Lists of the Week: Top Performers 9/9/2024
Hello battle brothers! It was quite a week for the
Let's start with the biggest news - the Crucible 2024 Warhammer 40K GT in Orlando Florida, a 7-round, 115 person event, where no less a personage than the Art Of War's John Lennon took the Dark Angels Gladius all the way to the top! You can see John's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Knights of the round bases
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
If you're looking to netlist, here's the list to copy. If John Lennon is playing it, it's probably as good as it's going to get. It's got all the elements we're accustomed to seeing in high performing Dark Angels lists. About the only thing I find remarkable is going with 3 jump Intercessor squads and only 1 Scout squad, because that doesn't give John much he can forward-deploy to prevent his army being put in jail, and he's only got the 1 uppy-downy unit, but the jump Intercessors can certainly move around the table fast once they're down, and they are also invaluable for scoring secondaries.
John took a nonstop ride on the win train all the way to 1rst place! 1rst round he beat Death Guard 99-64 (I wonder how he missed that 1 point). 2nd round he defeated Astra Militarum 91-65. 3rd round he scored 100-81 against Chaos Daemons. 4th round he beat another Chaos Daemons list harder, 100-61. 5th round he went 80-47 against Aeldari. 6th round he had a tight game against Grey Knights, 81-72. 7th round he prevailed against Thousand Sons 84-65.
I don't know if this is by accident or design, but other than the Aeldari game, none of John's opponents scored particularly low. One would think John could simultaneously hold down his opponents' scores while scoring his own points if he'd been trying, particularly in the early rounds, so I wonder if he was comfortable letting his opponents get decent scores as long as he was confident he was winning. Alternately, maybe his status as a tippy-top player was a consideration in the pairings.
Jumping down the list of events to the other event won by a Dark Angels player brings us all the way down to Unicorn Battle in St. Gregoir, France, a 28-player, 5 round event where Dark Angels took both 1rst and 2nd place! I'd love to be able to tell you more, but I cannot find the listing for the event on MiniHeadQuarters.com (French events tend to be listed there instead of on BCP, and it's where Meta Monday says to look). It does spare me some work though, so I'm going to move on.
Unfortunately for me I don't get to jump off of MiniHeadQuarters, because the second biggest event of the weekend was also in France. In Saverne France, specifically, where O.G.R.E. 2024, a 5-round, 114-player event was held. A player identified as Wydjaz (the site uses cute nicknames) went 4-1 to score 9th place. You can see Wydjaz' list on MiniHeadQuarters (but you'll have to scroll down and click it, honestly why don't the French event organizers just use BCP?). The short version is below.
Wydjaz' list
Azrael
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
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
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator
Voidsman-at-Arms: 5 inexpensive squishy boys
There's been a variant of the DA Gladius that has employed Vindicators instead of Eradicators as their shooting element, and Wydjaz certainly leaned into it! Two Vindicators don't cost that much more than the Eradicators+Harmacist brick, with Vindicators being harder to hurt and the demolisher cannon being effective into a broader array of targets than the Eradicators' guns. There's even some core strat utility, with the Vindys being able to deliver a pretty potent Tank Shock.
Curiously, the entry for the list states the total points are 2020. I duplicated the list on New Recruit and got 2020 points. I don't know what's going on there. One would think the TOs would have caught that. The only thing I can think of is that Wydjaz didn't play the list as it appears on the site.
The event used WTC scoring, but one upside to MiniHeadQuarters is that the game points are shown on the results page, so I can give you those. Wydjaz rode the win train for rounds 1-4, losing the last game. 1rst round he drubbed Adeptus Sororitas 100-26. 2nd round he decisively won against Blood Angels, 96-48. 3rd round against Tyranids was a much closer 85-73. 4th round he spanked Chaos Daemons 96-30. 5th round he took a tight loss against Adeptus Sororitas, 58-67.
The next event Dark Angels rose to the upper echelons of was the Warhammer 40,000 MidtconGT in Viborg, Denmark. This was a 60 player, 5 round event where Simon Darre took 4th place with his Gladius Task Force. You can see Simon's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Simon's list
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Judiciar: The Honour Vehement
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter 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
Land Raider Redeemer
Callidus Assassin
Here we can see Simon swapped the Repulsor for a Land Raider Redeemer, exchanging the Redeemer's jump-back-in datasheet rule for the Redeemer's assault ramp and murderous Overwatch potential. He did have to pay for that by a much smaller commitment in secondary scoring units, with only the 1 squad of jump Intercessors and no Scouts. However, that is somewhat mitigated by taking the Callidus, which is the ultimate uppy-downy unit.
Interestingly for a list that placed so high at a decent sized event, Simon's loss came in the 2nd round. 1rst round he drubbed Death Guard 100-38. 2nd round as mentioned he lost against Thousand Sons, 94-65. 3rd round he got back aboard the win train, although it was a near thing, 62-59 against Chaos Marines. 4th round he avenged his previous loss against Thousand Sons with a 97-35 drubbing of another Thousand Sons list. He ended strong with a 95-55 win against World Eaters.
Next we go to the Goonhammer Open UK September 2024, a 6-round, 52 player event where Jay Seebarun took 3rd place with his Gladius! You can see Jay's list on BCP. The short version is below
Dark Angel v2
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Librarian: Artificer Armor
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Impulsor
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Desolation Squad: 5 krak rocket boys
Desolation Squad: 5 krak rocket boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
I'll tell you what, Desolation Squads popping up in a competitive list was not on my 10th ed Bingo card! I can see the utility. With superkraks they're a credible threat to vehicles and monsters, and they have their Castellan launchers to hit chaff units hiding behind terrain. That said, they're small squads of standard Primaris bodies, so not hard to pick up and a high-value target for opponents to focus on. Plus 5 Desolators are not that many more points than 10 Hellblasters. For the price of the two squads, Jay could have had 10 Hellblasters and 2 squads of jump Intercessors. It's interesting to note that Jay retained the Eradicator brick, so he's not relying on just the Desolators for his anti-Big Thing needs. Notable by their absence are any sort of unit to dedicate to scoring secondaries, which also calls into question the wisdom of spending so many points on the Desolation Squads. That said, Jay did place 3rd at this event. Could he have placed higher if he'd had more secondary-scoring potential? His scores are kind of low, so maybe.
Jay won his first 3 games, lost the 4th, then ended strong with 5th and 6th round wins. 1rst round he went 94-46 against Adeptus Custodes. 2nd round he faced more Custodes and had a much closer 74-64 result. 3rd round he went 75-58 against Chaos Marines. For his 4th round loss he went 74-86 against Blood Angels (BCP says Space Marines, but I checked out the list). 5th round Jay got an 84-59 result against Adeptus Sororitas. 6th round Jay beat World Eaters 90-80.
Our last lists for this week both come from the Shanghai Sanlin Warhammer Chinese Championship, where a pair of Dark Angels Gladius lists went 4-1 to score 6th and 7th out of a field of 48 players. Our 6th place player was Xuan Hewen of the Arsenal 14 Warhammer Club - Beijing. You can see Hewen's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Hewen's list
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Chaplain in Terminator Armor
Judiciar: Artificer Armor
Callidus Assassin
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy 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
Repulsor
Impulsor
I haven't seen anyone attaching the Terminator Chaplain to the sword Knights very much but it the utility is obvious. A Terminator Chaplain almost made it into my list but I opted to attach a Phobos Librarian to my Infiltrators instead. Anyway, Hewen is a battle brother after my heart, having both the Eradicators and the Hellblasters in his list. The one criticism I have is that he's only got the Scout Squad for sitting on his backfield objective, which leaves it vulnerable to pesky 3" Deep Strike shenanigans.
1rsr round Hewen went 81-68 against Death Guard. 2nd round he won 83-70 against Space Marines. 3rd round he took his loss, 73-82 against Custodes. 4th round he bounced back with an 89-66 win against Necrons. 5th round he squeaked a 77-76 win against Space Wolves.
According to Google Translate (the name and club are given in Chinese characters), the event's 7th place player is Dark Elf Night Breeze of the Beijing Chess Club. You can see Night Breeze's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Night Breeze's list
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Judiciar
Callidus Assassin
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter 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
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
The only differences between Night Breeze's list and John Lennon's are that Night Breeze swapped a jump Intercessor squad for the bolter Intercessor squad (to sticky objectives presumably) and the squad of Infiltrators for the Callidus Assassin. In this case, the Scouts are probably free to go about scoring secondaries, because I imagine Night Breeze tasks either the Assault Intercessors or the bolter Intercessors with minding his backfield objective. That said, Infiltrators are still preferable for zoning out pesky 3" Deep Strike nonsense.
Night Breeze crushed Necrons in the 1rst round, going 99-33. 2nd round he took his loss, 70-82 against Adeptus Sororitas. 3rd round Night Breeze bounced back with an 83-66 win against Necrons. 4th round he won 88-55 against Chaos Daemons. 5th round he won 77-55 against Imperial Knights.
Statistics
Dark Angels had a 51% win rate over the weekend, with 41 players playing 207 games and winning 106 of them. We had 8 X-0/X-1 results and 2 event wins, all with the Gladius Task Force.
That sounds like a lot, and Meta Monday made a big deal of it, but at least 5 other armies had comparable results, and one of those event wins came at the hands of John Lennon. John Lennon is literally one of the top players in the world, with his contenders for being THE top player probably being numbered in the single digits. He was probably going to get an event win with any army he happened to play. If he'd gotten it playing Adeptus Sororitas or Thousand Sons, Meta Monday would have scarcely batted an eye.
The Gladius was by far our most played detachment, with 35 players bringing it to a 53% win rate. As previously mentioned, all our top scoring lists were Gladius detachments.
The Ironstorm and Stormlance are tied for the detachment having the highest win percentages at 60%, with each of them having 1 madman go 3-2 with them.
The Unforgiven Task Force had 1 diehard play it, going 3-4 for a 43% win rate.
The Inner Circle Task Fore also had 1 player, who only went 1-4 for a 20% win rate
Bringing up the rear is the 1rst Company Task Force, with 1 player going 1-5 with it for a 17% win rate
No one elected to play the Company of Hunters, at least not at any events Meta Monday is collecting data from.
If you made it this far through the article, why don't you go over to the left and click that blue Follow button?
Also, you should check out Dank List Wargaming on YouTube for more Dark Angels content. I enjoy having Heath and Bailey's podcast on while I'm painting.
And that, battle brothers, concludes our roundup of the weekend's top lists. Congratulations to everyone who piloted a list featured in this article. You serve as an example for all of us to follow. May we all rise to the excellent standard you set. For the Lion!
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