Vegas looms ever closer and the good news is that I am extremely close to finished hobby-wise. Other than attaching a few already painted gun-swaps and sticking some adhesive gems to base rims for squad markings the only things I have left to do are optional – the army is in a usable state and the few hours I’ll be able to spare this weekend should tie everything off.

With that in mind, my thoughts have finally started to turn towards the actual games, and there’s been two bits of news on that front. First of all, Frontline Gaming have made an important announcement about terrain at the event and secondly thanks to my friend Doug very kindly stepping up at short notice, I got a practice game in pre-submission to make sure that my list wasn’t going to be a complete disaster. We’ll talk about the terrain announcement first, and then run down my practice game and whether it led to any drastic list changes.

Terrain

Shortly after I finished my practice game (doh) Frontline Gaming put up an article outlining a big change in this year’s LVO. For the top 100 tables, (so probably the top quarter-ish of the field allowing for attrition) they’re providing a roughly consistent set of terrain and fixed layouts. Fixed terrain isn’t unusual in the tournament world, but what’s a bit different is that rather than a single layout, they’ve designed a different one for each of the six deployment maps, with players re-setting the terrain according to helpful handouts that will be on the covered tables.

As far as details and measurements go, the information given is that the wall-like pieces are counting as hills (although remember “if it fits it sits” will be in effect) and are about 4″ high and 10-14″ long. The area pieces with the fallen pillars etc. are counting as area terrain that only provides cover (no charge modification), and it wasn’t quite clear if that applies to the ruins as well.

My initial hot take on the announcement is extremely positive. I’m a big fan of fixed terrain layouts, and I think the idea of experimenting with different ones for different deployment maps is definitely interesting. Entirely selfishly, as long as I can get into the X-0 bracket it’s going to be a huge help for doing the event write up as well. Also, much to the delight of me and all of my fellow euro-trash, the layout shows that there are going to be no magic boxes in the top games, which is a rather wonderful later Christmas present.

I’m a bit less of a fan of when the announcement was made. As we’ll discuss in a second, the maps have a big tactical impact, and thus announcing it only 2 days before the cut-off for list submission seems a bit harsh. Entirely co-incidentally I think the army I’ve ended up on is heavily favoured by the terrain, so it doesn’t hit me too hard, but some people are going to feel a bit dunked on – I’d certainly have ended up in a bit of a panic if I’d still been on the Fire Prism list.. This must have been in the works for a while, and even an extra week’s notice would have helped a lot to give people time to plan and adapt – and hard working content providers to produce hot takes in time to actually help with list design.

I think this matters so much because of just how good these maps are for certain types of unit. Notably, armies with a low-ish footprint and fast assault elements get a huge boost because of how safely and aggressively the big L-blocks let them deploy on five out of six of the maps. Unlike a lot of “standard” setups, in every deployment except Dawn of War (which looks a bit more like setups seen in other events), the largest line of sight blocking pieces on the map are positioned in each player’s deployment zone, near or on the deployment line. A lot of the powerful melee options that are popular in the metagame can move through the walls of the L-blocks (either via FLY or being INFANTRY) and have access to either pre-game or double move effects, and on most of these maps they can plausibly deploy completely hidden and still comfortably make a turn one charge if they go first.

Melee units aiming for a turn one charge are the biggest winners, but honestly any low-drop army that wants to be mobile should be delighted by this. Even when my army is putting all the bikers in deep strike, the fact that I can probably fit everything else I have behind those L-blocks is a massive deal, and means I can afford to put a lot more armies on the first turn than I would be able to otherwise, and there will be vastly more games where I can afford to start at least the Skyweavers in play. Obviously plenty of top armies are far from helpless even if they can’t see you, but even the nightmarish indirect-fire options that Marines pack struggle to shift Wave Serpents in cover – there’s a world of difference for armies similar to mine to being shot at by “a bunch of Whirlwinds” and “a bunch of Whirlwinds and two lascannon dreads”.

So who are the big winners and losers? I think it’s something like this:

Winners

Footslogging/flying biker melee bombs – Shining Spears, Skyweavers, Centurions, Possessed, Sanguinary Guard, Krakenstealers.

Indirect fire – Whirlwinds, Thunderfires, Night Spinners, Wyverns

Plane-based Marine lists.

Fast Lists

Losers

Vehicle/Monster/Non-FLY biker melee options – Knights, Lords Discordant

Low-mobility shooting that needs LOS – Knights, Tank Commanders, Dreadnoughts, Fire Prisms (kinda)

Stalker bolt rifle spam Marine lists

Slower lists

I think armies that apply deep strike pressure such as GSC and Orks are probably helped a bit, but I’m withholding judgement a little – I think the wall-like hills could potentially turn out to be a big problem for them, giving savvy opponents a way to screen out charges on some of the maps, or at least funnel the forces into a killzone.

If your army is using some of the stuff on the “losers” list there then I’d recommend having a good think about how you’re going to deal with this terrain – don’t just assume it’ll be alright, as you’re going to find yourself in a lot of trouble. It’s also probably worth going over past articles on some helpful website and familiarising yourself with the options available to the big meta nasties for getting in your face. Our reviews of Raven Guard, Faith and Fury and Blood Angels would be worth a look, along with our Start Competing guides for Craftworlds, Harlequins and Tyranids.

I’m generally very keen on a setup that reduces the number of games where one player gets blown straight off the board (and god knows that happens enough in the current meta), but I think putting the LOS-blockers in such a good aggressive spot in 5/6 maps might have swung the pendulum too far the other way. Going for a half-and-half split of having the L-pieces in and out of deployment zones would have been my preference.

Outside of the L-blocks, there is one wild-card here for the rest of the terrain – what does “about four inches” actually mean (minds out of the gutter you at the back)? Quite a few notable units hover on the edge of this height, especially in factions with flying units, so it could make a surprising amount of difference if the hills turned out to be more like 3.5″ or, alternatively, crept up towards five.

As an example, consider the following Skyweaver:



I have the sinking sense that these assholes and their sticky up spear are going to cost me at least one game – and hiding them behind the 4″ walls could prove very fraught if they turn out to be even slightly short.

On the other hand, some armies stay under this height surprisingly consistently:

The fact that Whirlwinds in particular (along with Thunderfires) can hide behind the walls with ease is going to give Marine players quite a few options as to where to deploy them, although at least they won’t be in cover against anything that does manage to draw a line on them.

There’s probably more that could be said about the terrain, but we’ve probably hit the most important beats at this point, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays on the table. If you want a more in-depth analysis, including suggested deployment locations, Nick Nanavati did a write-up over on the Art of War.

Testing

By the end of last week I was in a bit of a panic about my updated list – I was pretty sure it was good, but worried that it would turn out to be somehow unplayable on the table. Luckily, when I sent a desperate message to Doug, he stepped right up to the plate and came round packing a full set of LGT terrain and a nasty Eldar list to throw down with.