Howdy friends! I had the very good fortune to be able to travel down to Las Vegas for Frontline Gaming’s LVO 2024 and compete in the Nemesis Grand Clash. For this event, my main goal was to have fun and meet people, but it’s always nice to win when you’re able. We talked about the event on the Underworlds Underground podcast and you should be able to listen in to my and my cohosts’ journeys soon. If you’re more of a reader, here’s a brief summary of how the Nemesis Grand Clash went for me!

I decided to bring Gryselle’s Arenai with Breakneck Slaughter. The idea was to charge hard into enemy territory, pour on the attacks, and focus down one fighter at a time to score the positional, aggro, and out of action objectives pretty concurrently. A prior version of the deck will be showcased on Sleek’s Bowl, and the final version of the deck I ended up taking can be found HERE. A few relatively minimal changes were made to allow for better performance against passive elite flex/hold that I expected to face.

The deck design is definitely a gambler’s dream – I went to Vegas to roll some dice, and when I win I’ll win big. The downside is that I exaggerated the dice game nature of Underworlds, so if I don’t get good dice, especially early, it will be hard for me to come back. Some of my cards don’t require success to score, but I was taking a pretty big risk with my strategy. The tournament scoring format actually rewarded total glory pretty heavily, so my hopes were that even if I dropped a game or a set, I could score enough in my wins to offset those drops and make the top cut, where 16 of the total 24 players would advance.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the matches!

Match 1: Derek Traquair playing Ephilim’s Pandaemonium with Force of Frost

On Friday, I opened against Derek, the prior year’s undefeated champion. This time around he was back for a repeat, with his trip to the World Championships of Warhammer last year not earning him a ticket back as he failed to make the top cut. He also runs most of the events in Alberta, so had effectively no other opportunities to get his chance at Worlds again this year – this was a ‘must win’ event for him and I was the first thing in his way. Nothing to worry about, right? World class contestant, reigning LVO champ, playing Ephilim’s Pandaemonium with Force of Frost. Easy peasy.

In our first match, I had boards and was able to align things in my favor, but honestly the dice just wouldn’t get off the ground for me. I was playing as well as I think I could, but Derek rolled four different crit defenses and delayed much of my scoring. I did eventually take Ephilim down, and was ahead at that time, but was in a tough spot. I had a single fighter left on one wound, staggered, against the back of his board. In the final activation Flamespooler killed her, and so I couldn’t score any of my ‘all fighters’ objectives like Fastest Around and Eager for the Fight. I lost this one 12-15, but had she survived I would have had a 5 glory win. It is what it is, but it felt nice to know I had a chance against such a juggernaut.

Our second game of the match started a lot like the first, but my dice were even colder. I also had to run into a max offset, and handed him some free glory with a stagger to score him Callous Manipulator. He continued to crit defend (three times in this match as well, which is the risk I take gambling on dice like this) when I did roll successes, and I was on the ropes. I had a desperate come back lined up, where a vulnerable Gryselle could scythe into a pack of three including Ephilim. I foolishly attacked in the wrong sequence and killed Kindlefinger who was equipped with Spiteful Mouths – this pinged Gryselle back and she died before she got the chance to kill an unsupported Ephilim with plus dice and a reroll. It’s unlikely that I would have won in any case, but a bummer that my inexperience into Ephilim came through so hard in this game and I lost 7-23.

Result: Gryselle loses 0-2, 19-38.

Match 2: Frank Calabretta playing playing Spiteclaw’s Swarm with Beastbound Assault

Now 0-1 and trying to remind myself that I’m here for fun and the results don’t matter, my second match pairing was against Skritch, who is the Greatest (Yes, yes). Frank was a great sport, and honestly a hero for keeping the Season 1 spark alive. His deck had potential to really get rolling if he got his early seed glory, and two wound elves are just the recipe for that so I had to be careful not to become rat food.

In the first game, he set up with some lethal hexes to take advantage of my impetus, but ultimately it worked in my favor as I was able to knock Skritch for 3 damage and push him into a lethal for the finish. With his leader out in round 1, he had a rough time and honestly my dice were very hot (where was this last round!?). I also happened to hit 5 surges in the first round and was way to far ahead for him to overcome despite some crafty power card play. I won the first game 22-5.

Our second game looked similar – he avoided lethal hexes and so it took a little more effort for me to cut down his leader, but it still happened early enough that we has in a tight spot. My dice again were quite good, and while he did his best to prevent some of my positional scoring having seen my deck function, I got to delay kills with Acrobatic multiple times and he never got off the ground as a result. The second game ended with a 20-3 victory for the Arenai.

Result: Gryselle wins 2-0, 42-8.

Match 3: Brian Faulhaber playing Thricefold Discord with Seismic Shock

Now fresh off a nice win with a big tournament point boost thanks to my total glory, I was 1-1 headed into Brian, who you may recognize as one of the podcast voices on What the Hex. Brian is a Slaanesh fan to his core, and brought the Thricefold Discord out to play for this event. Unfortunately for him, this pairing is effectively the exact thing I built my deck to beat, and when I win, I win big. I killed Lascivyr early and used the seed glory to get some damage reduction out, which made him have to make some hard choices about whether to try and stand on tokens or attack me. Hindsight is 20-20, but leaving me at full strength meant I could pretty easily cut him down and have him tabled before the end of round2. Early dice luck and great card order had me win this game 14-3.

Game 2 was unfortunately much the same for us. We opened with him orienting in a longboard fashion, and he started by hanging back and drawing cards. No worries, I think, since I have Breakneck Pace and am able to dive in to hit the Helm of Insight wearing Lascivyr, and Gryselle got a crit to grievous him out and he was in a bad spot. His card draw was all out of order, and I kept having an answer for whatever he played. At once point he reduced my fighter’s movement only for her to get a momentum counter and the Inertial Lance, allowing me to barely reach Vashtiss and poke her into a lethal hex to finish her off. This time I win 15-2 as once again his card draw was brutal and I was able to table him before the end of round 2. This was unfortunately the end of Brian’s journey in the grand clash, but put me in a really good spot headed into the top cut.

Result: Gryselle wins 2-0, 29-5.

At the end of the first day, the top 16 cut was announced. Quite to my surprise, I was Rank 3 heading into single elimination! I even placed above Derek, who was undefeated at that stage and beat me quite handily in head to head, but my total glory was so high that I had the points to leapfrog him. An interesting scoring format for this event, but it’s how the cookie crumbled.

Match 4: Brandon Cabanas playing Grinkrak’s Looncourt with Paths of Prophecy

Saturday morning, bright and early, I went to face the 14th seeded Cabanas, who I had eaten lunch with the previous day. That conversation gave me just enough information to know I had no idea what I was up against! I had never played into Grinkrak prior to this match, and hadn’t done any homework on it since it wasn’t expected to be ‘meta relevant’. Paths of Prophecy was a deck I had only faced twice, and while I won both those games, they were unsettlingly close for my Arenai deck. Going in effectively blind, I set my intentions to rolls some crits and see how it went.

Game 1 saw me lose 9-17 as I just couldn’t hit attacks and push him off tokens. Gryselle missed four attacks this game, I took forever to get my seed glory, and my objective deck couldn’t deal with a horde that didn’t do a lot of charging. He scored something in the majority of my power steps, and he had some brilliant positioning to force me to either attack lesser targets or risk diving into double supports, even before impetus messed me up.

In game 2 I faced pretty much the same story unfortunately. Gryselle finally got her hit on attack number 8 of the match, and didn’t even get a kill. When you roll zero successes, you can; drive your target back, so he got to sit on 3 tokens all game long and happily cycle his deck while I got my just reward for running up the score in my last two matches. I lost this one 9-18 despite making smarter moves, and dropped the set so get eliminated in round 1 of the top bracket.

Result: Gryselle loses 0-2, 18-35

Overall I placed 10th of 24 at the grand clash. We didn’t play out any consolation matches after elimination, but Damian (ranked #1 in the top cut) also fell in the first round, so he took 9th place. Overall I went 2-2, 4-4, and had a net + 22 glory, which isn’t so bad really. The most important thing is that I had a great time rolling dice with some friends new and old, and got to see Derek repeat his LVO winning performance to earn a ticket back to Worlds this year. Having a shot at taking down the eventual champ is what I call a ‘quality loss’! I’m also pleased I was able to put the Sisters of Breakneck Slaughter through their paces in a serious competition and have them perform pretty well.

Hopefully I’ve inspired you to give either Breakneck Slaughter or Gryselle’s Arenai a shot, and I would definitely encourage you to try out a Grand Clash if you’re able – traveling for such an event is a wonderful experience win or lose. Let me know your thoughts, and in the meantime I’ll be out there spending that glory!