3 Lord of Skulls at the LVO, or How I learned to enjoy the Marine Meta

I took three Iron Warriors Khorne Lord of Skulls to the Las Vegas Open.

And I had the time of my life. I played against 6 highly skilled opponents, each at or above the caliber where I’d expect they easily win a local tournament. Every game was exciting and it never was over on turn 1, which is sometimes the case right now in competitive Warhammer 40k.

Update: Placed 2nd at CaptainCon GT

Will do a quick summary of that GT if there’s interest. Took alpha legion instead.

Terms Used

LOS: Lord of Skulls. A Chaos Space Marine Titanic Khorne Daemon Engine Vehicle. Visually, it’s the upper body of a knight on a landraider-sized chassis. It’s a 28 wound monstrosity with a 3++/5++ (even in combat), healing a wound a turn. Key Stratagem: Daemonforge, 1CP. “Reroll all failed hits and wounds for a daemon engine in the fight or shooting phase.”

MOP: Chaos Space Marine Master of Possession. Most critical unit in my list: provides two psychic 6″ aura abilities that buff the LOS and all Iron Warriors Daemons to having a 4++ and a reroll 1s to hit and wound

Brims: Brimstone daemons, a Daemon troop choice. Very efficient 3pt troops who have a 6++ and a few tricks up their sleeves: the ability to cast and deny on one dice, deep strike, and take blue horrors as a 2pt upgrade — the blue horror can split into a brim when it dies (as long as your list has 3 points left over to cover the cost of the 3pt reinforcement).

Disco: Lord Discordant. A Chaos Space Marines Warpsmith Daemon Engine Vehicle Character. Double-buffer to the Lord of Skulls: +1 to hit aura, and +2 to Movement aura if I chose to spend the Field Commander Stratagem for 1CP.

Why do this?

After their 100+ point drop in Chapter Approved, I took a look at the LOS again. I asked on reddit (/r/WarhammerCompetitive) what people thought of its value and I got thoughtful answers and tips. I brought one LOS to Goldensprue and liked it (that’s a whole other story), so I put in more.

One thing I liked about the LOS is that unlike knights it has this big heavy grimdark tank tread body. Which conveniently blocks line of sight to stuff behind, even occasionally lord discordants, but mostly its buffing characters. Additionally, the new Iron Warriors Vehicles Strats improve the LOS both offensively and defensively, and it gets buffed by MOP, Disco, the Daemonsmith (Iron warriors warlord trait for all Iron Warriors Daemon Engines with 6″ to score an extra hit on an unmodified roll of a 6 to hit), as well as the Crimson Crown which i put on the Daemons HQ Bloodmaster (Khorne Daemons relic: all Khorne Daemons within 6″ score an extra attack on a 6+ to wound). A final reason to take this list is that it’s relatively straightforward: I’ll know how well I’m doing by how many LOS are left alive. And my list will be a wildcard that few people will have practiced against, because the list was 2600+ points before December’s Chapter Approved.

First Day:

My LVO started out really well on Thursday, before the tournament, with a masterclass from Glasshammer Gaming’s Mani Cheema. A dozen of us sat around a table and chatted for over 2 hours about all aspects of the game. Mani’s advice: if the opponent won’t break your back on their first turn, give it to them (so of course Mani brought a list that can break backs on his first turn lol). Also, I learned a few critical things: abilities that allow unmodified 6s to hit to generate an extra hit, aka “explode”, works even if there are enough minuses stacked to mean you can’t hit: imperial fists shooting at -4 to hit Discos will still get a hit when they roll a 6 with 3+ BS. This learning would also apply to my list, as it applies to Daemonsmith. Also, I learned you can move over enemy models with fly when you heroically intervene, pile in or consolidate.

General strategy for the event: Hide characters and even sometimes the disco behind LOS, keep the 2 red LOS towards the back of the board and shoot things at 48 inch range. Keep most of my units, except for one aggressive LOS, the one painted white, castled up within 6inch aura buffs. Around turn 3 or 4, if I correctly kill enough alpha targets, any LOS will be unkillable (due to lack of enemy anti-tank) and I can go into a god-mode breakaway with it up the board, helped by a warptime.

List Strategy:

I chose to not take the gatling gun on one of the LOS (which is the best and obvious choice at 30pts more) so that I could take a double battalion and a mix of buffing characters. The general idea is to place that white, weaker-at-shooting LOS on the frontline as the “threat they can’t ignore”. This forces the opponent to come out of their hole and engage this juicy target, which I consider a decoy. On my turn, with that LOS dead, I’ll be able to move my two remaining red LOS out of the backfield and shoot his targets that got exposed to kill the first LOS.

I took a double battalion for the CP, mostly so that I would have many options to deal with a variety of threats. This proved to be a mistake: my cultists gave away too many kill points to the opponents. But I think it’s part of the learnings that come with attending my first LVO, and also being in this blind corner moment in the meta.

Thank you to Goonhammer’s Review for making it so clear to see the pros and cons of the different new rules from Faith & Fury, which led me to choose Iron Warriors (but maybe I should have chosen alpha legion for the re-deploy 3 units warlord trait!)