Dark Angels - Dark Angels

10th Edition Dark Angels Codex

It is raining Dark Angel rolls on the Wheel of Warhammer! I actually do not mind doing the Dark Angels his often because the 10th Edition Codex has just dropped and it means that I will not need to do a new review for these units in a very long time. (Unlike the Tau ones I have done recently.)

The Dark Angels have a special 1st Company formation in the lore known as the Deathwing. All the members of this Company wear Terminator Armor and the Deathwing Knights are the elite Assault troop of the Deathwing.

Statline

Straight into the statline, Deathwing Knights have the same characteristics as Assault Terminators with Storm Shields:

5" Movement.
Toughness 5, 2+ Save, 4+ Invul and 4 Wounds each.
They have a leadership value of 6+

Weapons

Weapon's wise the Knight have basically two configurations.

The Master in each unit is armed with a Great Weapon of the Unforgiven OR a Relic Blade (This is the sort of blade you usually see on a Captain)

The rest of the unit either have the Mace of Absolution or Power Weapons.

Let's do a Comparison:

Master
Great Weapon of the Unforgiven A5, Hit on 2+, S6, AP-2, D2 ,- Sustained Hits 1, and Devastating Wounds
Relic Blade A6, Hit on 2+, S7, Ap-2, D2, and Lethal Hits

In my opinion the Great Weapon is the better weapon. On a roll of a 6 on the Hit dice the Sword automatically Wounds while the Great Weapon generates additional hits. On the Roll to Wound the Great Weapon can bypass Armor and Invul saves and wound anything. While Lethal hits are great, Something with a decent Invul save could still block it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the unit:

Mace of Absolution: A4, Hits on 2+, S6, AP-1, D2
Power Weapons: A5, Hits on 2+, S6, AP-2, D1

This is a real problem. One weapon is more likely to cause damage against heavily armored opponents but deal lower amounts of damage while the other will not go through armor as easy while dealing more damage when it does.

The swords do have more attacks though.

Mathematically, the Maces will kill more Space Marines if the Space Marine does not use Armor of Contempt. Otherwise the Swords will be better at dealing with 1 Wound horde armies.

I guess it depends on what hero, if any that you attach the the unit and what sort of opponents you play the most. If signing up for a tournament you need to consider what else in your army will deal with the opponents you choose not to go anti with these weapons.

Abilities

Something else that will help you decide what to use the Knights for is their ability: Inner Circle

Each time Damage is allocated to them, -1 to the Damage. This means that they will die by a thousand cuts but will take D2 Damage like Power Fists and reduce them to 1 Damage each.

This makes them great for hunting other terminators or other units that do lots of damage on their attacks. It also makes them better at handling Screamer Killers but not Genestealers. Interesting...

Thank you for reading this post! I hope that you enjoyed it!