Lists of the Week: Top Performers 11/11/2024

 

Hello battle brethren! Another weekend has passed, and with it success to the First Legion chapter! We didn't have any event winners, but a Dark Angels list did go undefeated at the second-biggest event of the weekend, and a few more performed well. Let's take a look at them!

Our first list took 2nd place at the Utah Open Warhammer 40K Tournament, held in  Provo, UT. At this 6-round, 97-player event, Evan Stump of Red Rock Renegades went 6-0 with his Gladius Task Force. You can see Evan's list on BCP. The short version is below.

2x repex (spoilers!)
Azrael
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
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Repulsor Executioner: big chonky laser box
Repulsor Executioner: big chonky laser box
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin

This starts off looking like a pretty typical DA Gladius, and I suppose it doesn't divert too much from the template. Evan decided to go with a pair of Repulsor Executioners for his fire support, and it's easy to see the sense in  the decision. The heavy laser destroyers will make a mess of any large target, and they can throw a bucket of dice at chaff. Getting to them through all the DWKs, Jump Intercessors, and ICCs would be a pretty neat trick. The only criticism I have is that Evan could have used a squad of Infiltrators as his backfield objective holding unit instead of taking the Callidus and using Scouts, but maybe I'm making an erroneous assumption. One could reasonably assume opponent are going to be trying to Deep Strike into one's backfield, and maybe Evan used Azrael and ICCs as his backfield unit, generating CP and daring opponents to come get some. Whatever he did, it certainly seems to have worked. 

Evan enjoyed a nonstop ride on the win train! 1st round he handed it to Necrons 90-45. 2nd round he drubbed T'au Empire 96-43. 3rd round he soundly beat Grey Knights 91-49. 4th round he prevailed against Adeptus Mechanicus 87-61. His closest game came in the 5th round against another Dark Angels list, 76-66. 6th round he ended strong, wrecking Death Guard 95-50.

Our second list comes from the same event, and happens to have been played by Evan's 5th round opponent, James Walsh of Coors Light Saedath. James took a Vanguard Spearhead, went 5-1, and took 5th place.  You can see James' list on BCP. The short version is below.

Vanguard
Azrael
Judiciar: The Blade Driven Deep
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
Devastator Squad: Sergeant + 4 grav boys
Devastator Squad: Sergeant + 4 grav boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Stormraven Gunship
Stormraven Gunship

This list is certainly quite a departure from the template. It's not often we see a high performing list that doesn't include Deathwing Knights. This list is more about the shooting than assault, though 2 squads of ICCs led by Azrael and a Judiciar are a robust assault element. Grav Devastators are a throwback to 7th edition when they were all the rage, with the Strike From The Shadows strat mitigating the main weakness of grav weapons, the bad AP.  He's got the Ballistus Dreads to be a long-range firebase, the Stormravens to fly around and get angles on things opponents are trying to hide, and he can use Guerilla Tactics to move his hard-hitting infantry units around to where they will do him the most good. The one thing he seems a little light on is secondary scoring units, but he does have the Combi-weapon Lieutenant for that.

1st round James had a really low scoring game where he squeaked out a 40-39 win against Emperor's Children. 2nd round he crushed Adeptus Sororitas 96-26 (competitive Sororitas lists tend to be heavy on vehicles, making a target-rich environment for James' Grav Devs). 3rd round he handed out a not-much-kinder thrashing to Blood Angels, 98-38. 4th round he showed Salamanders who are the superior Astartes with a 89-64 win. Round 5 he took that 66-76 loss against Evan's Dark Angels. Then in the 6th round he squeaked a 69-67 win against Blood Angels, showing Dark Angels are the superior Astartes, but maybeby a slimmer margin than with other chapters - we did share the 2nd ed Angels of Death codex with them after all. 

The next list we're looking at was played at the Hydra Events GT IIII 2024 in Roskilde, Denmark. At this 5-round, 33 player event, Simon Darre went 3-1-1 to score 5th 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
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
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Repulsor: Astartes party bus with gatling cannon

As you can see, Simon's list is the most conventional one we've seen today. The template is the template for a reason. It's been found to work, so people will use it. In this case Simon cut 2 Assault Intercessor squads and has 2 Scout Squads.Other than that, not much to be said about it that hasn't been said before.

WTC scoring at this one. 1st round Simon crushed Tyranids 20-0. 2nd round he sadly got crushed by Death Guard, 0-20. 3rd round he drubbed World Eaters 18-2. 4th round he had a 10-10 draw against Blood Angels (cause they're ALMOST as good as us!). 5th round he ended strong, 12-8 against Chaos Knights.

Statistics

As a whole, Dark Angels had a 42% win rate over the weekend, with 32 players playing 158 games and winning 67 of them. 4 players went X-0/X-1, though Meta Monday only led me to 3 of those lists. The last one may be listed as an Astartes list, but I'm not going and looking at the BCP listing for all of them to find it. The 3-week win ragte is 45%

The most played was the Gladius Task Force, with 27 players getting a pretty bad 40% win rate. 3 of the X-0/X-1 results were Gladius lists though, so in that regard it's still the most successful. The 3 week win rate for the Gladius is 46%. 

Our Vanguard list above was the only DA Vanguard played over the weekend, and it got an 83% win rate.

The Inner Circle Task Force had 1 player who got a 50% win rate. Looks like it was played at an 8-round event. It's 3-week win rate is 30%

The Unforgiven Task Force had 1 player who got a 40% win rate. The 3 week rate is 33%

The Company of Hunters had 2 players who between them got a 45% win rate, which on average makes them better at playing the CoH than me. The CoH's 3-week win rate is 35%.

That, battle brethren, is what I have for you. Follow my blog for more of this content, and check out Dank List Wargaming on YouTube to hear from a couple genuine enthusiasts. Until then, may we all rise to the challenge of improving our game! For the Lion!