressive army favored, which is why I believe the Chaos factions and Orks were so well represented (besides SoCal just having an above average amount of Ork players).
1. Tear Down Their Icons: A mission with so many ways to play, and yet rarely do matches go differently from “Data-Scry except Hold 1/2”. Board presence and pressure is the name of the game with the objectives being so distant from the deployment zones.
2. Abandoned Sanctuaries: Another mission that rewards incredible aggression onto the battlefield center and thus melee presence. Orks losing their Kommando infiltrates is sad, but Daemons and CSM generally do not care about that since all their non-deployed units are coming from deep strike anyway.
3. Conversion: This deployment map might as well be called “Melee Heaven”. Shortest distance between the armies, tertiary that synergizes with the intended playstyle of said armies, and smallest width of all deployment types all add up to most armies not having a way to run. These missions only become real cagey when neither army has a reasonable assault presence.
4. Tides of Conviction: Bias aside, Tides is probably my favorite mission simply due to how it stress-tests armies. It asks “Can your units individually function across your flanks?” In the current Nephilim rules, there’s a massive character shortage, so most armies cannot supply buffs across all their territory’s objectives. Coupled with Hold 2/3, overrun tertiary, and the basically auto-12 scoring of half the Shadow Operations secondaries in the game, and you got yourself a mission with a lot of fun times to be had for armies that can put on the pressure.
5. Death and Zeal: Honestly, same as Conversion.
6. Secure Missing Artefacts: A personally despised mission of mine. This mission is one of the few that directly encourages turtling for maximum points, since you don’t need to leave your deployment zone to max primary. Super anti-aggression, and notable amongst the matchups is that Orks vs. Astra Militarum on SMA is essentially an Ork auto-loss.
Of the missions, 5/6 missions encouraged and facilitated aggression and melee presence. This explains the high representation of Nids, Daemons, CSM, and Orks. While melee is definitely the most straightforward way to accomplish aggression, short-ranged shooting with high output and high mobility also accomplish very similar goals for the selection.
Conclusion: I probably would’ve gone if I lived in SoCal. But I don’t lol.