Angel's Keep: A 40K Dark Angels Blog

Hello battle brothers! When our codex supplement dropped, I'd intended to review the detachments, and I reviewed the Company of Hunters pretty quick. Since then, I got distracted by other things, such as reporting on all the Dark Angels Ironstorms that are placing high in big tournaments. However, I sort of reminded myself I meant to review the other two, so having covered the Company of Hunters already, I decided it was time to review the OG of our unique detachments, the Unforgiven Task Force.  Unless, like a member of the Fallen, you've fallen through a hole in space-time, you're probably aware the Unforgiven Task Force is considered a pretty bad detachment - a contender for the worst detachment in the game. Statistics bear this out. According to the  Meta Data Dashboard  at Stat-check.com, the UTF is currently sitting at a laughably bad 19% win rate, which means players are only winning about 1 in 5 games. There's no getting around the fact that's pretty abysmal...

  I was doing something other than playing 40K this past weekend, but I was monitoring a local RTT a number of friends and acquaintances were playing at. A fellow Dark Angels player within the local community was playing, and he had the misfortune of going 0-3. I don't want to dissect his list, but I am going to point out he was playing an Inner Circle Task Force.  That got me thinking about why some of our battle brothers insist on using our supplement's detachments to make lists they bring to tournaments when it's common knowledge that they are just bad. I'm not just stating that because I think so, it's what the statistics bear out. If you go on the  Meta Data Dashboard  on Stat-check.com, you can see for yourself how the various detachments are performing, and I'll tell you, battle brother, the supplement detachments are not doing well.  Combined, as of this writing the supplement detachments have a win rate of 31%. The Company of Hunters has the highest at ...

Hello, battle brothers! It's a little late, but Meta Monday finally posted the results of the events over the weekend, and I'm here to bring you the most important information from that, which Dark Angels lists performed well! Two DA lists went undefeated at major events over the weekend, and while (as you may have guessed from the photo) they were Ironstorms, they were at least different enough from the template to be interesting, and to show there can be some deviation from the 2 Stormraven formula and still be competitive. Just a quick note - according to Meta Monday, three DA lists performed well, but when I went to the Best Coast Pairing listing for one of them (The Alamo GT '24), the top list wasn't a Dark Angels list as shown on Meta Monday, but Chaos Daemons instead. Oops. Maybe the author saw the event was in Texas and just figured Kit Smith Hanna crushed it the way he crushes all other events in the state. We travel a pretty fair distance from Texas to see our...

  Hello, battle brothers! I'd like to tell you about a unit that's quietly been popping up in competitive lists with some frequency, and that's the Storm Speeder Thunderstrike. It hasn't been the focal point in the lists its appeared in, but it's appearing consistently enough that I thought it's worth a look, as the Storm Speeders haven't gained as much attention as units like the Gladiator Lancer or the Redemptor Dreadnought. So, I'm here to put it on your radar. The Thunderstrike shares the same profile as the other Storm Speeders. What's remarkable about the profile is they are fast, with a 14" movement, but have Toughness and Wounds appropriate to a gun tank - T9 and 11 wounds. That's only 1 less Toughness than a Gladiator, and the same number of wounds.  For firepower, the Thunderstrike is packing 1 Strength 12 AP-3 Damage D6+1 Stormfury Missile shot and 2 Strength 9 AP-3 Damage D6+1 Las-talon shots. That's pretty fair anti vehicle/...

Hello, battle brothers! It was an eventful weekend (literally), and while I was out getting soaked LARPing in the rain, some of our battle brothers were putting in good showings at GTs. Players have adjusted their lists to the MFM points, and while a few things have changed, it looks like the Ironstorm is still the most competitive way to play Dark Angels. The biggest event of the weekend was the Dallas Open with 234 players. Texas is Kit Smith Hanna's stomping grounds, so it comes as no surprise that he was the highest scoring Dark Angels player there, going 6-2 to come in at 9th place. Here's  a link to see Kit's list , but I'll give the TLDR version below: Don't worry, +20 on Stormravens was enough of a nerf Azrael Techmarine: Target Augury Web Techmarine: Adept of the Omnissiah Techmarine: Master of Machine War Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack Squad: 5 jump pack choppy boys Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack Squad: 5 ju...

 Hello battle brothers! Another week has come, and with it I have another Ironstorm Spearhead to write about. Two, actually, and they both rose to the top at the same event. At the Midwest Conquest GT 2024 in Independence MO, Dark Angels Ironstorm Spearheads took 1rst and 5th place out of a field of 32 players.  The first place player was Jeremy Capko of Macragge's Crabshack. As you may have surmised from the photo I chose for the article, his list did not include the Stormravens that so commonly appear in high scoring Ironstorms. You can check out  Jeremy's list on BCP here . However, for all of our convenience, here's the short version of his list. I'm a stupid marine player  (That's legit the name of the list) Lieutenant with Combi Weapon: Master of Machine War Techmarine: Adept of the Omnissiah Techmarine:  Target Augury Web Inceptor Squad: 6 plasma boys Inceptor Squad: 3 bolter boys Inceptor Squad: 3 bolter boys Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys Ravenwing Da...

 It was a bad weekend for Dark Angels, with no DA lists popping up near the top in any of the weekend's events and DAs only scoring a 27% win rate overall. That said, only one player took an Ironstorm out this weekend, and based on his 17% win rate he must have only won one game, which suggests either he didn't play an optimal list, or he took a netlist he wasn't that familiar with to a major event and did poorly due to lack of experience with the army. Since I don't have any lists to talk about from the weekend, I thought I might take a crack at analyzing why so many Dark Angels Ironstorms keep getting high scores in the meta. For that, I took a bit of a dive into game statistics. If you're interested in looking at raw data, you can go to  The Meta Dashboard  at Stat-Check.com. It's a fun tool, you can do a lot with it. For starters, let's look at the stats for Space Marines, as Dark Angels are Space Marines with some unique characters and units. That pictu...

Hello Battle Brothers! Meta Monday was Meta Tuesday this week, so I wasn't able to get this article to you at the beginning of the week.  As I'm writing this article, there were some Dark Angels lists that did well over the weekend. As you may have surmised from the photo, they are Ironstorm detachments featuring Storm Ravens. I'll admit, I wouldn't mind seeing some more variety in unit selection and detachment, but so far it seems like every army that does well in 10th edition has one list that carries them across the finish line. What's good about 10th edition is that most factions do have at least that one list that can take the top spot at a GT. As you may imagine, the events that played over the weekend used the previous Munitorum Field Manual points. The new one dropped last Thursday, which would have given players only a couple days to make adjustments. Maybe next week we'll see if the points adjustments cause some shakeups in the meta. Maybe we'll se...