How to Play Chaos Knights in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

Read this section first. It is the question that brings most people to a Knights page.

Chaos Knights spend the ordinary Detachment Points budget, exactly like every other faction. Their eight detachments cost between 1 and 3 DP. There is no Knights-only budget, no minimum or maximum model count for the army as a whole, no requirement that it be all-Titanic, and no rule tying detachment choice to how many big models you own.

We are asserting that narrowly and on purpose. Neither the Faction Pack version 1.2 nor the Munitorum Field Manual version 1.3 prints any Knights-specific army construction rule. We looked for one. What the documents contain is a list of detachments with Detachment Point costs, force dispositions and enhancement points, in the same shape as every other faction's. Where a document is silent, we report silence rather than filling it in from memory, because this edition sits outside our training data.

The faction does have three genuine army construction rules, and none of them touches Detachment Points.

Dreadblades is an army rule, and it runs in the direction people forget. If every model in your army has the CHAOS keyword, you can include either 1 Titanic Chaos Knights model or up to 3 WAR DOG models in your army, even if they do not have the Faction keyword you selected in the Select Army Faction step. None of these models can be your Warlord, and they cannot be given Enhancements. That is a rule about a Chaos Space Marines or Death Guard army borrowing a Knight. It is not a rule about how a Chaos Knights army is built. It is the exact structural mirror of the Imperial Knights Freeblades rule, with CHAOS in place of IMPERIUM and WAR DOG in place of ARMIGER. This one is mirror-sourced codex text the pack does not reprint.

Wretched Thralls is the second, and this one is printed in full in the pack, on page 4, inside the Iconoclast Fiefdom detachment rule. While using that detachment you can include DAMNED units in your army, see Codex: Chaos Space Marines, and the combined points cost of such units cannot exceed 500 points. That is a points allowance living inside one detachment, and it is the single most consequential list-building fact in the faction: it is how a Chaos Knights army gets bodies.

The Houndpack Lance minimum is the third and the only unit-count requirement in either Knights faction. While using that detachment, your army must include three or more WAR DOG units; War Dog units gain BATTLELINE; and when mustering you select three War Dog units which have the CHARACTER keyword until the end of the battle, which means they can take Enhancements and one of them can be your Warlord. This block is mirror-sourced and is flagged as such on that detachment's page.

What we are not telling you, because no document we read says it: that a Chaos Knights army must be all-Titanic; that War Dogs are capped outside Houndpack Lance; that Chaos Knights have a different Detachment Point budget from anybody else; or that they face any restriction on mission or game size. If you have read otherwise, check the Warhammer 40,000 app.

Harbingers of Dread is an accumulating rule rather than a static one, and the choices are front-loaded.

If your Army Faction is CHAOS KNIGHTS, each unit from your army with this ability gains Dread abilities, depending on which are active for your army. Deathly Terror is active from the start of the battle. Then, at the start of the first, third and fifth battle rounds, you can either select one of the other Dread abilities, or randomly select two by rolling two D6 and applying the results from those numbered 1 to 6. Anything selected stays active until the end of the battle. You cannot select the same ability twice, and a duplicate produced by a random roll has no additional effect.

The seven abilities, with the one the pack amended flagged:

• Deathly Terror (Aura), active from the start: while an enemy unit is within 9 inches, worsen the Leadership characteristic of models in it by 1.
• Despair (Aura): the same 9 inch Leadership penalty again, and both documents state it is cumulative with Deathly Terror. Two points of Leadership is a large number in a system where most units sit around 6+.
• Doom: each time this model attacks, if the target is Battle-shocked, add 1 to the Wound roll.
• Darkness: this model has Stealth. This is the clause the pack rewrote in version 1.2, and the mirror reproduces the new wording exactly, so it rests on both sources.
• Dismay (Aura): in the Battle-shock step of your opponent's Command phase, each enemy unit below its Starting Strength and within 9 inches must take a Battle-shock test.
• Delirium (Aura): while an enemy unit that is Below Half-strength is within 9 inches, each time it fails a Battle-shock test it suffers D3 mortal wounds.
• Dominion: add 3 inches to the range of this model's Aura abilities.

Two things follow, and both are ours rather than the documents'.

Four of the seven are Auras on a 9 inch bubble, so Dominion scales with everything else rather than standing alone. Taken early it makes every later Aura pick better; taken last it is worth much less.

The abilities chain into each other in a specific order. Deathly Terror and Despair make units easier to Battle-shock. Dismay forces the tests. Delirium punishes the failures with mortal wounds. Doom rewards the state afterwards with better Wound rolls. That is a genuine engine, and it is why the first battle round's choice matters more than the fifth's: an ability taken on turn one is active for the whole game.

Super-heavy Walker is the other rule shaping how you move. A model with it can move through models, excluding TITANIC models, and terrain features 4 inches or less in height, moving within but not ending within Engagement Range, and can cross taller terrain at the cost of a D6 roll of 1 leaving it Battle-shocked. A Battle-shocked model has Objective Control 0, so the tall-terrain option is a scoring risk as well as a movement one. Its wording is mirror-sourced; the pack refers to it by name inside the Traitoris Lance Imperious Advance amendment.

In 11th edition you spend a Detachment Points (DP) budget rather than picking one detachment. The budget scales with game size: roughly 2 DP at 1,000 points (Incursion) and 3 DP at 2,000 points (Strike Force). The Munitorum Field Manual points at the Warhammer 40,000 app for exact figures, and we do not quote a figure for Onslaught because no first-party document we read states one.

The Chaos Knights spread is the most even in this series, with three cheap detachments, a broad 2 DP middle and one that eats the whole budget:

• 3 DP: Infernal Lance.
• 2 DP: Helhunt Lance, Houndpack Lance, Lords of Dread, Traitoris Lance.
• 1 DP: Bastions of Tyranny, Hunting Warpack, Iconoclast Fiefdom.

Eight detachments are legal, and we can show it in two independent directions. The pack prints four in full: Bastions of Tyranny (page 2), Hunting Warpack (page 3), Iconoclast Fiefdom (page 4) and Helhunt Lance (pages 5 and 6). Its Rules Updates section amends four more by name: Houndpack Lance, Infernal Lance, Lords of Dread and Traitoris Lance. Four plus four is exactly the eight the Munitorum Field Manual lists and exactly the eight the mirror's index lists, so nothing is unaccounted for either way.

That is worth contrasting with our Imperial Knights guide in the same wave, where the pack covers only six of eight and two pages rest on a community mirror. Every Chaos Knights detachment here has first-party backing for its existence, which makes this the better documented of the two Knights factions.

No Chaos Knights DP cost is contested. All eight values are agreed by the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and the mirror's own detachment selector, and the Munitorum Field Manual prints no increase or decrease marker on any of them.

The four the pack prints in full:

• [Bastions of Tyranny](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/bastions-of-tyranny) (1 DP, PRIORITY ASSETS). +1 to hit against battle-shocked units, for KNIGHT TYRANT units only, which is exactly one datasheet. The narrowest detachment in the faction.
• [Hunting Warpack](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/hunting-warpack) (1 DP, RECONNAISSANCE, WAR DOGS in the pack). Spotting for War Dogs, once per battle round. Carries the contested tag; read the section below.
• [Iconoclast Fiefdom](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/iconoclast-fiefdom) (1 DP, TAKE AND HOLD). The detachment that gives a Chaos Knights army bodies, via a 500 point DAMNED allowance, plus a heal loop that moves wounds from infantry to Knights.
• [Helhunt Lance](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/helhunt-lance) (2 DP, DISRUPTION). A Titanic Knight's War Dog Auras start affecting the Knight itself. Six stratagems and four enhancements, the largest printed spread in the faction.

The four the pack amends by name:

• [Houndpack Lance](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/houndpack-lance) (2 DP, RECONNAISSANCE). Marked prey for War Dogs, and the only unit-count requirement in either Knights faction: three or more WAR DOG units, three of which become Characters.
• [Infernal Lance](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/infernal-lance) (3 DP, PRIORITY ASSETS). A per-turn Leadership gamble that Empowers your Knights, with a choice of three payoffs. The pack rewrote one of the three this version.
• [Lords of Dread](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/lords-of-dread) (2 DP, TAKE AND HOLD). +2 Objective Control on Chaos Knights Character models, which is close to army-wide, and a free stratagem use per battle round.
• [Traitoris Lance](/40k/armies/chaos-knights/detachments/traitoris-lance) (2 DP, PURGE THE FOE). One additional chosen Dread ability at the start of the first battle round, which front-loads the entire army rule.

Now the constraint that shapes list-building, and for this faction it means telling you what we do not know.

This is the one genuinely unresolved fact in this set, and we flag it rather than decide it.

What the Faction Pack version 1.2 says. It prints UNIQUE: WAR DOGS as a banner above the Hunting Warpack heading on page 3, and it prints the matching sentence inside that detachment's own rule: this detachment has the WAR DOGS tag and cannot be taken with another WAR DOGS detachment.

What the Munitorum Field Manual version 1.3 says. It lists no active unique tag on any Chaos Knights detachment at all, and it annotates both Hunting Warpack and Houndpack Lance with UPDATED and UNIQUE TAG REMOVED.

Two official Games Workshop documents therefore disagree, and the newer one appears to be recording the removal of the tag the older one prints. We assert the tag and we do not assert the restriction. Whether Hunting Warpack plus Houndpack Lance is a legal army is unresolved, and this site does not claim to know.

Why that particular pairing. Hunting Warpack is 1 DP and Houndpack Lance is 2 DP. One plus two is 3, exactly a Strike Force budget, and both are War Dog detachments. So the arithmetic invites precisely the army whose legality is in question, and it is the natural build for anyone whose collection is mostly War Dogs. We therefore never recommend that pairing in either direction, and it has its own warning page.

The mirror does not break the tie. A community rules mirror keeps the pack's WAR DOGS sentence in the Hunting Warpack rule. That mirror is one version behind the Munitorum Field Manual for this faction, so it cannot yet reflect the v1.3 removal. It is agreeing with the older document, not casting a second vote. Confirm in the Warhammer 40,000 app.

Contrast with the Imperial Knights, whose set we published in the same wave. There, two detachments share the ARMIGERS tag, the pair also costs exactly 3 DP, and the two official documents do not disagree, so we say plainly that the pairing is illegal. Same geometry, same arithmetic, different evidence, different answer. If you have read our Imperial Knights guide, do not carry its confidence across to this one.

The shape that is safe whichever way it resolves. Bastions of Tyranny plus Hunting Warpack plus Iconoclast Fiefdom is 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 3 DP and is legal either way, because only one of the three carries the contested tag and no two of them share one. Carrying a tag is not the same as sharing one. If you want certainty, that is the three-detachment army to build.

No new codex datasheet. Unlike the Imperial Knights pack, which prints a brand new Knight Destrier, the Chaos Knights pack's contents list goes straight from Detachments to Imperial Armour Datasheets. This faction received rules changes rather than a new model in this version.

A large Imperial Armour section. Pages 7 to 25 print the Chaos Acastus Knight Asterius and Porphyrion; the Chaos Cerastus Knight Acheron, Atrapos, Castigator and Lancer; the Chaos Questoris Knight Magaera and Styrix; and the War Dog Moirax, which carries the WAR DOG keyword and therefore counts for everything the War Dog detachments do. None of these are flagged as Legends anywhere in the pack.

No Legends section at all. The pack's contents list runs Detachments, Imperial Armour Datasheets, Rules Updates and stops. The word Legends does not appear anywhere in it, and a search of the official Warhammer Community downloads index for Legends returns no Warhammer 40,000 document.

No Boarding Actions detachments either. Neither official document nor the mirror's index lists one for this faction.

Three datasheets got substantial weapon rewrites, and they are large enough to change how you use the models.

• Knight Abominant. Its Volkite Combustor is now 30 inches, 12 attacks, Ballistic Skill 3+, Strength 12, 0 Armour Penetration, 3 Damage, with [IGNORES COVER, DEVASTATING WOUNDS]. Its Warp Storms ability now reads: at the end of your Movement phase, roll one D6 for each enemy unit within 9 inches; on a 3 or more that unit suffers D3 mortal wounds.
• Knight Desecrator. Its Desecrator Laser Destructor is now 72 inches, 3 attacks, Ballistic Skill 2+, Strength 18, minus 4 Armour Penetration, D6 plus 3 Damage, with [DEVASTATING WOUNDS: MONSTER/VEHICLE]. Its Obsessive Ruthlessness now lets its ranged attacks against MONSTER or VEHICLE units ignore modifiers to its Ballistic Skill and to its Hit and Wound rolls.
• Knight Ruinator. Its Darkflame Lance is now 18 inches, D6 plus 6 attacks, no Ballistic Skill, Strength 8, minus 1 Armour Penetration, 2 Damage, with [IGNORES COVER, TORRENT]. Its Terrorpulse Missiles are now 36 inches, D6 plus 6 attacks, Ballistic Skill 3+, Strength 8, minus 2 Armour Penetration, 2 Damage, with [BLAST].

One official FAQ, and it is a nerf: the Iconoclast Fiefdom Preserve the Idols stratagem's Target section changes 9 inches to 8 inches.

We track no 40K Chaos Knights product at all. Not a Combat Patrol, not a Battleforce, not a single Knight or War Dog kit. Every unit named across these pages therefore renders without a link.

There is a specific reason to be careful here rather than helpful. Our Age of Sigmar catalog carries kits literally called Chaos Knights, from Slaves to Darkness and Warriors of Chaos. Those are cavalry from a different game system and have nothing to do with this faction. Our 40K catalog also carries a Genestealer Cults Abominant, which shares a word with the Knight Abominant and is likewise unrelated. We would rather show you no link than a confidently wrong one.

What this section can tell you is what the rules reward.

If you own nothing yet, the rules point hardest at War Dogs plus one big Knight. Three of the eight detachments are built around War Dogs, and one of them, Helhunt Lance, needs a Titanic Chaos Knight on the table to function at all. Buy in both directions or neither detachment works.

If you own one big Knight already, the 1 Detachment Point detachments are where the value is, and Iconoclast Fiefdom is the one that changes the shape of your army rather than its damage. Five hundred points of DAMNED infantry is the difference between a three-model army that cannot hold two objectives and one that can.

If you own a Knight Tyrant specifically, note that it is the only KNIGHT TYRANT datasheet, and Bastions of Tyranny is a 1 DP detachment written for it alone.

A caution about Infernal Lance. It costs 3 Detachment Points and fills a Strike Force budget on its own, so it locks you out of the pairing game entirely and cannot be taken at 1,000 points at all. If you are buying toward a first army rather than optimising an existing one, the 1 and 2 DP detachments give you more to learn from.