Lists of the Week: Top Performers 11/25/2024
The event winner is the obvious one to start with. It rose to the top at the Obsec presents the 10th Annual Perth 40k GT in Perth Australia, a 6-round, 64 player event. Callum German went 6-0 with his Gladius Task Force. You can see Callum's list on BCP. The short version is below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-8zgGNAlg
There isn't going to be enough Garlic Bread in all of Tasmania with NSW bringing a 54 person squad!?!?! (This is what he put as the title)
Azrael - Warlord
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Invader ATV: 1 chonky melta quad
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
This looks like a fairly conventional list. I think it's safe to say Vindicators are the new Eradicators+Harmacist, and they probably actually solve more problems than the Eradicators did, not to mention being tougher to pick up. They're supplemented by the Ballistus and maybe in some incidental ways by the Invader. I'm not sure I'd have made that choice over a third Vindicator, but on the upside the Ballistus does have more reach than the Vindicators do. The list has a solid assault component with the 3 units of Deathwing Knights and Azrael leading the Inner Circle Companions instead of a Judiciar, which is a more exciting use for Azrael. The rest of the units have pretty well defined uses I don't feel the need to reiterate here.
Callum enjoyed a non-stop ride on the win train! 1st round he thrashed Chaos Marines 99-36. Guess he left that one last point on the platter to not seem like a glutton. Anyway, 2nd round he crushed Aeldari 100-38. 3rd round he prevailed against Astra Militarum 87-74. 4th round he was greedy for points again, drubbing Imperial Knights 100-59. 5th round he stomped Orks 94-56. Round 6 he showed Black Templars who are the superior Astartes with a 70-62 win.
The next list we're looking at was played by Axel Linder, who took his GTF to the Fantasia Fanatic XLVI – 40 in Umea, Sweden, a 99 players. 5 round event. He went 4-1 and placed 4th. You can see Axel's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Character
Azrael - Warlord
Chaplain in Terminator Armour
Chaplain in Terminator Armour
Judiciar: Artificer Armour
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Eradicator Squad: 3 chonky melta boys
Inceptor Squad: 3 chonky flying bolter boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Gladiator Lancer
Gladiator Lancer
Callidus Assassin
The most striking thing to me about Axel's list is that he decided to buck the conventional wisdom that Deathwing Knights don't need attached characters. Instead of going with the maces which make that statement accurate, he went with swords, and attached Terminator Chaplains to both units. That has the added benefit of giving a 4+ FNP against Mortals all the time instead of just once from the Watcher.
The two full squads of Inner Circle Companions also stands out for me. One is clearly having the usual Judiciar attached to them. That leaves the other to have Azrael attached, which has clear advantages as well.
The rest of the list is kind of an eclectic mix of Space Marine good stuff. Axel went with Gladiator Lancers as his primary shooting threat, with a small squad of Eradicators, probably being held in reserve to pop out in the 3rd turn to put some hurt on vehicles hiding behind terrain. Axel has a wide range of capability in his utility units between the Combi-weapon Lieutenant, Inceptors, Scouts, and Callidus.
This event used WTC scoring, which is a 0-20 range. 0 is a crushing defeat, 10-10 is a tie (within 5 battle points), 20-0 is a win by at least 50 battle points.
When Axel's list worked, it really really worked. All 4 of the games he won, he won 20-0, against Necrons in the 1st round, Chaos Daemons in the 2nd round, Space Wolves 4th round, and Thousand Sons in the 5th round. His one loss was pretty significant, 3-17 against Adeptus Sororitas (a tank-tastic Bringers of Flame list). That may have either been a bad matchup for Axel's list or a fluke, because that list lost its last 2 games and wound up in 20th place.
Our next list was played at the Renegade Open 2024 – 40K GT in Minneapolis, MN, an 80 players. 5 round event. Repeat brethren Alex Vian of Midwest Murdersports went 4-1 and took 7th place with his GTF. You can see Alex's list on BCP. The short version is below.
Oh Mama I'm in fear for my life from the long arm of the law
Azrael - Warlord
Judiciar
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Gladiator Lancer
Gladiator Lancer
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
As we've been seeing, this list is a hybrid version of the conventional DA Gladius with tanks taking the place of Eradicators and the Repulsor they rode around in. Alex opted for a pair of Lancers and a pair of Ballistus Dreads (Ballads?). On paper they do seem like they'd pair up well, with the Ballis setting something up for the Lancers to take down. They've got numerous advantages over the Eradicator brick, being tougher, having longer range, and the Lancers can throw a bucket of dice at chaff while their main guns are putting the hurt on tougher targets.
Alex won his first 4 games and lost the 5th. 1st round he went 97-46 against Tyranids. 2nd round he squeaked an 83-81 win against Genestealer Cults. 3rd round he had a much more comfortable 81-48 against Space Wolves. 4th round he went 65-43 against Adeptus Custodes. His 5th round loss was 57-100 against Death Guard.
I looked at the Death Guard list, and it seemed to be teched against the DA GTF army in particular. Any given competitive DG list that includes Mortarion is going to be halfway there by virtue of Morty having a 6" Ignore-Modifiers aura, which negates DWK's best trick. It also contained 3 big squads of Deathshroud Terminators and 2 DG Terminator Sorcerers, who give their attached squads a -1 damage effect, and the Deathshrouds have a -1 To Wound rolls against them when they have a character attached, which would have reduced the Ballis and Lancers to wounding on 4s. Coming out on top of that one would have been a neat trick. That player, Andrew Moe, went undefeated and took 2nd place.
Our last two lists conveniently came from the same event: DaBoyz GT Rochester 2024 40K 1v1 in Rochester, NY., a 70 players. 5 round event. Trevor Deviantier of Warhamsters went 4-1 and took 4th place with a GTF, and Christopher Drazan of Steamed Hammers also went 4-1 with a GTF, placing 7th. Let's look at Trevor's list first. You can see it on BCP, or look at the short version below.
I cant play my iron hands character volcon so I settled for this.
Azrael - Warlord
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 swordy 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 stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Repulsor
Hello, neo-Lennon List! This list took the pre-MFM Lennon list, cut a Jump Intercessor squad and the Callidus and added a Scout Squad. It even retained the Repulsor. Apparently the list still works well enough to place well at a medium-sized GT.
Trevor started strong with a 1st round 90-45 win against Tyranids. 2nd round he went 86-68 against Ultramarines, proving who are the superior Astartes. 3rd round was a tight 75-71 win against Necrons. 4th round was a comfortable 86-61 win against T'au Empire. 5th round he took a crushing 47-97 loss against Aeldari. That particular list and player took 1st place at this event, so no shame in losing that game.
Now let's take a look at Christopher's list, which you can see on BCP. The short version is below.
Round 4 bb
Azrael - Warlord
Ezekial
Judiciar
Lieutenant: Fire Discipline
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Heavy Intercessor Squad: 5 chonky bolter boys
Impulsor
Ballistus Dreadnought
Devastator Squad: 3 lascannon boys, 1 multimelta boy, 1 power fist sergeant
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Predator Annihilator
Repulsor
Scout Squad
Scout Squad
I gotta say, there's a whole bunch of units in this list who are not on my Bingo card of units I expected to see in a competitive list. Let's start with Ezekial. In 9th ed he was hot shit, but I think most of us regard his 10th ed incarnation as hammered garbage. That said, he's not expensive, he's got some cute shooting attacks within 12", his melee attacks are Anti-chaos 2+ which is probably relevant with some frequency, he can force Battleshock tests, grants a FNP to his attached unit against psychic attacks which again will be relevant with some frequency, and he grants his attached unit +1 to melee attacks, which with the ICCs he's almost certainly attached to is a pretty signficant upgrade.
Likewise units I wasn't expecting to see: Heavy Intercessors, Devastators, and the Predator Annihilator. I imagine Christopher has the Heavy Intercessors jog out onto a midfield objective and oblige his opponent to commit something fairly significant to remove them, which lets him then engage those units with his killing power. I'm chalking up the Predator Annihilator and the Devastators to Christopher not having better options for long range firepower, or maybe not really liking Primaris models in general. That said, between the Devs, Pred, Repulsor, and Ballistus, Christopher has a lot of lascannon shots he can toss downrange. Plus there's the Hellblasters with the Fire Discipline lieutenant.
In this list, Deathwing Knights are notable by their absence. It took me a bit to figure out that, while the typical competitive DA list has been an assault list backed up by some shooting units since the Spring 2024 Balance Dataslate, this is a shooting list backed up by some assault units - in this case 2 squads of ICCs. Christopher did go 4-1, so it seems to have worked pretty well for him.
Like Trevor, Christopher won his first 4 games, taking his loss in the 5th round. 1st round he hammered Aeldari 100-39. 2nd round he similarly crushed World Eaterhs 95-27. 3rd round he had a comfortable 86-59 against Death Guard. 4th round he humbled Orks 100-55. His 5th round loss was a tight 86-91 against Space Wolves. That particular list went undefeated and took 2nd place. That game was so close the difference was probably one or two die rolls that went the SW's way instead of Christopher's.
Overall, there's definitely a trend towards tanks providing the fire support to Dark Angels lists, though Trevor's list shows the Eradicator brick can still work. Tanks may work better though because they don't have to get within being-punched range of the opponent's army and require dedicated anti-tank weaponry to suppress, which is weaponry that then can't be put into DWKs. It seems like the most popular fire support choices are Vindicators, Ballistus Dreads, and Gladiator Lancers. As for assault punch, Deathwing Knights and Inner Circle Companions are still providing the bulk of that.
Statistics
Over the weekend, 47 people played Dark Angels at GTs and larger events, playing a total of 263 games and winning 113 of them for a 43% win rate, which ties us with Imperial Knights for 3rd worst win rate of the weekend, outperforming only Adeptus Mechanicus and Imperial Agents, who really aren't a standalone army faction. On the upside, we did have an event winner and 4 other lists go X/0-X/1. Our 5-week win rate is a pretty dismal 44%. I looked at Stat-check.com to see what the Overrep for Dark Angels is, and it's less than 1, which means Dark Angels are underrepresented at the top tables. It's definitely looking like GW was overly heavy handed in their nerfs.
The Gladius Task Force was both the most played and winningest detachment over the weekend. All of our top performing lists were GTFs. 32 players took GTFs and got a 48% win rate.
The Stormlance Task Force was the next most played, with 5 players apparently trying to copy the success of earlier lists but not succeeding, collectively getting a 40% win rate.
The next most played detachment was the Inner Circle Task Force, with 4 players who collectively scored a 15% win rate, which is not even 1 win per player. Ouch.
2 optimists took Company of Hunters lists and scored a 46% win rate, which has the distinction of being the best performance of our bespoke detachments over the weekend.
2 optimists also played Unforgiven Task Force lists, getting a 30% win rate between them. They didn't even play as many games as the CoH players, playing 10 to the CoH players' 13.
The Ironstorm and Vanguard detachments each had 1 player give them a try. Both players went 2-3 for 40% win rates.
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That's it for this weekend! It was certainly better than last weekend, bad win rate notwithstanding. Hopefully we'll find our way and be on the upswing again. We can look to the successful lists for guidance and try use them to make successful lists that work for us. And, maybe we can hope for some rules tweaks or new mechanics that let us play competitively in new and exciting ways. May we all improve the quality of our lists and our gameplay to match the performance of our most successful brethren. For the Lion!
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