Howdy friends! Today I’ll cover what went down at the 2024 Las Vegas Open Rivals event this past month. It was scheduled to be a 5-round, best of 1 rivals tournament with an additional round 6 for the top players to determine a champion. If you’re looking for the Nemesis Grand Clash, check out my writeup here, and if you’re curious about the REAL main event, go watch the after-hours Pink Slips Match here.

The Rivals event originally had 30 registrants and we ended up with 22 total players, which is pretty sizeable for a US tournament, especially in the Rivals format. I had put most of my prep and energy into the Nemesis Grand Clash, so I stuck to what I knew and figured I’d be able to ride my experience to a decent record and brought out Ol’ Reliable – the Sons of Velmorn. I had taken them to the Tacoma Open Grand Clash just 6 months earlier to some good success and wanted to compare their performance then with the new heights they might reach after the latest Errata release. They had the added advantage of the refined Command Counter rule so that not only does King Morlak generate one at the start of the round, but now also after an activation like the original rule. This meant I would get to keep the benefit of the early support on both offense and defense, and wouldn’t feel the pain of spending a counter on a card nearly as much (and would have three additional ‘free’ counters across the game compared to previously). These all coalesced into my decision to pair them with their standard faction deck, rather than a Universal Rivals deck (no matter how much fun Malevolent Masks would have been). I had briefly considered running Fearsome Fortress or Voidcursed Thralls, but I really wanted to see how their faction cards played after the latest Errata.

Practice Game: Damian Skoczyk playing Crimson Court with Breakneck Slaughter

Having both been knocked out of the single elimination bracket on day two of the Grand Clash, Damian and I decided to drown our sorrows in a casual Rivals game to warm up for what was obviously the more important event the following day. I played my Velmorn into his Crimson Court paired with Breakneck – CC are quite powerful stat-wise and have a big advantage in Rivals as a result. Breakneck Slaughter is a pretty nice Rivals deck as well, and would make it pretty difficult for me to hide my King effectively or to hold tokens if he was able to impetus me around. I braced myself for a heap of trouble and got to rolling dice. It started out pretty rough for me, but eventually the crits came in and I was able to get inspired and claw my way back. I ended up winning in the final activation to get the last kill I needed to score a handful of cards and win what we had both considered a game-over scenario for me partway through the second round.

Result: Velmorn wins 19-17

Game 1: Brian Faulhaber playing Thricefold Discord with Breakneck Slaughter

I opened the Rivals event facing off against Brian of the What the Hex Podcast who I had eliminated in the Nemesis Grand Clash two days prior, and who was fresh off a CRAZY Pink Slips match the night before. Brian was taking Thricefold again, but in Rivals with Breakneck Slaughter I expected very different behavior. I actually think it ended up working to my advantage, as both their faction deck and Seismic Shock (which he had used previously) would allow him to longboard and stay safe while I struggled to reach him with movement 3. Instead he came bounding over the line into my territory, and even my offset orientation with blocked hexes couldn’t protect me. The game opened with Vexmor taking a YOLO charge after playing Devastating Charge, which hurtled him deep into my territory rolling one die against the king. He rolled a hammer, I rolled a double support, and down the King went in activation 2 of the first round. Ouch. It had only a 25% chance of working out for him, but it did. With 3-4 cards effectively un-scoreable from my deck now, I trudged on and just tried to hit with unsupported two sword attacks. I did manage to hit some, and Jedran inspired, which allowed him rerolls against Vexmor who got himself stuck in a pile of fighters, board edges, and blocked hexes, unable to escape. Thereafter, Vashtiss was his only living fighter, and he made a late move into my territory in what looked like a safe spot, but a surprise Jedran range 2 Fearless Lunge attack upgrade meant I could actually reach him, and thanks to some fortuitous dice I tabled him and was able to steal a win despite being effectively eliminated in the first moves.

Result: Velmorn wins 10-8, and with his third consecutive defeat at my hands Brian has now been Thrice FOLDED. Fight me in Tacoma. To Brian’s credit he did win the painting competition so at least they died pretty, to Slaanesh’s dark approval.

Game 2: Thomas Wakefield playing the Headsmen’s Curse

Thomas is the fearless leader of the Underworlds Underground Podcast, took me on as a cohost, and has since demonstrated his definitive superiority at competitive play. Today was unfortunately no different! Thomas was taking the faction deck for Headsman’s which is a rough matchup for Velmorn and a very strong Rivals deck in its own right. The cards I drew to open the game basically mandated that I make some wild charges to open the game, and the dice just didn’t cooperate. Had King Velmorn hit his big charge following Frightening Speed next to a supported Grave Guard, I would have had two inspired fighters, a dead Bearer of the block, and four surge glory. Instead I ‘stood accused’ and had my entire royal line’s heads summarily parted from bony shoulders. Ser Jedran did live (his head must not have been royal enough) and managed to take down the Sharpener and the Wielder by the end of the game. Still got blown out though, but might have prevented Thomas from having a shot at the third place game. Oops!

Result: Velmorn loses 6-20

Game 3: Frank Sevilla playing Gryselle’s Arenai

Now 1-1 across my first two games, I was paired in Frank playing Gryselle’s Arenai. He also had played them in the Nemesis event, also pairing them with Breakneck Slaughter like I did. His Retaria even got a broken spear over the weekend in the same way as mine! Unfortunately, one of we two kindred spirits had to go down swinging today. Today he was playing with their faction deck, which has many of the same dice-dependent issues the BNS pairing does, with the added trouble of some card draw order related problems regarding Flourishes. With two ways for things to go wrong outside of player control, Arenai in Rivals is a risky move, but much like in Nemesis, when they do go off, they go off big. Unfortunately for Frank, luck wasn’t in his favor. I hit most of my attacks, usually getting crits to inspire, and he missed most of his and wasn’t able to score the objectives he drew. Part of that was because I know the Arenai faction deck inside and out and could counterplay some of it, but mostly it was luck. I had him tabled relatively early without losing a model, and was able to walk onto tokens to score out my deck thereafter.

Result: Velmorn wins 21-0

Game 4: Jonas Færing playing Magore’s Fiends with Voidcursed Thralls

Before I begin, I want to point out Jonas’ phenomenal painting skills. He lost the best painted vote by a single point, and honestly could have won if he had entered either his Drepur’s Wraithcreepers or this warband- both are just marvelously done from a technical and a thematic perspective, with great scenic bases to boot. AND he happened to be the dark horse at the Nemesis event, making to top cut at 17th place as an alternate for #16, but then dethroning the #1 and #8 seeds to advance to the semifinals and end in the top 4! What I’m trying to say is I was up against a winner, playing strong-statted models with a good Rivals deck pairing.

The game opened with neither of us making a lot of headway into each other – I needed three surviving inspired fighters and despite setting up multiple support piles just could not roll crits at all, and he only got one successful attack to inspire in the round. As we went into round 2 I took a risky gamble to charge Velmorn into the fray to try and kill Magore, which needed a crit for grievous to pull off. I very fortunately succeeded, getting the bounty, Scoring both Martial Lord and Absolute Monarch, as well as eliminating his voidcursed fighter. Game’s in the bag right? Not quite – we actually were still very close at this point. I took anther risk and brought back a dead Thain to try and finish off Riptooth, got a crit, but so did he and so survived. This left him vulnerable and easy pickings for Riptooth and I saw the writing on the wall. While lamenting my situation to Bobby at the next table over, I realized that Riptooth was trapped, so I actually hit the attack, succeeded with a crit, killed Riptooth, and inspired all in one go. Jonas was very gracious and allowed me to rewind it to say I succeeded even though we didn’t realize it at the time, and that’s the courtesy that ended up winning me the game, as it allowed multiple end phases to score and I could cycle through my deck more efficiently. He had me scared though, and it definitely could have gone either way!

Result: Velmorn wins 17-11

We had run long on time with a later start and a swapped lunch period, so in order to allow people to catch their flights back home, we called the main tournament at four matches rather than the planned five. At this point I was 3-1 with a total glory of 63 and a net glory of +15. This landed me in 5th place of 22 competitors based on the event scoring system, and so I missed out on the third place game and had some free time to watch the final, where Mike Smith from Sleeksbowl and Underworlds Underground did my team proud when he took Xandire’s Truthseekers with Faction Rivals to victory over Jesse Hardman’s Crimson Court. Maybe that guy is good at Underworlds after all?!

Honestly kind of glad I didn’t make it to the third place game because I either would have had to get Steamrolled by Derek again, or face Aran Miller who is a frighteningly good player with Gorechosen. Another 3-1 opponent I might have had to face would be Thomas (again) or Davy from What the Hex, who shockingly was very successful with Eyes of the Nine and Malevolent Masks. Not the pairing I would have thought of!

My flight home, of course, was 30-something hours later, so I had plenty of time to kill and got in some good games with Brandon Cabanas, the guy who eliminated me in the Nemesis event. We did break out the Malevolent Masks deck to give it a spin, and Grinkrak Masked his boys up walked all over me again. Velmorn lost 7-17 and it was never close. Good thing I dodged him in the real tournament this time around!

So, in summary:
A) The Sons of Velmorn are just fine in Rivals
B) They subjectively appear to have benefitted from the new post-errata Command Counter Rule
C) Comfort level and experience with a warband is as important, if not more important than ‘meta relevance and power level’, so play what you like
D) Conventions are a blast and you should try to find big events within your travel range/budget
E) Warhammer Underworlds rips and remains the best game in the world

… and F) Malevolent Masks is a pretty cool deck and I expect to see if a lot more often than people are anticipating

Hope you’ve enjoyed the recap, and maybe I’ll see you spend some glory at LVO next year!