How to Play Aeldari in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

The structural change is Detachment Points. You get a DP budget — roughly 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points — and spend it on detachments that each cost 1 to 3 DP, so you can combine detachments.

Fifteen Aeldari detachments are legal. The Faction Pack prints seven of them in full — Armoured Warhost, Fateful Performance, Path of the Outcast, Twilight Flickers, Serpent's Brood, Eldritch Raiders and Corsair Coterie — which is how the Corsairs and Harlequins come to sit inside the core faction. Of those seven, Tabletop Battles' review of the pack describes four as genuinely new for 11th edition (Armoured Warhost, Fateful Performance, Path of the Outcast, Twilight Flickers) and the Corsair and Serpent's Brood detachments as returning. The other eight come from the 10th-edition Codex: Aeldari, and every single one of them is amended somewhere in the pack's Rules Updates section, so check that page even for a detachment you think you know. There's no full 11th-edition codex yet, so a future book could change things.

If your Army Faction is ASURYANI, your army rule is Battle Focus. At the start of each battle round you receive a pool of Battle Focus tokens — 2 at Incursion, 4 at Strike Force, 6 at Onslaught — and unspent tokens are lost at the end of the round. You spend a token to let an eligible unit perform one of six Agile Manoeuvres: Swift as the Wind (+2" Move), Flitting Shadows (the unit can't be shot by Fire Overwatch), Star Engines (a Vehicle that Advances gains [ASSAULT] on its ranged weapons), Sudden Strike (6" Pile-in and Consolidation moves), Opportunity Seized (a D6+1" move when an enemy Falls Back) and Fade Back (a D6+1" move after being shot). A unit can only perform one Agile Manoeuvre per phase, so the tokens are a rationed mobility economy: the Aeldari don't out-muscle you, they out-position you.

The pack's Rules Updates open by rewriting Star Engines, so use the current wording above rather than an older printing.

One thing to be careful about: "Strands of Fate". In 10th edition that fate-dice mechanic was the Aeldari army rule, and it is easy to find older articles that still say so. In 11th edition the Seer Council detachment has a detachment rule called Strands of Fate, and it is a different thing: you roll 3, 6 or 9 dice by battle size and discard matching dice to make that detachment's stratagems cheaper. Separately, Wahapedia's 11th-edition Aeldari page still lists a Strands of Fate army rule for an army whose Faction is AELDARI, alongside Battle Focus for ASURYANI. The Faction Pack is silent on the point, and we're not going to guess which applies to a mixed list. For a normal craftworld army, plan around Battle Focus tokens, and check the Warhammer 40,000 app if your Army Faction isn't ASURYANI.

Your DP budget scales with game size: about 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points. The pack doesn't print DP costs, but three independent sources agree on all fifteen — Wahapedia's 11th-edition Aeldari page, Wargamer's 11th-edition detachments guide and Tabletop Battles' review of the pack — so nothing here is a guess:

• 3-DP detachments (Warhost, Aspect Host) fill your whole 2,000-point budget with one strong package.
• 2-DP detachments (Windrider Host, Guardian Battlehost, Spirit Conclave, Seer Council, Ghosts of the Webway, Devoted of Ynnead, Eldritch Raiders, Corsair Coterie, Serpent's Brood) leave 1 DP spare for a support.
• 1-DP detachments (Armoured Warhost, Fateful Performance, Twilight Flickers, Path of the Outcast) are the glue — bolt one onto a 2-DP core.

The Unique Tag restriction, honestly stated. The pack prints a UNIQUE: ACROBATIC banner on exactly two detachment pages, Fateful Performance and Twilight Flickers, and both say in their own rule text that they can't be taken with another ACROBATIC detachment. Wahapedia, however, lists four ACROBATIC detachments, adding Ghosts of the Webway and Serpent's Brood — even though the pack reprints Serpent's Brood in full without a banner. That's an unresolved conflict, so we don't claim a tag for those two. Because the restriction may well apply, we never recommend pairing two Harlequin detachments. Confirm in the app before you build one.

Note also that Path of the Outcast carries no Unique Tag in either the pack or the mirrors, so it pairs freely, including with a Harlequin detachment.

Fifteen detachments span the whole faction. Highlights by role, with DP costs:

• Warhost (3 DP) — the flexible all-comers generalist. Start here.
• Aspect Host (3 DP) — elite Aspect Warrior shrines.
• Windrider Host (2 DP) — hyper-mobile jetbikes that hit and fade.
• Guardian Battlehost (2 DP) — disciplined infantry objective play.
• Spirit Conclave (2 DP) — durable Wraith constructs.
• Seer Council (2 DP) — Farseer/Warlock psykers (home of Strands of Fate now).
• Ghosts of the Webway (2 DP) — the codex Harlequins hit-and-run detachment.
• Devoted of Ynnead (2 DP) — Ynnari and the death-god's followers.
• Eldritch Raiders (2 DP) — aggressive Corsair raiders (charge after Advancing).
• Corsair Coterie (2 DP) — Corsair objective-raiding.
• Serpent's Brood (2 DP) — Harlequin transports with Sustained Hits.
• Armoured Warhost (1 DP) — grav-tanks that advance and still shoot.
• Fateful Performance (1 DP) — Harlequin close-combat.
• Twilight Flickers (1 DP) — Harlequin evasion and objectives.
• Path of the Outcast (1 DP) — Ranger snipers from concealment.

Pick a core from your collection and playstyle:

• All-comers / unsure → Warhost. Jetbikes → Windrider Host. Aspect Warriors → Aspect Host. Wraiths → Spirit Conclave. Psykers → Seer Council. Corsairs → Eldritch Raiders or Corsair Coterie. Harlequins → Serpent's Brood or Ghosts of the Webway.

If your core is a 2-DP detachment, spend the leftover DP on a 1-DP support (if your core is a Harlequin detachment, take a non-Harlequin support):

• Armoured Warhost to add mobile grav-tank firepower.
• Path of the Outcast to add Ranger and Shroud Runner snipers for board control and character-hunting.
• Fateful Performance or Twilight Flickers to fold in a Harlequin element onto a non-Harlequin core.

Two concrete 2,000-point examples: an Eldritch Raiders Corsair core (2 DP) + 1-DP Path of the Outcast pairs fast aggressive raiders with Rangers and Shroud Runners that both detachments already buff; and a Seer Council core (2 DP) + 1-DP Armoured Warhost bolts a Fire Prism firebase onto a psychic control army, which is a combination the pack reviewers call out as a natural fit because the Seer Council already fields the Aeldari Psyker that Armoured Warhost's enhancements require.

Two habits win Aeldari games. First, spend Battle Focus tokens with intent. They're limited, so use Agile Manoeuvres to win the positioning battle at the decisive moment — a reactive move to dodge a charge, a fall-back-and-shoot to escape and still fire, or an extra move to seize an objective — rather than dribbling them away. Second, lean into mobility, not attrition. Aeldari units are fragile; the plan is to strike, reposition, and never present a good target. Trade space for tempo and out-score.

And since 11th edition lets you run two detachments, remember you can use both detachments' stratagems — a 2 + 1 split quietly widens your toolbox.

If you're new or returning, build a Warhost list first. It's the flexible all-comers detachment, it works with almost any Aeldari collection, and it teaches Battle Focus token management without extra sub-systems. Once you're comfortable, experiment with a 2 + 1 DP split — a Corsair, Windrider, Seer or Wraith core plus a 1-DP support — to find your style.

Because Aeldari are on a Faction Pack rather than a full 11th-edition codex, watch for a future codex that could re-tune detachments and points, and re-check the pack's version number: it has already moved to version 1.3 as of 26 August 2026. Until then, everything here reflects the current, live rules.