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Eldar doing just as strong as predicted
3 eldar on top 8
2 necron (shocker)
1 space marine battle co
1 dark angel space wolf list (kinda funny in respect to current campaign)
1 chaos demon

No tau! Maybe need bat was a little to strong.
Overall the results are kinda predictable the other 2 in top 10 was eldar and necron again. There is a couple token dark eldar formations but they aren't really the focus on any of the above lists. Abc as strong as warp spider spam still is I'm kinda glad about thd ITC rule on them.

And final four is 2 eldar, demons, and battle co

What?! No Tau in top 8? But they were OP? And even after all the nerfs people loudly claimed they had several strong units/formations.
I am shocked, shocked i tell you.

Anyway, i for one welcome our new metallic overlords!

Round 7 finishes. 2 Eldar, a Daemon, and Battle Company left. Basically as expected imo

Great live stream, for the record.

Tau Unit or Formation - ITC Ruling

Ghostkeel - Changed

Stormsurge - Changed

Hunter Contingent- Changed

Optimised Stealth Cadre - Changed by default

Riptide Wing - Not Changed

Piranha Formation - Changed

Drone Network - Not Changed

These are the new things we got that are good and what ITC voted or did to them prior to this event. The fact that Tau did not top 8 despite having a new codex is not surprising and these issues will most likely be addressed and there is a thread where you can discuss your issues.

I am not sure if any of the big names actaully brought Tau but the good Tau players did not have an OP formation such as the Necron Decurion Detachment to use because our formation had its power taken from it. Our only hope was probably a riptide wing or a list that took the forge world riptides but thats besides the point.

To the players that did top 8 job well done! Anyone knows who won the tournament?

I'd say tau could have been in the top 8 if any of the guys currently there were playing them. Seriously...a lot of familiar names there. They're playing on the final day for a reason.

I agree with you voidwraith which is the reason why you should not nerf a formation for everyone because you see one of the best players decimate another good or average player with it in a battle report.

Even if a known great player is decimated the next game after he has played a new formation will be totally different. A formation should be nerfed after it has consistently affected the tournament scene not because you think its over power or a few games!

The best eldar units getting bs 5 for the tax of buying a sergent has won more touranments than I can count. There is no one raising flags, so the idea of nerfing Tau before it has accomplished anything is almost idiotic in my opinion and is one of the reason why I left 40k for a year or two. No one gets credit for winning a tournament with a formation that was broken! Its like winning a card game tournament with the banned cards after the tournament no one is going to give you any credit which lets be honest the reason why we go to these events we do not benefit in any other way from winning. You have alot of fun but winning to gain recognition from your peers is why you go!

But once more I am interested to know if there were any new comers among the top 8 or if it was the same guys!

There were Tau players on Table 3 and 4 of the last round of the LVO before the Top 8, they both lost and didn't make top 8. Had the games gone slightly differently we'd have two Tau in the top 8, it's not that Tau are bad, it's just the got a little unlucky in the last round before top 8.

Also, the finals are now double Eldar, who had more or equal entries in the top 8 as the Imperium, but clearly the ITC is Imperium biased.

Edit: Oh, and here's another fun one, there was no War Convocation in contention for the top 8 at all going into the last round, so they did worse than Tau as a whole...

Top placing armies are and always have been totally irrelevant in terms of being meaningful metrics for what armies are good. The same players would have, as often as not, done about as well in the upper standings so long as they took a highly optimized list.

MVBrandt wrote:
Top placing armies are and always have been totally irrelevant in terms of being meaningful metrics for what armies are good. The same players would have, as often as not, done about as well in the upper standings so long as they took a highly optimized list.

Top players also don't play Uncompetitive armies. There is a reason why Sean didn't play tyranids and instead chose eldar this time.

gungo wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:
Top placing armies are and always have been totally irrelevant in terms of being meaningful metrics for what armies are good. The same players would have, as often as not, done about as well in the upper standings so long as they took a highly optimized list.

Top players also don't play Uncompetitive armies. There is a reason why Sean didn't play tyranids and instead chose eldar this time.

I didn't say it wasn't somewhat useful for helping identify which armies are bad.

I fully believe Sean could have competed with Lictor shame again...probably just felt like a new list for a new challenge.

Of course...I don't know him at all, so.....

I doubt it
Lictor shame is almost a 3 year old list he made and tyranids are one of the oldest codexs currently and no tyranid list was even close to the finals. I'm not saying he wouldn't of done well with tyranids but there is a reason it's a eldar vs eldar tournament.

No, it's two phenomenal players. In both cases, they had plenty of close calls against other phenoms who lost by the barest of margins not playing Eldar. Which isn't to say Eldar aren't super good. But you can't really credit the codex much when your final is Harrison and Nayden.

 Voidwraith wrote:
I fully believe Sean could have competed with Lictor shame again...probably just felt like a new list for a new challenge.

Of course...I don't know him at all, so.....

Sean took the corpsethief claw formation so he gets a victory point for every unit he kills in assault which almost guarantees him the maelstrom mission every game.

 Blackmoor wrote:

 Voidwraith wrote:
I fully believe Sean could have competed with Lictor shame again...probably just felt like a new list for a new challenge.

Of course...I don't know him at all, so.....

Sean took the corpsethief claw formation so he gets a victory point for every unit he kills in assault which almost guarantees him the maelstrom mission every game.

I don't know Sean but it seems he has the gift to identify amazing things such as his Lictor Shame List and now he has found this claw formation that in certain matchups almost guarantees a victory! I mean he faces a gladius strike force he gets a victory point for killing a free rhino! Wow, that seems broken but I am not familiar with the formation and I cant say for sure as the units in it may be slackers!

But if that formation has the good units and they get free victory points for destroying stuff, how did something that powerful not get voted on! The answer is that only the things that they feel are over powered are voted on! Which is another flaw in this voting system they have, good players are going to find the broken stuff regardless of your effort!

So in conclusion Sean ability to find these gems is the thing I am trying to highlight here!

Good job, Sean!

Well it's looking like eldar need some more nerfs now. The twitch was a lot of fun to watch.

Playing lists that aren't top tier, but rather home brew, has always been a pro-player past time in any game. Not every player will do it, but there will always be those that Top 8 with wacky stuff, we only don't see it in 40k as much because there aren't that many events. In more popular games like Magic or Hearthstone people like Brian Kibler or Patrick Chapin have a long history of bringing "sub-par" things to pro-tours, grand prix, and even Worlds, and making top 8. Some of those things even went on to break the format once enough people got their hands on it and refined it more, despite it being considered a "pet project" at first.

 Blackmoor wrote:

 Voidwraith wrote:
I fully believe Sean could have competed with Lictor shame again...probably just felt like a new list for a new challenge.

Of course...I don't know him at all, so.....

Sean took the corpsethief claw formation so he gets a victory point for every unit he kills in assault which almost guarantees him the maelstrom mission every game.

Only in assault though. Didn't look like he got many from them in the 2 streams he was on, so theres that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tinkrr wrote:
Playing lists that aren't top tier, but rather home brew, has always been a pro-player past time in any game. Not every player will do it, but there will always be those that Top 8 with wacky stuff, we only don't see it in 40k as much because there aren't that many events. In more popular games like Magic or Hearthstone people like Brian Kibler or Patrick Chapin have a long history of bringing "sub-par" things to pro-tours, grand prix, and even Worlds, and making top 8. Some of those things even went on to break the format once enough people got their hands on it and refined it more, despite it being considered a "pet project" at first.

What was sub par in the top 8?

The necron list had wacky stuff. It was a bunch of random units with an obelisk, and I heard another necron player basically say 'how'd he win with that?'.

I'm not really in the tourney loop so this might be obvious, but man those top lists look MSU-heavy! Especially the winning list, of course. Lists are halfway down this page:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/02/07/lvo-40k-championships-day-3-live-blog/

It was really neat being able to watch the live stream in Super Bowl breaks . Love Sean Nayden's weird list ideas!

 DarkLink wrote:
The necron list had wacky stuff. It was a bunch of random units with an obelisk, and I heard another necron player basically say 'how'd he win with that?'.

I mean, it's not "random". Praetorians are quite good overall, as are Deathmarks, they can all Deep Strike and shoot relatively well. The Obelisk/Monolith formation is a bit odd, but it lets you almost null deploy and start plopping down stuff responsively.

Null Deploy armies seemed to be quite the rage in this format (and possibly in general?), so I would imagine it was basically just using Living Tomb to deal with that or mimic it. I don't know if that's the best way to run an army like that, but it's not a bad way to do so. The Obelisk is also very good at taking out MSU units, with lots of S7 shooting.

I would like to see what opponents he ran against. I don't know how this would have dealt with Eldar. Deathmarks have a decent shot at killing a WK outright on the Deep Strike, but it doesn't have much else to do against one, and it doesn't have the mobility or range to deal with Warp Spiders jumping in and out.

 RiTides wrote:
I'm not really in the tourney loop so this might be obvious, but man those top lists look MSU-heavy! Especially the winning list, of course. Lists are halfway down this page:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/02/07/lvo-40k-championships-day-3-live-blog/

It was really neat being able to watch the live stream in Super Bowl breaks . Love Sean Nayden's weird list ideas!

The ITC missions are biased towards armies that are good at scoring. Every mission has modified maelstorm, 4 of 6 primaries are 4+ objectives, etc. There are a lot of nuances that favor highly mobile armies with lots of scoring units.

 DarkLink wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
I'm not really in the tourney loop so this might be obvious, but man those top lists look MSU-heavy! Especially the winning list, of course. Lists are halfway down this page:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/02/07/lvo-40k-championships-day-3-live-blog/

It was really neat being able to watch the live stream in Super Bowl breaks . Love Sean Nayden's weird list ideas!

The ITC missions are biased towards armies that are good at scoring. Every mission has modified maelstorm, 4 of 6 primaries are 4+ objectives, etc. There are a lot of nuances that favor highly mobile armies with lots of scoring units.

Yup.

Tournament missions generally favor some builds over others. The maelstrom objectives in the LVO format places a premium on a lot of fast moving scoring units.

I was one of the Tau players (table 3) playing to get into top 8. The changes to tau definitely hurt them, and some would benefit from a vote I feel.

That being said, I missed top 8 because I played against Alan, good friend, fellow ETC team member, and the guy that made it to the semi-finals and won the ITC season. That game was not a loss due to the Tau nerfs, it was a truly atrocious matchup and not one that tau handle very well, and it showed. Tau are still a good book, but they have been hit a bit hard in the rulings and would benefit from a second look going forward. I'm unsure the voting will help them out a lot as Tau have a smaller palyerbase than eldar or space marines, but it's definitely worth a shot.
Cheers to Reece and the FLG crew - it was a great event, ran extremely smoothly, and I had a blast.

 Red Corsair wrote:

What was sub par in the top 8?

In this top 8, not that much, though things like the Monolith and Obelisk are considered such by many people.

The idea isn't that it's actually sub-par, but rather it's seen as such until used in the right way. The idea is that you take something off the wall and different, and win the event, or at least top 8, as it's much more memorable than bringing what's known as good. Plus you get a surprise factor.

Again, Brian Kibler's Caw-Blade deck was seen as a fun pet deck that was sub-par, and it was better to play the UB Control deck... Then it was refined for a while by the player base and ended up getting the first bans in standard in the ten years of Magic since the previous bans in that format. Think about that, ten years without any bans, and this "cute pet project" that isn't seen as serious at first forces bans in the future.

Edit: The play mat Kibler inspired:

I am a really good player from the past I have played the panjamas guy place in top eights and all that jazz! I decided to quit because I didn't like how GW was jacking up the prices for no reason. In the past 2 years I have gone to maybe 4 tournaments just to see if I still had it I placed first in one event third in another so I know I am still good but I have never won the big one! I have the itch to play again mainly because of my friend and I have come close but never won. I decide to come out of retirement and all the tournaments around me is using ITC I investigate it and I love it! Than when Tau comes out the army I was plan on using to make my quote on quote come back with it is nerf to hell! I haven't even bought a single model!

So needless to say I am frustrated with Tau's treatment but in reality I don't have a single model just the codex, I am really a marine player! My criticism is not based off of the fact that they made my stuff not as good its because its just not right! If I am going to invest large amounts of cash into this game again (because GW has made it impossible not to) and I am to attend tournaments where the rules are decided by a political process I want my voice to be heard!

I use marines which based off of my research when it comes to voting they seem to get the most love! I am not trying to gain an unfair advantage when I play these big names again because I will be playing these big names once more and if I am able to win, I want it to be because I was the better player that day!

This comment that the ITC favors scoring units is not fair because as a player it is your job to figure out what to bring! If you know that its best to bring a lot of scoring units than why don't you bring a lot of scoring units to the tournament? Each tournament has something like this so make a list to take advantage of it. I know you are going to say what if my army isn't good at doing that well be like the players that top 8 have multiple armies!

So it is up to you to decide what is best to bring to win an ITC tournament if you know what it is just do it! I am a big critic but that's not fair to the ITC now if you were to say all of my scoring units are not as good because of a rule change that the ITC implemented than you have a case!

The things that won is exactly as I predicted, I mean Eldar with scatbikes and bs 5 fire dragons or warp spiders. I mean you get to choose which one you want to use and all you have to do is pay for a sergent who is going to give you another special rule! Combine that with the fact that the codex has the best unit in the game the wraithknight you can not be surprise at the results and the fact that all list are similar.

Do not mistaken that to mean that they only won because they took Eldar, I am saying that the best players made the decision to use Eldar and that validates why Eldar is the best codex to use for the ITC. And was the reason why I was slowly building an Eldar army!

Now to the average player, I will explain why the Necrons did so well! A 4+ save followed by another 4+ save is literally crazy! My friend used to use something similar except it was better as it had a 4+ invulnerable that he could re-roll but that was Seer council and it was one unit. Necrons can do this for an entire army! You shouldn't be surprised at all when a great player has this type of durability places in the top 8. Most players don't know how to handle that type of durability! The only reason why Eldar is better is because they have the wraithknight who just charges them and that's the end of the conversation! However the 4+ re-roll I am talking about is the Necron Warriors what about the other stuff that have a 3+ save and are t5 they get a 3+ followed by the 4+. So to be surprised that the Necrons did so well means you don't know the game that well. There isn't a single list in the top 8 that you should be surprised by and the one that had the sniper necron unit is a stroke of genius to handle those wraithknights!

Anyway Kenpachi is back and I will most likely be coming to a top table near you! And I will be a critic of everything that ITC does if it is going to impact what I can play which has an impact on my wallet as well. So please do not mistaken me for a bad guy I am just willing to play this theory craft game before votes to try to influence players to make the right decision especially if it is going to impacted what players play which I know affects their wallets.

Especially when it comes to Tau the army I want to make my comeback with but, if the voters vote a certain way strike force it is!

Target wrote:
I was one of the Tau players (table 3) playing to get into top 8. The changes to tau definitely hurt them, and some would benefit from a vote I feel.

That being said, I missed top 8 because I played against Alan, good friend, fellow ETC team member, and the guy that made it to the semi-finals and won the ITC season. That game was not a loss due to the Tau nerfs, it was a truly atrocious matchup and not one that tau handle very well, and it showed. Tau are still a good book, but they have been hit a bit hard in the rulings and would benefit from a second look going forward. I'm unsure the voting will help them out a lot as Tau have a smaller palyerbase than eldar or space marines, but it's definitely worth a shot.
Cheers to Reece and the FLG crew - it was a great event, ran extremely smoothly, and I had a blast.

As a Grey Knight player, my heartfelt sympathies for "how hard your book has been hurt". It's a real shame you couldn't go into the event with a full power codex.

 DarkLink wrote:

Target wrote:
I was one of the Tau players (table 3) playing to get into top 8. The changes to tau definitely hurt them, and some would benefit from a vote I feel.

That being said, I missed top 8 because I played against Alan, good friend, fellow ETC team member, and the guy that made it to the semi-finals and won the ITC season. That game was not a loss due to the Tau nerfs, it was a truly atrocious matchup and not one that tau handle very well, and it showed. Tau are still a good book, but they have been hit a bit hard in the rulings and would benefit from a second look going forward. I'm unsure the voting will help them out a lot as Tau have a smaller palyerbase than eldar or space marines, but it's definitely worth a shot.
Cheers to Reece and the FLG crew - it was a great event, ran extremely smoothly, and I had a blast.

As a Grey Knight player, my heartfelt sympathies for "how hard your book has been hurt". It's a real shame you couldn't go into the event with a full power codex.

This is so ironic the recent tournaments that I have won with uses a Draigostar with centurions but it would not have been able to compete in a tournament such as the LVO. They cant make your codex good that's GW's job, but if your codex is capable of Top 8 but rule changes forces you to play something that is not as effective is another story! Which is unfortunately what happen to the good Tau players such as Target, I know it was done out of time restraints but, when it comes to things that are not even over powered such as the ability to make one unit snap fire! You can potentially do this 3 times but as a Judge you should see that it is good but not broken just because the average player cant see it doesn't mean nerf it on the spot! Things like that should not happen and I will do my best to influence the voters when these votes happen especially with Tau!

Oh no guys, everyone in the ITC votes fairly, reece even said the vote was close but fair. Nobody voted to nerf the tau decursion because that would make playing them easier. When have people ever taken the dirty route just because its easier? Nobody I know.

Good thing we nerfed tau though, I would have hated to see the status quo of marines, eldar and necrons be broken for the finals. Oh hey theres a demon player too.