Lists of the Week: 2024 Warhammer 40,000 World Championships of Warhammer

 

Hello battle brethren! This is a special week because the 2024 Warhammer 40,000 World Championships of Warhammer was held in Atlanta, GA! This was one of the biggest events of the year - 8 rounds, with 268 players. Three Dark Angels lists made it into the top bracket, so I'm dedicating a post just to their lists. 

That said, Dark Angels lists did not perform spectacularly at this event. The highest scoring list was in 75th place, which doesn't even place it in the top quarter of lists. That said, these are the top performing Dark Angels lists at the event where literally the best players in the world were invited to attend. Being in the upper 50% of that crowd is probably a more significant achievement than being the top player at a GT with less than 30 players in it. 

Switzerland's Antonio Mejias took a Gladius Task Force and went 5-3, winding up in 75th place. You can see Antonio's list on BCP. The short version is below.

We are just neutral
Azrael: Warlord
Heavy Intercessor Squad: 5 chonky bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Gladiator Reaper
Gladiator Reaper
Incursor Squad: 5 scouty knifey bolter boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Invader ATV: 1 chonky melta quad
Invader ATV: 1 chonky melta quad
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator

Tanks are back in fashion! Between the Vindicators and Gladiator Reapers, Antonio's list has 5 of them. From experience I can tell you a trio of Vindicators can pretty reliably delete anything in the game. No opponent is going to be happy having a trio of demolisher cannons line up on their key units. The Reapers will clear chaff like a boss and can be relied on to put at least a few Mortal Wounds on bigger targets if that needs doing. The Scouts are there for uppy-downy Secondary scoring, the Deathwing Knights do what they do, and Azrael joins up with the ICCs for a spicy package of swordy death.

The off-meta picks in this list are the Heavy Intercessors, the Incursor Squad, and the Invader ATVs. The Heavy Intercessors are likely tasked with minding the backfield objective, and have the virtue of being at least somewhat challenging to pick up, but 5 more points buys Infiltrators, who are just better for that purpose. I think Antonio settled for the Heavy Intercessors because points were tight and there was no good way to cut 5 points without sacrificing another capability he wanted.

The Incursors are a little easier to understand, granting a +1 to hit bonus against any shooting going into a target they hit with one of their shots, which is almost like having a second Oath during the Shooting phase. They've also got the Haywire Mine, which they can use once per game at the start of any phase, so if an opponent gets something a little too close (within 3" of them), they can put some Mortal Wounds on it. If the target is a vehicle, between the Haywire Mine and the Grenades strat, they have the potential to put quite a few Mortals on it - possibly as many as 12, with average dice 5-7. 

I think the Invader ATVs are a budget alternative to Jump Intercessors. They're a relatively small footprint unit with high mobility and carry a decent gun they can do a little damage with. Unless they're being run as a pack, their datasheet rule isn't going to amount to much, but they do have the Grenades keyword, so they can potentially put some Mortals on something hanging on by a few wounds, and the multimelta can potentially finish off something wounded by the tanks, freeing up some more significant firepower to go elsewhere. 

1st round Antonio put a 95-46 smackdown on Chaos Daemons. 2nd round he took a tight 71-72 loss against Aeldari. 3rd round he bodied Imperial Agents 96-46. 4th round he beat another Dark Angels list 79-76. 5th round he took a hard loss, 37-64 against Chaos Space Marines (ironically including Cypher). 6th round he managed a tight 65-59 win against World Eaters. 7th round he beat Kyle McCord's Dark Angels list 78-68. Sadly in the 8th round he took a bruising 54-85 loss against Leagues of Votann.

Next is a list you may have already heard about. France's Olivier WEISS (that's how his name appears on BCP), who placed 93th by taking an effing Company of Hunters to the World Championships of Warhammer and went 4-1-3 with it.  That definitely wasn't on the Bingo card. You can see Olivier's list on BCP. The short version is below.

I play a Primarch!
Lion Dad
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Techmarine
Techmarine
Techmarine

Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Invader ATV: 1 chonky melta quad
Invader ATV: 1 chonky melta quad
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike
Vindicator
Vindicator

Olivier apparently decided he didn't care too much about the Company of Hunter's strats, because the only units he can use them on are the ATVs and the Hammerstrike. What he did care about is stuffing his list to the brim with units that really like the CoH's detachment rule, allowing them to Advance+Shoot. It is kind of interesting to note though that Storm Speeders get the Ravenwing keyword when played in a Dark Angels list, have Deep Strike, and are eligible to be picked up using Rapid Reappraisal, which means you can freely pick them up and put them down anywhere as long as you're willing to spend the CP on it. Of the 3 Storm Speeder variants, the Hammerstrike is the most valuable to this list because its datasheet rule allowed Olivier to strip Cover from a target a turn.

Again, the seemingly-unlikely Invader ATVs creep into a list, but they have more utility than they would in Antonio's list, because they can be used to sticky objectives with Hunter's Trail and can be repositioned as needed with Rapid Reappraisal in addition to a little incidental multimelta shooting and grenade throwing. 

Lion Dad may seem like an eyebrow-raiser, but I'm actually doing a similar thing in my CoH list. I'm running 3 Vindicators in it, and one thing I observed is that more opponents dealt with them by having things run up and punch them than by shooting them. Having Lion Dad in the list presents a dire Heroic Intervention threat to opponents, and he can get Lone Op by sticking near a Techmarine, who can get Lone Op by sticking near a vehicle. So, Lion Dad can be positioned out in front of the wedge of tanks, complicating opponents' efforts to go punch them to death. He can also provide protection against Mortal Wounds, which is another way opponents seem likely to try and get around something like a Vindicator's high Toughness and 2+ save.

Olivier had a 74-66 win in the 1st round against Blood Angels. 2nd round he took a 61-83 loss against Adeptus Mechanicus. 3rd round he had a solid 89-66 win against Aeldari. 4th round he inflicted a 94-49 drubbing against Drukhari. 5th round he had a 78-78 draw against Chaos Daemons (I find it wild whenever a game of 10th ed 40K ends in a draw). 6th round he took a tough 68-94 loss against World Eaters, who I guess perform much better when their opponent doesn't have a bunch of tough -1 damage units. Round 7 he took another loss, 73-96 against Necrons. He ended strong though, and avenged his earlier loss against the Adeptus Mechanicus, thrashing another Admech list 100-39.

Kyle McCord, a familiar name to my readers, took 106th place. He went 4-4, which doesn't sound super-impressive, but he was 4-1 going into the 6th round, and he was among the best players in the world at this event, so I'm not going to throw shade. You can see Kyle's list on BCP. The short version is below.

Unforgiven? More Like Fun-Forgiven!

(Jack told me this was an incredibly lame list title, but Peanut, his cat, told me it sounded cool and gave me a high five with her paw in a dream I had. So here we are.) (Author's note: I approve of your list title Kyle!)

Azrael: Warlord
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
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
Repulsor Executioner (wt heavy laser destroyer)
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator

This is another tank-tastic list if you count the Ballistus Dreads as tanks, and they do fill the same role that tanks do. They actually pair pretty well with the Repulsor Executioner, because their Ballistus Strike rule gives them rerolls to Hit against targets not below half strength, whereas the RepEx's Executioner rule gives it +1 to Hit versus targets below half strength. 

Looking at this list, I expect how it plays is that the 3 DWK squads march out onto midfield objectives, obliging opponents to commit some serious assets to trying to pick them up. They then fall back as necessary while the Ballistuses, Repex, and Vindies blow away what came out to deal with them. Everything else has pretty obvious roles we've seen often enough in other lists, so I don't feel the need to comment on the rest of it.

Kyle squeaked a tight 1st round 100-95 win against T'au Empire. 2nd round he took an 82-66 loss against Necrons. 3rd round he got a comfortable 96-70 win against Chaos Marines. 4th round he got a solid 100-82 win against Chaos Daemons. 5th round he scored a tight 72-68 win against Tyranids. Sadly that's where Kyle got off the win train. He took a bruising 46-84 loss against Astra Militarum round 6. Round 7 our man Antonio handed him a 68-78 loss. Round 8 he had what must have been a disappointing 50-60 loss against Thousand Sons.

I'm not going to review the rest of the Dark Angels lists from this event, but I will list who else played Dark Angels and how they did. 

Jose BELDA, also from France, placed 122 with a GTF. 
England's Jay Seebarun placed 136th with a GTF.
Amador Perez of Mexico placed 165th with a GTF.
Maxime Rampen of Belgium placed 216th with a GTF.
Adrian Philips of the United States placed 243th with a GTF

Axel Chazman of Mexico placed 263rd with a GTF

That brings us to the end of this article. Unfortunately Dark Angels did not perform particularly well, and I'm sure all our battle brethren who participated wish they'd performed better. That said, they were all playing amongst the best players in the world. Just showing up at this event is a big deal. I'm sure they'll all thrash their local metas when next they play at home. 

If you got this far, I suggest Following my blog for more of my articles, and check out Dank List Wargaming for Dark Angels content created by genuine enthusiasts. May we all play the best games we can, and achieve victory! For the Lion!