Dark Angels Update 8/31/2026

 Greetings honored battle brethren! Another weekend full of exciting 40K action has passed, bringing a pleasant abundance of well-performing lists. I'm here to review my pick of them to keep you informed about what's doing well and hopefully why. 

The bulk of the high-scoring lists were again Company of Hunters + Darkflight Pursuit (Recon), which I'm sure comes as no surprise. I'm going to start us off with Scott McCutcheon's list, with which he went 5-0 and took 1st out of 30 players at the KTC Summer GT held in Hurlford, Scotland. I picked Scott's list because he appears to have take the netlist that emerged as the best overall Dark Angels list and adapted it to Sammy and Recon Hunter each going up 10 points, so it seems likely to be the new netlist for a while. Let's check it out!

Speeders goo fast.

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Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
    Attached: Sternguard Veteran Squad: 5 awesome bolter boys
Sammael
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
    Attached: Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy 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
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike

No big surprises here. The main difference seems to be the removal of the Techmarine from the pre-nerf list, giving Scott a few more points to spend, so the Assault Intercessors got upgraded to Sternies.

Just to briefly touch on the virtues of the list, it starts with a pretty significant early-turn threat with Sammy's unit. That unit can potentially cross 40" of table in the first turn and crash into something with 12 Damage 3 Attacks (half of those with Sustained 2!) plus a pile of Damage 2 attacks, all with Lance. That's apt to pick up anything short of a Questoris Knight, and even a Knight player is going to sweat having that unit plow into one of their big boys. 

Sammy's unit is just the start of the melee threat. Following them up are Lion Dad and the squad of Deathwing Knights. Scott went with sword Knights because he has Lance on tap, so he might as well have more attacks from them. Plus if they're close to Lion Dad, they don't need Oath, which frees it up for whatever the Vengeances are shooting at.

Speaking of the Vengeances, those are obviously the big ranged threat of the list. The profile of the plasma storm battery speaks for itself. It's a threat to anything in the game all by itself, and it's greatly enhanced by the Nightforged Battery enhancement, letting Scott reroll the number of shots and the Hazard rolls, giving it consistently higher damage output and making it unlikely to damage itself.  There's also the Thunderstrike to enhance their ability to wound tougher targets, and sometimes the Thunderstrike even does some damage on its own - it does have 3 Damage D6+1 shots, that hit on 2's because...reasons, I guess.

Utility units are Intercessors, Scouts, and the Land Speeders, who also pack some pretty decent firepower on their own, plus Azrael and the Sternies, who I think likely hold the expansion objective and can do a pretty good job of killing anything that's likely to slip into the backfield through movement or Reserves shenanigans. 

Scott enjoyed a nonstop ride on the win train! 1st round he pummeled Ret Cad (Purge) T'au 96-68. 2nd round he trounced Hu Ma CSM (Purge) 98-51. 3rd round he crushed Changehost+RoR (T&H) Thousand Sons 95-50. 4th round he massacred Con Eng+MortHam (Purge) Death Guard 100-46. He wrapped up his streak by humbling GAF+Venge Ho (Purge) Black Templars 100-60. Way to go Scott!

The next list I'd like to bring to your attention belongs to Team Spain's Borja FM, whose CoH+Darkflight (Recon) list arguably performed better than Scott's, because Borja's list is currently in 2nd place at the La Voz Open 2026 held in Lugo, Spain with 147 players. I say currently because it appears some championship brackets are still to be played (or entered). Regardless, Borja's list currently is listed as going 7-0, which is really good by anyone's measure. Let's check his list out!

Captain Bora's flying circus of astonishingly unnerfed stuff (honestly GW wtf)

#FreePalestine 🇵🇸
Lion Dad - Warlord
Azrael
    Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 3 spooky awesome swordy boys
Sammael
    Attached: Ravenwing Knights: 3 awesome plasma biker boys
Incursor Squad: 5 spotty boys
Incursor Squad: 5 spotty boys
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Invader ATV: melta buggy
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
Vindicator

Borja decided to lean harder into shooting with his list. He did without the typical Sammy brick and the Deathwing Knights, and instead included a Vindicator, a pair of Incursor Squads, and a pair of Invader ATVs. The Vindicator is a big stick all by itself, potentially able to inflict up to 9 Strength 14 AP -3 Damage D6 shots, not counting the 1-shot HK missile. It's also a not-inconsequential chore to pick up, being Toughness 11 with 11 Wounds and a 2+ save. They're on the Firstborn chopping block, going to Legends when 11th edition Codex Space Marines drops, so maybe Borja figured he'd have one last hurrah with his.

The Incursor squads' primary role is to enhance the list's shooting, granting +1 to Hit against a target each, but they're not bad in the Fight phase against lighter units, and are cheap enough to assign to scoring tasks when needed. The ATVs are primarily cheap scoring units, and you can think of each one as freeing up a Land Speeder to shoot instead of do actions, but they do carry multimeltas, which can potentially do a lot of damage as well. 

Borja assigned a 3-man unit of Inner Circle Companions to Azrael, which I'm not sure is better than the Assault Intercessors. They hit harder, but have less OC and 1 less wound collectively. They do seem to have performed well for Borja though. I'm puzzled by having Sammy assigned to a unit of 3 Ravenwing Knights. Usually people attach him to Outriders for the damage boost. The Ravenwing Knights instead grant Anti Big Thing 4+ when they charge, and maybe that was the point, to send in Sammy and fish for 6's with his Sustained 2 sword and land a bunch of wounds on a target without having to spend the CP for Lance. 

Borja's nonstop ride on the win train was longer than Scott's. 1st round he trounced Liberator (T&H) Blood Angels 100-45. 2nd round he battered Bio Brood+Xenocult (Recon) GSC 100-52. Round 3 he squeaked out a 93-91 win against Hyper+Skyshroud (Recon) Necrons. 4th round he hammered Vanguard+Ambush (Recon) Tyranids 92-54. 5th round he drubbed DBH+Rollin' (Purge) Orks 100-67. 6th round he obliterated CoE+FH (Recon) Emperor's Children 100-29. 7th round the same configuration of Necrons had another go, but did worse, suffering a 100-61 trouncing. Well done Borja!

The last list we'll look at today is Danny Evison's Wrath of the Rock (Priority) list, with which he went 4-1-1 and took 8th out of 277 players at The MANCHESTER 40k SUPER-MAJOR - SUMMER. It's nice to see something different perform well. Let's check out the list!

Good job on 11th josh, it's actually not shit. Let's have some fun

Chonky tonk
Lion Dad - Warlord
Ancient in Terminator Armour: Deathwing Assault
    Attached: Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Ancient in Terminator Armour: Ancient Weapons
Chaplain in Terminator Armour
    Attached: Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Azrael
    Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Incursor Squad: 5 spotty boys
Incursor Squad: 5 spotty boys
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Storm Speeder Thunderstrike

The first half of the list feels like a pretty classic Wrath of the Rock list, with Lion Dad, a pair of Deathwing Knight squads, and Azrael with a squad of ICCs. Danny went with some character support for his DWKs, assigning each an Ancient, plus a Chaplain for the one squad. The Ancients appear to be attached to the squads mainly for the OC and to be caddies for enhancements, because their Keep the Banner High ability really doesn't seem like it will do much for Deathwing Knights, but OC is important. Parking 12 OC on an objective stands a good chance of flipping it from most opposition, and removing Wrath DWKs is a real nuisance. I'm a little puzzled by the inclusion of the Chaplain to macey boy Knights, but he does give that Feel No Pain against Mortals, and plus I suppose not everything the DWKs are going to punch will be a Monster or Vehicle.

For fire support, Danny has the same base of Vengeances and a Thunderstrike that the other lists have, which I suppose says something about their inherent value, because Wrath doesn't do much for them. I found myself wondering why Danny didn't allocate the points to give them the Nightforged Battery upgrades before remembering Wrath is a 3 DP detachment. Instead, he's got a pair of Incursor Squads to buff their shooting, which is going to be more important because speeders' shooting will take the Cover debuff in this list. Even with all of that, they're still an awesome firebase that we're lucky to have access to.

I am puzzled by the lack of utility units in this list. Besides the Incursors, there's nothing that seems like a cheap unit that can go stand in a particular place to score points. It doesn't even seem to have a dedicated backfield objective holder. The lack doesn't seem to have hurt Danny too bad though.

Danny's 1st round, he went up against another Dark Angels list, this one UTF+Lib Con (T&H), and prevailed 99-68. 2nd round he drubbed Kab Ag+Real Raid Drukhari 94-64. 3rd round he pummeled Hallowed Sororitas 90-56. 4th round he scored a close 96-92 against Lions+MoM (T&H) Custodes. 5th round he got that rarest of results, a draw - 86-86 against Flame+Condemn Sororitas (Priority). Alas, he only missed moving on the 7th round by 2 points, losing in the 6th round 78-80 against GWL+Forgepack Knights. Nonetheless, scoring in the top 10 at an event with over 200 players is a very impressive achievement. Well done Danny!

Honorable Mentions

Kyle McCord went 5-0 and placed 2nd out of 34 with his Wrath of the Rock (Priority) list at Turbulent Games Warhammer 40K GT @Sioux City Geek Con.

Iván TheDoctor went 4-1 and placed 21st out of 147 with his CoH+Darkflight (Recon) list at La Voz Open 2026

Gabriel Baughman went 5-0 and placed 2nd out of 99 with his CoH+Darkflight (Recon) list at Arch City GT 5.

Jerry Zhang went 5-0 and placed 1st out of 42 players with his CoH+Darkflight (Recon) list at the China Warhammer City Tournament 2026 Summer.

Benjamin Frederiksen went 4-1 and placed 5th out of 37 players with his CoH+Darkflight (Recon) list at the Beat The Heat 40k GT. 

桑尼 S went 4-1 and placed 9th out of 42 at the China Warhammer City Tournament 2026 Summer. BCP doesn't have a submitted list, but as the dispo is Recon, I'm guessing CoH+Darkflight.

Brethren, I salute you!

Statistics

The overall numbers were quite good, with 44 players playing 234 games and winning 127 of them, resulting in a 55% win rate, 9 X/0-X/1 results, 7 podium placements, and 2 event wins. 

Company of Hunters + Darkflight (Recon) propped up the numbers, with 17 players scoring a 68% win rate and bringing in 6 of the X-results, 5 of the podium placements, and the 2 event wins. 

With the CoH+Darkflight lists taken out of the results, the DA win rate drops to a pretty mediocre 47%

Wrath of the Rock did pretty well on its own though, with 12 players who scored a 52% win rate and earned 2 X-results/podium finishes. 

No other detachment setup had more than 3 players.

That, honored battle brethren, is what I have for you. It looks like we're going to be pretty consistent with what we have now till the new Codex: Space Marines drops. It'll be interesting to see how that changes things. 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!