Warhammer 40K: Richard Siegler Is The Most Versatile Player, And Follows His Heart
Let’s talk about Richard Siegler’s LVO2022 40K win.
This last weekend the big daddy of Warhammer events went down. After delays and cancellations and an uncertain past two years, the Las Vegas Open 2022 is over. Richard Siegler, running his Ad-Mech army has not only won the event, but also the 2021 ITC. Let’s take a look at how he did it.
Richard Siegler – A Repeat Winner
Richard Siegler is fairly indisputably currently the best 40k player in North America. He is the first person ever to win the ITC twice. Over the last couple years, he’s gotten wins at most of the major events in North America, that he’s been able to get to. This year along with LVO he swept the three GW events, Austin, Orlando and New Orleans. This is an insane amount of major wins. With two ITC wins on his belt he’s proven himself as the guy to beat in the game, and beating him isn’t easy.
A Versatile Player
Siegler isn’t a one-trick pony. Sometimes a player rises to glory on the back of a single book. They find a good combo with an army or build and can milk that for a while. Until the meta changes in a significant way they are on top. However, a major meta change can unseat them. Richard on the other hand seems to defy this a bit. He’s played a variety of armies. He first gained some major fame as a T’au player, in an age when T’au were considered a bottom-tier army.
This year he’s won events with both Ad-Mech and Drukhari. Both of these are of course powerful armies at the top of the meta. It’s not super surprising to see a great player using great armies. However both these armies have had some real ups and down. Ad-Mech in particular has seen a real rollercoaster of a year. Siegler won three major events with Ad-Mech and each of his armies was pretty different from the last. This represents not only a new codex, but also a codex supplement and then a major nerf. The nerf in particular hit Ad-Mech hard and rendered a lot of lists, including the one Siegler had made famous obsolete. He overcame that and still managed to win with Ad-Mech.
Playing With Your Heart
Richard Siegler is without a doubt an amazing 40k player. He knows the meta and builds great lists. He wins games. However, the thing I admire about him the most is that he doesn’t always follow the meta. Siegler tends to play armies he wants to play. He even looks for challenging armies to play at times. When T’au were considered bottom tier, Siegler played them and won. He took a bad army, and found a good build for them. It wasn’t the easiest choice to play them, but he made it work.
He does follow the meta sometimes. His choice to play Drukhari at the Austin Open (and win with them) was based on them being the best and easiest army to play. Yet he also doesn’t seem to find them that fun to play. It seems very much like Siegler wants more of a challenge in his games. Choosing to play Ad-Mech at LVO was asking for a challenge. Ad-Mech certainly aren’t a bad army, but they aren’t the obvious choice either.
Meta conventional wisdom is that Drikhari, Nids and Custodes are all “better” choices. Richard went with Ad-Mech, because he clearly likes them. He won with an innovative army, not simply copying other people or asking someone else to build one for him. Ultimately we need more champions like Siegler, people who are willing to innovate, try new things and push the game and armies.
Let us know what you think about the LVO results, down in the comments!
