Dark Angels Update 6/29/2026
The first list we're looking at is Nicholas Chesnick's Company of Hunters + Dark Ange Arsenal list, with which he went 5-0 and took 2nd out of 34 players out at Hellpit Grand Tournament 2026 in Brunswick, OH. Nick went with Disruption as his Disposition. You can see Nick's list on BCP. We'll look at it below.
Motorized Scooters
Azrael
Lieutenant
Attached: Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys: Entreaty of Perpetual Ardour
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Attached: Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Sammael
Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys: Petition of Stability
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master of Manoeuvre
Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Drop Pod
Land Speeder
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Storm Speeder Hammerstrike
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike
This is not unlike the list I played for my first game of 11th edition, only I took an ICC squad instead of Hellblasters to pair with Azrael and the Lieutenant. I figured I needed the melee threat more than I needed a third plasma unit, but from my experience with a similar Hellblasters brick in a Firestorm, they are not a bad melee threat either. Most of the punch is in Azrael and the Lieutenant, but each Hellblasters has 3 close combat attacks and are getting Sustained and Lethal Hits, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Anyway, this is quite a lot of plasma, with the Hellblasters and Ravenwing Knights potentially able to get up to Strength 10, and the Vengeances to Strength 11, which takes them past some pretty significant break points. Nick's list doesn't specify which unit upgrades his Hellblasters and and one squad of Ravenwing Knights have, but I can infer they have them from the points cost listed, and I'm making educated guesses about who has what. Entreaty of Perpetual Ardour can only be slapped onto Hellblasters, and it gives them hitting on 5's with Snap Shooting, which makes them a pretty significant Overwatch threat. Putting them in a Drop Pod helps ease congestion in Nick's deployment zone and lets him deploy them where he really needs to delete something
In addition to Azrael and the Hellblasters, Nick has a pair of full Ravenwing Knight Squads, two Ravenwing Command Squads, and Sammael. He made kind of interesting choices as to who to put where. For instance, I'd have attached Sammael to the Outriders, and had both Black Knight Squads with Ravenwing Command Squads attached. I suppose the reason he did it the way he did was to have an initial fast melee threat that could potentially tag units in an opponent's deployment zone, or possibly threaten his opponent's Expansion Objective Turn 1, but not send a full 300 points of Ravenwing Knights across the table for his opponent to bite off. However, it makes me kind of think this list may have started life with the Darkflight Pursuit detachment insead of the Dark Age Arsenal detachment, as attaching Sammael to Black Knights in a Darkflight list would give them Ignores Cover. Nick certainly has enough Ravenwing Fly vehicles in his list to make that viable build.
Anyway, Nick's other Black Knight brick has Master of Manoeuvre on the Champion so it counts the turn as 1 higher for coming out of Reserve. That's not quite as spicy as it used to be because Rapid Ingress specifically states it can't be used in the 1st turn now, but it does oblige an opponent to be concerned about the Knight brick appearing in his backfield Turn 2 of he doesn't screen it out. I had that matter at an RTT on Sunday. I'm inclined to think that Petition of Stability would be a better Enhancement for the squad now, because getting a Rapid Fire range of 12" is really spicy on Black Knights.
Speaking of such things, Nick included two Land Speeders Vengeance, one of the new Land Speeders, and one each of the Storm Speeders Thunderstrike and Hammerstrike. Vengeances need no explanation, though I will point out Nick left 15 points on the table and he might as well have given one Petition of Stability just to use those points. Thunderstrikes have some okay anti-Big Thing shooting, but the real utility is giving the rest of his shooting +1 To Wound into a Monster or Vehicle hit by the Thunderstrike. The Hammerstrike has a plethora of Strength 9 D6 damage shots, and strips cover from something hit by one of its' shots, which as you can imagine is very useful to Nick's list. Then there's the little Land Speeder, which is fast, has got some punch, can move after shooting, but is also cheap enough to be used as a utility piece of Nick needs to.
Speaking of utility pieces, Nick is actually running a little light in that regard. He doesn't even have the usual Intercessor Squad to sticky the backfield objective. All he's got is a pair of Outrider Squads. Outriders are fast, and pretty durable for 70 points. They have higher Toughness and more wounds than an Intercessor Squad, and can sticky an objective with the Path of Blood stratagem.
Nick's nonstop ride on the win train started with a 1st round clash with Huron's Marauders Chaos Space Marines, Disruption vs Disruption, where he scored a comfortable 67-56. 2nd round he smashed a T'au Red Cad + AA Cad (Priority Assets dispo) list 94-48. 3rd round brought more T'au, this time Kauyon+EP Cad (Priority Assets dispo), which he pummeled 61-18. 4th round he eked out an 89-84 win against Pan Wo+Pha Arm Necrons (Purge). Finally, he had another close win, 69-64 against a Salamanders Firestorm with a Librarius Conclave doing a ride-along (Purge). Woo 5-0! Well done Nick!
The other list we're covering this week was played by Chris Lewis at the WH40K SWC: Qualifier 4 - June held in Newport, Wales. Chris used a Darkflight Pursuit + Fulguris Task Force + Librarius Conclave list, going with Reconnaissance Disposition, went 4-1, and placed 5th out of 30 players. Herer's Chris' list on BCP. We'll discuss it below.
Ravenwing Azrael - Warlord Apothecary Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Librarian: Celerity Apothecary Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys Land Speeder Land Speeder Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Storm Speeder Hammerstrike Storm Speeder Thunderstrike Storm Speeder Thunderstrike
Well, if ever there was a list that epitomized the principle of Fast Gun Good, this is it. Chris' list has a lot of fast gun platforms, with the two Inner Circle Companion squads to give it a melee threat, and the Intercessors and a pair of Scout Squads for the usual utility purposes.
All of the units in this list should be pretty familiar to everybody, so I'd like to address Chris' choices of detachments and how their rules synergize with each other. For starters, the Fulguris' detachment ability allows Chris to hold all his Storm Speeders and the smaller Land Speeders in Deep Strike Reserve and Ingress them Turn 1, which is apt to give him a pretty solid alpha strike, particularly now that the Hammerstrike and Land Speeders can Deep Strike within Melta range. The Fulguris gives Chris access to some good stratagems, giving him a reactive move if a unit gets within 8" of one of his Speeder units, a return to Reserve, and +6" to a unit's Detection range for one Speeder's activation. None of these strats can be used on the Vengeances though, as the detachment rule defines the units that can exploit it's abilities very specifically as vanilla Land Speeders and the Storm Speeder variants. It would have been nice if it had keyworded Astartes Fly vehicles instead, but then someone would be using it to Ingress a Storm Raven Turn 1, which the developers probably wanted to prevent.
Now let's talk about Darkflight Pursuit. The detachment rule grants all Ravenwing Fly units Ignores Cover, which does stretch to include the Codex: Space Marine units as they get granted the Ravenwing Keyword in a Dark Angels army. That's a powerful ability all on its own. The detachment also has a hell of an enhancement for Land Speeders Vengeance - Nightforged Battery, granting them the ability to reroll the number of attacks on their plasma storm batteries and to reroll Hazard rolls. That makes their output a lot more consistent and makes them a lot less likely to hurt themselves. For strats, you can give a Speeder Stealth, give a just-shot Speeder a D3+3 reactive move, or give enemy units within 6" of a Ravenwing Fly unit +3" Detection range for the rest of the phase. That last one could be triggered by a Land Speeder following a Deep Strike move, because after it shoots it can take it's D3+3" move and spot for all the rest of the units that haven't shot yet. Good times.
Finally there's the Librarius Task Force. Chris might have gone with Dark Age Arsenal to bump the strength of his Vengeances' plasma storm batteries, or maybe Interrogation Conclave if only for that sweet Purge The Foe disposition, but he chose Librarius and one single solitary Librarian to use it with. The main reason he did so appears to be to give himself and Advance and Charge threat by giving the Librarian the Celerity enhancement, which also grants Fall Back and Charge if he's in the Biomancy discipline. He's likely to want to be in Biomancy most of the time, as it grants the attached unit +2 Movement, though if he doesn't need the movement, Divination is grants some sweet reroll 1's to Hit and to Wound, and Telepathy is potentially handy if an opponent is banking on debuffs.
One last thing about the list: Chris, if you happen to read this, I'd like to hear about how attaching Apothecaries to the squads worked for you. With the double-debuff enemy shooting has at the ICCs, adding Apothecaries seems like it has the potential to make ICCs absurdly durable. I chose a Lieutenant for my Azrael+ICC unit so they can Fall Back and Charge, but I'm tempted to use an Apothecary instead so I have three units that grow back squad members. Also, with the controlling player activating first in the Fight phase now, being able to Fall Back and Charge is a little less important.
Chris took his loss in the 1st round, a tight 68-73 against Saga of the Great Wolf+Veterans of the Fang Space Wolves with the Take and Hold dispo. 2nd round he bounced back, slapping down Crusher+Norn Talons Tyranids with Purge dispo 100-67. 3rd round he took a close 85-76 against Lions+Moritoi Custodes with Purge dispo. 4th round he scored a comfortable 95-80 against Dread+Taktikal Orks with Purge dispo. Finally in the 5th round he drubbed Conceited Emperor's Children (Purge) 87-64. Well done Chris!
Statistics
Oh boy, if this is a glimpse of what's to come, it's going to be a wild edition. There were 13 players who played 60 games and won 24 of them, for an underwhelming 40% win rate. There were 2 X/0-X/1 results with one of those being a podium finish.
Out of those 13 players, the only detachment combo that repeated was the Unforgiven Task Force plus Dark Age Arsenal, with 3 players.
The most-used single detachment was Dark Age Arsenal, which was used in 6 lists.
After that, Librarius Conclave was used in 5 lists.
Of our legacy unique detachments, the most used was the UTF (4 lists). The Inner Circle Task Force showed up in 2 lists. Wrath was only used by 1 player, as was Company of Hunters.
Here's a table of all the detachments and dispositions that got used.
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. I hope we all enjoy 11th edition now that we're fully immersed in it. Try new things, there's all kinds of wacky combos to experiment with now! May your games be fun and victorious! For the Lion!
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