Lists of the Week: Top Performers 9/23/2024
Hello, battle brothers! Another weekend has come and gone, and I am here with the news of how well the
I'm going to start off discussing what is emerging as the gold standard for Dark Angels list. It's the list that John Lennon won the Crucible 2024 40K GT a couple weeks ago, and since then it's been pretty common to see players copying John's homework and taking that exact same list to events. John named his list Knights of the round bases, but I'm going to refer to it as the Lennon list (correct me if someone came up with it first). You can see the Lennon list on BCP. The short version is below.
The Lennon List
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Judiciar
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying 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
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
The Lennon list combines the best datasheets available to Dark Angels players with some of the best datasheets in Codex: Dark Angels, using the best detachment available out of both books. It's got units that slap, units that are hard to shift, and units that can move around the board and score secondaries. I'm not saying it's a perfect list, or beyond criticism or modification, but any Dark Angels list that does well at a major event is probably going to resemble it pretty strongly.
The reason I made a point to bring it up is that the both the lists that placed highly at the biggest event of the weekend, the 2024 Michigan GT Warhammer 40K championships were the Lennon list. At this 5-round, 129 player event, Conan Jennings of Gem Wargaming used the Lennon list to take 1rst place, and Benjamin Frederiksen of United Midwest Project went 4-1 with it to score 10th place.
As one might imagine, Conan rode the win train all the way to 1st place. 1st round he buried a T'au list 100-29. 2nd round he beat Astra Militarum 90-66. 3rd round he beat Tyranids 86-66. 4th round he bludgeoned Orks 100-57. 5th round he beat Chaos Daemons 92-63.
Conan may of copied John's homework, but he aced the test all on his own!
Benjamin's ride on the win train hit a bump in the 4th round. 1st round he won 96-69 against Necrons 2nd round he beat Orks 100-71. 3rd round he beat Adeptus Sororitas 90-58. 4th round he took a loss to T'au, 75-82. 5th round he ended strong with a very tight 86-85 win against Space Wolves.
Our next list comes from The Hammer Cup Solo - Golden Ticket, a 5-round, 101 player event held in Golfech, France, where a player who goes by Benji on miniheadquarters.com (oh France, why can't you just use BCP?) went 4-1 to score 12th place. You can see Benji's list on miniheadquarters.com if you have an account. Here's the short version in case you don't.
Benji's List
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 macey 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
This is a modest variation on the Lennon list, dropping a jump Intercessor squad in favor of a Callidus Assassin, who can uppy downy at will anywhere on the board. It also sacrifices the Infiltrators, making do with a second Scout Squad for backfield objective duty. Personally, I would not make that tradeoff, but the next GT I go 4-1 at will be the first one, so take my opinion for what it's worth.
Our man Benji's win train went off the rails just before the last stop. 1st round he beat Space Wolves 82-61. 2nd round he beat Leagues of Votann 78-66. 3rd round he beat World Eaters 92-68. 4th round he beat Grey Knights 93-79. 5th round, he dropped his loss to Astra Militarum, 58-95.
Our last list of the weekend comes from The Fall PNW Warlords Clash in Ellensburg, WA, a 36-player, 5 round event. Tanner Hebert took a Gladius Task Force to go 4-1, taking 5th place. You can see Tanner's list on BCP. The short version is below.
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Lion Dad
Azrael
Ravenwing Command Squad: Fire Discipline
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Incursor Squad: 5 sneaky choppy boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Scouts: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
Oh Tanner! Oh you wonderful fellow! Taking a full Ravenwing Knight brick and going 4-1 at a GT with it! That's just one of many interesting choices in this list. Taking Lion Dad is also unconventional, and I think I can safely say this is the first time I've seen Incursors in a competitive list, thought it does make a certain amount of sense. Using the Incursors to buff some shooting would allow Tanner to put his Oath target on something else. I'd imagine he'd want to put the Black Knights into his Oath target to max on Fire Discipline's Sustained Hits, so it probably buffs the Vindicators' shooting.
One of the bits of tech in this list is the combination of Lion Dad and the Ravenwing Knight brick. With the change to how Hazardous works, Lion Dad's No Hiding From The Watcher's aura can save a Knight from a failed Hazardous check with just 1 success on 3 4+ FNP tests. That makes it a lot safer to go hot with the plasma talons.
The Vindicators are another unconventional choice, though we do see them from time to time. Their casino cannons can fulfill a similar role to the output of an Eradicator brick, but with a little more range and harder to pick up.
Even the Deathwing Knights are a little unconventional, in that both squads pack swords instead of maces. Tanner probably uses Honor The Chapter to compensate for their lack of Anti Big Thing 4+ when he needed to.
I'd say the biggest failing of this list is that it's a little light on units that can score Secondary points, with only the 1 Scout Squad and no jump Intercessors. Tanner didn't break 90 on any of his scores, and this is probably why.
Tanner's ride on the win train went off the rails just before the end of the track. 1st round he won 84-59 against Genestealer Cult. 2nd round was an 80-67 win against Grey Knights. 3rd round he had a very tight 69-68 win against Adeptus Custodes. 4th round he went 81-69 against Astra Militarum. 5th round he lost, 57-73 against Space Wolves.*
Just out of curiosity, I checked out the Space Wolf list. It was a Thundercav Stormlance which, interestingly enough, also had 2 Vindicators.
Statistics
Dark Angels overall had a 46% win rate over the weekend. We had 4 lists go X-0/X-1 and 1 event win. 33 players played 166 games and won 77 of them.
The Gladius was by far the most played, with 30 players playing 151 games and winning 73 of them for a 48% win rate. All of the high results were scored by Gladius lists.
1 player each played a 1rst Company Task Force, an Unforgiven Task Force, and an Inner Circle Task Force. The 1rst Company player won 2 of his 5 games. The Inner Circle and Unforgiven players each only managed to win 1 game.
If you made it this far, why don't you click on the Follow button over on the left? And I recommend you check out Dank List Wargaming for some Dark Angels content produced by genuine enthusiasts for the army!
That's it for this article battle brothers! I'm not going to throw shade at people who netlist but put in the work to perform well with the list, but I definitely like to see some innovation as well, and we did get to see a bit of that. Congratulations to everyone who did well over the weekend, and may we all rise to your excellent examples. For the Lion!
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