Angel's Keep: A 40K Dark Angels Blog

  Greetings honored battle brethren! Dark Angels players have battled it out with heretics, xenos, traitors, and misguided jealous lesser Astartes players across the globe over the weekend, and I have the honor of reporting on the lists that did the best. It was a bit of a slower weekend, with about 10 less Dark Angels players than usual. That said, it seems like the drop off of high performing lists is sharper than the drop off in player count, as only three lists went X/1 over the weekend. That said, one of those lists took 3rd place at the biggest event of the weekend, the ALPINE-CON 40K Singles 2026 - Alpine Cup, an event of up to 7 rounds with 202 players held in Graz, Austria. Zugzwang's Niklas Frerichs went 5-1 with a Gladius list and beat out 199 other players for his spot. You can see Niklas' list on BCP, and of course we'll check it out below. Niklas' list Lion Dad - Warlord Azrael Librarian Lieutenant with Combi-weapon Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky mac...

Hello fellow 40K enthusiast! I'm back with the meta snapshot of the past weekend. We're back to a more normal number of events, which allows frontrunning factions to clearly emerge. Unfortunately we do have clearly frontrunning factions, and they are what I think have emerged as the usual suspects: Ultramarines, Necrons, and Chaos Space Marines. Top Faction of this week is Ultramarines, with one 1st Place result, four 2nd place results, and two 3rd place results. The 1st Place result and two of the 2nd Place results were Blade of Ultramar lists, and the other two 2nd Place results and one of the 3rd place results were Gladius lists. Those two detachments are so similar they may as well be considered the same detachment. The last 3rd Place result was a Reclamation Force list. All of these lists featured some combination of Ultramarines Epic Heroes (though not all the same in every list), multiple Repulsor Executioners, and Victrix Honor Guards, with Roboute Guilliman and Ballist...

 Greetings honored battle brethren! The event tempo picked up last weekend, which brings us some lists to talk about! A total of six lists went X/1 over the weekend. That number includes four Wrath lists, one Gladius list, and one Stormlance list. We'll begin with the Gladius list, because it arguably was the best performing list of the weekend. Rules Lawyerz' Phillip French went 4-1 and took 2nd place in a field of 30 players at the April GT held at Gamer Geeks in Warrior, AL. You can see Phillip's list on Best Coast Pairings, and we'll check it out below. Gladius no Lion needed Azrael - Warlord Captain: The Honour Vehement Librarian: Fire Discipline Lieutenant with Combi-weapon Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys Impulsor Incursor Squad: 5 spotty boys Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys Invader ATV: melta buggy Land Speeder Vengeance Land Speeder Vengeance Repulsor Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Sternguard Veteran Sq...

Greetings esteemed battle brethren! Today I'd like to bring you a review of the units unique to our legion chapter, rate them on the familiar A-F scale, and discuss the reasons why I'm giving them the rating I'm giving them. This will give us a point of contrast for when we get our 11th edition datasheets. We'll see how our units fare in the transition.  S Tier Azrael In these rating systems, it's become a convention to have an S Tier for units that deserve to be rated above the A Tier units. I don't know why everything doesn't just get knocked down a letter grade, but it's the convention. If we have an S Tier unit, it's Azrael. It might be a little strong to say Azrael is the chapter master every Space Marine player wishes they had, but chances are everyone who doesn't play Dark Angels will be jealous of at least one of his abilities.  Azrael's got a pretty typical chapter master profile: Toughness 4, 6 wounds, 2+/4++, Leadership 6, OC 1. H...

Hello fellow 40K enthusiasts! Not a lot of 40K events were held last weekend. Easter weekend, go figure. I only have 9 events to work from, with 8 of those being 30 players or less, and one of them only recorded results for 4 rounds despite being advertised as a 5 round event. As you can imagine, with so few events, there's not a lot of data to go on for providing the meta snapshot. Top Faction this week is Chaos Space Marines, with one 1st Place, two 2nd Place, and one 3rd Place finishes. The 1st Place list used the Renegade Raiders detachment. One of the 2nd Place lists used the Veterans of the Long War detachment. The other 2nd place list and the 3rd Place list used the Huron's Marauder's detachment. There were a lot of common elements to these lists. All of them had Huron Blackheart, Masters of the Maelstrom, Chosen, Cultists, and numerous Rhinos. Appearing in three of the four lists were: Fabius Bile, Cypher, Legionaries, and two squads of Noise Marines. Beyond that th...

 Greetings honored battle brethren! It was a slow weekend for events, what with the Easter holiday and all. There were a few though, for those of us lucky enough to be near them and able to squeeze them in, so we do have a few lists to talk about. Our top list of the week was run by Black Crow Gaming's Rules Lawyer, Alan Percival. Alan went 4-1 and took 4th out of 30 players at Peterborough Slam! - Inspired GT held in Hampton, England (I think Hampton is a suburb of Peterborough, judging from Google Maps). You can see Alan's list on BCP. We'll discuss it below.  The rock’s complaint department Lion Dad - Warlord Azrael Captain in Gravis Armour: Ancient Weapons Sammael 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 Eradicator Squad: 3 chonky melta boys Infiltrator Squad: 5 stay-off-my-lawn boys Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boy...

  Greetings fellow 40K enthusiasts! It's a little later than I intended to get this out, but I've brought you the meta snapshot of the past weekend. If you want to know what factions are dominating 40K at the moment, I've got you.  This week there were three factions that scored 7+ top three results. Out of them, I judge T'au to be the Top Faction of the week, with the following results: 1st Place: 4 2nd Place: 2 3rd Place: 1 Mont'ka was the top T'au detachment, with 3 of the 1st place results and 1 of the 2nd place results. One 1st place and 2nd place result were scored with Retaliation Cadre, and the 3rd place result was scored with a Kroot Hunting Pack. A T'au Mont'ka list won the second biggest event of the weekend, The Sheffield 40K GT with 243 players. I have to make a judgement call between the Number Two and Number Three factions, because they're pretty close. For the Number Two faction I'm choosing Chaos Space Marines , with the followi...