Houndpack Lance: The 11th-Edition Chaos Knights Three War Dog Detachment

At the start of your Command phase, select one unit from your opponent's army. Until the start of your next Command phase, each time a WAR DOG model from your army makes an attack that targets that enemy unit, if the unit is visible to the attacking model, that attack has [SUSTAINED HITS 1].

Straightforward, army-wide across your War Dogs, and it lasts a full round. Note the visibility requirement is checked per attacking model, not once for the unit.

The KEYWORDS clause is where the detachment actually lives, and it is a genuine army construction rule:

• Your army must include three or more WAR DOG units.
• WAR DOG units from your army have the BATTLELINE keyword.
• When mustering your army, select three WAR DOG units. Until the end of the battle, those units have the CHARACTER keyword.

The mirror's own designer note spells out what that last clause is for: the selected units can be given Enhancements, and one of them can be your Warlord.

That is unusual and worth dwelling on. Most detachments let you choose what to bring; this one tells you. If you own fewer than three War Dog units you cannot legally take Houndpack Lance at all, and if you do own three, the detachment hands them the keyword they need to carry its own enhancements. This whole block is mirror-sourced, cross-checked against the pack's amendments, and we flag it rather than presenting it as pack text.

The official Munitorum Field Manual version 1.3 carries two annotation bands on this detachment: UPDATED and UNIQUE TAG REMOVED. It carries the same pair on Hunting Warpack.

What we assert. This detachment carries no unique tag. Neither the Faction Pack nor the mirror prints a tag sentence in its rules text, and the Munitorum Field Manual shows no active tag on the card.

What we do not assert. We do not claim to know what tag was removed or when, because we did not read the version it was removed from. The annotation is reported as an annotation.

Why it still matters for your list. The other card carrying that annotation is Hunting Warpack, whose pack-printed rule still says it cannot be taken with another WAR DOGS detachment. So whether Houndpack Lance plus Hunting Warpack is legal is unresolved, and that pair costs exactly 3 Detachment Points, a full Strike Force budget, and is the obvious double-War-Dog army. It has its own warning page. Confirm in the Warhammer 40,000 app.

Pairing this detachment with anything other than Hunting Warpack is unambiguously legal.

The pack does not reprint this detachment's stratagems in full, but it rewrites a named section in two of them, and those rewritten lines are first-party.

Animalistic Rage. When section changed to: your opponent's Shooting phase or the Fight phase, just after a WAR DOG unit from your army that has not been selected to attack this phase is destroyed. That is a precise trigger with two conditions on it, and the second one, that the destroyed unit had not yet attacked this phase, is easy to overlook.

Harrying Hounds. Target section: 9 inches becomes 8 inches. A straight reduction, and the kind of one inch change that decides whether a use is legal at the moment you want it.

The effect text of both is not printed in the pack. Read the full cards in the Warhammer 40,000 app.

Final Howl (Aura) (20 points). WAR DOG model only. While a friendly War Dog model is within 6 inches of the bearer, each time that model attacks, re-roll a Wound roll of 1.

Preyslayer's Mantle (15 points). WAR DOG model only. The bearer has the Super-heavy Walker ability. That is normally a Titanic Knight ability, so this lets a small model walk through screens and low terrain the way its masters do.

Panoply of the Cursed Knights, 15 points, and Loping Predator, 10 points, are listed in the official Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 with their costs. Their rules text is not printed in the pack, and the costs are reprinted only as a planning aid.

Note what makes the first two possible at all. Enhancements go on CHARACTER models, and War Dogs are not normally Characters. This detachment's own keyword clause grants three of them the CHARACTER keyword for the battle, which is why War-Dog-only enhancements exist here and nowhere else in the faction.

Enhancement points are dataslate-volatile and none carries a change marker in this pass.

At 2 Detachment Points this leaves exactly 1 DP at Strike Force.

Plus [Iconoclast Fiefdom](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/iconoclast-fiefdom) (1 DP, total 3). This is the safe way to build a War Dog army. Houndpack Lance already forces three or more War Dog units into your list, which leaves very little standing on objectives, and Iconoclast Fiefdom's 500 point DAMNED allowance fills exactly that gap. Iconoclast Fiefdom carries no tag, so this pairing is unaffected by the unresolved question.

Not recommended in either direction: Hunting Warpack, for the reason set out above.