Dark Angels Update 9/21/2026
Hands down the most successful Dark Angels list of the weekend was Josh Pope's Company of Hunters + Darkflight Pursuit (Recon) list, with which he went 6-0 and placed 2nd out of 85 players at Roll for Damage GT - Presented by Dragon's Lair. Let's check out his list!
DA hunters r4d
Sammael - Warlord
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Command Squad
Attached: Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Techmarine
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Invader ATV: melta buggy
Land Speeder
Land Speeder
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Land Speeder Vengeance
Ravenwing Darkshroud
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Josh, did you just go undefeated at a pretty big event with 27 Ravenwing Knights? That makes me so happy! A complaint I have about the current state of Company of Hunters is that it's great for non-Ravenwing units, but it does very little to help our most Ravenwingy of Ravenwing units. That's led to our most iconic mounted unit, Ravenwing Knights, taking a backseat to Lion Dad, Deathwing Knights, and Land Speeders Vengeance. It's nice to see a high-performing list where they take front-and-center.
I really like Ravenwing Knights, but I freely admit they're a unit that has a lower floor than, say, Deathwing Knights. It's possible to really blunder with Deathwing Knights and still potentially scam opponents with their -1 Damage and 4++ save, but Ravenwing Knights are a lot more squishy. However, they're also a lot faster, have a higher damage ceiling, and are a two-phase unit instead of a one-phase unit. They can shoot their plasma talons at one unit, evaporate it (hopefully), and then charge another unit and do a bunch of Dev Wounds to it if it's a Monster or Vehicle. They also have Grenades, which frequently surprises other players for some reason. They're not going to tank damage like Deathwing Knights, but they do have an Invulnerable save, so they'll never roll lower than a 5+ save. And, in a Company of Hunters, they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. They can freely Advance or Fall Back and shoot and charge. The only thing they can't do after an Advance/Fall Back is do actions.
Recon lists require action monkeys, and Josh gave himself a pretty generous helping of them. He's got a Techmarine, a pair of Outrider Squads, a pair of ATVs, a pair of Land Speeders, a Scout Squad, and a Ravenwing Darkshroud. The Land Speeders, and to a lesser extent the ATVs, can double as striking units, swarming something with multimeltas, but their primary utility is being cheap fast units that can run around the board occupying places and doing actions. The Techmarine likely sits on the natural expansion objective with a vehicle nearby to grant him Lone Op. The Scouts will generally forward-deploy to keep opponents from screening out the lane of advance Sammael and his brick are going to use to come screaming in and run right up the other guy's nose, obliging him to fight his way out of his own deployment zone. Finally the Darkshroud is a unit I kind of wish I had 3 of right now - it's a 70 point Toughness 8, 10 Wound unit with a 14" move, Fly, and it gives a Stealth aura just by existing in a space. Kudos to Josh for having 4 of the Vengeance/Darkshroud hull. I wish I'd bought more back when they were underwhelming. Which, to be fair, was most of their existence.
Josh started his event off with a bang, crushing Invasion Nids (T&H) 100-40. 2nd round he massacred Excess+Frenzied Emperor's Children (Recon) 100-35. 3rd round he battered Berzerker World Eaters (Purge) 100-55. 4th round he hammered Synaptic+Norn Queen Nids 100-41. 5th round he buried Lions Custodes 100-20 (which is nuts!). 6th round someone finally put a scare into him with Flame+Chorus Sororitas (Priority), but he still squeaked out a 79-76 win. Undefeated! Woohoo! Way to go Josh!
The second list I'd like to review also came from Roll for Damage GT - Presented by Dragon's Lair. In this case, Chen Gao brought an Unforgiven Task Force+Darkflight Pursuit (T&H) list and used it to go 5-1 and take 8th out of 85 players. Let's check out his list.
unforgiven Lion Dad - Warlord Azrael Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 3 spooky awesome swordy boys Librarian Attached: Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys Sammael Attached: Outrider Squad: 3 choppy biker boys Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys Land Speeder Lnad Speeder Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery Land Speeder Vengeance: Nightforged Battery Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
I think this list is built to execute a pretty simple game plan. One Scout Squad parks itself on the backfield objective. Azrael and his unit march up to sit on the natural expansion objective. That unit is just powerful enough to repel any small fast skirmishing unit without much difficulty, and presumably opponents will be too busy elsewhere to dedicate enough force to kick them off. Sammy's unit rushes forward to contest the opponent's expansion objective early, and the Librarian's ICCs march up the board to contest it later. Meanwhile, Lion Dad and the pair of Deathwing Knight squads declare that they own the center of the board and dare anything in the opponent's army to prove them wrong. Anything that does runs afoul of being shot up by the various Land Speeders in addition to being punched to death by Lion Dad and his Deathwing Knights.
Gao is assisted in this game plan by the UTC's detachment rule. His units don't lose OC to Battle-shock, and he can electively give any one unit +1 OC to cement their claim to an objective. I think his game plan relies on three stratagems: Unbreakable Lines to give anything charging one of his units a flat -1 To Wound in the subsequent Fight phase, Intractable to allow the chosen unit to Shoot or likely more importantly Charge after making a Fall Back move, and the ever-popular Armor of Contempt. It's possible he may occasionally use Fire Discipline to give one of his Vengeances Assault so they can Advance to get an angle, and maybe very occasionally give something Lethal Hits with Unforgiven Fury, but the ICCs already have it, the Knights are macey boys who have Anti-Big Thing 4+ and don't need it, and Lion Dad already has it, though I suppose Gao could use it on him when he chooses to use the Sweep Profile for the hilarity of having both Sustained 1 and Lethals on his 16 attacks.
The plan worked pretty well for Gao most of the event. 1st round he murdered Arkifane+Murdertalon Chaos Marines (Priority) 100-22. 2nd round sadly he took a punishing 45-100 loss against Forgefather's+Lib Con (Priority) Salamanders. 3rd round he got his mojo back, pummeling Vengeful+Godhammer Black Templars 100-65. 4th round he crushed Infernal Chaos Knights (Priority) 94-46. 5th round he squeaked out an 87-86 win against GWL+Questor Imperial Knights (T&H). 6th round he ended with a comfortable 87-70 against Traitoris+Iconoclast Chaos Knights (T&H). Well done Gao!
The last list I'm going to review is Alexis Bonnin's Wrath of the Rock (Priority) list, which went 3-1-1 and took 14th out of 65 at Open des 3 Frontières. Let's check it out!
1 wrath vfinale Lion Dad - Warlord Azrael Attached: Inner Circle Companion: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys Heavy Intercessor Squad: 5 chonky bolter boys Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys Land Raider Redeemer Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads Vindicator Vindicator
I think this is another pretty straightforward list. It's based around of difficult-to-wound units (either because of the detachment rule or the datasheet) with either 2+ Armor saves or 4+ Invulnerable saves (or both) that have strong datasheets. Part of the motivation may have been to have one last hurrah with the Vindicators, which are going to Legends in a matter of days.
Alexis can make the center of the board very hostile territory with these units. Lion Dad, 10 Deathwing Knights, plus Azrael and 6 Inner Circle Companions are perfectly capable of punching to death anything in the game, and will always be making a pretty good save. The pair of Vindicators can come up right along with them and don't care if something touches them or not. They will dish out casino cannon death to whatever they can can draw a bead on.
The Redeemer is an interesting addition. It's a strong datasheet all on its own, but there are no special synergies with Wrath or anything else in the list. My thought is maybe it's transporting a squad of Deathwing Knights forward to create problems for opponents on their expansion objective. Alexis also made the interesting choice to include a squad of Heavy Intercessors, which is unusual to say the least. As a datasheet, they're kind of underwhelming. A small squad of heavy bolter Eradicators seems like it would have been a better choice. However, the unit is OC 10, so I suppose they can hold an expansion objective and be a nuisance to shift, and maybe every once in a while they get Relics of the Dark Age played on them to make their guns wound on 3's against Toughness 5-6 targets.
I imagine for strats Alexis is mostly relying on Leonine Aggression and Armor of Contempt. With a core of Lion Dad and 10 Deathwing Knights, the army is pretty Oath-agonistic and barely needs Oath once, much less twice. There aren't a lot of good targets for Relics. Tactical Mastery is probably occasionally useful for Advance and Charge. There is Lion's Will, which can give an Engaged unit +1 OC, which probably pairs quite well with Leonine Aggression.
Alexis had a strong 1st round, smashing Tyranids (no list) 100-52. 2nd round was a close 90-86 against a No List Provided Imperial Agents. 3rd round was an 89-92 loss against Cursed+Skyshroud Necrons (Purge). 4th round was a near 98-95 against No List Provided Sororitas. The 5th and final round was a 97-97 draw against Orks, with a provided list, but it's in French. Je ne parlais francais and the list didn't appear to give detachments or a disposition. I think there were enhancements from both War Horde and Runt Swarm. Anyway, well done Alexis!
Honorable Mentions
moritz Klima went 3-1-1 and took 10th out of 64 at NRW 40K Singles 2026 - Alpine Cup with a CoH+Darkflight (Disruption) list.
Ryan Cooney went 3-1-1 and took 11th out of 55 players at Vortex VFT GT Sept 19-20 with his CoH+Darkflight (Recon) list.
Brethren, I salute you!
Statistics
It was a much slower weekend, with only 21 Dark Angels players who played 111 games and won 59 of them, scoring a great-but-reasonable 55% win rate, 5 X/0-X/1 results, and 1 podium finish.
Company of Hunters+Darkflight (Recon) was the most popular list type by far, with 13 players who scored a 57% win rate, 3 of the X-results, and the podium finish
There was only a smattering of other list types, with the only other one repeating being Wrath of the Rock (Priority) with 3 players.
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. Getting close to the end now! Get in your last games with whatever combo of detachments you want to try before everything changes! For the Lion!
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