Chapter Update 1/26/2026
Greetings honored battle brethren! Once again I am here to bring you the news of the
The best performing list of the weekend was a Gladius, played by Russell Amott of Big Marge's Brigadiers. His Gladius list took 4th place at The 2026 Swordwind Winter Grand Tournament, a 5-round, 45-player event. You can see Russell's list on BCP. We'll discuss it below.
Swordwind GT
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Bladeguard Veteran Squad: 3 awesome swordy-boardy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Eradicator Squad: 3 chonky melta boys
Eradicator Squad: 3 chonky melta boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
The army Russell brought to the table at Swordwind was a versatile list with a good variety of units to bring to bear. He's got a solid firebase with the trio of Vengeances and the Vindicator, a variety of trading pieces, and some solid melee threats with Lion Dad, Azrael and the Inner Circle Companions, and the Deathwing Knights.
I've really come to like Land Speeder Vengeances (Land Speeders Vengeance?) from my experience playing with them. They're fast, pack a good punch into anything that might hit the table, and they're cheap enough to trade for things. They take up a fair chunk of real estate too, so they can be pretty effective screening units. And, being OC 3, a pair of them can hold an objective against most small non-battleline units. With three of them in his list, Russell can send them forward to both score some initial kills and screen for other units moving up the table. Positioned properly, he can also potentially score some out-of-sequence shooting, which is always nice when you can get it.
In order to stand a chance of popping tougher targets at range, Russell included a Vindicator. There are arguments to be made for other units - Centurion Devastators, Gladiator Lancers, and Ballistus Dreadnoughts being the other obvious contenders. Compared to them, the Vindicator has a shorter range and no built-in rerolls. What it's got instead is the toughest platform of the lot and the highest potential damage ceiling. At Toughness 11 with a 2+ save, it's also not a trivial unit to destroy. I expect Russell rolls that sucker up to the center objective to blast away at whatever he needs to go away in any particular turn.
For trading pieces, Russell has the Jump Intercessors, a small Bladeguard squad, and a pair of Eradicator Squads. All of those are sub-100 point units that can reasonably be expected to do good damage against the right kinds of targets. Russell also has the usual holy trinity of utility units in his Intercessors, Scouts, and Combi-Lieutenant.
Russell's list has a heavy lean into shooting, but he's got a significant melee counterpunch with Lion Dad, Azrael leading a squad of Inner Circle Companions, and a squad of Deathwing Knights. He probably doesn't lead with them, but moves them up to either strike when opponents try to take down his shooting elements in melee, or muster a charge against a more shooting-oriented list while his opponents are focusing on his own shooting elements.
Unfortunately, Russell's 1st round was his loss, 70-87 against Talons Custodes. 2nd round he bounced back for a close 87-77 against Contagion Death Guard. 3rd round he scored a comfortable 72-59 against Fellhammer Chaos Marines. 4th round he drubbed Awakened Necrons 84-50. 5th round he faced the mirror match against Jay Seebarun, prevailing 84-63. Well done Russell!
The second-best performing Dark Angels list of the weekend belongs to Jordan Gledhilll of Double Dutch Rudder. He went 4-1 and took 5th out of 41 players at the "Wishing it was LVO" 40K GT held in Sandy, UT with his Company of Hunters list (yay!). You can see Jordan's list on BCP. We'll review it below.
Speedy Dangles
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master Crafted Weapon
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master of Manoeuvre - Warlord
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Ballistus Dreadnought
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 super-chonky grav-missile boys
Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 super-chonky grav-missile boys
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike
Vindicator
To my way of thinking, there's basically two effective ways to play the Company of Hunters. One is to try and leverage the detachment rule to the maximum with a heavy investment in Ravenwing Knights, who can have two good activations a turn if played the right way. The other way is to play it as a jail list, attaching Ravenwing Command Squad to Outriders while employing good shooting units to do most of the heavy lifting of degrading your opponent's forces. You can see Jordan taking the latter approach here.
In order to accomplish the jailing, Jordan has three Ravenwing Command Squads with three Outrider Squads to attach them to. That's pretty solid as it presents opponents with 72 wounds to chew through, with the potential of up to 12 of them coming back per turn. Jordan can pretty effectively hem his opponent in with the combined bike squad that has Recon Hunter, giving it a 9" Scout move, plus the two squads of Scouts he included in his list. The squad with Master of Manoeuvre can Rapid Ingress Turn 1 if Jordan needs it to. Alternately, he can pick up the third squad with Rapid Reappraisal and have two squads pop out of Reserve as he sees fit.
The bike squads are not bad in assault, particularly when they charge, but most of the killing power in Jordan's list is in his shooting units. He has doubles each of Ballistus Dreadnoughts, Centurion Devastator Squads, and Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes, plus a Vindicator for good measure. There are not a lot of targets in the game that this spread of units can't just shoot off the table. I'll say it's a little unconventional for Jordan to have picked grav Cents over las Cents, but he may have made the decision it's more important to be able to handily pick up Vehicles than Monsters, and he's got plenty of other options for Monster-slaying if he needs them. Plus, the Grav has more utility into Infantry or Mounted units, having 3 Damage 3 shots instead of 1 Damage D6+1 shot. Jordan is also presenting his opponents with a mini stat-check, because he's got five high-toughness 2+ save units in his list, which some opponents may struggle to deal with, particularly as his Bike squads are speeding up to their units to chainsword them in the face.
The Hammerstrikes deserve a special mention in this review because they have a little extra synergy with the detachment. Obviously, being able to Advance and Shoot with them is a good thing. They also benefit from having the Ravenwing keyword, which means they're eligible to have High Speed Focus and Rapid Reappraisal played on them. They (and other Storm Speeders) are especially good candidates for Rapid Reappraisal because they have Deep Strike. This lets Jordan uppy them when he has an opportunity to downy them in an advantageous position the next turn, either to simply melta-slag something themselves, or strip Cover off of something else.
For utility units, Jordan has the usual Combi-Lieutenant and two squads of Scouts (assuming they survive being Turn 1 speedbumps). He's also got the Invader ATV, which he's probably using as his backfield objective holder. It's big enough to screen out that back corner while keeping one tire just touching the objective, and having Mounted and Ravenwing keywords it can be used to play Hunter's Trail to sticky the objective so it can go off and do other things if it's advantageous to do so.
Jordan had a strong 1st round, crushing Talons Custodes 90-36. 2nd round he drubbed Beastslayer Space Wolves 94-59. 3rd round he decimated Conceited Emperor's Children 94-45. 4th round he took a humbling 53-81 loss against Hearthband Votann. 5th round he bounced back to pummel a Black Templars Gladius 87-49. Good show Jordan!
Our next list was played at the Winchester 40K GT - January 2026, a 5-round, 39-player event held in Winchester, England. At that event, South London Legion's Conor McNama took a Stormlance list and took 6th place. Here's Conor's list on BCP. We'll discuss it below.
The Yeet!
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Apothecary: Feinting Withdrawal
Judiciar
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
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
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys
This is a pretty simple list in concept. We as Dark Angels players have some very good assault units that are not inherently fast, so they like to be in a detachment where they can ABC - Always Be Charging (I have a local Tyranid player to thank for that one). Being able to charge after making an Advance or Fall Back move suits Deathwing Knights, Inner Circle Companions, and Lion Dad right down to the ground.
Conor's list seems to be designed to come at opponents in a couple waves. He's got the two squads of Scouts, two squads of Jump Intercessors, and the Outriders to be the first wave. The Scouts can forward-deploy to hold open lanes of advance to allow the Jump Intercessors and Outriders to rush out and engage opponent's forward-deployed and screening units. The Scouts are equipped to help out with that, with all of them having combat knives and the Sergeants having chainswords. That's a lot of AP -1 combat damage coming at opponents in that first wave. If Conor needs them to and he's willing to spend 2 CP, he can have the Outriders auto-advance 9" with the Full Throttle strat, giving them that extra bit of reach, and they can potentially punch up with Shock Assault played on them for Lance when they charge.
The second wave is clearly Lion Dad, the Deathwing Knights, and the Inner Circle Companions with the Judiciar attached. Conor might hold a squad of Knights in reserve to Deep Strike them a little further forward than they'd be able to reach themselves, and of course we're all familiar with Lion Dad's uppy-downy abilities.
For shooting support, Conor has a full squad of Sternguard with Azrael and the Apothecary to attach to them. I really like the Azrael-plus-Sternguard combo. Sometimes you need a solution to a unit with a lot of layered defensive abilities, and doing massed Devastating Wounds bypasses everything but Feel No Pain rolls. With my rough mental math, I estimate the unit can put 11 Devastating Wounds on a target they can get within 12" of, and that is a good chunk of anything in the game. The unit is not a bad melee threat either, between Azrael's Sword of Secrets, the Sergeant's power weapon (I'd have gone with a power fist personally) and each Veteran having 4 close combat weapon attacks - and don't forget Azrael's Sustained Hits triggers in the Fight phase too. I do question the inclusion of the Apothecary in the unit, as he seems unlikely to make his points back in revived Veterans, but maybe Conor finds that opponents tend to focus their serious firepower on the units threatening to punch their faces in, and only throw chip damage at the Sternguard. I also think Conor wanted a character to hang Feinting Withdrawal on so the unit can shoot after making a Fall Back move, and the Apothecary seemed more useful than an Ancient.
If this list has one flaw, I'd say it's that it doesn't have a means to pop transports from range. If you're running a melee list, you really want your melee units to be punching Infantry, not Transports carrying Infantry. A Predator Annihilator costs 135 points. It wouldn't take too much points-juggling to afford one, and then he'd have a way to de-mech units for his melee threats to punch.
That said, it's hard to argue with success, and Conor sure had some. 1st round he crushed Invasion Fleet Tyranids 99-49. 2nd round he had a close 74-65 against a Space Wolf Gladius. 3rd round he scored a tight 85-78 against GrizzleTarum. 4th round he scored a slightly-more-comfortable 86-75 against yet more GrizzleTarum. Hisloss came in the 5th round, 60-86 against Rage-cursed Blood Angels played by the event winner. Still, going 4-1 with a 4-0 event start is quite the accomplishment. Well done Conor!
Our last list takes us back to the 2026 Swordwind Winter Grand Tournament, where Bristol Crusaders' Patrick Carroll went 4-1 and took 7th out of 45 players with his Wrath of the Rock list. Here's Patrick's list on BCP, and as always we'll take a look at it below.
itt teams
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Judiciar: Ancient Weapons
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Callidus Assassin
This is a fairly conventional Wrath list. There's not as clearly defined a template for Wrath lists as there was for the Dark Angels Gladius when the Lennon list was the gold standard around this time last year if I remember correctly, but there are common unit choices in the lists that rise to the top: Lion Dad, Azrael, a pair of Deathwing Knight squads, Inner Circle Companions, and the usual Combi-Lieutenant, Scout Squad, and Intercessor Squad.
The points of variation in this list are the Land Speeders Vengeance and the Hellblasters. Vengeances aren't to hard to understand. They may not benefit much from Wrath's detachment rule, but they are a solid datasheet that is well worth the points in any detachment. They're best at eliminating elite Infantry, but can punch up into Monsters or Vehicles if the need arises.
Hellblasters are an interesting sight in pretty much any list. They're a unit we want to like, and they can certainly do some good work, but they're a bit pricey for what they do, and their tendency to degrade themselves through the course of the game makes them a little hard to rely on. In the Wrath list, they have the virtue from being able to benefit from the Relics of the Dark Age strat to potentially bump them up to Strength 10, which increases them from wounding a lot of common targets on 5's to wounding them on 4's or 3's, but that doesn't do any good into anything higher than Toughness 10, so it's problematic into Knights or some of the really big Daemon Monsters.
Somehow, Patrick scored no points in the 1st round of the event. He didn't even get the Battle Ready points. BCP shows him not having an opponent either, which leads me to believe he got to the event late for some reason, missed the first game, and decided to play the rest anyway. Undaunted, 2nd round he crushed Infernal Chaos Knights 96-53. 3rd round, he murdered Saga Space Wolves 84-34. 4th round, he buried Contagion Death Guard 100-26. 5th round was his closest game, but he still drubbed Talons Custodes 98-75. Man! Imagine if he'd arrived in time to play the 1st round! Well done Patrick!
The weekend's numbers were a little light, possibly because like half the United States got hit by a massive winter storm. The GT I was going to attend became an RTT because Sunday we wound up getting like two feet of snow - I'm not exaggerating. For the rest of the world not getting buried under snow and getting to have their full events, there were 34 Dark Angels players who played 172 games and won 82, earning a 48% win rate and picking up 4 X/1 results.
The most played detachment by a 3-1 margin was the Wrath of the Rock, with 23 players, a 46% win rate, and 1 X-result.
Gladius was the next-most played with 6 players, a 61% win rate, and 1 X-result.
One player each played the Company of Hunters and the Stormlance, each earning an 80% win rate and 1 X-result.
One player played an Inner Circle Task Force and got a 20% win rate.
One diehard played an Unforgiven Task Force and got a 0% win rate. He played all his games though.
And finally there was one player who didn't submit a list so I couldn't identify what detachment he played. He scored a 33% win rate.
That, honored battle brethren, is what I have for you this week. Be sure to check out Dank List Wargaming and Black Crow Gaming on YouTube for Dark Angels content created by real enthusiasts for the legion chapter. It's good to be back! I'm looking forward to a new year, both for putting my skills to the test and bringing you the news of our beloved army. As always, I hope you find my work enjoyable and informative. May we all strive ever for glorious victory! For The Lion!
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