Hello Warhammer 40k fans, and Las Vegas Open 2023 attendees in particular. Head LVO/FLG Judge SaltyJohn and Reece himself are here to discuss the LVO 2023 Warhammer 40k Championship.
Hey everyone, Reecius here. I wanted to take a moment to talk through our decision making process for this as the past few weeks have been turbulent for the 40k community. Leading up to the LVO this is always something we wish to avoid so that you, the attendee, can focus on getting ready for the big event without any undue stress.
We now find ourselves in a position where GW has released in total what amounts to a 9.5 edition of Warhammer 40k between the new detachment, missions, balance update, points changes, etc. The changes, while assuredly exciting for many players to dig into, came suddenly and so we’re now making the call to retroactively roll our new rules submission deadline back to the 31st of December, 2022. Any rules that were legal at that time will be in play at the LVO. Anything after that, will not.
In years past, tournaments had a 30 day moratorium on new rules for big events, meaning that within 30 days we no longer allowed any new rules so players could settle on a list, get models painted, etc. Over time, with the increased frequency of codex releases, this often resulted in people not getting to use their new rules which was frustrating so eventually we shortened this moratorium to 2 weeks. Honestly, we were hoping to get the new Astra Militarum Codex in for the LVO but that clearly isn’t hapenning at this stage.
We apologize for the confusion, this was not intentional on our part. With Warhammer enthusiasts coming from all around the world to compete for fun and prizes and finish up the ITC 40k season, we do not want to drop a major change on them just weeks before we play. Many may not be able to get the new rules material at all, and it is probable that there will be many questions requiring an FAQ for the new material that may not come in time for the LVO. Many players would have to entirely change lists and tactics they have been using all season and paint new models with very little time to do so. Our judging staff which already works hard would assuredly get flooded with questions they may not have time to answer, etc. Overall, we feel this degree of change this close to the event is unfair for the average LVO attendee that didn’t already have access to these rules.
Going forward we will do out best to avoid a similar circumstance and the ensuing uncertainty that comes with it. Thank you for your understanding and we can’t wait to see you all at the LVO!
-Reece “Reecius” Robbins
Las Vegas Open 2023 is fast approaching! The largest Warhammer tournament in the world is a huge operation with a lot of moving parts and the hard-working team at FLG and those of us who help with judging is always looking to improve. That’s exactly what this post is about, some improvements we are bringing to the players at the Warhammer 40k Championships this year and how we are looking toward the future. Some of this information was previously posted but is being compiled here in a single post for ease of reference.
FROM THIS POINT ON THE INFORMATION PRESENT IS REPOSTED FROM PREVIOUS POSTS
The Player Packet has been finalized. This includes having the missions listed. We will be playing the missions in order out of the Nephilim GT Book, Missions 1-9 for rounds 1-9. The Shadow Round, should it be necessary, will use a Mission from Nephilim rolled at random by our Shadow Round judge, Daniel Ruiz. We have also finalized the terrain section of the packet. Besides the aforementioned change to how the bottom floor will be played for certain pieces of terrain, we have also taken further steps to help mitigate the advantage of placing the first piece of terrain. Certain terrain sets now have pieces marked with a C, these pieces are preset and do not move. Another change is with the terrain being used, we have gone to great lengths to make sure the least popular terrain sets will be used the most sparingly and are the first sets that will be phased out of use due to drops and event attendee attrition.
You will notice is with our terrain pool, each player gets 1 “F” which will help them traverse the board and close ground-level firing lanes. This strikes a good balance between everything blocking Line of Sight 100% and making issues for shooting armies, and having everything completely open and making issues for assault armies; while working within the limitations of our terrain pool.
The most problematic pieces for creating “magic boxes” are not marked with an “F” on any of the terrain setups posted above. This means that those pieces will use Line of Sight as laid out in the Warhammer 40k rules and are not going to be large pieces of terrain you can camp a large unit inside of and have them be nigh unassailable for the majority of a game.
I am happy to publicly post the new FLG Paint Rubric for the Las Vegas Open 2023. Every player who wants to be paint-judged will be judged using this rubric. The scores will be input by a trained judge via an online form, these scores will be made public so every player can see their scores. The publication of your score is for the purposes of transparency, scores cannot be disputed, and a paint judge’s scores are final. With a large number of players at LVO, it is a very time-consuming, and difficult, task to paint-judge the event and we do not have the time and resources to go back and re-judge armies.
Please remember that even with a rubric judging the Hobby side of Warhammer events is still a highly subjective activity. It is entirely possible two judges could have different scores for the same army, the point of the rubric is to help the judges look for the same factors and make you aware of what those criteria are.
This is a great call by the FLG staff!
Thanks!
Good on you guys.
Please reconsider. This kills my (and most likely many others) excitement for the event. I don’t care to face 15 flamers, 2 tau bombers on every other table…
I get not using the arks of omens rules but I think the balance dataslate should be used since it’s meant to make the comp scene more balanced.
GW actually said that the Dataslate and points adjustments were designed to balance Arks, not Nephilim. So adopting them for Nephilim wouldn’t make sense as they aren’t designed to work with that book at all.
As GW says in the article, they are all meant to be used together, not parts of them.
I’m sure lots of people don’t care to face Space Marine armies that gained around 400pts of models. And I’m sure lots of people don’t care to have build/paint new models to fill points into their list that had changed.
Disappointing
It is what it is, this was a no win situation. Sorry if you do not like the call.
The win would be to keep by the rules you yourselves already set, not changing them last minute because you didn’t like what it means.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the changes, I don’t think Marines getting hundreds of free points is great, but I don’t care, that is up to GW. This has everything to do with a huge change to the game coming unexpectedly and too close to go time for people to adjust to. our number one concern is the experience of the attendee, and making a huge change with rules some people wouldn’t even be able to get on time, is not conducive to a good experience for the average player.
The decision to not uphold the latest balance change is a bad one. There are 3 weeks until the event. That is plenty enough time for people to solidify a new strategy and things ready. Tzeentch flamers are horribly unbalanced without this update. AoC is unhealthy for the game. Harlies need the nerf that is present. Nids need the nerf that is present. These are big and important changes to that will make it more healthy. Making the decision to arbitrarily not allow them (and holding that decision until they were released, you could’ve preemptively made the rules cut-off change before these updates) is unfair to those of us who saw the update and had a reinvigorated excitement for the event.
Everyone is free to see things how they choose, but all of these changes in total, not just the few anyone focuses on, are almost a new edition of the game. With the book coming out on the 14th, some folks won’t be able to get it in time and it is entirely probable that there will be an FAQ required for it that may not come on time leaving lots of unanswered questions. It’s easy to fixate on one or two things you like or don’t like but in total this was a massive change to the game with what amounts to 10 days to react to from the time it is all actually released.
100% agree. This was not an easy choice. For what its worth i think you guys chose the best decision in an unfortunate situation.
Thanks, it is a really crappy situation, the timing on this couldn’t have been worse honestly.
Hi All, just to clarify does this decision hold for all events at lvo (so narrative 40k for example) or only for the competitive event? Many thanks
I’m not talking about the AoO mission book, I’m fine with playing the Nephilim missions. But the Dataslate and Points updates that were released TODAY 1/5, aka 11 days from list submission and 22 days from the event beginning, bring very lucrative and healthy changes to balance some very critically unfair aspects to the competitive meta. The ones I listed above are only some of them, so I’ll add other changes that improve the game now. The changes to flyers having to start in reserves, for one, reduces the alpha strike feel-bad moments from bombers wiping out well over their points cost turn one. The points adjustments to marines will help them have a much more fair, and enjoyable time. Custodes finally get some of their objective play back that they’ve been lacking.
Ultimately its your event to do with as you please, but I personally feel that arbitrarily changing the date that’s been set for a long time now is an unfair and unpleasant move.
Games Workshop stated that those changes are designed to be used with Arks not Nephilim.
So I’m generally fine with the decision not to use Arks of Omen just because yeah, it’s a *massive* change super, super close to the cutoff time, but I feel like opting not to use the new point costs/dataslate feels really silly; it’s a good distance from the event. Obviously how ‘close’ to the event a change should be allowed and not feel silly is a bit subjective but… that’s kind of the point of the initially set rules cutoff date. The new points/slate are a week and a half before the cutoff date. If a new codex, something just as likely to force someone’s lists to change drastically, came out just prior to the cutoff date, they wouldn’t make this same decision; why do point cost changes and some rules shifts changing the effectiveness of a few armies, a week and a half before cutoff, change the reasoning here?
I get it with Arks, it’s really big and SO close to cutoff, but the decision not to use the new point/rules updates that came out today definitely makes me take the event much less seriously, just bringing some goof off for funsies lists. I mean I’ll still have a good time but I like to get some competitive testing out of tournaments like this but now it’s just going to be playing something *weeks* behind the actual new meta that will no longer be relevant at all.
The intention of the new rules material is to use all of it or none of it as it was designed to go together. An a la carte solution wasn’t seen as viable.
For marines players it helps the meta guys but not the renaissance players that in theory have to get 300-500 extra points painted.
Yeah, those 55% winrate armies sure needed to be knocked down several tiers while Marines get free wargear and no troop tax while reverting all their rules back to 8th edition nightmares.
Reece and the others objectively made the correct call. Let something other than imperium shine at an LvO. This change affects the least amount of people, flamers are gross, sure, but not unbeatable. Not everyone has countless hours to change their list to meet new guidelines and paint new models.
Can we get a refund
If you want to transfer your ticket to another party it is very easy to do so, go into the FB group for FLG, many are looking for a ticket. Just have them pay you, transfer it over and done deal. If you choose not to come, you’ll be missed but this situation was not one we wanted to deal with nor saw coming, it was thrust onto all of us. We made the call that was least disruptive to the people coming which is the most fair way to handle a very disruptive situation.
I’m sure it’s going to be easy to find people that want the ticket 3 weeks from the event playing in an old edition of the game he said sarcastically
Yes it is, there are people posting today looking for tickets.
This is a great decision for the majority, thank you for being understanding.
You got it.
Can we get the old data slate included into the player packet.
Working on that now.
This sucks, I thought you were at least going to have it taken to a vote.
At least using the new points and Dataslate changes…. No one wants to be playing against flamer spam and Bugs, which have been the dominant army since their release.
And instead play against the new broken stuff you have had no time to prepare for because you don’t know what it is yet, and get your pants pulled down during the event instead of playing against broken stuff you at least understand how it works. It was a situation in which people would get mad no matter what we did, we went with the least disruptive scenario.
Exactly this. ^^
Then why did you not just have it go to a vote like originally planned? Let the people attending the event decide.
Exactly. God knows what people would come up with that could be unstoppable. Well done on the decision. Not everyone has teams of people playong 50 games in 3 weeks to see what’s best
So instead you will play brohammer IH lists pumping out Dev doctrine for all 5 turns.
Not sure why so many players were banking on a last minute rules update to play in the LVO, but sounds like poor planning to me especially since the Player Packet specified it intended to use the Nephilim GT rules. Great decision FLG team!
Yeah I think people fixate on one thing, like Flamers, and get mad if they think the “fix” isn’t coming but they don’t consider all of the unknown changes they are not thinking about because they aren’t out in the wild yet. I assure everyone there will be dozens of new “broken” things that come with these changes that the same people will be complaining about next month. At least the current issues can be planned for.
Thank god it’s not changing, good call
What happened to the planned vote?
Things kept changing rapidly and piling up, we had attendees coming from other countries that needed to know what was going on and as the actual CA won’t come until the 14th, it was determined people wouldn’t have time to actually digest the information before any type of vote. The situation was very fluid, it made it really difficult for us to plan on anything. Sorry for the confusion, we certainly wish to avoid that.
I wish you could have least given a vote if players wanted to use the updated Dataslate and points.
I get not using AoO booklet, and I know GW said they go together (Which doesn’t make sense, because the Dataslate/points affect much more than the current GT booklet). but that seemed like the healthier middleground. Everyone has the information available, and the people with a stake in the matter get to decide.
I get it but the intention is that all of it goes together, the missions, points, balance changes, new detachment, etc. It was a weird position to be in.
Does this mean that the books that where no longer legal on the 1st are useable for the event now also? Looking for any bone for the Guard.
You got that bone, yes.
That is such good news to get after being worried over if the Guard book would be out in time or not. Then if not what to do knowing all those rules would be going away.
Of course they give a buff to Admech for the “meta” to only get shot down. 10 days before the cut off
I think this is absolutely the right call, though I kinda wish it had been made sooner. Hindsight and all that. People asking for dataslate and points without AoO are asking for a meta that’d last all of a week, which would be mad. I’d suggest that the 31st dec cutoff is a good cutoff for future LVOs. Gw don’t tend to release codices on the first of last weekends of the year, so probably only removes one weekend of eligibility and less likely to be stuff that just misses or just hits the deadline. People can go into the holiday period (lots of painting time) with a list mentally locked in.
As a Speed Mob hobby enjoyer, this is potentially great news. Does this statement apply to every event, including the Long War Doubles and Narrative?
I’m concerned that the writers of this article think that the solution to “too many rapid changes” is to make their own rapid changes, rather than doing (a) what they said they would originally or (b) putting it to the players by way of vote (which they also said they’d do).
We fully understand your position, but the situation was changing constantly and it was difficult to plan for anything. In the ends, we decided to make a call that would have the least impact on attendees coming from all over the world that had already prepared for a given set of conditions. The changes in total coming would have resulted in totally different lists for many people which this close to the event was deemed to be too much of a change to be fair.
Great call! I am actually glad I get to play the scions list before the changes to Guard. Thanks for the sensible change to the cutoff date.
I agree that this is a lot of change to throw out 3 weeks before a huge tournament. I appreciate being upfront with us on that! Thanks for all you are doing to make this a fun event. 🙂
My only question is when is BCP going to be open for us to add our lists and check in?
It would actually have been like 12 days, as the supplements don’t become available until the 14th.
The event will be live in BCP very soon.
I can’t imagine trying to rethink my whole army, 12 days before an event like LVO. Thank you for not doing that to us! haha
Yeah, that was a big factor in the decision. You’re welcome.
You got it =)
IMHO, this is the better call of a tough choice.
Already some posters are pointing out the imbalances that exist (flamers, tau bombers) in the game are still there, but far, FAR worse would be what Reece cited, the less than 3 week scramble to make adjustments to, as he accurately put it, 9.5e, a half edition change in the game.
As far as OP units like flamers, Tau bombers, etc, 40k will never be a balanced game system; as it is now, it is par for the course, as I can cite back to 4e. And, we already have months of experience to try to counter those broken units. We won’t have much time at all to counter what is going to be OP within the next few weeks.
For those *not* happy, please consider:
– this helps the majority of players have a better experience (which is what we all want). The Top Table Dogs would still be playing on Sunday if the changes were to be implemented. However, the scrubs and mid-range players would be put in the UNpleasant place that is Edition-Hang Over, rule look-ups, far more disagreement and arguments (not heated, just “That’s what changed.” “Ohh!”) and all that.
– game play will go smoother for all parties, because players will be in familiar, experienced territory with secondaries, model function/data slates, etc. With the changes, there would be far more stressed out players timing out while looking up & verifying those changes over a mental pattern established since Nephilim dropped six months ago.
Think about trying to perform a new dance at a show with only a couple weeks to learn new dance steps when you thought it’d be the one you’ve been doing for months? 😉 Sing a new song? Ski a new downhill slalom course? Cook a complicated meal for a competition or family for the first time?
Benefits of going with Arks?
– OP units get their nerf.
– New Force Organization Chart, or ‘Detachment’; it does look fun to bypass Troop Tax.
– New fun of elements to explore, missions, secondaries, and sad units getting buffs
Detractions:
– A lot of disagreements and time taken to disregard the old rule, aka Edition Hang Over
– Loss of time in game.
– Players scrambling to buy, paint and get used to new models. Plus the overall ‘fit’ in how they interact and perform their roles in the list, anti-tank, Mortal Wound output, scoring, etc.
– Might not get those changes made in time – some lists, models, units, as cited by Reece, would become very sub par, and the player bringing those is going to be in the position to lose a lot more than just the game. Experienced players know that without key elements of an army, you’re going to get tabled. *cough* Harlies 😉 *cough* Eggs, rotten lettuce and tomatoes will be thrown, but I think FLGaming made the best call.
-Casey H.
Yeah, the BeerHammer guy
How do I transfer my ticket
Click the transfer button.
This was the right call. Hard but fair. Looking forward to a great event!
Nice
Thank you for letting us know. It was a tough call and I appreciate all that you all do to make this amazing event happen. This was not an ideal situation and you guys made the best of being thrown in the drops.😀
So is AoC and such still good for LVO?