Evolution of an Army List: Dark Angels

Way back in 3 and 4e I had a skirmish 500 point list for when I just wanted to play a short game of 40k and it was pretty good in most situations. It looked a little like this.

HQ: Chaplain with Jump Pack

Troop: Tactical Squad w/ Heavy Bolter and Flamer. Rhino transport

Troop: Scout squad w/ Sniper Rifles and Heavy Bolter

Fast Attack: Assault Squad w/ 1x Plasma Pistol


That was then and it worked very well for what passed for missions at the time, but now it lasted one battle and a Tie against Eldar. Now I am not saying that the current list was the same as the old but they were pretty close. The big difference is that it didn't really work for me. Several games later I hit on something that worked much better. It looked a bit like this.

HQ: Librarian

Troop: Tactical Squad w/ Plasma Cannon and Plasma gun and Rhino w/ Hunter Killer Missile

Troop: Tactical Squad w/ Missile Launcher

Troop: Scout squad w/ Sniper Rifles and Heavy Bolter


The tactics on a 2 or 3 objective mission was rather straight forward. Advance deploy the scouts on or near an objective with cover and deny the opponent. Move the Combat Squad with the plasma gun in the Rhino towards another objective. The Missile Tactical Squad moves towards what ever objective needs support or denied depending on the current needs while the Plasma Cannon Combat Squad sits somewhere with the Librarian and eats re-rolls due to misses or bad scatter from Prescience. Works pretty well for the most part. Had a couple problems keeping scouts on the objectives due to their small numbers but they usually get back on the objective pretty quickly and anytime a 5 count of scouts can last 4 or 5 turns on an objective against large amounts of Tau fire is damn good from my point of view.  

In one game I replaced the scouts with a minimum unit of Ravenwing that seemed to work ok but when it came to the objective base game they didn't help deny as much as i hoped. I know one game does not make it good or bad and the Dice Gods are fickle. So i will give the current list another game or two and then try the bikes again just to make sure.

All in all I was surprised that the way units play now versus back then and the fact that objective based missions seem to have become the norm has changed the way one has to organize their army.