Lists of the Week: Catchup Ball Edition (1/20/2025)

 

Hello, battle brethren! Here I am catching up with the review backlog caused by the LVO edition. There were other events played that weekend, and three of those events had Dark Angels lists place well. 

First let's turn our gaze to the Hamburg Major 2025 40k, a 5-round, 102 player event, held in Hamburg Germany, that on any other weekend would stand a good chance of being the biggest event of the week. Sebastian Müller with Groundzero Kiel went 5-0 and placed 2nd with his Gladius Task Force. You can see Sebastian's list both on BCP and below.

DA: Der König der Möwen
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Bladeguard Ancient
Lieutenant in Phobos Armour
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
Gladiator Lancer
Gladiator Lancer
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Invader ATV
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

Any list with Lion Dad, Azrael leading Bladeguard, and three squads of Deathwing Knights in it is going to slap in close combat. The pair of Gladiator Lancers aren't an enormous investment in shooting, but enough to pop transports, make opponents concerned about moving big units out in the open, and can throw a bucket of dice at chaff. 

The other units are an eclectic mix. I suspect Sebastian used the Bladeguard Ancient to hold his backfield objective when he didn't feel like he had to worry about opponents pulling shenanigans out of reserves. When he did, he probably supplemented with the Scouts until his opponent had committed his Reserves units, at which point he could uppy-downy the Scouts. The ATV is cheap and fast, so it's easy to see the utility of that unit. The Phobos Lieutenant's virtues are that he's cheap (55 points) and has Deep Strike, so Sebastian could plop him down to score points anywhere on the table his opponent hasn't screened out. I've thought about that myself. I have my Phobos Lieutenant half-finished on my painting table. He's got Infiltrators and Scouts too, so he could be used to speedbump opponents who want to come balls-to-the-walls at you.

WTC scoring incoming! It's a 0-20 scale with every point above/below 10 representing a 5 battle point difference in score. In his 1st round Sebastian scored a comfortable 13-7 win against Chaos Marines. 2nd round he chalked up a solid 15-5 win against a Blood Angels Liberator Assault Group list trying to do that wacky thing where they don't take any Blood Angels-unique units so they can get improved Oath. 3rd round Sebastian dished out a 16-4 drubbing to Genestealer Cult. 4th round he blew out Astra Militarum 20-0. 5th round he comfortably beat Ultramarines 12-8.

Next we turn our attention to the 1 GT Moguer Iberian Open held in Moguer Spain, a 5-round, 34 player event. There, JUANMA MUÑOZ LÓPEZ went 4-1 with a Gladius Task Force to place 6th. You can see Juanma's list on BCP and below. 

La Merva Prevalece Judiciar - Warlord 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 macey boys
Incursor Squad: 5 choppy spotty boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator

Holy crap, Juanma apparently decided he wanted to play the Dark Angels Gladius on Hard Mode, opting not to take Azrael and his tasty tasty CP generation! Otherwise as DA Gladius lists go it's pretty conventional, and sure does have a lot of 2+ save units for opponents to deal with. All of the unit choices are solid. It's just - dang, I'd have found a way to put in Azrael. 

Juanma started strong with a 1st round 80-73 win against T'au Empire. 2nd round he took his loss, 57-79 against Necrons. 3rd round he won a tight 64-60 victory over T'au Empire. 4th round he took a solid 85-64 win against Genestealer Cult. 5th round he scored a close 79-68 win against Death Guard.

We finish our barnstorming around Europe by going to Loch 'n Load GT 1 held in North Kessock, Scotland, a 5-round, 36 player event. David Jack went 4-1 with a Gladius Task Force and took 4th place. You can see David's list on BCP and below.

Dangels
Lion Dad
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
Eradicator Squad: 3 chonky melta boys
Eradicator Squad: 3 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

As you can see, David's list is almost entirely devoted to punching things to death, and it's hard to argue with because we have a lot of units that punch things well. He's got the Infiltrators to mind his backfield objective and one squad of Scouts for uppy-downy secondary scoring, and the Jump Intercessors can help with that too when David doesn't need them to punch things. His token nod to shooting comes in the form of the two 3-man squads of Eradicators, who it should be remembered are very good into monsters and vehicles just on their own. It's nice to be able to attach a Harmacist to them if it's points-efficient to do so, but they don't need him to be worth including. I suspect David may put the in Reserves so he can have them pop out and engage shooting units that are attempting to stand off from his punch-tastic units. 

David started strong with 1st round a 97-61 win against Drukhari. 2nd round he had a tight 61-56 win against Iron Hands*. 3rd round he had another tight win, 89-81 against T'au Empire. 4th round he took a bruising 46-90 loss against Tyranids. He bounced back though, delivering a 5th round drubbing to Chaos Daemons, 100-65.

*The Iron Hands list was kind of wild, in that it included 30 Heavy Intercessors, which isn't something I see very often. It didn't do very well though, only going 2-3.

Statistics

There are some irregularities in the statistics reported by Meta Monday, but I suppose we should cut them some slack because they got their report out the day after LVO, so they were probably a little rushed.

Dark Angels overall had a 51% win rate over the weekend of January 18th, with 53 players playing 288 games and winning 147 of them. We didn't have any event wins, but Meta Monday reports 5 X/0-X/1 results. By my count, it should be 6 - 3 at LVO, 3 at other events.

The highest win percentage was evidently enjoyed by the Inner Circle Task Force for once, with 2 players playing 11 games and winning 8 of them for a 73% win rate. It didn't get any of the X/0-X/1 results though, which is an irregularity unless both players managed to lose 1.5 games.

Next up in win percentage is the Unforgiven Task Force, with a 67% on the strength of Brandon Blair's 4-2 performance at LVO, because he's the only person who ran one over the weekend. 

After the UTF, the Company of Hunters has the next highest win percentage at 65%, with 4 players playing 23 games and winning 15 of them.

It's pretty wild that all three of our codex detachments are at the top of our win percentages this week!

The Stormlance Task Force comes next in win percentage at 56%, with 8 players playing 41 games and winning 23 of them. The Stormlance is credited with 2 X/0-X/1 results, but I only counted 1.

The Gladius Task Force comes next with a 50% win rate. Unsurprisingly it was the most-played detachment, with 25 players playing 133 games and winning 67 of them. It's credited with 2 X/0-X/1 results, but by my count it should be 3. 

One player each played an Ironstorm Spearhead and a Vanguard Spearhead, and each went 3-3 with their respective lists.

The Lion's Blade Task Force was played by 7 players, who played 40 games and won 13 of them, for a pretty dismal 33% win rate.

Two players played the Firestorm Assault Force, winning 3 out of 10 games for a 30% win rate.

Meta Monday didn't include stats in the Dark Angels category for the Librarius Conclave, but we know that one Librarius list got a X/1 result.

That's gotten me something like caught up, though I still have to do an article for this week's results! Fear not battle brethren, for I shall get to it. Until then, check out Dank List Wargaming for some fun analysis by a pair of genuine enthusiasts, and hunt down that Follow button like it's a member of the Fallen if you enjoy my work. May we all become the best players we can be. For the Lion!