My LVO 2024 Experience with… Not One, Not Two, but THREE Land Raiders

Let’s just acknowledge one thing: The timing of this writeup is a little bit weird. LVO was last weekend, and we have a dataslate coming out sometime this week (hopefully, don’t get our hopes up WarCom!). This means this article won’t have as much written about the exact details of the list, as rules and points are liable to change at any moment.

On the other hand, I see no reason not to do an LVO 2024 writeup at Warphammer. My list is far from the meta CSM list (intentionally), and at least some of these units should still have a lot of play after any potential CSM nerfs. There are also lots of people rooting for Warphammer out there that I think would enjoy a recap of an amazing event. I also want to give credit to my 6 great opponents.

People come to Warphammer to read about Cool Chaos Shit (TM), so why not give them exactly that?

So this tournament report will be briefer than most, but I’m still going to share the story of taking 3–that’s right, 3–Land Raiders to one of the world’s largest tournaments. Let’s jump into the Assault Ramps, buckle up our seatbelts, and dive straight in.

Tournament Results

I always like to spoil the result so people know what to expect. My Land Raiders finished 5-1, 53rd out of 910 players. 

I had 6 great opponents and friendly games out of 6 games, so I went 6-0 in my favorite metric.

We could have done better, but we also could have done a lot worse. I was happy I was able to continue the Warphammer tradition of taking lists that look nothing like anyone else is running and doing really well with them.

My Land Raider List

• Land Raider: Nurgle, Combiweapon
• Land Raider: Nurgle, Combiweapon
• Land Raider: Nurgle, Combiweapon
• 5 Possessed: Undivided
• Master Of Possession: Undivided
• 5 Possessed: Slaanesh
• Master Of Possession: Slaanesh
• Chaos Lord: Undivided
• 5 Chosen: Undivided
• Chaos Lord: Undivided
• 5 Chosen: Undivided
• 10 Cultists: Nurgle
• 5 Warp Talons: Slaanesh
• 5 Warp Talons: Slaanesh
• 4×3 Nurglings
• The Blue Scribes

I’m going to be honest and say my writeup of the list will be short, because we’re going to get a dataslate this week that will shake everything up, so there isn’t as much value diving into the exact specifics of this list. So we’re just going to hit a few highlights.

I wanted a list that was both fun to play with, and against. I’ve seen tons of CSM players running near identical hordes of Accursed Cultists backed up by Forgefiend and ChosenLords in Nurgle Rhinos, and honestly, those lists are just miserable to play again. They are also–no offense to any other CSM players out there–a little bit brainless. If I’m going to a tournament at the end of a meta cycle, then I want myself and my opponents to have fun.

You know what really made me happy? 3 of my opponents told me during or the after the game that it was a really cool take on CSM to play against, and they enjoyed facing CSM and seeing something fresh. It felt great to take an index that could be really unfun to play against and cook up something that could win games but also gave opponents a good experience.

It’s a fool’s errand to try to predict exactly what will be in a dataslate, but I think its unlikely that Possessed, Masters Of Possession, and Land Raiders get nerfed (Chosen, Chaos Lords, and Warp Talons are likely to get looked at hard by GW, so I won’t dwell on them in this writeup).

I will say this: The Masters Of Possession were absolutely incredible all weekend. Their guns are incredibly strong, often throwing out 3 AP3 flat 3 Damage Dev Wounds shots with +1 to wound, and making it impossible for any Characters to poke their heads out because they have Precision. Master Of Possession shooting is such a powerful tool and completely changes how some matchup play. Once you get past the obvious heavy hitters like Forgefiends and Obliterators, I honestly think a Master Of Possession attached to some Possessed is one of the best shooting units in the codex.

Possessed with a Master Of Possession are weirdly fragile, but also very fast coming out of a Land Raider and durable enough that the opponent needs to commit real guns to make them go away. When those real guns are pointed at the Possessed they melt, but their real guns are also getting blown up by Land Raiders as the game goes on and stretched very thin because I have so many threatening targets.

I took 2 ChosenLord units upon urging from a friend, and I honestly wish I hadn’t. They were the one meta part of my list but weren’t enough of an upgrade of the Possessed to get such a huge downgrade in style points. Something like replacing the 2 ChosenLords with 1 MOP+Possessed squad and a 3rd Warp Talon squad would have been very fun and similar in power.

Round 1: Guy’s World Eaters (W, 98-42)

Guy’s List: Angron, Khorne Lord Of Skulls, Lord Invocatus, Lord on Juggernaut with Favoured Of Khorne, 10 Jakhals, some 3-man Exalted Eightbound units, some 3-man Eightbound units

Halfway through the game, Guy realized we had played before. It took me a second, but I realized that we had played at the Tacoma Open. I remembered him because he was such a good guy. My friend had just had his car broken into and a bunch of stuff stolen so we rolled up late and rattled, and Guy offered to buy us beers and take some time for everything to calm down so we could enjoy the game. I have a lot of respect for him as an opponent.

In terms of how the game went, the Nurglings were just way too good at blocking his Scout moves and early aggression. I went first and did surprisingly little damage (realized after the game I should have used Lethal Hits not Sustained Hits when shooting at the Lord Of Skulls, T13 is no joke). But we were able to set up a ton of moveblocks and prepare counter-charges for the following turns. When we crashed into the World Eaters at near full strength round 2, basically half of Guy’s army evaporated. I love Nurglings for many reasons, and their incredible strength in the World Eaters matchup is a big part of that.

Once I decided to ignore the Lord Of Skulls, the game became a lot easier. All my Lascannons with exploding 5’s just put way too much damage into Angron and the Eightbound for them to survive. Guy was at a big disadvantage from the terrain pieces we had and did a great job scoring points even after his army was nearly tabled, but the damage output from the CSM was just too powerful for the World Eaters to overcome.

Highlight: Chaos Lord doing 12 damage to the Lord Of Skulls by himself, finishing it off

Lowlight: Killing Angron R2T1 then having him resurrect with the stratagem to roll a Blessing again in R2T2, meaning Angron was able to Rapid Ingress onto the board during my turn in round 3

Round 2: Marc’s Hypercrypt Necrons (W, 83-57)

Marc’s List: Nightbringer, Void Dragon, 3x Transcendent C’tan, 6 Wraiths with a Technomancer, 2×5 Deathmarks, 2×3 Tomb Blades, Lone Op gun dude

Marc was a really great opponent, and had a very relaxed attitude that is always nice to run into at a tourney. Like myself, he seemed to be enjoying Vegas outside of just the 40K tournament, and I was rooting for him over the rest of the event.

The game felt like it mainly came down to Marc’s invulns and FNP rolls on his C’tan. On the first couple turns, he couldn’t fail a save and it seemed like he would run away with the game. We both agreed it was looking very dire for the CSM after turn 2. Then a switch flipped, and suddenly he couldn’t make a single save or FNP, and his previously invincible C’tan melted away. CSM damage output is very consistent compared to most factions so my dice weren’t making huge swings. It felt like outcomes came down entirely to Marc’s dice, which was a weird situation to be in.

Marc took fixed Behind Enemy Lines/Deploy Homers, which is a smart gameplan. The issue was as his army was whittled down to just the C’tan left, those C’tan had to be fighting over midfield objectives, so his ability to send units to score his secondaries was really decreased. I was also able to leverage my much better on-board mobility to get where I needed, using plays like Rapid Ingressing Warp Talons to hunt down his Glocktopus.

Highlight: 5 Warp Talons doing 7 wounds to a Transcendent C’tan

Lowlight: A full unit of Undivided Possessed with Profane Zeal

Game 3: Chris’s Chaos Space Marines (L, 80-42)

Chris’s List: 2×5 Chosen with a Chaos Lord, 1×5 Chosen, 2 Nurgle Rhinos, 1 Forgefiend, 2×5 Warp Talons, 4 Obliterators, 10 Cultists, 2 Vindicators

Chris was a really friendly opponent, and like myself seemed to enjoy experimenting with CSM more than just running the standard powerful stuff. Any Warphammer fans out there can certainly appreciate that mindset! Chris definitely played well and deserved the win.

On short Dawn Of War deployment, I think this game was influenced more than usual by the first turn roll-off.

When using 3 unwieldy metal boxes, I had to make some tradeoffs in deployment/terrain setup. I could keep everything hidden so I take 0 damage if Chris goes first, but then I am basically out of the game for several turns as we try to move around terrain. I could deploy completely on the line, have a great first turn if I go first, but then take massive damage if Chris goes first.

What I ended up settling on was a deployment where I was positioned to have a great first turn if I went first, but Chris would get to activate 1 Vindicator into 1 Land Raider in cover, 1 Forgefiend into a different Land Raider in cover, and the 2nd Vindicator wouldn’t get to shoot.

Unfortunately we got about the worst possible first turn, as the 1 Vindicator that could activate ended up one-shotting my Land Raider (comfortably, it ended up being 19 damage total). That was very unfortunate, but it happens. In my turn, I lose over half a Possessed+MOP squad to 1 Vindicator’s overwatch, and lose 1 model too many to both kill 3 Warp Talons and the 5 wounds of his Vindicator left. I would have had enough, but I failed a short but failable charge and didn’t have the CP to Profane Zeal.

Things were actually okay though, and I set up a great play where I wrapped his Rhino with 2 Chosen squads inside with my Warp Talons and my Slaanesh Possessed and tagged his Forgefiend. There was no room for his Chosen to disembark, and his Forgefiend couldn’t shoot my infantry because they had the Rhino wrapped. To even shoot me he would have to take a Desperate Breakout test from Warp Talons with a Rhino full of Chosen and spend a CP to fall back and shoot with his Forgefiend. It was a great spot to be in. I just needed to not kill his Rhino in my turn. Warp Talons are perfect for this, as you can use their Twin-Linked rule to reroll successful wounds and make sure you do very little damage.

It was a great plan, and I was pretty happy I found that path to get back in the game after a very bad first turn.

And then, for some reason, my mind completely went blank and I threw the game away. I rolled the Warp Talons for damage instead of rolling to not kill the Rhino, taking the exploding 5’s and rerolling failed wounds and killing the Rhino. This meant his Chosen could emergency disembark and prepare to smack me very hard on the following turn. I don’t know what happened, other than that it was the third game of the day and I had been out at the Bellagio until 3AM the night before (okay, I guess I do know what happened).

That was basically the game. Chris did a great job applying pressure after that point and we never got back in the game. I wish I could go back and re-do that Warp Talon activation and actually follow through with my plan to not kill the Rhino instead of defaulting to max damage Warp Talon attacks, but its all good. It was a dumb move and I can’t blame Chris’s dice for the loss nearly as much as my own mistake.

Chris made a comment after the game along the lines of “There is no such thing as averages with Vindicators”, and that is so true. While the Vindicators popped off for Chris this game, he also positioned them well to take advantage if his dice rolled well and applied a lot of pressure.

Highlight: Setting up a cool play where I used an objective marker to effectively “Fire And Fade” my ChosenLord squad into melee with his Cultists and then move back behind terrain

Lowlight: Losing almost 4 Possessed to a Vindicator’s overwatch

Game 4: Steve’s Salamanders (W, 87-51)

Steve’s List: 2 Land Raider Redeemers, 2 Lancers, Command Squad, Callidus, 6 Aggressors with a buff Character, 6 Bladeguard with a Buff Characters

Let’s appreciate for the fact that we had a combined five Land Raiders on the table in 2024!

This is just iconic 40K. This game would have been recognizable to someone playing 20 years ago: Heavy Infantry being ferried to the front by Metal Bawkses.

And also, let’s give credit to Steve for really repping the Salamanders well. He loaded up with enough flamers to make Vulkan proud, and was a really friendly opponent the entire time. He’s an opponent I would happily play again anytime.

This game was much closer than the final score. I had some breaks go my way early, and if things went the other way then in a few key moments then Steve would have gotten a lot of momentum. To sum it up, we won the brutal damage output war over the first few turns, and the game basically ended with both of us nearly tabled except I had 3 Land Raiders with varying amounts of health left. That enabled us to rack up a ton of points over the final turn or two and end up with a much larger score differential than you would have guessed if you were watching the game early.

Highlights: My Cultists surviving a Scout shooting phase and charge with only a few casualties, bravely holding the point in a real heavyweight battle

Lowlights: A Land Raider Redeemer killing all 5 Possessed in a unit in one activation. Twice.

Round 5: Luke’s Tyranids (W, 95-42)

Luke’s List: Hive Tyrant, 10 Gargoyles, 10 Gants that move when I get close, 3 Exocrines, Maleceptor, Biovore, 4 Lone Op Characters, Pyrovores, Old One Eye leading a Carnifex

Luke was a friendly opponent, and despite how bad the final score ended up being, I thought he played a very smart game. Unfortunately, CSM going first on corners deployment just do so much damage to Tyranids that the game effectively ended pretty quickly. I would have loved to have seen what Luke would have done going first. From talking afterwards it seemed Luke had some smart plays set up to moveblock and stop my scoring early if he went first, so I was definitely fortunate to win the roll-off. CSM might still have won if we went first because we just do so much more damage, but it would have been a very close game.

Because his only real anti-tank was concentrated in the Old One Eye + Carnifex unit, we were able to feed that unit Nurgling roadblocks until we were able to shoot it dead. It’s a surprisingly tricky unit to shoot because it can move after its shot into Engagement Range. The trick to avoid that is place a nearby Nurgling unit or whatever really close to the Carnifex unit, and make sure every unit you activate after the first unit you shoot has Line Of Sight to both sides of that Nurgling’s base. That way you force them to move a certain direction, get into engagement with that Nurgling (or whatever) so they can’t move anymore, and then continue unloading your guns into them because they’re Monsters and can still be shot.

I did get to the live the Master Of Possession dream this game, as one Master of Possession by himself killed a Maleceptor without it rolling any saves turn 1. The combination of Anti-Psyker 2+ and Devastating Wounds means that a Master Of Possession is absolutely brutal into any tough unit with the Psyker keyword. His shooting did 6 damage to the Maleceptor, and then we charged a nearby Gants unit and used some Fight Phase tricks to get the Master Of Possession into melee with the Maleceptor and easily finish it off.

Highlight: The Master Of Possession tearing the Maleceptor a new one

Lowlight: We got first turn, we got all the dice, we had a good matchup. How can I complain about anything?

Round 6: Joe’s Deathwatch (W, 84-83)

Joe’s List: Land Raider Redeemer, 3 Repulsor Executioners, 2 Lone Op Lts, 6 bolter Inceptors, 10 man Kill Team with lots of 3 damage hammers led by a Judiciar for Fights First

More Land Raider on Land Raider madness! Joe was an exceptional sport to top off a week full of great opponents, and I couldn’t have asked for a better final game. I know he was one of the top Deathwatch players over the last few years, and I was excited for the matchup between our two armies.

I’m going to be honest with you–this game was a blur and my knees were killing me by this point, and I can’t remember most of it. He made some very smart use of reactive moves on his Lone Op Lts to stop my Primary denial. I used angles well to stay hidden and charge without Overwatch. We were both playing our best while having a very friendly vibe, and I wish this game had been on stream.

The key moment of the game was an actually insane sequence of events. To summarize the board state, Joe had a Land Raider on 1 wound in the center of the board. I had a Land Raider with 3 wounds left nearby. He had 3 Inceptors near both of our Land Raiders, that if they were around next turn, could flip my back objective that was stickied with no one left on it.

Joe moves his Land Raider to tag my objective with the Blue Scribes on it and deny me primary. In a Hail Mary play, I overwatch with my Land Raider on 3 wounds. I roll my Dark Pact. I fail, and take 2 wounds, going down to 1 wound. With Sustained Hits Lascannons, we do the final wound to his Land Raider. He rolls to explode, and gets a 6. He does 3 mortal wounds to his Inceptors and kills my Land Raider.

I roll to a explode… and get a 6. My Land Raider explodes with only his Inceptors in range. I roll my damage, and get a 6. With the 1 Overwatch, we killed his Land Raider, my Land Raider, and his 3 Inceptors. Most importantly, this clears out both of his remaining units on my side of the board, letting me hold Primary longer than I should have been able to. There is nothing as fun in 40K as a chain explosion, and this was a hell of a time for one.

Joe, after the game, was kicking himself because he thought he made a mistake by deepstriking his squad onto the wrong objective on the bottom of turn 5 and costing himself the game. I thought it was a mistake after the game too, but I reviewed the scoresheet afterwards and realized it actually made no different. He would have denied me 5 points but cost himself 5 Area Denial points, and he couldn’t have been on my objective while also scoring investigate Signals with that squad. The only mistake he made was after his Land Raider killed my Warp Talon in melee turn 2 (I had tried to tie him up since Deathwatch have no way to Fall Back and shoot with Land Raiders, but we got run over!), he missed a play to consolidate onto a nearby objective and score an extra 5 Primary. I’m sure I missed plenty of plays myself (including a play where I set up a Heroic Challenge kill on his Judiciar squad by charging the tail end of the unit, then threw away my CP on something silly and didn’t have the CP I needed when we got to the Fiht Phase), and that was the only small mistake I saw Joe make in an otherwise extremely well-played game.

This was a fantastic opponent to end LVO with, and I’ll be rooting hard for Joe’s Deathwatch in any future events!

Lowlight: A full unit of Slaanesh Possessed attacking a 1 wound Land Raider and doing literally 0 wounds, setting up the chain explosion sequence later.

Highlight: The chain Land Raider explosions, of course

Final Thoughts

I can’t tell you what the future holds for Chaos Space Marines, or any other army as we await the new datslate. I can tell you one thing though: No matter what happens to Chaos Space Marines, I’ll continue battling with them against the toughest opponents and armies I can.

The meta is temporary. The Long War is forever.

Thanks to all 6 of my opponents, my other friends in attendance, and the FLG crew for an amazing 2024. Now let’s hold tight, continue hobbying models we enjoy regardless of their rules, and buckle down as we await the next dataslate.

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