Lists of the Week: 2/17/2025

Hello battle brethren! It was a slow weekend overall, so as such we only have two lists to look at this week. The first was played by Alastair Helm of Veterans of the Long Black, who went 4-1 with his Stormlance and took 2nd place at Warzone Wellington 2025, a 5-round, 44 player event held in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. You can see Alastair's list on BCP and below. 

Friendship ended with Gladius, Stormlance is my new best friend Lion Dad Azrael Sammael Lieutenant with Combi-weapon Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys 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 Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Storm Speeder Hammerstrike Vindicator Vindicator

This looks like a pretty competent Stormlance list to me. If I were running a Stormlance, I'd definitely use Lion Dad. Being able to charge after an Advance or Fall Back move gives one maximum freedom to put him where he'll be of best use. It's nice to see Sammael pop up in high-performing lists too. He's arguably our second best combat character (after Lion Dad, competing with Azrael) with the Raven Sword having Sustained Hits 2. Pairing him with a small unit of Outriders compliments both him and the Outriders, and gives Alastair a Mounted unit with which to exploit the spicy Mounted-keyworded strats.

Between Lion Dad, two units of Deathwing Knights, and Sammael and his Outriders, Alastair certainly has plenty of punchy death, but he didn't go entirely without shooty death either. The pair of Vindicators are a dire threat to anything in the game, and the Hammerstrike throws out a slew of D6 damage shots, plus it strips cover from a target.

Alastair's list has the usual Infiltrators and Scouts for the utility they bring, plus the Combi-Lieutenant, who in addition to his own utility can hang out near Lion Dad to confer Lion Op. The one thing I find a little confusing about his list is the absence of an obvious place to put Azrael. He can certainly be attached to either the Intercessors or Assault Intercessors, and either of those choices is fine, but not especially spicy. I'd have been happier to see either a squad of 10 Intercessors or 10 Assault Intercessors than 5 and 5, but I suppose the idea is more to keep Azrael out of harm's way and generating CP than to exploit his Sustained Hits and the invulnerable save he confers. It can be handy to keep a good skirmishing unit in your backfield to police up little utility units your opponent may throw back there to score Secondaries.

Alastair had a strong 1st round start, absolutely stuffing Aeldari 95-45 (probably be the last time we see a score like that against Aeldari for a while). 2nd round he doubled down on defeating Aeldari, but this was a much closer 75-68 win. 3rd round he took his loss, 79-93 against Death Guard - I think Death Guard is probably the worst matchup for  our typical DWK-heavy builds. 4th round he bounced back with a convincing 79-31 win against Orks. 5th round he ended with a solid 87-62 win against Necrons. 

Our other list for this week is also a Stormlance, played by Iain Clark at Club Champs 2025 in Kingston, Canada. At this 5-round, 26 player event Iain went 4-1 and took 4th place. You can see Iain's list on BCP and below.

Iain's list Lion Dad Azrael Chaplain on Bike Lieutenant with Combi-weapon Assault Intercesor Squad: 5 choppy boys  Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys  Deathwing Knights:  5 awesome chonky macey boys    Deathwing Knights:  5 awesome chonky macey boys  Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome combi-weapon boys    Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys Ballistus Dreadnought     Gladiator Lancer Predator Annihilator

This list is fairly similar to the last one, so I'll just comment on what's different. For starters, combi-weapon Sternguard yeah! I'd like to think that Iain, like me, had a lot of Firstborn robed Veterans with combi-weapons kicking around he could press into service as Sternguard. Attaching Azrael to them is a much spicier use for him than attaching him to a small Assault Intercessor squad and having them lurk in the backfield. 

Iain's token Outrider Squad gets paired with a Bike Chaplain instead of Sammael. This choice is much more about buffing the Outriders than buffing the Chaplain. Sure the Chaplain gains the Outrider charge bonus, but his Crozius is only AP -1, so it's not much more impressive than the Outriders' chainswords. He does give them +1 to Wound in assault though, plus giving their guns Devastating Wounds, which is not a huge buff, but the bikes' bolt rifles are Twin Linked, so they'll generate a few Devastating Wounds when they get to shoot.

Iain's shooting element is an eclectic mix of Space Marine vehicular gun platforms. Lancers and Ballisti are generally seen as solid choices. The Predator Annihilator is interesting to see. I suppose with its Twin Linked Predator twin lascannon and its ability to reroll all damage rolls against Monsters and Vehicles, it can kind of be seen as a budget Lancer, though you'd probably want to Oath whatever you shoot it at. Iain's gun platorms are not as tanky as Vindicators, but they do have a lot more range, so upside/downside.

Iain's games all had kind of incongruously low scores. 1st round he had a tight 50-46 win against Ultramarines, showing them we don't need any gimmicky improved Oath of Moment. 2nd round was a similarly tight 53-46 win against Imperial Knights. 3rd round he scored more comfortable 50-33 win against Drukhari. 4th round he scored a comfortable 66-40 win against Orks. Sadly, 5th round he went out on  loss, 51-68 against Death Guard (there are those jerks again!)

Statistics

It wasn't a stellar week for us, but a surprising 9 factions scored a worse win percentage for the week than us. We scored a 46% win rate for the weekend, with 2 players going X/1 out of 16 overall players. Our 7 week win rate is also 46%, so unfortunately we've been consistently mediocre in the current meta. 

Surprisingly the Unforgiven Task Force had the highest weekly win rate at 60%, with the one person who played it going 3-2. I swear, I think there's like one guy who flies from event to event to go 3-2 and bump up the UTF's numbers.

The next-winningest detachment is, unsurprisingly, the Stormlance Task Force, with 6 players scoring a 53% win rate. Half the wins came from our two X/1 results, which means the remaining 4 players, on average, went 2-3.

The most played detachment was the Gladius Task Force, with 7 players and a 46% win rate.

Playing Tail End Charlie is the Inner Circle Task Force, with 2 players scoring a 20% win rate. 

The army with the highest win percentage for the weekend was Genestealer Cult with a 67% win rate. All 3 of the detachments played (Final Day, Host of Ascension, and Biosanctic Brood Surge) scored at least a 60% win rate, and the Final Day detachment racking up a whopping 80%!

Wildly, Imperial Agents came next with a 60% win rate, with 1 of the 3 players winning their event! They all played the Imperialis Fleet detachment. Maybe they bluffed their opponents into thinking they have an orbital strike ability. Codex: Daemonhunters used to have that back in 4th edition.

Next up is Adeptus Custodes with a 59% win rate, 8 X/0-X/1 results, and 2 event wins. Solar Spearhead had a 65% win rate, 5 of the X/0-X/1 results, and 1 of the event wins. Shield Host had a 56% win rate and the other high scoring results 

I'm going to do a 4th because Imperial Agents placing so highly is surely a fluke, right? In 4th place for the weekend is Chaos Daemons, with a 56% win rate. One player went 4-1 with Scintillating Legion and Legion of Excess scoring a 60% win rate. 

That, battle brethren, is what I have for you. Dank List Wargaming has a new video up, so go check that out. If you enjoy my work, chase down that Follow button like you're a member of the Ravenwing. Until next week, may you progress ever forward to being always victorious! For the Lion!