Lists of the Week: Top Performers 10/28/2024
The biggest event of the weekend was The Coventry 40K: 3-day, an 8-round, 144 player event held in Coventry, England. Louis Ballington of Mind Goblins took a Stormlance and went 6-2, scoring 14th and placing in the top 10% of the event. You can check out Louis' list on BCP. The short version is below.
Lion Lance
Lion Dad
Azrael
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
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Everyone associates the Stormlance with Thunderwolves (with good reason), so you'd be forgiven thinking this was another detachment if all you saw was the unit choices. That said, putting this list in a detachment that lets everything charge all the time makes a lot of sense, and the fire support element doesn't have to fall back out of combat in order to shoot. The Stormlance has a good enough strat in Wind Swift Evasion (6" reactive move) to make up for the two strats that are useless with no Mounted units in the list.
One other thing I find surprising is that Louis opted for relic weapons for all his Knight-Masters. I messed around with a relic weapon on one Knight Master, but decided pretty quick the Great Weapon of the Unforgiven was hands-down better.
Louis did not have a 4-0 event start, but he did win 6 games and was in the top 10% of the event, which is a noteworthy accomplishment. He actually lost his 1st game, 79-85 against World Eaters. 2nd game he prevailed over different heretics, 76-56 against Chaos Marines. 3rd game he beat more Chaos Marines, 95-71. 4th game he took his second loss, 61-67 against Adeptus Mechanicus. From the 5th game onwards he rode the win-train nonstop, starting with a 91-75 against Tyranids. 6th game he went 94-78 against yet more Chaos Marines. 7th round he won 83-52 against Tyranids. IN his 8th and final round he won 92-61 against yet yet more more Chaos Marines just kidding Imperial Knights.
The next event Dark Angels did well at was the Rumble on the Rivers 40K GT, an 82 player 5-round event held at Fort Wayne Indiana. Conan Jennings of Gem Wargaming took a Gladius Task Force to go 4-1 and take 7th place. You can see Conan's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Still here
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
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
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor
Scout Squad: 5 spooky lads
Navigator
I had to look up the Navigator to see what he does. It turns out he's a budget Infiltrator Squad - he screens Reinforcements out from a 12" radius around him. Him as a backfield objective holder and a dropped Jump Intercessor Squad are the differences between this list and a pre-nerf Lennon List.
1st round Conan drubbed Necrons 89-47. 2nd round he handily beat Chaos Daemons 100-67. 3rd round he took his loss, a tight 70-74 against Chaos Daemons (maybe he was overconfident after the previous game). 4th round he crushed Necrons 100-32. 5th round he delivered a pretty brutal beating to Death Guard, 98-51.
Our next list came from the 2nd VTC Warhammer 40K, a 67-player, 5 round event. Armin Geher of Team Südösterreich went 4-1 with his Gladius and took 10th place. You can see Armin's list on BCP. The short version is below.
DA Gladius Triple Vindicators
Lion Dad
Azrael
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
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
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator
It's kind of gratifying to see triple Vindicators in a list because I'm planning on trying out triple Vindys in a list I started messing with last weekend. The Vindicators replace the Eradicator brick, solving the same problem in a different way. In case you haven't looked at the codex entry lately, the Vindicator is a T11 2+ save platform whose demolisher cannon is 24" D6+3 S14 AP -3 D6 Blast. Those are going to be hard to pick up and are going to leave a mark on whatever you point them at.
There are just the 2 squads of DWKs, but the absence of the third is made up for by the presence of Lion Dad, who brings different capabilities to the table. The Combi-Lieutenant is probably in there to guarantee Lion Dad gets Lone Op, but I'm inclined to wonder how necessary he is.
2nd VTC Warhammer 40K used WTC scoring, so 10-10 is a draw, 20-0 is at least a 50 point blowout, 11-9 is a tight game. Our brethren Armin convincingly won his first game, 17-3. Sadly, it was against another of our Dark Angels brethren playing an Inner Circle Task Force with 3 units of Deathwing Terminators. It's just said to see one of our bespoke detachments proven inferior in such a way. 2nd round Armin beat Custudes 13-7. 3rd round Armin had another 12-7 win versus Orks. 4th round he got slammed by Leagues of Votann, 0-20. Ouch. He ended strong though, with an admittedly tight 11-9 win against Chaos Daemons.
Our next list appeared at the Palladium Games Presents: “the dumpster fire gt” Fall Edition event held in Phoenixville PA, a 33 player 5-round event. Kyle Myers of Second Founding took a Stormlance, went 4-1, and scored 5th place. You can see Kyle's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Enter Lionman (thanks Kyle, now I have Enter Sandman playing in my head!)
Lion Dad
Azrael
Ravenwing Command Squad: Hunter's Instincts
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
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin
Like Louis did with the first list we looked at today, Kyle is leveraging the Stormlance to be able to charge after advancing or falling back with everything he's got in the list. Unlike Lous, Kyle included a Mounted unit, and not a little token one, but a full 9-man Ravenwing Knight+Command Squad brick, which makes me squeal with glee on the inside. It has the enhancement that lets it come in from Reserve a turn earlier. The brick can benefit from Blitzing Fusillade and Full Throttle, but I suspect the real secret sauce is Ride Hard, Ride Fast, debuffing shooting into the brick with a -1 to hit and a -1 to wound. Between that and the Deathwing Knights, an opponent would only have bad choices to shoot at, and Kyle can pop them onto the board someplace inconvenient for his opponent to shoot at in the first place. Also, if Kyle was able to contrive to keep the brick within 6" of Lion Dad, Lion Dad's No Hiding From The Watchers aura would let him take 4+ FNPs against failed Hazardous tests, preserving some of the bikes.
Kyle decided to forgo having even a token Battleline unit, attaching Azrael to ICCs instead of Assault Intercessors. He also doesn't have the Infiltrators to hold his backfield objective. I gather he's tasking the Scouts to do that while the Callidus did the secondary scoring heavy lifting. That'd be a weakness opponents could exploit, but it appears not many were able to do so at this event.
1st round Kyle showed Ultramarines who are the better Astartes with an 92-88 win. 2nd round Kyle took his loss with a 40-75 loss against Grey Knights. I suspect that was just a bad matchup for Kyle's list, with Grey Knights being able to reactively pop into strategic reserve when hostile units move within 9" of them. They also have a 3" Deep Strike strat, so it would have been pretty easy for Kyle's opponent to flip Kyle's home objective. Anyway 3rd round Kyle bodied Emperor's Children 100-50. 4th round he played into another Dark Angels list (a fairly conventional Gladius with 3 Vindicators as its shooting element), winning by a very convincing 87-47. 5th round he ended strong with a 100-80 win against Imperial Knights.
The next list came from the Dice Like Ice Grand Tournament – Q4 2024 event in Bogart GA, a 33-player 5-round event. Huck Bagby, who did not list a team affiliation, went 4-1 and scored 3rd with a Gladius Task Force. You can see Huck's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Huck's List
Azrael
Librarian
Lieutenant: Fire Discipline
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 swordy boys
Hellblasters: 10 plasma boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Land Raider
I think it's pretty safe to say Huck's list is designed to shove the Land Raider full of Inner Circle Companions down his opponent's throat, with the spooky awesome swordy boys getting invulnerable saves conferred on them by Azrael and the Librarian. I imagine the DWKs and Hellblasters march out onto objectives, and then opponents have the not-enviable choice of either shooting at the hard-as-nails DWKs or the Hellblasters, who will shoot back at whatever they want when they die - with Lethal and Sustained Hits.
Huck has 2 squads of Infiltrators. The one almost certainly sits on his backfield objective and tells opposing 3" deep strike units to stay off his lawn. The second one may be in there to completely zone out his side of the board. I see the value, but Huck doesn't have any uppy-downy units, so he must be tasking his Jump Intercessor squads to score secondaries. I'm a little surprised at the lack of an uppy-downy unit though. Most players find 1 squad of Infiltrators enough, and 100 points could be a Callidus Assassin, or a Scout Squad and The Honour Vehement on the Librarian.
This last comment is not about the list, but about how Huck produced it - he used Battlescribe, which still appears to have not updated points on anything. At first I thought Huck was playing at a 75 point handicap. My dude, if you happen to read this, use the 40K app, or switch over to New Recruit. I actually use both. I use the app when I'm away from my computer and I want to mess with lists, and New Recruit when I'm list-building on my computer.
Huck had a solid start with an 86-45 win against Custodes. He took his loss in the 2nd round, 48-87 against Chaos Daemons. 3rd round he had a convincing 100-80 win against T'au Empire. 4th round he showed Ultramarines who are the better Astartes with a 72-68 win. 5th round he prevailed against the xenos filth again with a 66-32 win against T'au Empire.
That is it for the lists that appeared in the rankings on Meta Monday. It appears that the list archetype people are succeeding with at tournaments hasn't changed all that much. They're still being built around Deathwing Knights, Jump Intercessors, and Azrael. Some lists had 2 units of DWKs instead of 3, but all of the lists that did well had multiple DWK squads.
For the things that did change, for starters only one list featured the Eradicator+Harmacist brick. While every list incorporated at least one strong shooting unit, no two lists had the same shooting elements. Another difference is that 2 of the lists were Stormlances instead of Gladii. I think it's not a coincidence that both of those lists featured Lion Dad, who's ability to slap in combat is legendary, so you'd want him to always be able to charge after advancing or falling back. If you're going to make a list that goes all-in on assault, it does make sense to make it a Stormlance.
Statistics
Collectively Dark Angels had a 45% win rate over the weekend. 58 players played 299 games and won 134 of them. There were no event wins, but 8 X-0/X-1 results. It appears a lot of people went back to the drawing board lask week, because there was a widest variety of detachments being played that I've seen in a while.
The most played by far was still the Gladius, with 40 players and a 47% win rate. 7 of the 8 X-1 results were Gladius lists.
The next most played was the Inner Circle Task Force, with 5 players and a tragic 27% win rate.
After that, we have the Stormlance Task Force with 4 players and a 61% win rate, which was the best of the weekend. 1 of the X-1 results was a Stormlance.
Next most played was the Company of Hunters, with 3 players and a 33% win rate. I was one of those players, and I'm sorry to say I dragged the win rate down. Sorry guys.
One player took an Unforgiven Task Force and somehow managed to get a 25% win rate. Meta Monday shows he only played 4 games. I'm not sure how it worked out that way.
Two players played Ironstorms and one player played a Firestorm. Both those detachments got 40% win rates.
As always, I'd like to shout out Dank List Wargaming for more Dark Angels content by genuine enthusiasts, and if you'd like to show your appreciation for my efforts, click on the Follow button up on the left over there.
Finally I'd like to offer congratulations to all our brethren who gave good performances over the weekend. Hopefully we can learn from your lists and emulate your success. For the Lion!
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