Chapter Update: 11/3/2025
Angels of the Roaring 🦁!
Lion Dad
Azrael
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 super-chonky las-missile boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 super-chonky las-missile boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Incursor Squad: 5 spotty boys
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike
Vanguard Veteran Squad with Jump Packs: 5 awesome flying choppy boys
Vanguard Veteran Squad with Jump Packs: 5 awesome flying choppy boys
Vanguard Veteran Squad with Jump Packs: 5 awesome flying choppy boys
Kyle used a pretty conventional Wrath of the Rock list. Starting with the characters, Lion Dad, Azrael, and the Combi-Lieutenant all appear in most Wrath lists. Lion Dad is both a potent melee threat and a force-multiplier for any list, especially in melee. This applies to Azrael as well - less so on the melee threat, but arguably more so as a force multiplier, both for the buffs he provides his attached unit, and for the CP generation he provides. He's even got a much better gun than Lion Dad has. The Combi-Lieutenant is also a force multiplier and a very useful utility unit, providing a buff to attacks made against units on a chosen objective and able to provide value with his Lone Op and reactive move.
Besides Lion Dad and Azrael, Kyle's list has a pretty solid melee presence with two squads of Deathwing Knights, three squads of Vanguard Veterans, and the Sternguard Squad. The Deathwing Knights are a hard-as-nails unit that are equally good at smacking down Infantry and punching up into Vehicles and Monsters. Vanguard Veterans are nowhere near as impressive in either their offensive punch or their durability, but they do have a lot of attacks, Lethal Hits on the Charge, and are fast, all for a relatively cheap price. They're really more utility units, but they do have the Deathwing keyword, so can be selected for the Leonine Aggression lala-charge into any unit an opponent carelessly leaves within 6" of them. Then there's the Sternguard Veterans, who are more of a shooting unit, but with 4 attacks each, including the power fist-armed sergeant, and their datasheet rule granting them full Wound rerolls into the Oath target with all of their attacks, they can be a pretty devastating melee threat too, especially with Azrael attached.
Kyle's list has pretty respectable shooting as well. Most of that is coming from the pair of Centurion Devastator squads, who can throw out 3 lascannons shots and 3d3 Strength 9 AP -2 Damage D3 shots with Blast. They're tough to pick up, with Toughness 7, 4 wounds, and a 2+ save. Their datasheet rule makes them not need Oath of Moment, rerolling 1's To Hit with their shooting, or full rerolls against a target on an objective. If they shoot into something tagged by the Incursors, they effectively get full rerolls to hit no matter where the target is, barring negative To Hit modifiers. They're even surprisingly good in melee - not great, but can probably punch their way out of being tied up by a 5-man unit without too much trouble.
The other main shooting platform is a Storm Speeder Hammerstrike, which is a high speed platform that can throw out 5 melta or near-melta-equivalent shots into something, plus tag something else with its Krakstorm Grenade Launcher to trigger its datasheet ability, stripping Benefit of Cover from that unit for the rest of the phase.
Kyle's utility units are an Intercessor Squad to sit on the backfield objective, his Combi-Lieutenant, and the three Vanguard Veteran Squads, who can also skirmish with opponents' light utility units pretty effectively. Oddly, he has no Scouts, but with three VanVet squads he probably figured he didn't need them. Since he went undefeated, that seems to have been born out.
1st round Kyle had a pretty close 90-80 versus Dread Chaos Knights. 2nd round he had a similarly close 85-75 against Brandfast Votann. 3rd round he scored a very comfortable 95-71 against Liberator Blood Angels. (This opponent has a little ode of accord for Kyle in his list, check it out.) 4th round Kyle scored a solid 93-71 against Gladius Templars. 5th round Kyle scored a tight 63-57 against Liberator Blood Angels. Undefeated run! Well done Kyle!
The next best performing list of the weekend was played at Courage & Honour XI, a 5-round, 34 player event held in Cardiff, Wales. Patrick Vance went 4-1 with his Wrath of the Rock list and took 3rd place. Here's Patrick's list in its entirety on BCP. We'll discuss it below.
Lion Dad, the best Dad
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Captain: Ancient Weapons
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Gladiator Lancer
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys
This list is pretty similar to Kyle's. Lion Dad, Azrael, 2 squads of Deathwing Knights, Intercessor Squad, Combi-Lieutenant. It doesn't have Centurion Devastators - perhaps Patrick doesn't own any. His long-range shooting comes from a Ballistus Dreadnought and Gladiator Lancer. I think the Ballistus is too many points for what it brings to the table, but I like the Lancer.
Patrick included a big squad of Inner Circle Companions, which are hard to go too far wrong with. They don't have the durability of Deathwing Knights, but make up for that with a higher damage ceiling, and better synergies with attachable characters. In this case, they are clearly being attached to Azrael, which means they have a Strike profile with both Lethal and Sustained Hits. Good times! Azrael also provides the squad his 4++ save, which helps their durability quite a bit.
Patrick also included a nice punchy Captain with Ancient Weapons to his list. He clearly attaches to the Sternguard Squad to exploit their full Wound rerolls against the Oath target on his go-turn, giving him 8 Damage 3 attacks with Devastating Wounds. That will punch up into things quite nicely. Also, the Captain provides discounted strats, so playing Inescapable Justice for the second Oath target becomes a lot more feasible.
Patrick's utility units are the Intercessors for minding the backfield objective, the Combi-Lieutenant, a Scout Squad, a Jump Intercessor Squad, and an ATV. The virtues of the Intercessors and Combi-Lieutenant have been explored. Scouts can uppy-downy, making them invaluable secondary scoring units. Jump Intercessors have many of the virtues that Van Vets do, minus the Deathwing keyword and all the advantages that conveys, but they can do impact Mortals when the charge, which is never a bad thing. ATVs are cheap and move fast, and occasionally it's worth putting Relics of the Dark Age on them to boost the multimelta to Strength 11.
Patrick got his loss out of the way in the 1st round, giving up a tight 66-71 against an Aeldari Warhost. From then on it was all wins. 2nd round he crushed Valourstrike Knights 93-43. 3rd round he brutalized an Ultramarines Ironstorm 84-39. 4rd round he humbled Invasion Fleet Tyranids 91-52. He wrapped up the event with a 5th round drubbing of Incursion Daemons 96-65. Good show Patrick!
The last list I'm going to review this week was played at Atomic City Warzone 2025, a 5-round, 37 player event held in Pasco, WA. BFG (Big F'ing Hammers)'s Jeremy Nakano went 4-1 with his Wrath of the Rock list and took 6th place. Here's Jeremy's list on BCP. We discuss it below.
Wrath: Lion on the rocks
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Chaplain in Terminator Armour: Ancient Weapons
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 6 super-chonky las-missile boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys
This is a very conventional Wrath list, with all of the usual unit choices. The iron core of the list is Lion Dad and the three squads of Deathwing Knights. One of those squads has swords instead of maces, which makes them a little less capable of functioning without character support, but does give them more attacks. Jeremy compensated with a Terminator Chaplain, which does give him a character to give Ancient Weapons to. That also compensates for the main weakness of the Chaplain - that his weapon has low AP. It also makes that squad capable of functioning outside of Lion Dad's bubble against Mortals, as the Chaplain grants a 4+++ against Mortals to his attached squad.
For his shooting element, Jeremy went with a full 6-man squad of Centurion Devastators. Usually players who have Cent Devs use 3-man squads because their bases are so big, and because the firepower of 3 of them is enough for most targets, but the advantage of a 6-man squad is you get maximum effect out of the Relics of the Dark Age strat. He's also got a 5-man squad of Sternguard to attach Azrael to. They can dish out some Devastating Wounds at range, and are a decent melee threat as well.
For utility units, Jeremy has Intercessors minding his backfield objective, 2 units of Scouts, and the Combi-Lieutenant. That's a pretty good spread for utility work.
1st round Jeremy murdered and buried Imperial Knights (couldn't tell the detachment from the very sketchy BCP listing) 98-26. 2nd round he crushed Taktical Orks 90-47. 3rd round he drubbed Starshatter Necrons 80-57. 4th round was his loss, 75-93 versus Lions Custodes. He bounced back to humble Subterranean Tyranids 96-57. Well done Jeremy!
Here are the players and lists I'd like to give honorable mentions to.
RBBR's Jofonz Bow went 4-2 and took 15th out of at 86 Mad Alpacalypse Warhammer 40k Major in Dixon, CA with his bike-tastic Company of Hunters list.
Lions in Disguise's Josh Kirby went 4-2 and took 16th out of 70 at LDXP Tacoma 2025 Grand Tournament in Tacoma, WA with his Wrath of the Rock list.
Honored battle brethren, you have done us proud!
Statistics
It was a slow weekend for Dark Angels players. I counted just 11 who attended 20+ person singles events. More than that attended a 600+ player teams event, so maybe that drew a bunch of players out of the pool. Those that did play singles events played 63 games and won 42 of them, giving a 65% win rate. None of those were event wins, but 3 went X/0-X/1, with the one undefeated run.
Wrath of the Rock was both the most popular and winningest detachment, with 9 players who scored a 65% win rate and took all three of the X-results.
One player (Jofonz) played the Company of Hunters, scoring a 67% win rate
One player played a Gladius, scoring a 60% win rate.
According to Stat-check.com, Dark Angels players are about 4% of the player base. We have a 50% win rate and an Overep of 0.62, and a 4-0 event start rating of 6% Wrath of the Rock is the most played detachment, and the Overrep pops a little higher to 0.89, but 4-0 event starts drop to 2%. The Company of Hunters and Stormlance both enjoy much higher ratings in the measures-of-success statistics, but the two of them combined are only played by a quarter of the players using Wrath. Overall, the statistics put Dark Angels as a C-tier faction.
Factions To Watch Out For
Data for this section comes from Stat-check.com.
The top three factions in the meta are Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Sororitas, and Aeldari.
Adeptus Mechanicus are about 3% of the player base. They have a 58% win rate and an Overrep of 1.32, which is a little high but not too problematic. Their 4-0 event starts stand at 15%, which is really high. The majority of Mechanic players are playing Haloscreed Battle Clade, which has a 57% win rate, but a 1.72 Overrep, which is quite high.
Next up is Adeptus Sororitas, who are also played by about 3% of the player base. They have a win rate of 56%, but an Overrep of 2.19, which is nuts, and a 4-0 event start rating of 20%, which is also nuts. The most played detachment is Hallowed Martyrs, but Champions of Faith is not much behind it, and Champions has an Overrep of 3.38, which is mental.
Third in the meta are the Aeldari, with 6% of the player base, a 54% win rate, a 1.4 Overrep. and a 4-0 event start rating of 8%. The most played detachments are Aspect Host (3% of the the overall player base) and Warhost (2%), both of which have Overreps of ~1.5, which is high.
That, honored battle brethren, is what I have for you. I recommend checking out Dank List Wargaming and The Lion's Den over on Black Crow Gaming on YouTube for more First Legion Dark Angels content. As always, I hope you find my work enjoyable and informative. Strive ever for glorious victory. For The Lion!
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