Lists of the Week: 12/16/2024

Hello battle brethren! Sorry this is late. Best Coast Pairing took a while to process my subscription renewal, plus as you can imagine it's been a busy week, what with holiday obligations and all. Meta Monday still hasn't given results for the weekend either, so I'll be going through the events on BCP looking for Dark Angels lists to tell you about. 
 

As it happens, the first Dark Angels list I found that placed well won its event - Winter GT - A Wh40k Grand Tournament, a 5-round, 34 player event held in England. Jak Payne went 5-0 and took 1st place with his Gladius Task Force. You can see Jak's list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Jak's list
Azrael - Warlord
Judiciar: The Honour Vehement
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
Incursor Squad: 5 scouty knifey spotty boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Redemptor Dreadnought
Vindicator

This is a pretty conventional list, standing out mostly because it's got 2 squads of Inner Circle Companions. Also instead of a token Battleline unit, he's got Incursors for the buff they grant shooting, plus they're more attractive as a skirmishing unit now, with -1 AP on their combat knives. It also lacks the usual Infiltrators to mind the backfield objective, so I imagine one of the Scout Squads did that. This list leans into assault a little more heavily than we typically see in the DA Gladius, but the Vindicator and Redemptor can deliver some pretty credible ranged pain. Personally, I might have gone with 2 Vindicators, but finding a way to spend 35 points would be awkward. It worked for Jak, and it's hard to argue with a 5-0 result.

Jak rode the win train nonstop to 1st place. 1st round he drubbed Aeldari 88-48. 2nd round he had a convincing 89-59 win against our brother Angels of Death, the Blood Angels. 3rd round was a credible 79-46 against Deathwatch. 4th round he crushed Tyranids 83-38. 5th round was his closest game but highest score, going 93-71 against Adeptus Sororitas.

We had another event winner at the Bolters Over Burque Warhammer 40k GT in Alburquerque NM, a 5-round, 26 player event. Jon Camacho of Team Geek Shack went 5-0 with...wait for it...a Company of Hunters list! Way to go Jon! You can see Jon's list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Bikes 2
Azrael - Warlord
Sammael
Chaplain on Bike: Recon Hunter
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Ravenwing Command Squad
Ravenwing Command Squad: Mounted Strategist
Outrider Squad: 6 choppy biker boys
Outrider Squad: 6 choppy biker boys

Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike
Culexus Assassin

I'm guessing the event Jon went to embraced the Balance Datasheet rules changes, but I can't help but think Jon had been playing this list, or one like it, for some time, because there's more to taking the top spot at a GT than throwing together a good list. Plus all these bikes didn't come out of nowhere.

Jon clearly leaned into the new utility of Outriders, with 2 chonky squads of them. I imagine he attached Sammael to one of them and the Mounted Strategist RW Command Squad to the other one, with the other RW Command Squad and Chaplain attaching to the Black Knight squads. 

As an aside, I'm almost inclined to think that whatever developer wrote the datasheet abilities for the Bike Chaplain had one eye on Black Knights when he was doing it. Litany of Hate and Catechism of Fire are far more usefull for Black Knights than for Outriders. Or, maybe they were just trying to write rules that would make Outriders effectual, and those rules just happened to benefit Black Knights more. 

For the non-mounted component of the army, we've got Azrael, but no squad for him to hang out with, so he's probably minding the backfield objective solo, maybe with a Scout Squad to discourage close-in Deep Strikes. There's the Combi-Lieutenant to declare "this objective is mine" and score Secondaries with the Scouts, a Hammerstrike and Thunderstrike to buff Black Knight shooting and do some damage on their own, and the Culexus Assassin, an interesting choice, but certainly useful with Chaos Daemons, Death Guard, Tyranids, and Thousand Sons all being upper-tier armies. 

As with Jak, it's hard to argue with a 5-0 result, but I'm going to anyway, particularly because I don't like the Thunderstrike. It gives a fine buff to other shooting, but I don't think its own shooting is worth 150 points. It needs to not only be able to buff other units shooting, but also do a credible job of taking care of hard targets on its own, and in this aspect I think it fails. It obliges Jon to put his Black Knights' shooting into those hard targets, when their shooting is better applied against medium-to-heavy infantry and mounted units. I think the Hammerstrike has a better balance between its own inherent killyness, it's buffing datasheet ability, and its price. Dissatisfaction with Thunderstrikes is why they came out of my CoH lists and Vindicators went in.

That said, I have to acknowledge the list performed well for Jon. Not only did he go 5-0, but he got some impressive scores too. 1st round he inflicted a crushing 100-12 on an Ultramarines Stormlance - holy cow, did Jon manage to bully his opponent off his own homefield objective Turn 2? Anyway, 2nd round Jon got his lowest score, 82-72 against Leagues of Votann played by the colorfully named Rob the Squad. 3rd round he buried T'au Empire 100-30. 4th round he crushed Chaos Daemons 97-40. 5th round he inflicted a devastating 97-29 against Tyranids. I'm sure that Culexus came in handy the last 2 games. 

Our next list was played at the Warhammer: 40,000 Charity GT by Rogue State Games held in Mahwah NJ, a 5-round, 51-player event. Chris Finnegan of HammerPark Boyz went 4-1 with a Gladius Task Force Lion's Blade Task Force to take 3rd place. You can see Chris' list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Accuracy by volume
Azrael - Warlord
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Sammael
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter-dakka boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
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
Invader ATV
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike

Chris' list is identified as a Gladius on BCP, but he made the list using the app, which hadn't updated to have the Lion's Blade as of when Chris played this list, and the unit selections make a lot more sense in a Lion's Blade than in a Gladius.

As one would expect, the list begins with Azrael, who doesn't appear to be doing anything super-exciting in this list, but he's got either Assault Intercessors or standard Intercessors to join. I almost wonder if Chris joined Azrael to the standard Intercessors because their new Target Elimination rule seems like it would pair pretty well with Azrael's Sustained Hits buff. Either way, Azrael also confers Deathwing to the unit he joins, benefiting it by making it eligible for the various buffs the LBTF can grant Deathwing unit.

The bulk of Chris' shooting comes from the three Ballistus Dreadnoughts, which gain the Deathwing keyword in a Dark Angels list and are the unit that will benefit most from the Illuminating Fire buff. + 1 to Wound on their S10 and S12 shots boost them to wounding on 3+ and 2+ against most of the targets we'd want to put them into instead of 4+ and 3+ (or possibly worse), and their native datasheet ability gives them rerolls to hit independent of Oath of Moment, freeing us up to put that elsewhere. The Hammerstrike brings considerable firepower too, plus it can Deep Strike within 12" to trigger Illuminating Fire and also strip cover with its own native datasheet ability. In addition to that, the Invader has a multimelta and Sammael has his plasma cannon, and those are not nothing.

For an assault component three squads of Deathwing Knights throw down with the best of them. Azrael can certainly do some work too, especially if paired with the Assault Intercessors so they can mutually buff each other. Sammael and the Outriders are a sneaky assault threat too, with the Outriders new datasheet rule and Sammael granting advance-and-charge, passing straight through terrain with the Knights of Iron strat and doing 2- and 3-damage attacks. 

The rest of the list are support elements you'd expect to see in a competent list - Scouts and the Combi-Lieutenant scoring secondaries, and probably the Intercessors sitting on the backfield objective.

For some reason this event used WTC scoring. As a quick reminder, it's on a 0-20 scale with a score signifying how much you won/lost by: 10-10 is a tie, 20-0 indicates you beat your opponent by at least 50 points, 0-20 you lost by at least 50 points.

1st round Chris won 15-5 against T'au Empire. 2nd round he drubbed Orks 18-2. 3rd round he lost 7-13. 4th round he won against Leagues of Votann 12-8. 5th round he bookended his record by beating Orks again, 13-7.

Another Dark Angels list went 4-1 at this event, this one piloted by Daniel Guarnaccia, who placed 6th. He also played a Gladius Task Force Lion's Blade Task Force. In fact, he played exactly the same list as Chris. It's not impossible for two players playing the same faction to come up with the same list - certainly my Lion's Blade lists have been pretty similar. That said, it's not unlikely the collaborated on their lists. Daniel might be a member of HammerPark Boyz and just forgot to list it in his BCP profile.

Since Daniel's list is the same as Chris', I'm just going to skip straight into his record. 1st round he had a close 11-9 win against our Angels of Death brothers, the Blood Angels. 2nd round he got crushed by Chaos Marines 20-0. Ouch. 3rd round he got some payback against heretics, drubbing Thousand Sons 18-2. 4th round he had another tight game, 11-9 against Necrons. 5th round he ended strong, once again against heretics, 13-7 against World Eaters.

The last Dark Angels list from the weekend of the 14th was played at the Safety's Off Merry Critmas Charity GT, a 5-round, 26 player event held in Taylors SC. Roberto Vazquez of Ultra Tabletop Games went 4-1 with a Gladius Task Force (for reals this time) and took 4th place. You can see Roberto's list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Sword Men Sword Men
Azrael - Warlord
Judiciar
Impulsor
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
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
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator

We're bookending things with a fairly conventional Gladius list. The main point of divergence is having two squads of Inner Circle Companions instead of just one, compensating for having only two squads of Deathwing Knights. That's still four very solid melee threats, one of which has Fights First from the Judiciar. There's an Impulsor for the ICCs to bounce in and out of with Squad Tactics, and the usual Infiltrators, Jump Intercessors, and Scouts. The three Vindicators are a very solid shooting element and also a challenge for opponents to pick up. A lot of my lists have been featuring three Vindicators lately, and they've been putting in good work for me. I approve.

Roberto's win train made it most of the way to the end, but got derailed at the last stop. 1st round he had a tight 66-57 win against Astra Militarum. 2nd round he had a convincing 81-45 win against Chaos Knights. 3rd round he had a very tight 85-83 win against another Chaos Knights list. 4th round he had a solid 70-51 win against Genestealer Cult. 5th round he took a rough 63-95 loss against Astra Militarum, losing to the list that took 1st place. No shame in that.

Statistics

As of this writing, Meta Monday hasn't updated since the 9th, so I'm pulling data from Stat-Check.com, which gives some different information. It's not much more up to date, having last updated on the 11th, but it's what I've got to work with.

Dark Angels as a whole have a 46% win rate, making us one of the lowest ranked factions in the game, ahead of only Space Marines, Imperial Agents, and Grey Knights. We've got an Overrep score of 0.83, which means we're actually underrepresented at podiums. Not a lot, but between that and the bad win rate, it's not a pretty picture. We're 4% of the player population. We have 6% of the 4-0 starts, and have had 6 event wins since the balance update a couple months ago. 

As usual, our most-played and winningest detachment is the Gladius, having been played by 163 players, getting only a 48% win rate but responsible for 5 of our 6 event wins. It's got an Overrep of 1.10, so it, at least, is right where it should be.

After the Gladius, player counts drop off sharply. The Stormlance is in a 2-way tie for 2nd most played at 20 players, and scored the 6th of our 6 event wins. It's got a 51% win rate, but an Overrep of only 0.68, which is pretty bad. 

The detachment the Stormlance is tied with for player count is the Inner Circle Task Force, but that's where the resemblance in figures ends. It's got a 30% win rate, no event wins, 0% on 4-0 event starts, and literally has a 0.00 Overrep score. That's pretty bad. 

The only other detachment I think is worth mentioning from the Stat-check.com data is the Vanguard Spearhead. It only had 6 players in that time period, but they managed an impressive 60% win rate, and have a 17% 4-0 event start, which looks impressive but that's literally like 1 player. They didn't have any event winners, and also have a 0.00 Overrep score.

Take this data with a grain of salt, because it doesn't include any games played since the December Balance Dataslate or most of the Grotmas Detachments were released. It'll be interesting to see how the new rules affect our numbers in the meta.

That, battle brethren, is what I've got for you regarding the weekend before last. Our pals over on Dank List Wargaming did a review of the Lion's Blade Task Force. Check it out, they've got some interesting insights. If you find my analysis helpful, do me a solid and subscribe. I'll try and get an article out for the weekend of the 21st out before Saturday, but as you can imagine it's been pretty busy this week. Until then, may we all strive for and achieve victory! For the Lion!