Lists of the Week: Top Performers 7/29/2024

Hello battle brothers! I'm pleased to be able to tell you that over the past weekend, we finally picked up some event wins! We've had battle brothers go undefeated at  events, but I'm pretty confident these are the first wins of the 10.5 era. It's an exciting time for a Dark Angels player!

It's also nice to be able to report that one of the event wins was at the biggest event of the weekend. At the North East Open 2024 in England, Stat Check's Innes Wilson took a Gladius Task Force and rose to the top of a field of 105 players! That is a noteworthy accomplishment in any player's book! As usual, you can find Innes' list on BCP. The short version is below.

The Same As Last Year
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Judiciar: The Honour Vehement
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin

Apparently this is the perfect list, as it went undefeated and took 1rst place! The Harmacist is obviously paired up with Eradicators. I'm not sure if the ICCs are joined by Azrael or the Judiciar - I suppose it could be either depending on what Innes happened to be facing, though I'm thinking Azrael may have been tasked to guard the home field objective, possibly with the Assault Intercessors as a bodyguard, possibly solo. The Repulsor unlocks some shenanigans, both through it's own dataslate rule and through the Squad Tactics stratagem. The jump pack Intercessors can skirmish with stuff an opponent might try to tie up the DWKs, ICCs, or Eradicators with or run off and score secondaries as needed, and of course the Scouts and Callidus provide uppy-downy secondary scoring options.

Innes rode the win train all the way to the last stop. Round 1 he went 99-52 against Imperial Knights. Round 2 he went 96-80 against Adeptus Sororitas, which I find particularly impressive because the Sisters have been one of my bogeymen (bogeywomen?) throughout 10th. Round 3 he went 85-74 against Chaos Knights. 4th round he went 100-60 against Astra Militarum. And, in the 5th round he went 90-80 against Black Templars.

The other winning list from the weekend was played at Waterdeep GT 3ra Edicion in Jesus Maria Mexico, a 6-round event with 53 players, where Xavier Barrera rose to the top with a Gladius Task Force. You can see Xavier's list on BCP. The short version is below.

The Knights who say Nee
Azrael
Captain
Librarian
Librarian
Lieutenant: Fire Discipline
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Impulsor
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

Apparently this is also the perfect list? Maybe it's more perfect than Innes' because it won more games? Or is Innes' list more perfect because it placed 1rst at a bigger event?

Or maybe they're EQUALLY perfect. Oooh!

Kidding aside, this list has a lot of tools at its disposal. It's got one less squad of DWKs and one more squad of ICCs than Innes'. Xavier took Librarians to assign to the ICCs to convey a 4+ invulnerable save on them, with Azrael and the Lieutenant likely both joining the Hellblasters, the Lieutenant conveying Sustained Hits, Lethal Hits, and crits on 5+ in Dev Doctrine and Azrael conveying his 4+ invulnerable save, plus the two characters' close combat attacks make the squad not an inconsequential threat in close combat. The Impulsor enables some embarking/disembarking shenanigans through clever use of the Squad Tactics strat. I suppose the Captain joins the Assault Intercessor Squad to skirmish in the midfield and be buffed by their datasheet ability, I imagine the Intercessors sticky the home objective and then move off when they can afford to do so, and the Scouts do what they do.

All aboard the non-stop win train! 1rst round Xavier went 80-60 against Imperial Knights. 2nd round he went 82-47 against Death Guard. 3rd round he went 97-22 against Thousand Sons (ouch what a drubbing!). 4th round he went 90-62 against Grey Knights. 5th round he went 90-78 against Chaos Space Marines. And, in the 6th round, he went 92-58 against Drukhari.

The third list I'd like to bring to your attention was played at Boise Cup 2024! in Boise ID, a 5-round event with 51 players. At that event Shaun Sharp of #REKT went 4-1 to score 4th place with his Gladius Task Force. You can see Shaun's list on BCP. The short version is below.

Lion's Blade
Lion Dad
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Inceptor Squad: 3 chonky flying plasma boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Redemptor Dreadnought
Redemptor Dreadnought
Repulsor

This was an interesting variation of the Gladius to see. This one leans a little harder into shooting. Of course, it can throw down in assault with Lion Dad, the Deathwing Knights, the ICCs, and the Redemptors. However, it also shoots well with the Eradicators, the Redemptors, and the Inceptors. It's been a while since I saw Inceptors in a list. Interestingly, the Redemptors had Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannons and Heavy Flamers instead of the Macro-Plasma Incinerators and underslung Onslaughts. Maybe Shaun's local meta is heavier on horde than most. It's a funny loadout, because I could see Macro-Plasma and Heavy Flamer, or Heavy Onslaught and Onslaught, but Heavy Onslaught and Heavy Flamer seems like the worst of both worlds. Still, Shaun went 4-1 at a GT, and the next time I do that will be the first time. 

Shaun won his 1rst Round game against Death Guard, 77-44. 2nd round was his loss, a very tight 75-76 against Aeldari. It was a ride on the win train for the rest of the event. 3rd round 72-54 against another Dark Angels list - an Unforgiven Task Force to be specific. Oddly, it included a Hammerfall Bunker! 4th round 100-0 against Leagues of Votann - I wonder if the other player dropped out or was DQed or something, because you'd think one would at least get the 10 points for Battle Ready at a GT. In the 5th and final round Shaun won 98-32 against Adeptus Custodes.

As a point of interest, the other DA player Shaun faced, Porter Nelson, went 2-3 with his Unforgiven Task Force.

Also placing well at the Boise Cup was Anthony Gilman's Gladius, which Anthony went 4-1 with and placed 6th. The short version of his list is below.

I'mJust Here To Purge The Heretics
Azrael
Lion Dad
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Terminator Squad: 5 chonky fisty boys
Hellblaster Squad: 5 plasma boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Redemptor Dreadnought
Repulsor Executioner

This list has some interesting choices as well. Clearly there's some room for variation in the Dark Angels Gladius. Deathwing Knights and Inner Circle Companions make a nice tough, choppy base, but they benefit from some fire support options. It's also unusual to see a standard Deathwing Terminator Squad in a high-performing list. I suspect Anthony may have included it as a budget third option for sticking on objectives in the early game, or as a backfield harassment unit. I imagine it's also not a bad guess that he might have been playing fixed Secondaries, and one of them was Behind Enemy Lines, or maybe Establish Locus.

Anthony's list does seem to lack for secondary objective scoring units, and I'm not sure what he'd have sitting in the backfield if it's not the Intercessor Squad. He didn't break 90 points in any of his game, and the lack of good action monkeys might be why.

Anthony started off the day with a Game 1 83-70 win against Space Marines. Game 2 was his loss, a tight 52-50 against Astra Militarum. That game's relatively low score makes me wonder if they played all 5 rounds. Game 3 was an 84-21 drubbing against Thousand Sons. Anthony's list having a lot of saves vs mortals may have contributed to that. Game 4 was a solid 88-50 win against Blood Angels. And, Anthony ended the day strong with an 85-43 win against Adeptus Mechanicus.

Here are the statistics for the weekend.

Overall, Dark Angels players enjoyed a 52% win rate. There were 6 X-0/X-1 players and 2 event winners out of 24 players, who played a total of 115 games and won 60 of them.

The Gladius had a 59% win rate, accounted for 5 of the X-0/X-1 results and both tournament wins. 14 players played the Gladius, winning 40 out of 68 games.

The Inner Circle Task Force was the next most played detachment, with 6 players who won 11 out of their 27 games for a 41% win rate. The 6th X-0/X-1 result did come from an ICTF though, so it's not all doom and gloom.

Only 1 player took an Unforgiven Task Force - Porter Nelson, as mentioned above. He got a 40% win rate. 

2 players took Vanguards and 1 took a Firestorm. They got 40% and 60% win rates respectively.

The statistics suggest that one more Gladius and one ICTF got X-0/X-1 results, but danged if I could find them. Me trying is why this article got released Friday instead of Wednesday.

That, battle brothers, was the weekend's top performers! It's always good to see Dark Angels lists come out on top!  It's also nice to see that the winning formula isn't just "take max DWKs and ICCs", but that there's some room for variation. Having a solid base of face-smacking units backed up by at least one solid shooting unit does seem like a winning formula though. As always, congratulations to our winning and high placing battle brothers, and may we all rise to your example! Until them, may we all represent the legion chapter well!