THE BIG LGT REVIEW BY COMMANDER K’HO
The weekend has passed. We finally caught up on some sleep and now it’s time for the big LGT review! The London Grand Tournament is by far the biggest event in Europe with around 750 40k players, and numerous side events for AOS, Adeptus Titanicus, Song of Ice and Fire (Where Ollie from Tabletop kingdom smashed face!) and many more games. In this article, I will share my experiences over the weekend with you and hopefully, you feel inspired to head on out to a tournament or even join me and the other Dutchies at the LGT next year
750 players all gaming together..
This was my 4th LGT experience and it just keeps getting better and better every time. The London Grand Tournament started out as your regular Warhammer 40000 tournament like any other. But, over the years it has grown so big that I consider it more a convention than anything else. There are so many events and activities going on over the weekend, food stands everywhere and the socializing part with overseas players and friends is what for me personally makes it the go-to event of the year (next to WTC of cours). This year I went with my old clubmate Dick van der Harst, well-known as a Necron player (coming in 4th last year at the same event). We’ve been to quite a few tournaments together and we have the same mindset on the game. We want to do well, and play to the best of our ability but having fun with what we play is important for us. This combined with the Dataslate a few weeks before the event meant that Dick would take his Chaos knights and I would stick to my guns and bring Tau. Dick has been wanting to play Chaos knights so long so he decided to disregard the buffs necrons received and took a chance with Chaos Knights. I was trying out 3 factions for this event, Worldeaters, Eldar and T’au. I didn’t feel comfortable with Eldar post-data slate as the list felt very thin and consisted of mostly characters. To bring Worldeaters I needed a lot more practice while I already had a lot of practice with T’au. So with enough reps in, models painted and ready we were both ready to head out to London.
Skyserpents drukharii in real live! (pictures “borrowed” from Contact Lost.
I started my trip over on Friday morning flying to London Luton. I got lucky and got picked up by a couple of friends I made via the Tryhard wargaming discord. With a short half-hour ride full of 90’s Eurotrash house we were at the venue at 11:30 and ready to enter the Friday evening RTT’s. Most tables needed to be set up at the venue but the food stands were already set up, I grabbed a nice lunch of Greek gyros and some salad and I was ready to start.
With such big events you can get a bit nervous and having a few games before the main event can release some of the tension. In the RTT I had 3 enjoyable games against Worldeaters, a fellow Ddutchie who also made the trip, Martijn and his Blood Angels and Votann. With a steady 2-1 record win I was feeling good and confident for the main event the next day!
I played On the Saturday I had 3 games on the Saturday, and played the following armies, Thousand Sons, Chaos Knights and Adeptus Mechanicus. While Chaos Knights is usually a difficult matchup I had the luck of running into a novice player, this helped me leverage an advantage in points as my opponent didn’t take fixed secondaries against Tau. Gents, (Always take Bring it down and Deploy Homers against Tau, it’s an auto 35 points - you’re welcome;).
My last game of the day was against Johnny Simmons on Ad mech. I haven’t had any games yet against Ad mech so I didn’t know what to expect. I could already tell by his behaviour and in-game choices Johnny was a very competent player so I had to be cautious, especially with those anti-vehicle guns on the Kataphron breachers. Johnny obviously took Fixed secondaries Bring it Down and Cleanse, I was forced to go Tactical as there weren’t two viable fixed secondaries. We both created somewhat of a stalemate in Turn 1, we were both ready to really put the hurt on each other’s units but no one really committed any units, luckily I managed to rapid ingress a unit of suits on an objective which gave me the upper hand on primary and thus forcing Johnny to start pushing out and trading units. In the end, I managed a small win putting me in the 3-0 bracket! Dick sadly lost his 3rd game against Chris Paterson, a well known Eldar player. We were both really tired so we decided to head back to the hotel, order some food and prepare ourselves for the Sunday which was most likely going to be a much harder day.
Dino and Johnny Simmons hard at work
Sunday started with a game against Chaos Space Marines. These guys were already good but the balance data slate changes made them a top contender for this event. The Pilot running them was Leigh Churchward from the 6++ podcast, a well known and very capable player so I had to bring my A-game! The mission was Priority Targets which means you can have a nice upswing in primary at the end of the game. The player going last had a big advantage and I was so glad Leigh was rolling hot for firs turn! I stuck to my usual gameplan, minimize incoming damage for Turn 1 and wait for the right moment to strike. I thought I established a safe zone with my breachers on one of the no man’s land objectives but Leigh still managed to hit my breachers which forced me come out a bit. We ended in this very trade-off game where we both kept looking for enough damage output without losing too many resources. Leigh was ahead on primary and secondary but totally forgot about the end-game scoring. I deliberately kept enough resources at the back, banking on the fact I could manage to get an extra 15 points on primary. Because of this play I managed to pip the win by 1 point!!! I was really happy with the win but also getting nervous about the last round. I was lucky enough to not have hit any Eldar matchups or one of the top players. Surely my luck had to run out somewhere. I took my 30 minutes break for a rest while Dick was so kind enough to grab me lunch. Having a friend with you at these events where you look out for each other is really great!
15 minutes before round 5 and the pairings pop up, I got Necrons. I hate Necrons..I hate 4++ and I believe 4+++ is an even worse experience than playing Eldar. The game is already very unpredictable but with Necrons it just gets even worse. The dataslate gave the necrons a nice glow up as certain units got a bit cheaper meaning the Necron lists had a few more units to play with than before. This was also one of the arguments for me to play Ttau. Tau have so many guns they should be able to deal comfortably with Necrons and their warrior blobs. I was happy with the matchup, my opponent was not taking fixed so things were looking great. I had first turn, I put up a nice little bait with Aun’va and my opponent took it. I know had 63 cyclic ion shots with sustained hits 2 on one of his Lychguard blobs from a safe spot. My turn 2 starts, I do my movement, i secure my secondaries without exposing too many resources and i enter my shooting phase. I iItook out his doomsday arks and some tombblades and now it was time for the big show. .I rolled my 63 shots, rerolled a bunch of dice and i ended up with 38 wounds! I killed 2 cryptothralls and 5 lychguard. He got all cryptothralls and 2 lychguards back, I lost 2 suits to hazardous rolls…
My plan failed horribly and I was now in panic mode. My opponent scored a clean 15 points VS my 5 and he was in a position to flood 2 objectives and make this a really hard game. Losing 2 suits also meant I didn'tIn didn’t have the critical mass of shots to one-shot his Lychguard units unless I overcommiti overcommit and risk the chance of misplacing my units. My only tactic now was to out-obsec him on objectives. For the remaining 2 turns I was forced to throw my units at one objective, hold a 2nd objective with my breachers and use any shot I hadi had to kill 1 lychguard unit. In the end, I managed to kill 1 lychguard unit and swinging the primary and secondary in my favour. I managed to reach my goal, 5-0.
After a short break, we got the pairings, I dodged Eldar again and I wasn’t playing any of the top players like Mani Cheema, Anthony Vanella or Vik Vijay, I got Chris Radford from team Ignite on Chaos Space Marines. In no way did I think I was going to have an easy matchup or opponent but it felt like a fair game so I was totally up for it. We had take and hold which is generally a bad mission for Tau on Hammer and Anvil, my speed would not be a factor in this game. I was forced to go tactical as my opponent didn’t give up any good secondaries. Chris went first, had to push up some units and staged his Chosen very well. His Forgefiends were placed in such a position that I couldn’t shoot at them but they could counter my units. I got a bit lucky on the cards the first two turns but was losing on the primary. Turn 3 was kind of a critical turn where I needed to decide to push out or wait a bit longer. I’m generally not a very aggressive player so I decided to see what my opponent would do, in the end this proved to be my fatal error as I was in a position where I could not win the primary game at all and with a couple of bad tactical cards I had now lost the game in turn 4. We did conclude Turn 5 to see if my opponent would make a mistake but on that level of competitive play, those things rarely happen. We settled the score on 83-65 and Chris and I both walked away very happy and proud. He got to play on in the shadow round, I reached my personal goal and did so with a smile and the respect of my peers. In the end, I think Dick and I both made the right choice, not only because we both had great games but also because we brought in great results! Dick ended 4-1 with a ranking of 63rd and I managed to get 13th place going 5-1! This was my best result at LGT ever and also a goal of mine.
As said before, LGT has grown to be far more than just 5 games with a lot of nerds in the hall. This year there were so many food stands and variety you could just spend half your day trying out all the options..there was even a stand that just offered steaks! I’ve met so many of my friends, WTC players and new players. We’ve all learned so much and we’ve all been witnessing how these new young kids like Nassim Fouchane, Alexandre Sacco and Liam VSL are popping up as the new star players in 40K! If you ever find yourself with the opportunity to go to the LGT or any of the other big UKTC events I highly encourage you to go! Meeting up with new players and seeing how they play in England is not only a great fun weekend but a great learning moment for you as a competitive 40K player. If you would like more information on the UKTC you can check out their website here.
In the end the Dutch ranked:
Dino Kho- Tau 13rd
Dick van der Harst- Chaos knights 63rd
Lenny Craft-it - Black Templars 77th
Rico de Reus - Astra Militarum - 300th
Mike Jungeling - Deathguard - 375
Wouter Kamps - 338th
Jalmar Nijpels - Drukharii - 402nd
Reno van der Zee - Tau - 471st
Martijn Versteeg - Blood Angels - 543th
Aat Niehot- Thousand Sons - 629th
I’d like to congratulate all the Dutch men and Wardicers on their scores! A big thank you to my wingman Dick van der Harst and a big thank you to the UKTC! Starting next week Dick, Rob Goossens and I will start preparing for the Warhammer Finals in Atlanta, Georgia in November. Stay tuned for some interviews and articles discussing how we prepare for such a large event. ;) If you have any questions about the LGT or you would like some more information on visiting tournament you can always jump into our new discord . We have a very open and friendly community who are ready to ask your questions and show you around.
Till next time!
Dino Kho
DTC40K