I want to upfront apologize, the coverage of the 2018 Bay Area Open is going to be kinda half ass, as I will be attending a wedding on Saturday and won’t be able to cover the event in person until Sunday.

This won’t stop me from covering the event through various other places like the Best Coast Pairings App, so for Saturday I am going to be just condensing the interweb coverage of the event into only the meaningful stuff.

So now as for some pre-event handicapping, expect one thing and one thing above all else to dominate the BAO 2018.

IMPERIAL KNIGHTS

Expect a crazy amount of these guys to annoy every Xenos player. I don’t expect a dedicated Imperial Knight army to win the BAO, but they should become the official new gatekeeper army, with Imperial/Chaos Soups being the actual winners of this new meta shift.

Expect to see the same old, same old, like Eldar and Imperial Guard still dominating. Without the soon to be pallet cleansers of Space Wolves and Orks, the BAO meta won’t likely reflect even what we will see at the Nova Open next month, unless Games Workshop wants to continue to wank off to more pointless Kill Team releases everyone is tired of.

Now things not related to lists that could be a big problem at the BAO, is the day 2 chess clock enforcement. I am not sure how this is going to play for the vast majority of players, it is important for the top tables, but if you are just playing for fun on day 2 you or your opponent won’t want the added stress. Traditionally, the BAO been one of the few Major Events that really hasn’t had any cheating problems, but with what has turned into the Year of the Cheater, extra eye balls will be focused on this event.

I expect to fully cover the event by Sunday, when it matters most, and hope to have a few videos from the contenders and images of the top armies, so look for Blood of Kittens on Facebook Live casting at totally random times.

Blood of Kittens Facebook

This post itself will be dedicated to images and text updates from each round as the best players duke it out, so keep on coming back for updates.

 Check back to this post from July 28th to July 29th 2018 for Coverage

Rounds 1-3

While I was at a wedding, the BAO was rocking and rolling. I have to say right off the bat the competition level seems to be the lowest I have seen in years, with most of the big names not making the event. This most likely has to do with the ETC being so close, but as is this is almost entirely a West Coast affair.

The good thing is this opens up a lot of possibilities for an unknown to sneak in a take the prize. The big surpises is of the top players attending, we already have Brandon Grant 2 time champion out of the mix losing game 3 to an Eldar player, as well Mitch Pelham (IG) got knocked out by Geoff Robinson (Custodes) in round 3. This really gives Geoff a clear lane to take his first BAO having gotten close a few years back.

The other real contenders I see are Carlos Kaiser and Nikhil Sinha..

On the Imperial Knight front we have 18 total 0 loss players and out of those 18 and a total of them 4 Primary Imperial Knights and an additional 2 with Renegade Knights.

Round 4

Round 4 saw some quick games and one real nail biter. Two Imperial Knight armies move on as undefeated, including a few sneaky “Renegade Knight” armies masking as something else. Geoff Robinson is in complete control having tabled 3 out of his 4 opponents in and around round 4 and the one game that he didn’t table his opponent he ended up leaving one model with one wound left. The real key match of round 4 was a creative World Eater list against Imperial Knights. This game was epic but, tainted by what I predicted was going to be Chess Clock problems (accidentally stealing time from your opponent). It lead had the effect of giving more time to eventual winner of the game.

Round 5

The Final Undefeated 8 are by Faction…

• 1 Custodes
• 1 Ynnari
• 2 Thousand Sons
• 1 Death Guard
• 1 Dark Angels
• 2 Imperial Knights

Now keep in mind both two of the Chaos Lists have Renegade Knights in them, most striking is no IG majority factions, though we have a few CP farms involved.

Well that was quick, looks like Ben Vaughn’s Imperial Knights seized and took out warlord and a few other key models, his opponent is going to play it out, but has already pretty much admitted defeat.

In another quick one, Jon the other Imperial Knight player won as well, making the final 4 to include 2 Knight players.

Custodes are handily winning making Geoff Robinson almost certainly the top seed heading into the final round.

It looks like Don Hooson won with his Death Guard, so look like Don vs. Geoff for all the marbles, unless the tie most likely.

Round 6

Table 1: Go to Frontline’s Twitch channel to watch the champion match between Don and Geoff. It should be an interesting battle, I really don’t know how it will go!

Table 2: is Imperial Knights vs. Imperial Knights (IG CP Farm) both opponents are telling me 1st turn won’t determine it, but I think it will be decisive.

Table 3: Looks like Brandon Grant has crawled his way back to respectability and is fighting Jack Harpster and his Knight,Smash Bros, IG list.

Table 4: Is Magnus and friends vs. Imperial Knights.

Salty John won the roll off to go first and proceeded to table the other Knight Player to secure at least 2nd place at the BAO 2018

Geoff has had a few failed charges he needed and now Don’s Knight just blew up on his Bikes doing 6 Mortal wounds crippling the unit. Geoff is winning by 3 points going into turn 4, but Don should be in control going forward. The end of turn 5 looks like Geoff is down to about 3 or 4 models, looks like Don Hooson is going to be the big winner of LVO!