Eirik Rokne Stensland’s 6-0 Dark Angels won the Invasion GT with a pile of Land Speeders, flyers, and bikes that no one could slow down.
Outside of two Scout Squads, a Techmarine, and the Lion, Stensland’s Dark Angels list is basically all vehicles
It’s the sort of army you look at and immediately wonder what happens when somebody has enough anti-tank to start knocking skimmers out of the sky, right? Well, Stensland took it to Kristiansand anyway and beat a field of 105 other players with it. So, Ravenwing players are probably feeling a little better about the current 40k tier list after that.
The Invasion tournament is in its 22nd year now, and 106 players over six rounds make it Norway’s biggest 40k weekend by far. The last time Invasion crowned a winner, Leagues of Votann finally got their moment. This year, Dark Angels brought the skimmers.
The standings had one nuance, though: two players went 6-0 without ever playing each other, and the one with fewer battle points won the event!
Invasion 2026 40k: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Dark Angels took Invasion 2026 on a list built almost entirely out of vehicles: Stensland’s Company of Hunters army fields three Land Speeder Vengeance, two Nephilim Jetfighters, a Storm Speeder and an ATV, with the Lion as the only real foot presence.
- Two players finished 6-0 at a 106-player event and never played each other: Victor Bergenholtz’s Grey Knights posted 599 battle points across six games and still came second.
- Subterranean Assault Tyranids ran 5-0 before the Land Speeders caught them in round six: Sveinung Nøding’s tunnel list walked into the eventual winner and lost 100-31.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we’ve got the real pairings and battle point data for all three lists.
Eirik Rokne Stensland’s Company of Hunters Dark Angels Were Faster Than They Looked
Stensland ran 2,000 points with Company of Hunters as his primary detachment, with Darkflight Pursuit behind it, and Reconnaissance as the disposition. Most of the army is fast enough that getting a clean shot at the model you actually care about is never guaranteed.
Company of Hunters Roster Breakdown
Sammael leads the Ravenwing Command Squad and carries Recon Hunter, with an Outrider Squad attached as bodyguard. That unit can hang back until it needs to move, then still get somewhere useful late-game. Lion El’Jonson is the Warlord, and he’s the odd one out because nearly everything around him moves much faster.
Three Land Speeder Vengeance all run Nightforged Battery, two Nephilim Jetfighters both take Thundercowl Turbines, and the list also brings a Storm Speeder Thunderstrike, two plain multi-melta Land Speeders, and an Invader ATV. Then a lone Techmarine keeps the vehicles patched up.
Two Scout Squads handle the boring jobs, each with a missile launcher and sniper rifle. They sit on the ground while the faster stuff goes elsewhere.
How Company of Hunters Wins the Movement Phase
His 87 in round one was the lowest score of his weekend. After that, he went 100, 100, 97, 100, and 100.
That kind of scoring usually makes you check the pairings, but his last game was against Sveinung Nøding’s undefeated Tyranids, and Stensland won 100-31. So regardless of whatever else was happening in that event, the Dark Angels still had to beat another 5-0 list to take first place.
Victor Bergenholtz’s Warpbane Task Force Grey Knights Only Dropped One Battle Point
Victor Bergenholtz went 6-0, scored 599 battle points out of 600, and finished second.
His Grey Knights, though, do almost the opposite of Stensland’s Dark Angels. They don’t need you chasing them around the board. They can sit in the middle, take the hit, and make you work hard to clear them. That’s a much better place for Purifier-heavy Grey Knights to be after the latest points update.
Warpbane Task Force Roster Breakdown
Castellan Crowe is the Warlord inside a ten-model Purifier Squad. Behind him are three Grand Masters in Nemesis Dreadknights, all with heavy psycannons and greathammers. There’s no mix-and-match loadouts here.
Three Brotherhood Terminator Squads handle board control, each with an Apothecary and an Ancient. Then a Strike Squad and two more Purifier Squads, one small and another full ten, fill out the rest of the 2,000 points.
How Warpbane Task Force Wins the Damage Race
Overall, Bergenholtz finished with a 100-52 win over Thomas Harkestad’s Tyranids and still landed behind Stensland, who scored fifteen fewer battle points. BCP doesn’t publish which tiebreaker separated them, so we don’t quite know what decided it. Either way, 6-0 with five perfect scores is a wild way to finish second.
Sveinung Nøding’s Subterranean Assault Tyranids Turned Deployment Into a Trapdoor
Nøding brought 1,995 points of Tyranids in Subterranean Assault with the Disruption disposition and went 5-0 before meeting Stensland in round six.
Subterranean Assault Roster Breakdown
The Red Terror is the Warlord here, with a Tyranid Prime leading a block of Hormagaunts; a Neurotyrant leads six Zoanthropes, and the Swarmlord is in there doing Swarmlord things.
Two Maleceptors, six Hive Guard, and several smaller Zoanthropes bring the direct damage, while Biovores throw spore mines at objectives. Finally, two Mawlocs and two Neurolictors handle the disruption side.
Nøding’s notes explain how the tunnel part works. The Red Terror and Mawlocs drop tunnel markers when they arrive; anything still in reserve can come down within 9″ of a tunnel, and those units can charge after arriving. Get caught within 3″ of a tunnel, and your models pretty much die. Once the markers start spreading, there are fewer comfortable places to stand.
How Subterranean Assault Wins the Deployment Phase
Nøding scored 100, 93, 95, 94, and 82 through five rounds without losing. Then he hit the Dark Angels flyers and scored 31 in that last game.
The tunnels are much more useful against an army that has to move through the spaces you’re threatening, and Stensland had enough speed to keep going around or over them instead.
Final Thoughts on the Invasion 2026 40k Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
The two 6-0 records will get some attention, sure, but I’d expect people to start messing around with the Dark Angels build more. Winning a 106-player event with a stack of skimmers gives Ravenwing players something concrete to copy before the next balance dataslate.
Tyranids put two lists in the top four as well, so they’re hardly out of the picture. If that keeps happening through the autumn circuit, we’ll get a much better idea of how much of 11th Edition’s early meta will revolve around catching armies that don’t want to stand still.
Either way, at the Invasion GT, the Dark Angels managed it, but there are still plenty more tournament army lists to get through before we know how repeatable that is.
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play Dark Angels
- How to Play Grey Knights
- How to Play Tyranids
- Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- More Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- 40k Tournament Guide
- Latest 40k Balance Dataslate
- Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates
What do you think of the Invasion 2026 40k army lists, and can a full-skimmer Dark Angels list hold up once people know it’s coming?
