Lists of the Week: Top Performers 10/14/2024

 

Hello battle brethren! It was kind of a slow week for 40K, with what would have been the biggest event of the weekend, the GW Open, cancelled due to Hurricane Milton. We still have a couple brethren that did well at the events they attended, so let's take a look at the lists they played.

With the GW Open being rained out, the biggest event of the weekend was the Battle For Salvation GT in West Nyack, NY, a 6-round, 112-person event. A Dark Angels Gladius Task Force played by Shaun Reynolds went 5-1 and placed 5th overall, which is not too shabby! You can see Shaun's list on BCP. The short version is below.

BFS
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

As you can see, Shaun brought the Lennon List to the event, which is a sensible thing to do as it is a well-proven list with the tools needed to handle all comers. Shaun clearly got his reps in with the list too, because going 5-1 at a 100+ person GT is no small accomplishment. 

1st round Shaun dumpstered World Eaters 100-50. 2nd round he prevailed against Tyranids 78-65. 3rd round he defeated Adeptus Sororitas 96-73.  4th round he took his loss, 74-89 against Chaos Daemons. 5th round he beat Leagues of Votann 100-69.  6th round he ended strong, going 91-81 against Chaos Marines.  He beat some pretty serious contenders in the process too, so well done Shaun!

Our next list comes from Otoñocalipsis Kingdom Wargames, Warhammer 40k, a 5-round 38 player event that used WTC scoring. Guillermo Palacious of Atremas went undefeated with a DA Gladius, scoring 4-0-1 to take 2nd place! You can see Guillermo's list on BCP. The short version is below

DA Gladius
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter 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 swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator

As you can see, Brother Guillermo substituted the ICCs and Infiltrators we'd see in a Lennon List with a pair of Vindicators, and it certainly seemed to work for him! Interestingly, he went with power weapons with all of his Deathwing Knights (and their Knight Masters brought relic weapons instead of great weapons of the Unforgiven). Maybe Guillermo found through practice with the list that he didn't need the Anti-Big Thing 4+ of the maces when he has the smashy firepower of a pair of demolisher cannons. The Vindicators give opponents target priority problems too, since they have 3 units they need to put their anti-armor firepower into, instead of the solo Repulsor a Lennon List would have. 

It looks like Guillermo probably used the Intercessors with Azrael as his home objective minding unit. The downside of doing so is that he was vulnerable to opponents using 3" Deep Strike or other Deep Strike/Strategic Reserves shenanigans. The upside is he could wait till his opponent committed such assets, and, assuming he was able to deal with them, leave his home objective stickied and come off it to have Azrael and his pals skirmish with his opponents' lighter units.

The list worked for Brother Guillermo too, because he took most of his opponents to school! As a reminder, WTC scoring is on a 0-20 scale, with every point over/under 10 representing a 5 point difference in battle points. 1st round Guillermo drubbed Chaos Marines 20-0. 2nd round he brutalized Blood Angels 19-1. 3rd round he took a break from handing out savage beatings, going 10-10 against Necrons. 4th round he resumed handing out savage beatings by going 19-1 against Thousand Sons. Round 5 he wasn't quite as savage, but still soundly beat Imperial Knights 14-6.

Statistics

It was a slow weekend, with just 13 people playing Dark Angels at GTs. Overall, the Dark Angels have a 47% win rate for the weekend, and a 47% win rate for the 15 weeks of the Pariah Nexus meta. We've had 11 event wins in that time period, which is pretty average for mid-tier armies. 

The most-played and most-successful detachment was, again, the Gladius Task Force. 11 players played it, earning a 51% win rate for the weekend. The 15-week win rate is also 51%. We didn't have any event wins, but Meta Monday reports 3 X-0/X-1 results. I only covered 2 lists, so that may be a typo, or it might be deep in the results for one of the events. 

The only other detachment played by DA players was the Inner Circle Task Force, which 2 optimists tried to make work. Unfortunately they only scored a 27% win rate. The ICTF's 15-week win rate is a dismal 34%.

For more news and analysis of our army, check out Dank List Wargaming. Heath and Bailey are a pair of genuine enthusiasts who put a lot of work into their podcasts.  And since you made it this far into the article, why not click the Follow button over on the left? I release an article or 2 a week. That'll help you keep up with them.

It was a short one this week. We're all holding our breath to see what happens in the updated points everyone is expecting this week. Let's all light a candle at our altars honoring Lion Dad and hope for good news. Until then, may we all strive to be as successful as our brethren who piloted this week's most successful Dark Angels lists. For the Lion!