Chapter Update 9/15/2025

Hello, honored battle brethren! It was a relatively slow weekend for 40K events, with a smaller number of events than we've seen recently. We do have a two lists to talk about though, so at least we haven't been skunked this week. 

I'm going to start with our midwestern hero, Kyle McCord of Midwest Monstars. He apparently wanted to join the Deathwing Knights fun and put together a Wrath of the Rock list, which he brought to the Flying Monkey Con 40k Champs 2025 (6 rounds, 129 players) held in Witchita, Kansas. Our honored brethren went 5-1 and took 3rd place.  Here's Kyle's list on BCP. Let's take a look at what he brought. 

Welcome to the Rock
Azrael - Warlord
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon: Tempered in Battle
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 ultra-chonky shooty boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 ultra-chonky shooty boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Inceptor Squad: 3 flying chonky bolter boys
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys
Vanguard Veteran Squad with Jump Packs: 5 awesome flying choppy boys
Vanguard Veteran Squad with Jump Packs: 5 awesome flying choppy boys

Kyle's spin on the Wrath of the Rock list features Centurion Devastator Squads, which makes sense, as they have good firepower that's relatively Oath-agnostic, and can benefit from having the Relics strat played on them. On top of that, at T7 a 2+ save and 4 wounds apiece, it takes far more than trivial effort to pick them up. Kyle's Cent Devs are equipped with lascannons and Centurion missile launchers, giving them solid firepower for dealing with Vehicles and Monsters.  The Centurion missile launchers also have Blast, so they'd be not bad into Infantry targets.

Dang. Kyle is really making me want to pick up some Cent Devs, despite the likelihood they're not going to make the cut come 11th edition. They probably paint up pretty quick, I could get a year out of them. 

Kyle's other shooting element comes from the 10-strong Sternguard Squad led by Azrael, which is hard to go wrong with. Mass Devastating Wounds will pick up virtually any unit. Chuck a power fist on the sergeant, and they make a pretty decent assault unit too, on the strength of Azrael, the power fist sergeant, and each Vet having 4 attacks. Plus, they have the Deathwing keyword, so you can trigger them to lala-charge a unit within 6".

Lion Dad is noteworthy by his absence, but Kyle has three units of macey Deathwing Knights, which is plenty of punchy death for anything with the temerity to get close to them. 

Kyle's utility units are a unit each of Intercessors, Scouts, and ATV, for all the usual reasons.

Kyle also packed in a trio of jump pack units. There's the unit of bolter Inceptors, whose job is likely to at least threaten to drop into opponents' backfields and gun down the usually-weedy units most players stick on them. If that's not an option, a savvy player won't have much trouble finding a use for a unit with a 6" Deep Strike, and their assault bolters are not to be sneezed at. Further showing the benefit of a deep collection, Kyle also brought along a pair of Vanguard Veteran squads. Van Vets are decently choppy, can lala-charge a unit within 6" thanks to having the Deathwing keyword, and can bring along storm shields for the handy 4++ save. They're definitely worth the extra 5 points over a Jump Intercessor Squad. 

Kyle went 5-0 his first 5 rounds, which unfortunately means he took his loss in the last round, but it did give him a 4-0 event start, which is noteworthy. 1st round was a near thing though, with a squeaked out 78-75 against Lions Custodes. 2nd round he handed out an 100-66 drubbing to Final Day Genestealer Cult. 3rd round he raked in a solid 77-52 against War Horde Orks. 4th round was a close 85-75 against Grand Coven Thousand Sons. 5th round he managed a comfortable 81-67 against MortHam Death Guard. His rampage came to an end in the 6th round though, giving up a 70-95 loss against Imperial Knights having a last hurrah with Noble Lance. Still, 5-1! 3rd place! Way to go Kyle!

Our other list of the week comes all the way from Pyeongtaek, South Korea, placing 4th at the MtG Osan Tabletop presents 40k GT (Golden Ticket Event), 5 rounds, 22 players. Haemin Gang of Kimchi Crusaders brought his Wrath of the Rock list and went 4-1. You can see Haemin's list on BCP. We'll look at it below. 

DA
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Captain in Terminator Armour: Deathwing Assault
Chaplain: Tempered in Battle
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Drop Pod
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Gladiator Lancer
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Repulsor Executioner
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys

I have a lot of questions about this list, but let's start with what's conventional about it. There's Lion Dad, Azrael, two squads of Deathwing Knights, a 5-man Sternguard Vet squad, 6 ICCs, an Intercessor Squad to mind the backfield objective, a Gladiator Lancer for long range fire support, and an Outrider Squad, which must be for utility work because it's the only unit in the list that fits that particular role. 

For the unconventional, let's start with the Repulsor Executioner. I suppose it's not that unconventional, as it's got a strong datasheet despite its weak datasheet rule, and no opponent is going to be happy to have it line up that Executioner laser destroyer on one of their big units. I am puzzled by the transport capacity. Is it part of Haemin's game plan, or is it incidental? If it was the only thing with tranport capacity, I'd assume it just carries the ICCs and their attached character, but it's not the only thing with transport capacity. 

That brings us to the drop pod. I don't think I've ever seen one of these things in a competitive list. I legit had to look up its rules. It's basically a 70 point investment in giving up to 12 models that wouldn't ordinarily be able to do so Deep Strike, and can come in Turn 1 during the owning player's Reinforcements step. Afterwards, depending on where it's sitting, it can be an obstacle to opponents' units, forcing them to either go around it or spend an activation dealing with it. My question is, what's going inside it? I think the most likely answer is the ICCs with the Chaplain attached, though Azrael attached to the ICCs, or Azrael and the Sternguard are also possibilities. It's possible Haemin may make judgement calls about who gets attached to what and goes in where on a game-by-game basis, giving him some ability to tailor his list to his opponent. If ICCs were a 5-man squad, I might suspect both the ICCs and the Sternguard go in the pod, but the two squads with attached characters would exceed its capacity.

Next there's the Terminator Captain with Deathwing Assault. I'd have thought he'd use a Terminator Chaplain to attach to those sword Knights, but the Captain has the dual virtues of discounted strats and rerolling Charge rolls.

Speaking of Chaplains, I also had to look up what a power armor Chaplain does. Spoiler alert - pretty similar to a Terminator Chaplain, giving the attached unit +1 To Wound. That seems less advantageous to pair with ICCs, since their Strike profile has Lethal Hits, but it will still boost their damage output. Plus, once per game he can un-Battle-shock a unit within 12", and with Tempered in Battle he prevents Battle-shock in the first place.

Between the Drop Pod and the Deathwing Assault Captain, I think Haemin is mounting a strong contesting of his opponents' expansion objectives 1st turn, dropping in a Deathwing Knight squad and the ICCs via the drop pod. He's possibly dropping Lion Dad in with them, Forest Walking him off the table in his Command phase and back on with the other two units at the end of his Movement phase. It's a bold but risky strategy. Likely there are a lot of opponents that would be put on their back foot by that, but against an opponent who doesn't get flustered, it could lose him like a third of his army in one turn. 

Haemin had a strong start, drubbing an Ultramarines Gladius 72-34 in the 1st round. 2nd round he faced a Dark Angels Gladius and won with a solid 86-62. 3rd round he bodied Cult Chaos Marines 95-64. 4th round he took a punishing 56-89 loss against Ascension Genestealer Cult. He ended strong though, with a comfortable 5th round 80-67 against Berserker World Eaters. Well done Haemin!

Statistics

It was a middling weekend for Dark Angels. We had 23 players play 121 games and win 47 of them, for an underwhelming 42%* win rate, but I'm giving that an asterisk and you'll see why when I break it down by detachment. We only had 2 X-results, but the number of events held was relatively small. I'll edit in the X-Rep score when Meta Monday updates and I can get the raw data I need to calculate it.  

Wrath of the Rock was the most played detachment once again, with 14 players, a 53% win rate, and the two X-results.

Gladius was the second most played with 4 players, but only a 22% win rate, which was so bad it dragged down the overall average by 10 percentage points. Only one of those players won more than one game, and that player didn't play the second day at their event.

The Stormlance was played by two players, who scored a 40% win rate, which I suppose didn't do the overall average any good either. 

Two players played the Company of Hunters and scored a 50% win rate, which was a neat trick because between them they played 11 games. One of those results was a tie.

One iconoclast played a Vanguard and went 2-3.

Factions To Watch Out For

As of Wednesday, Meta Monday still hasn't updated. Even if it had, I've been debating whether or not the information would be very relevant going into the new post-Balance Dataslate meta, so I think I'm just going to leave this till next week. We'll see who emerges as the top dogs once the Balance Dataslate is in full effect.

That, honored battle brethren, is what I have for you. As always, I'd like to recommend checking out Dank List Wargaming and Black Crow Gaming over on YouTube for more Dark Angels content. I hope you find my work enjoyable and helpful in your quest to be ever victorious! Glory to The Lion!