Chapter Update: 8/18/2025

 Hello, honored battle brethren! It was a somewhat slower weekend, with no huge events and just 23 players using Dark Angels, but we do have some lists to talk about, including an event winner! This week I started using attendance as a measure of what events I'm looking at. My cutoff is 20 players, which seems reasonable. Meta Monday seems to use a different figure, so their results and mine are a little different. Without further ado, let's get into the lists!

Our event winner, I'm excited to tell you, is a Company of Hunters lists, piloted by Jan Reisenauer of Hoher Rat zu Terra[BreakingHeads]. He played his awesome list at Hour Zer0 2: Heroes Unchained, a 5-round, 40 player event held in Großweil Germany. You can see Jan's list on BCP. Let's take a look at it below. 

Jan's list
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master of Manoeuvre
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 chonky las-missile boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 chonky las-missile boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys
Vindicator 
Vindicator
Vindicator

This should not be taken as a criticism of Jan's list, but of Games Workshop's rules design: you'd think a Ravenwing-themed detachment would have more Ravenwing in it. It does have some, and more than a token ATV, but it's less than a quarter of the list by points. Do better Games Workshop!

That out of the way, Jan's list largely exploits the very spicy detachment rule of the Company of Hunters, that allows everything to Advance and Shoot or Fall Back and Shoot all the time, with a solid firebase of Centurion Devastators and Vindicators. I imagine we're seeing the last hurrah of at least the Cent-Devs, but we do seem to be seeing a lot of them lately. They do like to be a Company of Hunters, because they're inherently slow, which the detachment rule helps with, and keeps them from getting turned off by being touched by an enemy unit. Both the Cent-Devs and the Vindicators won't have too much trouble wounding anything in the game. They're not easy to pick up either, with high toughness and 2+ saves.

Lion Dad doesn't get anything from the Company of Hunters detachment rule, so it may seem like a surprise to see him in a CoH list, but he adds a significant Heroic Intervention threat to the list to discourage opponents from running forward to punch Jan's shooting units to death. He can hang out near the Cent-Devs to activate his Lone Op, and thus be near the front to intervene as needed. His new Forestwalk ability adds value, enabling Jan to pick him up and drop him anywhere on the table late game, putting pressure from unexpected directions, or maybe snagging an unattended objective. 

Azrael and the Sternguard probably also stay close to home and skirmish with pesky Reserves, and can be counted on to pluck the last couple wounds off something big if needed. In fact, I expect they're the backfield objective holder, at least early in the game. Later in the game, Jan might have Scouts come in to take over that duty so they can come out and mix it up. 

Jan's Ravenwing element is a pair of Ravenwing Command Squads attached to small Outrider Squads. I imagine the purpose of these squads is to jail opponents for the first turn or two, giving Jan's shooting more time to work. Each squad has 24 wounds, which is going to be no trivial matter to chew through, and can regrow some of them over the course of the game. They also can just bounce out of combat and Shoot and Charge, as the detachment rule is extra-spicy for Mounted units. Assuming they survive loing enough, they can even bounce into Reserve from anywhere on the table with Rapid Reappraisal.

For utility work, Jan only has a pair of Scout Squads. Mind you, Scout Squads are solid utility units. Having a pair of them is likely enough for most games. They can be deployed forward to hold lanes of advance open for Jan's bikes, and then scoot away with their Scout moves to preserve them for scoring Secondaries later in the game.

Jan enjoyed a nonstop ride on the win train! 1st round he had a close 77-70 against Blood Angels Liberator Assault Group. 2nd round he scored a more comfortable 74-64 against Berserker World Eaters. 3rd round was a close 68-62 against Aspect Host Aeldari. 4th round he scored a sound 93-70 against Oathband Votann. 5th round was a tight 76-71 against Final Day Genestealer Cult. Way to go Jan!

Our next list was played at Rammaric Industries The GT 2025, a 5-round, 47 player event held in Clarksville, Indiana. Isaac Clark of Gravissima Schola played a Wrath of the Rock list, going 4-1 and taking 3rd place. Here's Isaac's list on BCP, and we'll take a look at it here. 

He's just standing there... menacingly... (best list name of the week)
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Librarian in Phobos Armour
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Gladiator Lancer
Gladiator Lancer
Infiltrator Squad: 5 stay-off-my-lawn boys
Invader ATV - melta buggy
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys

This is a pretty conventional Wrath list. It's pretty common to see a Wrath lists with two squads of Deathwing Knights and Lion Dad as the core, with some shooting elements and utility units to score points. The Deathwing Knights can stand on objectives and make opponents struggle to pick them up, while Lion Dad stands menacingly nearby, threatening to heroically intervene or leonineally aggress into anything that tries to clear the DWKs with a charge - though, lacking the Deathwing Keyword, they'd have to stumble to within 3" for Isaac to use Leonine Aggression on Lion Dad.

Isaac's shooting element is comprised of a pair of Gladiator Lancers and 10 Sternguard with Azrael attached. A pair of Lancers or a pair of Ballisti tend to be the long-range shooting element in theses lists, with which one gets chosen depending on what the owning player prioritizes. Jan prioritized being able to reliably wound bigger targets, with the Lancer's laser destroyer wounding anything in the game on a 3+ and able to reroll a failed To Wound roll. The tradeoff is they're a little easier to pick up than a Ballistus, having only a 3+ save. 

Ten Sternguard with Azrael are an excellent shooting unit. You do need to get them within 12" of a target to get full effectiveness out of them, but within that range envelope they can be relied upon to put at least 10 Devastating Wounds on an Oath target with their shooting, and they make a pretty respectable assault threat too.

Issac included a unit of Infiltrators, with a Phobos Librarian to attach to them. I think he included this unit to help counter the Death Guard meta. The Infiltrators zone out a big chunk of the table from Deep Strike, and the Phobos Librarian prevents them from being shot at from outside of 12". That would make it relatively safe for them to be somewhere mid-table to keep Deep Strike threats away from the units on the expansion and mid-table objectives. 

For utility units, Isaac has a Scout Squad, an ATV, a Jump Intercessor squad, and an Intercessor Squad to hold the backfield objective. Since the Infiltrators add their value to the list just by existing in a space, they can be tasked to score any mid-table positional Secondaries, which frees up the Scouts and ATV to run around as needed. The Jump Intercessors can be held in Reserve to Deep Strike in when Isaac needs to score Behind Enemy Lines or Establish Locus, and it's worth having at least one unit start in Reserves just to give your opponent a little something extra to worry about.

1st round Isaac had a close 82-72 win against Grand Coven Thousand Sons. 2nd round he drubbed Mont'ka T'au 82-42. 3rd round MortHam Death Guard squeaked out an 82-79 win against him. 4th round he avenged himself against Death Guard, thrashing a Tallyband list 94-64. 5th round he scored a comfortable 98-68 against Liberator Blood Angels. Well done Isaac!

Next we go to Grillin' Dice 2025!!!, a 5-round, 32 player event held in North Pole, Alaska. Up there in the far north, Ben Tuttle took his Wrath of the Rock list to go 4-1 and place 3rd. You can see Ben's list on BCP, and we'll look at it below. 

The one
Lion Dad
Azrael
Captain in Terminator Armour: Deathwing Assault
Lieutenant: Ancient Weapons
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Terminator Squad: 5 awesome bolter-fisty boys
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

Ben really went all-in on the Deathwing in this list. He went with the full three squads of Deathwing Knights, then apparently said to himself, "Is that enough? Nah! I need more Deathwing!" and promptly added a squad of bog-standard Deathwing Terminators for the lulz. I could be wrong, or this could be a thing that's matchup-dependant, but I'm assuming the Terminator Captain with Deathwing Assault gets attached to the Deathwing Terminator squad. Having that thing pop out of the Warp first turn is bound to throw off an opponent's game plan. It'll do some damage with its shooting, particularly if Ben can draw a line of sight on something relatively squishy, and then stands a roughly 50-50 chance of sticking a 9" charge out of Deep Strike with the free reroll granted by the Captain, and no one is going to be super-thrilled to have their leading unit get punched by 17 power fist attacks that ignore To Hit roll modifiers. The Captain makes double Oath more accessible too, with his strat-discounting ability. 

Or I could be wrong, and Ben could be generally attaching the Captain to a Deathwing Knight squad, and holding the Terminator squad for a little later in the game. By Turn 3, most opponents will have come far enough forward to open some space in their backfield, and then the Terminators can drop in and threaten their backfield objective. Most people task holding the backfield objective to a pretty weedy unit, making it reasonable that 20 storm bolter shots and a couple of cyclone missiles can pick them up.

I have to admit, I'm really thrown by this Deathwing Terminator squad. Seeing one in a list that managed an X-result was not on my bingo card, and yet here it is, hanging with the younger, cooler Deathwing Knights and evidently pulling their weight. 

Another interesting inclusion is the Hellblaster Squad. We're Dark Angels players, so we all like Hellblasters, but I think we widely consider them to be just on the wrong side of the line between competitive and not competitive. Ben went the full character support for them too, with both Azrael for the Sustained Hits and the Lieutenant for the Lethal Hits. The Lieutenant gets the privilege of the Ancient Weapons enhancement for his power fist, making the unit a pretty respectable melee threat so long as Ben can manage to keep at least one Hellblaster alive. Plus, the Lieutenant grants shooting and charging after a Fall Back move, which is a nice consideration in a Wrath list, where generally a unit doesn't get to do anything except exist in a space after a Fall Back move. The squad can be a good target for Relics of the Dark Age too. It won't improve their chances of wounding a big Knight, but it is an effective +2 To Wound against small Knights, and there's a lot of Vehicles and Monsters that are Toughness 10, so that's a pretty significant boost in effectiveness. 

This list does lack the long-range shooting options of other lists we've seen. It's got the Hellblasters, but they are mid-range shooting. Their plasma incinerators do have the Assault keyword, so they can shoot after an Advance move, but that still gives them, at best, a 30" threat envelope. Still, Ben doesn't seem to have suffered too badly for the lack.

The utility units in this list are the Intercessors and the Scout Squads. Their qualities are well known.

Ben started strong, crushing Prototype T'au 98-49 in the 1st round. 2nd round he squeaked out an 87-85 win against Houndpack Chaos Knights. 3rd round he buried Wrathful Procession Templars 81-32. 4th round he took a bruising 54-89 loss against Haloscreed Mechanicus. He bounced back to drub a Salamanders Firestorm 85-48. Good job Ben!

Wrapping up this week's lists, we've got Dan Gardiner of DTTLC, who went 4-1 with his Wrath of the Rock list to place 4th at BR&WL-CON WARHAMMER 40K GT, a 5-round, 25 player event held in Sugar Land, Texas. Here's Dan's list on BCP. Let's take a look at it here.

Dan's list
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Lieutenant: Tempered in Battle
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Inceptor Squad: 3 chonky flying bolter boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 stay-off-my-lawn boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vanguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome flying choppy boys
Gladiator Lancer
Gladiator Lancer

This list kind of feels like a mashup of the two previous ones. I suppose all Wrath lists that place well are apt to be broadly similar, but it's got the Lancers and Infiltrators from Isaac's list and the Hellblasters from Ben's list. This list doesn't have an obvious backfield objective holder, so I suppose it's the Infiltrators, though I suppose if Dan's playing Death Guard, he might task Scouts to that job and have the Infiltrators farther forward so they can zone out 6" Deep Strike nonsense.

Speaking of such things, unique to Dan's list (at least this week) is the Inceptor Squad. As previously mentioned, it's nice to have something in Reserve to give your opponent an extra thing to worry about, and Inceptors are more apt than most units to come down out of Deep Strike and blast a weedy objective holder off the backfield objective. Dan also has a Vanguard Veteran squad, which is another nice, inexpensive Deep Strike threat that will be more of a nuisance to pick up than Jump Intercessors due to their storm shields, and can potentially lala-charge something that hangs around too close to them.

1st round Dan squeaked out a 74-71 win against Daemonkin World Eaters. 2nd round he scored a much more comfortable 75-52 against Renegade Chaos Marines. 3rd round he managed to edge out Death Lord's Chosen Death Guard 72-71. 4th round he had a close loss, 75-79, against an Ultramarines Gladius. 5th round he ended strong, crushing Skitarii Mechanicus 100-55. Good show Dan!

Statistics

Over the weekend, 23 players played Dark Angels at GTs or bigger events. They played 116 games and won 56 of them, earning a 49% win rate. We had 4 X-results and 1 event win. We had an X-Rep* score of 0.91, which is a little low, but not bad. 

*X-Rep is a metric I devised to indicate at what rate a faction gets X/0-X/1 results compared to the meta-wide average. An X-Rep score of 1 indicates the faction is in balance with the meta as a whole. Lower means the faction scored X-results under the meta median, higher means it scored over the median.

The most played detachment, again, was the Wrath of the Rock, with 13 players who scored a 51% win rate and took 3 X-results.

The Company of Hunters had 3 players who scored a 56% win rate and brought us the event win. It's kind of funny, because to balance out the event win, one player went 0-5. The 3rd player went 4-2.

The Gladius also had 3 players, who scored a 64% win rate, but didn't manage any X-results.

The Stormlance was played by 2 players, who scored a 36% win rate.

One player used a Librarius Conclave, scoring a 25% win rate

One last player used an Inner Circle Task Force. That poor optimist went 0-3.

Factions to Watch Out For

It's Death Guard and Imperial Knights again.  Blood Angels scored fairly high over the weekend as well.

Death Guard had 59 players who scored a 58% win rate, 24 X-results, 3 event wins, and an X-Rep score of 2.13. MortHam had 22 players, a 65% win rate, 10 X-results, and all 3 event wins.  VirVec had 19 players, a 53% win rage, and 8 X-results.

Imperial Knights had 47 players, a 53% win rate, 11 X-results, and 1 event win. Their X-Rep score was 1.22

Blood Angels had 33 players who scored a 55% win rate, 7 X-results, and 3 event wins. Their X-Rep score was 1.11.

That is what I have for you, honored battle brethren. I hope you found this article informative and enjoyable. Be sure to check out Dank List Wargaming and Black Crow Gaming over on YouTube to see the work of our battle brethren. Until next time, may we all strive ever for glorious victory. For The Lion!