Factions

Let’s start with something nice and simple. With 347 players attending this year’s event, almost every faction is represented (sorry Bonesplitterz!). The international trend of Stormcast Eternals, being the most popular faction currently, has followed through to the LVO with both they and Gitz being represented by 29 players each. Blades of Khorne and its anti-magic continue to be popular.

Subfactions

Of the 24 Blades of Khorne players, 14 have opted to run Reapers of Vengeance. 13 of the 16 Idoneth players have gone for Fuethan to optimise their Sharks.

Most Diverse Factions

Most factions seem to have one or perhaps two go to subfactions regardless of whether it’s in the international meta or at LVo. However, the four factions above appear to have the most diverse subfaction selections.

Thanks to Furythrow2 from PlasticCraic‘s discord for asking this question and peaking my interest. Rest assured, this will be included faction stat articles.

Most Common Warscrolls

Talking about Idoneth, we can see that the dreaded sharks appear in 81% of all Idoneth lists, and the turtle joins them in 75% of Idoneth lists.

Every Big Waaagh list features at least one Wurrgog Prophet, and each Ironjawz list features at least one Maw-krusha.

In the Cities lists, we can see that both Pontifex Zenestra and the Command Corps are too good to pass up and are making their way into 91% of Cities lists. While the fusiliers are also popular, appearing in 73% of lists.

Likewise, with unique and powerful characters (300pts+), we can see Katakros features in 16 out of 22 Bonereapers lists. King Brodd has been chosen in 12 out of 13 Sons lists.

Grand Strategies

Around 1/5 of all players in attendance are using the Spellcasting Savant grand strategy (keep your Andtorian general alive).

Command Traits

Shaman of the Chilled Lands proves to be both the most popular command trait from the GHB and at the LVO this year, with no less than 36 players using it in their lists. While Master of Magic, which compliments the current GHB nicely, is also the most popular command trait from the core rules.

List Points

The vast majority of lists come in at either 2000 or 1990 points. The lowest points total for a list this year is 1910.

Player Experience

This is perhaps the most interesting section (to me, at least), we’ve broken down the attending players’ experience over a number of slides and have based this information on all tournaments they’ve attended (GTs and otherwise) since the start of 3rd edition AoS in 2021.

I was uncertain whether to include this one. Essentially, they show the average win rates of players who have tournament experience in Blue, compared to the most recent win rate in the meta for that faction. It would appear a number of skilled players with high win rates are playing Cities of Sigmar, Daughters of Khaine and Disciples of Tzeentch. While Slaves to Darkness, Maggotkin, Sons, Lumineth, and Gitz appear to have been largely ignored by the more elite players.

Following on from the previous slides. We have the top 20 players sorted by their win rates. In theory, this should be the list of the favourites to win the event this year. Note that three of these players are playing Cities, tying back to our previous slide.

I believe (buy don’t quote me) that Gavin Grigar is the most experienced player at the tournament with 61 different events under his belt since the start of 3rd edition AoS.

As expected, the vast majority of players are from the US or Canada, with only 1 Australian (Anthony of AoS Coach fame) and 1 from Ireland (the amazing Mick Wendel).

Finally, we have a breakdown of all the players’ experience in attendance. Interestingly, players with 11 or more events in their history make up over 50% of the field, while those with 5 or fewer events only make up roughly a quarter of the player base!

Good luck to everyone heading to Vegas this year!