Lists of the Week: Top Performers 10/21/2024
I wish this was a maid cafe tactical game instead. Moe Moe Kyun
Lion Dad
Techmarine: Target Augury Web
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
Inceptor Squad: 3 chonky flying plasma boys
Inceptor Squad: 3 chonky flying plasma boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Redemptor Dreadnought
Redemptor Dreadnought
Repulsor Executioner
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin
This is a creative list. The way I think it works is that Lion Dad and the two Redemptors march up the field, with Lion Dad's Lone Op being triggered by the Techmarine, whose Lone Op is triggered by the Redemptors. Meanwhile, the Ballistus Dreads and Repulsor Executioner make life difficult for anything that sticks its nose out from behind terrain, with the Jump Intercessors and Inceptors dropping in to skirmish and eliminate opposing tech pieces, the Infiltrators minding the home objective and telling everyone to stay off their lawn, and the Scout Squad and Callidus Assassin doing uppy-downy secondary scoring. Clearly it worked for Jeremy.
Jeremy rode the win train all the way to the last stop. 1st round he went 98-46 against Chaos Daemons. 2nd round he got 85-60 against T'au Empire. 3rd round he crushed Drukhari 100-33. 4th round was his closest game, 88-79 against Thousand Sons. 5th round he ended strong, 100-59 against Chaos Daemons.
Two of our high-performing lists rose to the top 10% at the Denver 40K Fight Club October Open 2024, a 6-round, 102 player event. Dark Angels lists placed 4th and 9th.
Our 4th place player is Colin Kay of Big D Energy, who went 5-1 with a Gladius Task Force. You may see that and be thinking he just cut some points from some variation of the Lennon List, but Colin went back to the drawing board and came up with something pretty wild. You can see Colin's list on BCP. The short version is below.
At this point who knows what's good
Lion Dad
Azrael
Captain: The Honour Vehement
Judiciar
Judiciar
Librarian in Phobos Armour
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Whirlwind
Whirlwind
Whirlwind
I legit don't know what I'm looking at here, but probably neither did anyone who faced it, which may be why it worked. Assault armies probably REALLY struggled against this list, because it's got 3 dire assault threats with Fights First in the shape of Lion Dad and the two Judiciar-led ICC squads. I would guess Colin may have kept at least the Captain-led Assault Intercessors (and maybe the Azrael-led Assault Intercessors) in Strategic Reserve to saunter onto opponent's backfield objectives after the Whirlwinds have annihilated the typically-weedy units most players commit to holding their home objective. That would put Colin in position to score the War of Attrition Secret Mission too. The Phobos Librarian attached to the Infiltrator Squad keeps opponents from trying the same thing against Colin. The Combi-weapon Lieutenants are probably the tech pieces, scoring Secondaries for Colin as needed.
What I can't figure is how Colin managed to deal with lists with decent shooting. He must have done a really good job using terrain to his advantage to get his melee threats into position to charge.
1st round Colin showed the Ultramarines who are the best Astartes with a 90-67 win. 2nd round he showed World Eaters how to fight in close combat, winning 93-30. 3rd round he ran a clinic in disciplining (War) Dogs, beating Chaos Knights 92-70. 4th round he took his loss, 50-69 against Orks. The Ork list had a couple Battlewagons full of Meganobz, maybe Colin couldn't clear them both. 5th round he beat Drukhari 83-57. 6th round he again showed Ultramarines who are the best Astartes with a 65-54 win.
Our 9th place player was Maxxwell Myers of Battle Lads, who also went 5-1 with a Gladius Task Force. You can see Maxxwell's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Maxxwell Myers
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Judiciar: Artificer Armour
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
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Ravenwing Darkshroud
Instead of going totally back to the drawing board, Maxxwell adapted the Lennon List to the new points. He went with one of the ways I speculated players might do that: dropping the Repulsor. He also dropped a Jump Intercessor squad. In the place of the cut units, he added 2 more Scout Squads and a Darkshroud, doubtless to make the Deathwing Knights that little bit extra hard to pick up at range. The Eradicators might have either moved up the table behind terrain or come out of Strategic Reserve, and 3 Scout Squads gave him plenty of units to score secondaries with.
Maxxwell had a bad start, taking his loss 1st round, 88-95 against Imperial Knights. 2nd round he drubbed Drukhari 92-45. 3rd round he took it to Grey Knights, 86-43. 4th round he went 85-57 against Tyranids. 5th round he went 90-68 against T'au Empire. 6th round he fended off the T'au's attempt at revenge with 84-63 win.
Our last list of the week was played at Edmonton Wargaming Open 40K, a 5-round, 70-player event held in Edmonton CA. Mark van Berkel of Evolution Gaming went 4-1 with an unadulterated Lennon List using the pre-nerf points. You can see Mark's list on BCP. The short version of his list is below.
Death wing knights are dumb 2.0
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 macey boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad
This is likely the last hurrah for the Lennon List, and Mark gave it a good send off with his performance. The list has been heavily analyzed at this point and is on its way out in its current form, so I'm not going to further comment on it. It certainly does appear that Mark did his reps with it though.
Mark started strong with a very convincing 83-37 1st round win against T'au Empire. 2nd round he squeaked out a 70-69 win against Leagues of Votann. 3rd round he, like Colin, showed Ultramarines who are the better Astartes with a 88-66 win. 4th round he took a hard loss, 49-95 against T'au Empire. He ended strong in the 5th round though, prevailing against World Eaters 84-76.
Statistics
It wasn't a huge weekend for the First Legion chapter. 20 players played 112 games and collectively won 53 of them, for a 47% win rate. There was 1 event win and 4 total lists that went X-0/X-1.
The detachment with the winningest percentage was the Ironstorm Spearhead, with 3 players playing 16 games and winning 10 of them for a 63% win rate. Jeremy was responsible for 5 of those wins. Since we didn't have another Ironstorm in the top lists, likely the other two went 3-2 and 3-3.
The Gladius Task Force appears to have suffered a bit from the nerfs, with 15 players playing 85 games and winning 39 of them for a 46% win rate. Our other 3 X-0/X-1 results were Gladius lists, so it can still do well. One of those lists deviated sharply from the Lennon List, but 1 of them clove to it pretty closely, cutting very few units and staying pretty close to the core build, and the last was the Lennon List played at an event that used the old points.
The Inner Circle Task Force continues to be Tail End Charlie, with 2 players playing 11 games and only winning 4 of them for a net 36% win rate. Where are the buffs for the ICTF, Games Workshop?
That's the roundup for this week. I have to admit I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, my nose is bent out of joint about what I consider overly heavy handed nerfs to the list that emerged as effective in the early Pariah Nexus meta. On the other hand, it's refreshing to see some list innovation. It would certainly be nice to see more than 1 list archetype we can do well with. Maybe we can even dare hope that such a list can be built out of one of our bespoke detachments. I don't think it's going to be the ICTF though guys, so my recommendation would be to mess with the UTF and the CoH.
If you like Dark Angels commentary, I'd like to recommend you check out Dank List Wargaming on YouTube. Bailey and Heath are a pair of genuine enthusiasts who deserve our support. Plus, if you click on the Follow button up on the left, you'd be doing me a solid.
Good luck to everyone playing in the new meta. Try new things! At this point, we have no idea what's going to emerge as the meta build, so go nuts. For the Lion!
Great write up! I think Ironstorm is something we’ll all have to take a second look at as we have the tools to make some of those units even more durable with the Darkshroud, Azrael can help fuel Mercy is Weakness, and DWK fit in right alongside Redemptors as a 2+, -1 Damage units but can go through walls.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think the Techmarine in that list follows the Redemptors though, he has Target Augury Web so more than likely babysits the RepEx in the backfield. I’d imagine The Lion is given Lone Op by stuff like the JPI hugging walls nearby and then the Inceptors dropping in nearby if required?
It’s a cool list though, thanks for sharing!