Dark Angels Update 7/20/2026

 Greetings honored battle brethren! There were three big events over the weekend, which between them and the more normal sized events attracted 53 Dark Angels players! That crop of players gave me an embarrassment of riches to draw from, including a win at the second biggest event of the weekend! I'm excited to bring this news to all of you!

The top event of the week belongs to Innes Wilson, who combined an Inner Circle Task Force and a Librarius Conclave (Priority Assets dispo) and used it to go 7-0 and take 1st out of 231 players at The Endinburgh 40K Super Major held in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can see Innes' list on BCP. Let's take a look at it below!

4+ FNP Vs PsyOps Keyword
Azrael - Warlord
Lieutenant
    Attached: Intercessor Squad: 10 bolter boys
Librarian in Terminator Armour: Temporal Corridor
    Attached: Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Librarian in Terminator Armour: Celerity
    Attached: Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Librarian
    Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Librarian: Fusillade
    Attached: Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Land Speeder
Land Speeder
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

Man, I have to keep a tab open to the Librarius Conclave all the time, it just keeps popping up! Innes is exploiting synergies between the Lib Con and the Inner Circle Task Force to make his list sing. Just a reminder for players who haven't looked at the ICTF in a while: the detachment rule gives all Deathwing Infantry units +1 to Wound against opponents on a Vowed objective, which can either be one you control or one or more you don't control. That was pretty marginal in 10th edition when the objectives tended to be out in the open, but now they're the terrain features that opponents are naturally going to want their units to be in for multiple reasons. That's pretty strong now. 

To see how this works out for Innes, we need look no further than his Intercessor Squad. I saw he attached Azrael and a Lieutenant to 10 Intercessors and wondered what the heck he was doing. Then I put the pieces together. Attaching Azrael gives the unit the Deathwing keyword, which gives him 40 shots that will wound anything in the game on 5's, plus Lethal and Sustained Hits from the characters. That'll leave a mark on anything, and be particularly good for dealing with massed Infantry. With Orks being really strong at the moment, that is an important consideration. 

The same thinking went into his choice of Deathwing Knights. Conventional wisdom has that maces are better than swords, but if you're getting +1 to Wound from the detachment rule, the only targets sword Knights won't be better than mace Knights into would be Toughness 12 units, and if he has to pick up one of those, he's got the Sternguard with the Fusillade Librarian to deal with it (man, Fusillade is so going up from 20 points in the balance pass!). Also, Terminator Librarians give Sustained Hits, so having swords gives Innes more opportunities to roll those 6's. Plus, Temporal Corridor gives him the option to uppy-downy one squad of Knights, while Celerity gives the other Advance and Charge, and potentially Fall Back and Charge as well. 

Actually, as I'm thinking about it, Innes potentially has Sustained Hits on all of his most important units. Azrael and the Terminator Librarians hand it out inherently, the Fusillade Librarian gives it out while in the Pyromancy discipline, and the Inner Circle Companions can get it with their Sweep profile. He has a list a horde player would not want to play into!

It also shouldn't be ignored that any opponent wanting to degrade Innes' striking power has to chew through an abundance of 4+ Invulnerable Saves, plus also widespread 4+ Feel No Pains against Psychic attacks. Thousand Sons are leaving a pretty big dent in the meta at the moment, so having an inherent advantage against them is to the good. I mean, that's what Innes named his list for after all!

Playing Priority Assets, Innes needs action monkeys, so he made sure to have a robust selection of them. The Combi-Lieutenant makes an appearance, as do two Scout Squads, two Land Speeders, and an ATV. I suspect Innes probably starts his Intercessors on his backfield objective to auto-sticky it in his first Command Phase, then probably leaves the ATV there just to keep an opponent from Deep Striking onto it until his opponent has committed his reserves.

Innes swept all before him to take the top slot! 1st round he pummeled Chaos Marines (Cabal of Chaos; Fellhammer Siege-host; T&H) 100-63. 2nd round he handed out a 100-66 drubbing to Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs; Priority). 3rd round he crushed T'au (Mont'ka; Purge) 100-52. 4th round he humbled Adeptus Custodes (Lions of the Emperor; Might of the Moritoi; Purge) 100-63. 5th round he scored a solid 99-78 against Thousand Sons Hexwarp Thrallband; Sekhetar Cohort; T&H). 6th round he spanked Ultramarines (Lib Con, Reclamation Force; T&H) 100-50. 7th round he scored a comfortable 99-84 against Chaos Daemons (Plague Legion; Warptide; T&H). Undefeated, woohoo! I just want to point out that not only did Innes go undefeated, he could have only possibly scored 3 more battle points total. It doesn't get much more decisive than that!

We have not one, but two winning lists to view today! Our second 1st place list belongs to Kostantinos Argyros, who combined the Company of Hunters and the Darkflight Pursuit (Recon dispo) to go 5-0 and chase down his victory over 64 other players at the Athens Open-Summer Edition. Here's Kostantinos' list on BCP. We'll check it out below.

Author's note: if you click on the link, it says the list belongs to Luka Dragacevic. I don't have an explanation for that. There is not a Luka Dragacevic in the roster, nor anyone with either of those names separately. I'm just going to continue to attribute the list to Kostaninos, and if that's not accurate it's because the information on BCP was unclear.

Kostantino's list
Sammael - Warlord
    Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
    Attached: Outrider Squad: 6 choppy biker boys
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master of Manoeuvre
    Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master-crafted Weapon
    Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon
Land Speeder
Land Speeder
Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery
Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery
Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike

Full disclosure: it was not clear from Kostantinos' list which characters were attached to which squads, so I made assumptions based on what I would do. In this case I'd attach Samamel to Black Knights to grant their shooting Ignores Cover, and the Recon Hunter RWCS to the Outriders to run 36 potentially-regenerating wounds up the opponent's nose and force them to deal with that while the rest of my army stages and picks off whatever he's sent out into No Man's Land. 

Kostantinos has really leaned into the Fast Gun Good principle with this list, spending the vast majority of his points on high speed shooting platforms. This is not to say his list is hopeless in the Fight phase. Ravenwing Black Knight bricks can be surprisingly efficient into bigger targets. The targets they tend to struggle with in the Fight phase are tough Infantry our Mounted units, but with their plasma talons (not to mention the Vengeances' plasma storm batteries), any charges they make into those units should just be mopping up a last few stragglers, not an effort to take down an intact unit. 

In addition to maxed plasma talons and maxed plasma storm batteries, Kostantinos included a pair of Land Speeders and a Storm Speeder Thunderstrike. The Speeders are handy little shooting platforms, but I expect they're in the list more to be utility units than striking units, just with some decent shooting output if Kostantinos needs it. The Thunderstrike is an important tech piece for anyone using a lot of mid-strength shooting, granting +1 to Wound against a Monster or Vehicle, and possibly doing a bit of damage itself. 

For dedicated utility units, Kostantinos just has the Combi-Lieutenant and a squad of Scouts. I expect he forward-deploys the Combi-Lieutenant to hold open a line of advance and puts the Scouts on his backfield objective to keep Deep Strikers off it till they're committed, then uppy-downys them for scoring purposes. 

WTC scoring incoming! A reminder how it works: 10-10 is a tie. 11-9 is a win by 5 points. 20-0 is a win by at least 50 points. I'm sure you can figure it out from that.

1st round Kostantinos delivered a 20-0 hiding to Adeptus Custodes (Lions; MoM; Purge). 2nd round he delivered a similar 20-0 spanking to Necrons (Obeisance Phalanx; Skyshroud Spearhead; Recon). Keeping up the pattern, 3rd round he orchestrated a 20-0 massacre of Orks (Dread Mob; Taktikal Brigade; Purge). He finally had a close 11-9 game in the 4th round against Salamanders (Forgefather's Seekers; Librarius Conclave; Recon). He didn't let that rattle him though, butchering Mont'ka T'au (Purge) 20-0. He closed out his undefeated streak going 14-6 against Chaos Marines (Huron's Marauders; Disruption). Congratulations Kostantinos!

For my next list, I had to choose between two Unforgiven Task Force+Librarius Conclave lists that both placed at their respective events. Both of them have some interesting elements to them. After some consideration, I'm picking the list that belongs to Murat Can Cobanoglu, who went 5-1 and took 3rd out of 82 players at Hee Yaw 2026 held in Killeen, TX (which is actually reasonably close to Austin, Dallas, and Houston). You can see Murat's list on BCP. We'll check it out below. 

Playing Thousand Sons with Dark Angels models Librarian in Terminator Armour Ancient in Terminator Armour: Pennant of Remembrance     Attached: Deathwing Knight: 5 awesome chonky macey boys  Librarian in Terminator Armour: Celerity Ancient in Terminator Armour     Attached: Deathwing Knight: 5 awesome chonky macey boys   Librarian in Terminator Armour: Temporal Corridor Ancient in Terminator Armour Attached: Deathwing Knight: 5 awesome chonky macey boys  Librarian: Fusillade     Attached: Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys Lieutenant with Combi-weapon Land Speeder Repulsor Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

Let me start off by noting Murat chose the Take & Hold disposition, and this list is certainly geared towards it. Three units of Deathwing Knights are certainly going to be challenging to shift off objectives, and with the attached Ancients and the UTC detachment rule they're going to be hard to out-OC on objectives too. They don't have the raw staying power of the same units in a Wrath of the Rock list, but the Librarius detachment rule lets Murat dial up the defense or offense depending on which is more important per turn. If you haven't already, I highly advise you look up the Lib Con's detachment rule.

All of the big units have logical enhancements. One of the Ancients has the Pennant of Remembrance for that Feel No Pain. One of the Termie Librarians has Celerity for the Advance+Charge, and another has Temporal Corridor so Murat can uppy-downy them. The Librarian with the Sternguard has Fusillade of course, and Murat provided them with a Repulsor to get them where he needs them faster and more safely, and also play re-embarkation shenanigans if an opponent thinks he's going to pick up the Sternies by charging them. The Repulsor should be able to pop transports too, so Murat can have his Deathwing Knights assault what comes out of them. 

Murat's list is a little light on utility units, but he doesn't need them too badly because none of the Take & Hold primaries require doing actions. He does have the usual Combi-Lieutenant, a Land Speeder, a squad of Scouts, and a squad of heavy bolter Eradicators. I'm inclined to wonder if the Eradicators are his backfield objective holders. They're cheap, at Toughness 6 with 3 wounds each they'd take some shifting, and any light units that land in Murat's backfield will soon know what trouble is if those things get a chance to shoot at them. 

Hm. Maybe we should all be using heavy bolter Eradicators as our backfield objective holders. 

Murat had a strong 1st round, handing out a 100-73 drubbing to Bringers of Flame Sororitas (Purge). He scored a solid 100-81 against DF+GWL Knights (Priority) in the 2nd round. 3rd round he improved his game into that flavor of Knights considerably (Purge dispo this time), crushing them 98-31. 4th round he eked out a tight 94-92 against Forgefather/Lib Con Salamanders (Recon dispo, surprisingly). 5th round he had a close 75-66 against Exhibition/Skysplinter Drukhari (Recon). 6th round he took his loss sadly, a bruising 64-92 against Cabal/Fellhammer Chaos Marines (Take & Hold). The last game may have been a disappointment, but Murat can hold his head high on the 5-0 event start and taking 3rd. Well done Murat!

Honorable Mentions

The other UTF/Lib Con list that I considered reviewing belongs to Mike Devlin, who went 5-0 and took 2nd out of 40 players at Aetherforce Gaming Summer Siege Warhammer 40k GT in New Carlisle, OH. Here's Mike's list on BCP. I'm not clear on which disposition he chose, but you'd think if you're playing UTF you're playing Take & Hold.

Tim Neal went 4-0-1 and took 2nd out of 47 at Capital Clash - Da Revolushun! held in Holt (a suburb of Canberra), Australia with a Gladius Task Force (Priority). Here's Tim's list on BCP. 

Paul Clifton went 4-1 and took 20th out of 231 players at The Edinburgh 40K Super Major with his Company of Hunters/Interrogation Conclave list (Purge). Here's Paul's list on BCP. Check it out, it's literally all bikes!

Joseph Rexer went 4-1 and took 14th out of 82 players at Hee Yaw 2026 with his Ironstorm/Darkflight list (Purge). Here's Joseph's list on BCP. 

Adam Landucci went 4-2 and took 20th out of 133 players at Palm Springs Classic - 40k GT with his UTF/Lib Con list (T&H).

David Labovitch went 4-2 and took 23rd at Palm Springs with his UTF/Darkflight list (Recon).

Lilian Gentil went 4-2 and took 31st at Palm Springs with her Vanguard/Lib Con list (Recon). 

Brethren, I salute you!

Statistics

As previously mentioned, it was a big weekend. 54 players played 313 games and won 159 of them, earning a 52% win rate. We had 7 X/0-X/1 results, 5 podium finishes, and 2 event wins!

The most popular single detachment was the Company of Hunters, with 14 players choosing to combo it up with a one DP detachment. The win rate for CoH players was 52%, also accounting for 2 X-results and one event win. The most popular detachment to combo it with was Darkflight Pursuit. The CoH/Darkflight win rate was 58%.

Surprisingly, the most played detachment scheme was Wrath of the Rock, with 12 players. The win rate was a respectable 50%, but there were no X-results.

Librarius Conclave seems to be the sauce that makes our other Dark Angels supplement detachments sing. Unforgiven Task Force + Lib Con scored a 64% win rate and 2 podium finishes out of 4 players. Inner Circle Task Force+Lib Con scored a 52% win rate and an event win out of 5 players.

Only 5 players didn't use any Dark Angels detachments at all, with only an additional 2 using a vanilla 2-point detachment.

That, honored battle brethren, is what I have for you.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. Until next week my brethren. May your games be fun and victorious. For the Lion!