Dark Angels Update 5/25/2026

Greetings honored battle brethren! It was a big weekend for 40K, with a full five events with over 100 players, plus more than the usual allotment of smaller events. As you can imagine, that means a lot of 40K got played over the weekend, which gives us some lists to look at!

The top Dark Angels list of the weekend is a throwback to early 10th, because it's an Ironstorm list! If you've been reading my blog for very long, you may have a guess who played that list. Well, your guess is correct. Tundra Tactics' Kit Smith Hanna took his Ironstorm Spearhead to the Warhammer 40,000 GT: Warhammer Open Dallas, went 7-1, and took 3rd out of 296 players! Here's Kit's list on BCP. We'll discuss it below.

It's Back
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Captain in Gravis Armour: The Flesh Is Weak
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Techmarine: Master of Machine War
Techmarine: Adept of the Omnissiah
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Ravenwing Darkshroud
Redemptor Dreadnought
Stormraven Gunship
Vindicator

It's not entirely a throwback to the early 10th Ironstorm list because there are more unique Dark Angels units than just Azrael and a Ravenwing Darkshroud. A trio of Land Speeders Vengeance made it into the list, as did Lion Dad. 

The centerpiece model of Kit's list is the Stormraven Gunship, which is a Firstborn unit and an Aircraft, so who knows how much longer Kit has before it goes to Legends. He can use it now though, and use it he did to good effect. I'll leave it to you to look up the particulars, suffice it to say "gunship" is an apt word to describe it. Kit opted for a twin multi-melta and twin heavy plasma cannon, giving him a lot of multi-damage shots with good AP, plus a pair of hurricane bolter for chaff chewing. It's fast, has Hover so it can start on the table and be sent into an opponent's grill Turn 1, it's reasonably tough with a -1 Damage rule, and it's a transport that can carry not only Infantry but a Dreadnought as well. I suspect Kit's opening play is to park that thing next to his Darkshroud and Techmarine with Adept of the Omnissiah (lets him blank the damage of a failed save) in case his opponent goes first and tries to shoot at it, then has it zoom forward carrying his Redemptor and probably the Gravis Captain, dumps them both out (the Redemptor where it has a good shooting angle, the Grav Cap with a wall between him and hostile shooting, plus uppy-downys Lion Dad to park him next to the Grav Cap. All of the sudden Kit's opponent has all kinds of catastrophe up his nose, while Kit's other stuff is moving out onto No Man's Land objectives and generally getting ready to shoot anything his opponent sticks out. The Stormraven even has Deadly Demise D6, and the Ironstorm has an auto-explode strat. 

I don't feel like I need to say a whole lot about the rest of the units in Kit's list. I did a post rating Dark Angels units which you can go to for my thoughts on the ones in this list. The one unit choice I will note is that it appears there's no unit for Azrael to join, which means he's probably just hanging out in the backfield solo holding the backfield objective and generating CP. The Ironstorm is a CP-thirsty detachment with a lot of good strats, so I see the logic. Clearly it worked for Kit.

Kit had a 6-0 event start. I suppose he may have paired into less skilled players his first few rounds, but by Round 4 I'm sure the opposition was pretty stiff. 1st round he crushed Helhunt Chaos Knights 100-49. 2nd round he battered Pactbound Chaos Marines (2 Defilers) 91-47. 3rd round he buried Mont'ka T'au 90-50. 4th round he had an oddly low scoring 42-33 against more Mont'ka T'au.  5th round he squeaked out a 78-77 against Mechanised Militarum. 6th round he barely fended off more T'au, this time a Kroot Hunting Pack, 89-87.  7th round he gave up a bruising 57-77 against the meta's current bully, Pactbound Chaos Marines whose player took 2nd place. Finally, in the 8th round he handily defended 3rd place from Plague Legion Daemons, 100-69. Congratulations on your performance Kit!

The next best performance out of a Dark Angels list over the weekend was provided by Team France's Paul Neuburger at Cheseaux Buccaneers Open #CBO2026 held in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland, where he went 4-0-1 with his Gladius Task Force and took 3rd out of 45 players. You can see Paul's list on BCP. We'll discuss it below. 

Paul's list
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Captain in Gravis Armour: Artificer Armour
Librarian
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys
Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs: 5 awesome flying swordy boys

Stat-check, the army! The sharp eyed among you may have noticed that the only things in Paul's list that don't have a 4+ Invulnerable save are the Intercessors, his Combi-Lieutenant, his 3 Vengeances (which have a 5+), and Lion Dad with his 3++.

Other than everything having an Invulnerable save one way or another, this is a nice balanced list. Most of its punch is coming in the Fight phase from Lion Dad, the Deathwing Knights, and the Inner Circle Companions likely led by Azrael, but he has a solid shooting element too with the three Land Speeders Vengeance and the Librarian-led Sternies. I think the Librarian is leading the Sternies instead of Azrael because there's a higher ceiling for his Focused Smite power than Azrael's Lion's Wrath, and Azrael's Sustained Hits does more for the Inner Circle Companions than for 5 Sternguard. 

This event used WTC scoring, which is a 0-20 scale, with a 0 indicating getting beat by at least 50 Battle Points, a 20 beating your opponent by at least 50 Battle Points, and every point of deviation representing a 5 Battle Point difference one way or the other.  

1st round Paul crushed Grand Coven Thousand Sons 20-0. 2nd round he fended off Pactbound Chaos Marines 12-8. 3rd round he drubbed Seer Council Aeldari 18-2. 4th round he humbled Mont'ka T'au 14-6. 5th round he had a 10-10 tie against Pactbound Chaos Marines. Woohoo! Undefeated! Well done Paul!

The last list we're going to do the full treatment on today is a Wrath of the Rock list. This list was played by Mon'keighing Around's Joshua Hirschfeld at Bay Area Open 2026 - Warhammer 40k Champs held in Millbrae (a suburb of San Fransisco) California. Joshua went 5-1 with his list and took 12th out of 161 players. You can see Joshua's list on BCP. We'll check it out below. 

How did the tyranid stay married to his wife after so many years? Easy, he Lictor.
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
Chaplain in Terminator Armour
Lieutenant
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Gladiator Lancer
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike

Joshua has the bones of a conventional Wrath list here, with Lion Dad and 2 DWK squads, plus Intercessors and 2 squads of Scouts for the usual reasons. What I find interesting about his list is that he leaned harder into the shooting aspects than we usually see, with a full squad of Eradictors, a full squad of Hellblasters, a Lieutenant, and a Thunderstrike. His list has the ability to deliver a devastating pair of shooting punches with this combination of units. I'd hazard to guess that he'll typically play Relics of the Dark Age on the Eradicators, and put the Hellblasters led by Azrael and the Lieutenant into a unit tagged by the Thunderstrike, so their shooting benefits from +1 To Wound, Sustained Hits, and Lethal Hits. Both of those units stand a pretty good chance of picking up a Defiler in a single activation. Plus, the Hellblasters shouldn't be discounted in the Fight phase either. They get both Lethal and Sustained Hits in the Fight phase too, and every one of them has 3 attacks, plus as long as so much as one of them is alive, Azrael and the Lieutenant buff each other. Plus he's got the Lancer and the Thunderstrike for transport-popping duties if he needs them too. The Thunderstrike can tag something with its Icarus Pod to activate its Thunderstrike ability, freeing it to put its Storm-something missile and las-talon shots into something Joshua is hoping to pop. He wouldn't want to put the Hellblasters or Eradicators into transports unless he absolutely had to because that's a waste of their potential.

1st round Joshua crushed Forgefather's Salamanders 100-42. 2nd round he scored a comfortable 83-69 against Starshatter Necrons. 3rd round he took a bruising 60-79 against Hallowed Martyrs Sororitas. 4th round he bounced back  with a close 82-76 against Freeblade Imperial Knights. 5th round he humbled Avernii Iron Hands 95-62. He ended strong with a solid 96-85 against Eradication Mechanicus. Well done Joshua!

Honorable Mentions

Ryan Burns went 4-1 and took 4th out of 45 players with his Wrath of the Rock list at Heroes of the Mid Table Spring GT 2026 held in British Columbia. 

Jay Seebarun went 4-1 with a 4-0 event start at and took 39th out of 338 players with his Wrath of the Rock list at The Bristol 40K Super-Major held in Stoke Gifford, England.

Lewis Ferrari also went 4-1 at The Bristol 40K Super-Major and took 41st out of 338 with his Gladius Task Force list. 

George Duggins went 4-1 and took 43rd out of 338 at The Bristol 40K Super-Major with his Wrath of the Rock list. 

Andrew Chacon went 4-1 and took 5th out of 29 players with his Wrath of the Rock list at The 11th Hour GT held in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Christopher Stadler went 2-1-2 and took 17th out of 74 with his Wrath of the Rock list at the CTC 2026 Warhammer 40k Championship Open held in Ottawa, Ontario Canada.

Kyle McDonald also went 2-1-2 at the CTC 2026 Warhammer 40k Championship Open with his Wrath of the Rock list, taking 21st place. 

Honored brethren, I salute you!

Statistics

It was a big weekend for events! A whopping 65 players played Dark Angels at GTs or better, playing 351 games and winning 147 of them, scoring an underwhelming 44% win rate. We had 10 X/0-X/1 results and 3 podium placings, but no event winners. 

As usual, Wrath of the Rock was the most popular detachment by far, with 53 players earning a dismal 42% win rate, but accounting for 7 of the X-results and 1 of the podium placings. 

Gladius was the next most played with 6 players, a 60% win rate, 2 X-results, and 1 podium finish.

By one measurement the most successful detachment was the Ironstorm Spearhead, because Kit was the only one who played it to his 7-1 event record (88% win rate) and his 3rd place finish.

One player each played the Stormlance and Company of Hunters, each going 1-3-1 for a 30% win rate.

One player took the Headhunter Task Force and got a 33% win rate.

One player used the Inner Circle Task Force and surprisingly scored a decent 60% win rate.

Finally, one poor sucker took a Librarius Conclave and went 0-5 with it.

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!