Lists of the Week: Top Performers 8/19/2024

Hello battle brothers! Another weekend of events has passed, and with it comes word of the lists that performed well. We had one event winner and quite a few lists that went X-1, so let's dive in!

I'm going to start with the list from the biggest event. In this case it literally was the biggest event of the weekend - The Leeds 40k Super Major in (presumably Leeds) England. This was a 219 player, 5-round event with the top 4 players playing off against each other. The Dark Angels list was not one of those lists, but did appear in the top 10%. Ben Jones of Vanguard Tactics went 4-1 with his Gladius to score 18th place, which in a field of over 200 players is no small thing. You can see Ben's list on BCP. The short version is below.

glad
Azrael
Harmacist (aka Apothecary Biologis): Fire Discipline
Judiciar
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
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Land Raider Redeemer
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin

One thing that jumps out at me right off the bat is that Ben opted not to include a token Battleline unit, which I've been seeing occasionally in my own competitive endeavors. Also prominent is that there are only 2 squads of Deathwing Knights, but there are also 2 squads of Inner Circle Companions, the Eradicators+Harmacist brick, and a Land Raider Redeemer for them to ride in. The Scout Squad could be doing backfield duty, but then they're not available for scoring secondaries. However, with a Callidus and 2 squads of Jump Intercessors, Ben's got other options on those fronts. 

I expect Ben's general game plan is to roll the Redeemer full of Eradicators up the middle while DWKs and ICCs work their way up the flanks. If things go well, I imagine the flank forces can keep pushing into an opponent's backfield or head towards the center as needed. The Eradicators can reach quite a distance to put their fire into the right kind of target for them between disembarking, an advance roll, and their own native movement, presumably leaving the Redeemer on the center objective waiting to Overwatch anything that gets too close to it. 

Ben won his first 4 games, taking his loss in the last round. 1rst round he drubbed the Adeptus Sororitas 100-29, which I find really impressive because I only just got my first win against a Sororitas list in all of 10th this past Saturday, and that was because my opponent made a significant mistake in the final turn. Anyhow, 2nd round Ben had a tight win, 89-84 against Tyranids. 3rd round was another close game, 79-70 against Thousand Sons. 4th round he handily won against Death Guard, 82-48. Alas, he lost in the 5th round, going 72-78 against Tyranids.

Ben's list wasn't the only one to go 4-1 at Leeds. There were actually two more lists that went 4-1 there, but both players took their loss in the 3rd round, so they weren't in any danger of winning the event. Consequently, I'm not going to give them the full analysis because I have a lot of lists to go through, but we'll take a quick look at them.

In 23rd place we have James McGlough of Try Hard Wargaming, who played a Gladius. You can see James' list on BCP. The short version is below.

James's List
Azrael
Harmacist: Fire Discipline
Librarian
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 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 macey boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin
Voidsmen-at-Arms: 5 inexpensive space navy boys

In 27th place we have Liam Keane of 5RB, who got there using an Inner Circle Task Force! That's neat to see! You can see Liam's list on BCP, with the short version below.

Mostly 4++
Azrael
Judiciar
Librarian
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Impulsor
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Bladeguard Veterans: 6 awesome swordy-shieldy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vanguard Veterans: 5 flying awesome swordy boys
Vanguard Veterans: 5 flying awesome swordy boys
Callidus Assassin

I want to take a moment to discuss the Vanguard Veterans, because it's a bit of tech I've been surprised not to see more often in the ICTF. The box on the right side of page 59 of our codex supplement states that Vanguard Veterans get the Deathwing keyword. That's important because they also have Deep Strike, which means we can use the Relic Teleportarium stratagem on them. That's handy all by itself for all manner of reasons, but they can all also substitute their bolt pistol for any of a number of sexier options, and Liam opted to go with inferno pistols. They can't get within Melta range off of Deep Strike, but that's still a bunch of S8 AP-4 D3 damage shots, and opponents then have to worry about those suckers getting close enough to their tanks to slag them. They don't really cost that much more than Jump Intercessors either - 105 points for the squad of 5. 

Staying in England, we now go over to Warhammer 40,000 Throne of Skulls event, which was a 1750 point event organized by Warhammer World Events, where John Oates's Gladius went 4-1 to take 3rd place. You can see John's list on BCP, with the short version below.

Deathwing 1750 ToS
Lion Dad
Azrael
Asmodai
Captain with Jump Pack: The Honour Vehement
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Gladiator Lancer
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin

One thing that stood out for me right away is that there are no duplicate units in this list, which makes me wonder if that was a list-building requirement. None of the top 4 lists had duplicate units except the Death Guard list, which had 2 each of Plague Marines and Rhinos, but as those are Battleline and dedicated transports, they might have been exceptions. Anyhow, I was also surprised to see the jump pack Captain - that's not a common thing for us, but he does give the jump Intercessors more punch, plus Rapid Ingress for free. Both the Inner Circle Companions and Assault Intercessors could ride in the Repulsor at the same time with characters attached, which would be an interesting way of delivering them. I was surprised by the absence of both the Eradicator brick and the Hellblasters. John seems to be relying on the Repulsor and the Lancer for his longer ranged firepower, and I suppose between the two of them one can reasonably expect to pick up an enemy battle tank equivalent in one turn. Plus Lion Dad is in this list. I've been using Lion Dad myself, and I've got some ideas about how best to use him I've developed over the last couple days and not had a chance to implement yet. That's probably a topic for another article.

John won his first 4 games and lost his 5th. 1rst round he bodied Chaos Marines 92-31. 2nd round he went 86-55 against Tristan Whitehead's Unforgiven Task Force. I'm not going to discuss Tristan's list in this article, but you can see it on BCP. 3rd round John wrecked an Imperial Knights list 96-15. That boggles my mind. I imagine someone going to a Warhammer World event would bring a Battle Ready army, which means the Knight player somehow managed to only score 5 points through the course of the game. What the heck happened? Anyway, 4th round John beat the other Angels of Death, Blood Angels, 72-48. His 5th round loss was against Death Guard, 58-88

Also having gone 4-1 at this event was Alan Percival, winding up in 13th place with his Gladius. Alan took his loss in the 1rst round, so as before we're just giving it the short look. You can see Alan's list on BCP, with the short version below.

Throne of skulls: Knights who say knee-capping..
Lion Dad
Azrael
Harmacist: Fire Discipline
Judiciar: Artificer Armor
Librarian in Terminator Armor: The Honour Vehement
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Gladiator Lancer
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin

I noticed a discrepancy in the list. The points total actually comes up to 1850 points. I suspect Alan accidentally left the Callidus in the list he posted to BCP, and just played without it. I imagine one of his opponents would have caught it if he was playing 100 points up on them. Math is hard. The list is 1750 points.

As a point of interest, Tristan Whitehead went 3-2 with us UTF, which is very impressive considering how sub-optimal that detachment is.

The next event where a battle brother did well was the North and South GT 2024 in Hobart, Australia. There, Zachary Lennon of BAV took a Gladius to go 4th out of 37. As a point of interest, all of the top 4 players of the event were from BAV. Anyhow, you can see Zachary's list on BCP, with the short version below.

InYourCircle Task Force
Lion Dad
Azrael
Harmacist: Fire Discipline
Judiciar
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 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
Eradicators: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin

This list seems pretty standard, with the most interesting inclusion being Lion Dad, who doesn't make it into every top performing list. Azrael must go with the Assault Intercessors, and I suspect they're on backfield objective duty. As the ICCs with a Judiciar lack an invulnerable save, Zachary probably uses terrain to keep them out of line of fire until they can jump out and butcher something.

1rst round, Zachary beat T'au Empire 87-32. Very nice Zachary, take it to the xenos scum! 2nd round he won 93-69 against Death Guard. 3rd round he drubbed World Eaters 89-35. 4th round was his loss, 68-99 against Grey Knights. 5th round he ended strong, winning 89-45 against Aeldari.

Last, we'll discuss the event winning list. This appeared at The Deck Box Masters Grand Tournament in Halifax, Canada, a 20-person event where Keenan Elliot of Halifax Privateers defeated all comers, going 5-0! You can see Keenan's list on BCP. The short version is below.

Dark Stuff n' Things
Lion Dad
Azrael
Harmacist: Fire Discipline
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 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
Eradicators: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Land Raider Redeemer
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

This list is very similar to Zachary Lennon's, swapping out the Repulsor to include the Redeemer, dropping the Judiciar and the Callidus to make up the points difference. In this case Azrael must be accompanying the ICCs, and woe betide to any unit that stumbles within their charge range!

Keenan rode the win train all the way to the last stop. 1rst round he beat Chaos Daemons 88-44. 2nd round he went 79-38 against Tyranids. 3rd round he went 91-35 against Astra Militarum. 4th round a close 79-72 against Astra Militarum. 5th round another close win, 82-77 against Thousand Sons. Good job Keenan!

Statistics

Over the weekend, Dark Angels had a 51% win rate at the GT level, with 42 players playing a total of 205 games and winning 105 of them. We had 1 event winner and 7 players go X-0/X-1.

Wackily, the detachment with the highest win percentage over the weekend was again the Unforgiven Task Force, with 2 players winning 6 of their 10 games for a 60% win rate. 

The Stormlance also got a 60% win rate because 1 player took it and won 3 of his 5 games. 

Next up is the Inner Circle Task Force at a 53% win rate and one X-0/X-1 result. 6 players took it and won 16 of their 30 games.x-1 

The Gladius Task Force had just a 52% win rate, but got the other 6 X-0/X-1 results and the 1 event win. 29 players took it and won 74 of their 143 games. Our Gladius' 8-week win rate is 52%, which should calm the nerves of people who were worried about a nerf when we were up in the high 50's for win rate.

2 players took Ironstorms and 1 took a Vanguard. Both detachments got 40% win rates. 

1 player took a 1rst Company Task Force, got a 0% win rate, apparently only playing 2 games and dropping out of the event afterwards. 

My weekend

I attended an RTT at The Portal in Manchester Connecticut on Saturday, went 2-1, came in 6th out of 25 players, and took 2nd place for painting! I should note that The Portal doesn't double up in awards, so the players who won awards for 1rst-5th place were ineligible for painting awards. 

Anyhow, 1rst round I won against Iron Hands. 2nd round I won against Adeptus Sororitas for the first time in 10th edition as I mentioned before, but it was because my opponent made an unforced error. I was up and had prevented him from scoring much Primary, so he went for the Unbroken Wall Secret Mission, and he would have gotten it if he'd kept units on all the midfield objectives 5th turn, but he made a play to take my backfield objective with his murder Canoness, it didn't work out for him (admittedly against the odds), and he'd moved off one of the midfield objectives to score Establish Locus in my deployment zone instead of in the midfield. 3rd round I lost against Genestealer Cults, which may sound counterintuitive, but we've got some good players messing with them in the Northeast, and my 3rd round opponent went undefeated and scored 2nd place.

That. dear battle brothers, concludes my report of the weekend's events! Congrats to all of our battle brothers who placed well in their respective events. You are testaments to the legion chapter! May we all rise to your fine examples. For the Lion!