Lists of the Week: Top Performers 1/13/2025

Hello battle brethren! It's a new week, in which I have the privilege of reporting the results of the events that were held over the weekend. We didn't have any event winners, but we have seven lists that went X/0-X/1 to look at, a full five of which were played at the The NOTTINGHAM 40K SUPER-MAJOR held in Nottingham, England. This was a 5-round, 375 player event, so it's no surprise the majority of our lists came from it. 

Unarguably the best performing Dark Angels list of the weekend was played by our own Toby Bennett of Black Crow Gaming, who put his money where is mouth is about the Stormlance Task Force and went 5-0 with it, placing 12th overall. You can see Toby's list on BCP. The short version is below.

DILF on wheels
Azrael
Ravenwing Command Squad
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy 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
Outrider Squad: 6 choppy biker boys
Reiver Squad: 5 choppy emo boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

I confess to be confused about the title of Toby's list, as Lion Dad isn't in it and even if he was he's not on wheels, so I can only think he's referring to a member of his Ravenwing Command Squad.

Anyway, Toby's list is built around the premise that it's better to have Advance+Charge than a conditional 7" charge out of Deep Strike, and the results over the weekend certainly seem to bear that out. Certainly Toby's performance is a strong argument for it. 

I want to call attention to Toby's big brick of bikes, because we don't see it very often, and it plays into a lot of the strats in the army. Toby can potentially charge a unit 34" away from where he deploys his bike brick, between their normal movement, charging 2D6", +1 to Advance and Charge rolls conferred by the Champion, and the Full Throttle strat granting it an automatic +9" when declaring and Advance. It would be 35", but I'm pretty sure you can't declare a charge on something that would require more than 12" to reach. Just knowing that would really complicate an opponent's deployment, because they're sure not going to want to get something caught by that. That charge is going to hit with some force too, with Outriders' spicy new datasheet rule. And, if Toby can afford the CP to play Shock Assault, he gets to reroll the unit's Charge rolls and they get Lance. If Toby cares enough to spend the CP for it, he could even let the unit shoot after advancing with Blitzing Fusillade, but I'm sure if he uses that at all, he uses it to give his Ballistus Dreads shooting angles. Then, if an opponent wants to fall back and shoot the bike brick, he can use Ride Hard Ride Fast to blunt the effect and make his opponent task more shooting than he wants. Between that, every bike in the brick having 4 wounds, and the Apothecary, they can be a real nuisance to remove. Finally, if Toby is playing against an opponent who maybe gets the jump on him and positions himself to get a preemptive charge on his army, Wind Swift Evasion will let him move the bike brick to screen the rest of his army. That one bike brick brings a lot of utility to the army.

Moving on to the rest of Toby's army, he's got Azrael to generate CP and skirmish with the Assault Intercessors, and the 3 units of DWKs to be the follow-on punch to the bike brick. He's not relying entirely on punching things to death, bringing 3 Ballistus Dreads to the party, who can sling out a respectable amount of anti-armor, D6 or D6+1 damage shots and come with their own rerolls, so Toby can put his Oath on something other than their target. There are the Scouts and Jump Intercessors for their well-known utility and Intercessors to mind the backfield objective. Finally, he's got a unit of Reivers, who are an interesting little unit, between causing Battleshock tests, debuffing opposing units' Objective Control, and all their attacks having Precision, so they can potentially knife out an opposing character.

Toby enjoyed a lovely non-stop ride on the win train. 1st round he crushed Aeldari 100-48. 2nd round he got a solid 82-55 win against World Eaters. 3rd round he went 87-71 against Space Wolves. 4th round he went 61-40 against Orks. 5th round he ended strong with a tight 78-71 against Adeptus Custodes.

Our next list was played by Jay Seebarun of Vanguard Tactics, who went 4-1 with a Gladius and placed 14th. You can see Jay's list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Dark Angels: for the Lion!
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 stay-off-my-lawn boys

Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor
Vindicator
Vindicator

Callidus Assassin

Jay's list is a pretty conventional Gladius. The most prominent deviation is having Lion Dad in the list instead of a third squad of Deathwing Knights. For his shooting element he went with a mix of Predator Destructors and Vindicators. The Vindicators are good to put into really big tough targets. The Predators can have some effect into such targets as well, but their main gun is better into elite infantry like Eightbound than the Vindicator's demolisher cannon would be. He went with the Callidus Assassin for his utility unit, which is more fragile than a pair of Scout Squads, but with Scouts being 70 points a squad now, the Callidus may have seemed like a budget option, and it would have been hard to spend 30 points in this list without changing out a unit.

Jay had a decisive win against Imperial Knights 1st turn, 83-46. 2nd round he drubbed Chaos Knights 100-58. 3rd round he took a 80-100 loss against Necrons. 4th round he crushed Leagues of Votann 100-50. 5th round he ended strong with a 100-55 drubbing against T'au Empire. 

The next most successful list at this event was played by Max DeBarr of Phoenix40K,who went 4-1 with his Gladius list to score 33rd place. You can see Max's list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Gladius.
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Judiciar
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon: Artificer Armour
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 stay-off-my-lawn boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Sternguard Veterans: 5 awesome bolter boys
Vindicator
Vindicator

Again, this is a pretty conventional Gladius, though again with Lion Dad. It's nice to see him cropping up in competitive lists! Jay's list is also a little thin on the utility units, with the Combi-Lieutenant being the only unit I'd consider one where its first priority would be scoring secondaries. The Assault Intercessors are good at that too, but I'd be tempted to have them inflict Mortal Wounds on things with the Grenades strat and their datasheet rule. 

Another source of Mortal Wounds is the Sternguard Veteran Squad. With their up-buffed datasheet rule, they can be a pretty reliable source of Mortal Wounds. Assuming you can get the squad with Azrael attached within 12" of the Oath target, they can plausibly inflict 5-6 Devastating Wounds on it, and some of those may be from Azrael and/or the Veteran with the Heavy Bolter and so therefore may do multiple Mortal Wounds. That's pretty solid output that doesn't even count whatever mundane damage the squad might do. They wouldn't be terrible in assault either, with every Veteran having 4 attacks each and the Sergeant able to carry an upgraded weapon. They reroll Wound rolls against the Oath target in close combat too, so they'd be like Assault Intercessors without the AP. 

Max had a bumpy start, with a tight 1st round 64-67 loss against Necrons. 2nd round he crushed Chaos Knights 100-43. 3rd round he had a solid 96-74 win against Chaos Marines. 4th round he had a solid 75-48 win against Blood Angels. 5th round he ended with a strong 93-67 win against Orks.

Next up repping the Dark Angels with a 4-1 at Nottingham was Paul James of 6++ (I like the team name, but it'd be funnier if it was 7++), who got on the train with Toby and Alan and took a Stormlance and took 44th place. You can see Paul's list on BCP. The short version is below.

Yeet
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Inceptor Squad: 6 chonky flying plasma boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 stay-off-my-lawn boys
Invader ATV
Invader ATV
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys

This is an interesting variation on the Stormlance. It's got Lion Dad and 3 squads of DWKs to take advantage of advance and charge and wreck face, with primary shooting coming from the plasma Inceptors and the big squad of Sternguard. 6 plasma Inceptors will ruin anything's day, and everything I said about the output of 5 Sternguard doubles, and Paul can use Blitzing Fusillade to advance and shoot with them, and then they can charge afterwards. He's got a couple ATVs instead of Scouts for utility work, and they're token Mounted units that can exploit the Stormlance's Mounted-keyworded strats.

Paul had a strong start, with a 1st round crushing of Leagues of Votann 91-31. 2nd round he had a strong 89-65 win against Grey Knights. 3rd round he beat another Dark Angels Stormlance 93-60. 4th round he took his loss, a rough 85-56 against Astra Militarum - the new Bridgehead Strike detachment, so you might want to familiarize yourselves with that. He ended strong though, with a tight 84-82 win against Tyranids.

Wrapping up our Nottingham lists, our man Alan Percival of Black Crow Gaming also put his money where his mouth is and brought the heat with a Stormlance, going 4-1 to place 62nd. You can see Alan's list on BCP. The short version is below.

Stormlance, that’s White Scars right? Wait, what? Deathwing Knights? Where’s the bikes? I mean, at least there’s vehicles right? No? But what about ranged anti tank? Or any real shooting? What madness is this? I mean, I may as well be playing World Eaters at this point, right? No bikes though? Aren’t most of the Strats for bikes? Sorry for making you read all that, I suppose you just wanted to read the list and see what I have? Saying that, this gave you a lot of information, so that’s something. I could have written an essay on the Lion or something, but I didn’t (least not in this list name). Imagine if this list does well and someone had to read out all this… Maybe I should have put some ranged anti tank in for that to happen… oh, and yes, those really are Reivers. (Note: I guess Alan wanted to see if I'd put in the whole paragraph he wrote as a list title. Yes Alan, you could write War And Peace the list title and I'll post it in its entirety.)

Azrael-Warlord Chaplain in Terminator Armour Judiciar Lieutenant in Phobos Armor  Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Reiver Squad: 5 choppy emo boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Terminator Assault Squad: 10 chonky hammer boys
Callidus Assassin

Reading Alan's list, I was nodding to myself going "Azrael, yup, oh neat Phobos Lieutenant, Deathwing Knights, cool two units of ICCs." Then I got to the 10 Assault Terminators and did a double take. I did briefly consider using Assault Terminators as a lower-cost alternative to DWKs for putting on an objective and obliging opponents to shift them. Alan, however, decided to dedicate almost a quarter of his list to a big brick of them and the Chaplain to buff them. They were not on my Pariah Nexus meta Bingo Card at all. That said, 40 2+/4++ wounds with a 4+++ against Mortals, a damage ceiling of 60 and Dev Wounds, there's definitely a case for them. 

Besides the Assault Terminators, Alan went all-in on punching things to death, with a plethora of DWKs, ICCs, and Reivers are respectably choppy too. For utility work there's the Scouts and Callidus, and with a Phobos Lieutenant attached the Reivers can shoot and scoot to get themselves in positions to score secondaries as well.

1st round Alan started strong with a solid 69-44 win against Tyranids. 2nd round he squeaked out a 87-86 win against Genestealer Cult. 3rd round he crushed another Dark Angels Stormlance 96-44. 4th round he took a bruising 42-86 loss against Leagues of Votann. 5th round he ended strong, drubbing T'au Empire 97-55.

Phew! That's all the Nottingham lists I'm going to cover, but there are still a couple more to mention. The first of these was played at the Hawaii “War on the Shore” Charity GT 2025 played at Waialua, HI, a 5-round, 32 player event whose participants were probably way happier to be in Hawaii than the Nottingham players were to be in Nottingham in January. Anyway, while he wasn't enjoying fruit-filled cocktails on the beach, TableWar Hawaii's Aaron Wisch went 4-1 and placed 3rd, and he did it with Company of Hunters! You can see Aaron's list on BCP. The short version is below. 

Hunters
Lion Dad - Warlord
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Ravenwing Command Squad
Ravenwing Command Squad
Invader ATV
Invader ATV
Invader ATV
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Darkshroud
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike
Callidus Assassin

This is certainly an interesting list. It's not what I'd have expected from a high-performing CoH list, but I can see how the parts of it come together. Obviously, the heart of the list is the 3 big bricks of Ravenwing Knights and their attached Command Squads. They're expensive, but they do a lot of things well. Lion Dad's ability to smash face in melee is no doubt welcome, but I think the main value he brings to the list is protection against failed Hazardous tests. Aaron probably keeps his Black Knights strung out within 6" of Lion Dad and the Darkshroud as much as is feasible. 

To solve problems the Black Knights can't, Aaron has the Invaders (with multimeltas) and the Thunderstrikes. Individually they're not phenomenal, but they have the speed to swarm specific targets to delete, the Thunderstrikes buffing the Invaders' multimeltas to wound Vehicles and Monsters on 4's instead of 5's. I don't much care for Thunderstrikes because, while their buff is great, their own output is underwhelming, but Aaron has certainly made them work for him in this list. 

Aaron started strong in the 1st round by crushing Aeldari 100-46. 2nd round he took his loss against another Dark Angels player* using a Librarius Conclave, a punishing 63-100. 3rd round he honored our historic rivalry with the Space Wolves with a comfortable 96-78 win. 4th round he drubbed Adeptus Custodes 100-52. 6th round he had a close 74-65 win against Necrons.

*Aaron's opponent, Robert Moreau, went 3-1-1 and placed 5th. He scored 100's on all three of his wins. I'm not going to review his list, but you can see it on BCP here.

The last list I'm going to cover was played at the We Have LVO at Home GT held in Roseville, MN, a 5-round, 31 player event, where Michael Nicchetta went 4-1 and took 5th place with an Ironstorm Spearhead, which is a throwback to last year! You can see Michael's list on BCP. The short version is below.

The mailed fist of the Lion
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Techmarine: The Flesh Is Weak
Ballistus Dreadnought
Brutalis Dreadnought
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Predator Annihilator
Vindicator
Vindicator
Callidus Assassin
Canis Rex

I've been writing this blog for over a year now, and this is the first time one of the lists I've covered included an Imperial Knight. If you're going to include a Titanic Knight in your list, Canis Rex is the one to choose. He's got both good shooting and good melee, both with multiple modes to give him appropriate offense against practically everything in the game, and with Sustained Hits 1 triggering on 5's thanks to one of his datasheet rules. His other datasheet rule grants discounted Strats, which isn't as useful when he's allied into an army as it would be in a Knight detachment, but I suppose it could give him free Tank Shock or Heroic Intervention.

Also, if an opponent destroys Canis Rex, Sir Hektur pops out, and Canis Rex doesn't count as destroyed until they kill Sir Hektur. So if you keep Canis Rex within a couple inches of a wall, you can have Sir Hektur bail out on the other side of the wall and make it hard for opponents to consider Canis Rex destroyed, which could be relevant if they're trying to score Bring It Down or Assassinate.

Michael was really counting on Canis Rex to perform for him because he spent a quarter of his points on him. The rest of the list feels a little thin as a result. It is mostly 2+ save units, with only the Predator and the Inner Circle Companions having 3+ saves. The Predator Annihilator is unusual to see, but I suppose with its buffed datasheet rule allowing it to reroll all Damage rolls against Monsters or Vehicles, it's a more reliable damage dealer, especially in an Ironstorm where the detachment rule grants it more rerolls.

One thing that seems missing from the list is an obvious backfield objective holder. Backfield objectives are usually behind walls, and we mostly like to avoid sticking them out so opponents can't easily pick them up and deny us at least minimal Primary points. I suppose he could be leaving the Techmarine there, because he's fairly cheap and has a 2+ save and a FNP. He might be able to position the Techmarine close enough to a unit that can shoot from the backfield, like the Predator or Ballistus, to be able to stand on the objective and buff the unit, possibly through a wall. Michael also seemed to lack for utility units besides the Callidus, though many players find the Callidus to be enough utility unit for them. 

1st round Michael drubbed Astra Militarum 95-52. 2nd round he had a tight loss against Adeptus Custodes, 63-70. 3rd round he bounced back with a convincing 90-58 win against Grey Knights. 4th round he dunked on Chaos Marines 98-41. 5th round he squeaked out a 65-63 win against Deathwatch.

I'm not going to review the list, but I'll mention that Scott Blegen went 3-1-1 and took 6th with a Dark Angels Gladius, which you can check out on BCP. 

Statistics

Dark Angels as a whole had a 44% win rate over the weekend. We didn't have any event wins, but we did have 7 X/0-X/1 results. 43 players played 210 games and won 92 of them.

The winningest detachment was the Stormlance Task Force, with 13 players, a 55% win rate, winning 36 of their 66 games, and scoring 3 of the X/0-X/1 results, the most of any detachment this weekend. It makes me feel like we saw Space Wolves having fun with the detachment, went over to them, demanded "Drop It!" in a stern tone, and took it away from them like a drool-slimy ball from the family dog.

The Gladius Task Force had the most players with 18, who scored a 44% win rate, but picked up 2 of the X/0-X/1 results.

The highest win percentage surprisingly goes to the Company of Hunters with 63%, but it only had 2 players who played a total of 8 games. Since Aaron Wisch accounted for 5 of those games, the other player must have gone 1-2 over his first 3 rounds and dropped. 

The Ironstorm Spearhead was played by 2 players who between them got a 50% win rate and 1 of the X/0-X/1 results

Two players tried to repeat last week's success with the Vanguard Spearhead, but wound up with a dismal 11% win rate. 

Our other bespoke detachments aren't doing so hot. 4 players tried to make the Lion's Blade work and got a 26% win rate for their trouble. 1 player tried the Inner Circle Task Force and only won 1 of his 5 games. The 1 player who tried the Unforgiven Task Force won none of his 5 games. At least he played them all. I hope his event had a Smoking Boots award. The Lion's Blade detachment's poor performance in particular is really disappointing to me, because I'd hoped it would be good, but initial results are not promising.

I'm keeping the running tally of event performance but I'm not going to list it today because I don't think the data lends itself to any conclusions as yet. 

Top of the Meta

Technically, Meta Monday has Imperial Agents being at the top of the meta with a 67% win rate, but as only 3 people played Imperial Agents lists, I don't think you have to worry about that too much.

Imperial Knights had a strong weekend with 30 players racking up a 59% win rate, 9 X/0-X/1 results, and 2 event wins. 

The 52 players who Chaos Daemons got a 56% win rate and had the most top results, with 15 X/0-X/1 results and 3 event wins.  The Legion of Excess got 10 of those X/0-X/1 results and all the event wins

I'm skipping over a number of armies that are ranked higher by win percentage, but I want to call attention to Orks because, in spite of having an decent-but-not shocking 51% win rate, the greenskins walked away with 15 X/0-X/1 results and 5 event wins. Of those results, about half were from the Taktikal Brigade, which had a 67% win rate, with the rest scattered through the War Horde, Bully Boyz, Green Tide, and Da Big Hunt detachments.

I'm also going to mention Necrons and Death Guard, both of which got 11 X/0-X/1 results and 1 event win. For the Necrons, all those results were the Starshatter Arsenal detachment.

That, battle brethren, is what I have for you. Sorry it took so long to get out. If you enjoy my content, track down that Follow button like it's a member of the Fallen. Plus, go give Heath and Bailey on Dank List Wargaming some love. Watch their latest video, and tell Heath how jealous you are he got to attend the event in Hawaii. Until next week, brethren. May you play to glorious victory. For the Lion!