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

The structural change is Detachment Points. In 10th edition you chose one detachment; in 11th you get a DP budget of 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 now combine detachments.

For Drukhari that means the six codex detachments were joined by three new ones, all at 1 DP: Exhibition of Slaughter for the Wych Cults, Kabalite Agonysts for the Kabals and Tools of Torment for the Haemonculus Covens. The Faction Pack prints all three in full, along with Reaper's Wager, the Drukhari and Harlequins saedath detachment that first appeared as a 2024 Grotmas download and now costs 3 DP.

The pack also amends three codex detachments in its Rules Updates section: Spectacle of Spite, Covenite Coterie and Skysplinter Assault. Kabalite Cartel and Realspace Raiders are named nowhere in it.

There is a second army rule now. The pack's Rules Updates adds Corsairs and Travelling Players, which lets a Drukhari army include Harlequins and Anhrathe units up to 250 points at Incursion, 500 at Strike Force and 750 at Onslaught. They cannot be your Warlord and cannot take Enhancements.

And a lot of the range moved to Warhammer Legends. The pack reprints Legends datasheets for the Raven Strike Fighter, Reaper, Tantalus, Beastmaster, Court of the Archon, Grotesques and Urien Rakarth, and none of those appears in the matched-play Munitorum Field Manual list. Hekatrix Bloodbrides and Kabalite Trueborn are not datasheets at all any more; in the rules mirrors they survive as Crusade Battle Traits you can give a Wyches or Kabalite Warriors unit.

Every Drukhari unit has a Pain ability, tagged with the word 'Pain' on its datasheet, and that ability only does anything while the unit is Empowered.

You gain Pain tokens three ways: 1 at the start of your Command phase, 1 each time an enemy unit is destroyed, and 1 each time an enemy unit fails a Battle-shock test. Keep them in a pool and spend them down.

Each Pain ability states when you can spend a token to Empower that unit. When you do, all of that unit's Pain abilities take effect until the end of the phase. There is a generous clause for attached units: while an Attached unit is Empowered, the Pain abilities of every Leader and Bodyguard unit in it take effect, with no extra tokens. A designer's note also confirms tokens can be spent to switch on effects inside certain Enhancements and Stratagems.

Read that economy carefully, because it is the shape of the faction. Tokens are scarce early and abundant late, and the two variable sources both require you to be killing things or frightening them. A Drukhari army that sits back starves; one that trades aggressively snowballs. The real skill is deciding which unit to Empower and in which phase, because a token spent in the Charge phase and a token spent in the Fight phase buy completely different abilities on the same model.

Several detachments are built to bend that economy rather than the damage. Realspace Raiders hands you up to 6 tokens before the first turn. Covenite Coterie gives one back when a Coven unit survives a shooting phase. The Dark Vitality enhancement makes one unit permanently Empowered for free.

Your DP budget scales with game size: about 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points. Costs:

• 3 DP (Reaper's Wager) fills your whole 2,000-point budget on its own, so it runs solo.
• 2 DP (Covenite Coterie, Kabalite Cartel, Realspace Raiders, Skysplinter Assault, Spectacle of Spite) leaves 1 DP spare for a support.
• 1 DP (Exhibition of Slaughter, Kabalite Agonysts, Tools of Torment) are the glue, and all three together also make a legal 3-DP army.

Those DP values are not printed in the Faction Pack, but they are published officially in the Munitorum Field Manual, and Wahapedia's 11th-edition page independently agrees on all nine. None of them is contested.

Now the part that matters more here than in any other faction we have covered. No two detachments in your army may share a Unique Tag, and Drukhari have three of them:

• WYCH CULT on Exhibition of Slaughter (1 DP) and Spectacle of Spite (2 DP)
• KABAL on Kabalite Agonysts (1 DP) and Kabalite Cartel (2 DP)
• COVENS on Tools of Torment (1 DP) and Covenite Coterie (2 DP)

Every one of those three pairs costs 1 + 2 = 3 DP, which is exactly a 2,000-point budget, and every one of them is illegal. It is worth saying plainly: if you want to double down on a single pillar, the arithmetic works and the rules do not. The pack prints the UNIQUE banner above each of the three new detachments and restates the restriction inside the rule text itself, so there is no ambiguity to hope your opponent shares.

Realspace Raiders and Skysplinter Assault carry no tag at all, which is precisely why they are the flexible 2-DP cores, and Reaper's Wager carries none either, though at 3 DP it has nothing to pair with.

Nine detachments are legal. By DP cost:

3 DP, run alone

• Reaper's Wager (Purge the Foe) is the Drukhari and Harlequins saedath. A wager flips between your Drukhari and your Harlequins as each side scores kills, and whichever side is losing gets the better re-roll. It also carries its own Harlequins allowance of up to 1,000 points at Strike Force, far above the standard army rule.

2 DP, with a point to spare

• Realspace Raiders (Priority Assets, no tag) starts you on up to 6 Pain tokens for bringing an Archon with Kabalites, a Succubus with Wyches and a Haemonculus with Wracks.
• Skysplinter Assault (Reconnaissance, no tag) gives any unit that disembarks Ignores Cover on its guns and Lance on its blades. It is the only detachment rule that pays all three pillars equally.
• Spectacle of Spite (Purge the Foe, WYCH CULT) is Combat Drugs: pick one buff a turn for every Wych Cult model, or roll two.
• Covenite Coterie (Take and Hold, COVENS) subtracts 1 from Wound rolls against your Coven units whenever the attack's Strength beats their Toughness.
• Kabalite Cartel (Disruption, KABAL) names an enemy unit as a Contract at the start of the battle and pays your Kabal and Blades for Hire units a keyword ability until it dies.

1 DP, the splash picks

• Exhibition of Slaughter (Reconnaissance, WYCH CULT) gives Wych Cult melee attacks Lethal Hits against anything that is not a Monster or Vehicle.
• Kabalite Agonysts (Disruption, KABAL) gives Kabal and Blades for Hire ranged attacks Sustained Hits 1 under the same restriction.
• Tools of Torment (Take and Hold, COVENS) subtracts 1 from Wound rolls against your Cronos and Talos whenever the attack's Strength beats their Toughness.

If you only remember one line from this section: the three 1-DP detachments carry three different tags, so all three together is a legal 3-DP army and is the closest the rules get to the realspace raid the faction is named for.

Pick a core from your collection and playstyle:

• A Coven collection built on Wracks, Talos and Cronos wants Covenite Coterie. Wyches, Reavers and Hellions want Spectacle of Spite. Kabalites and an Archon want Kabalite Cartel. Raiders and Venoms with anything inside them want Skysplinter Assault. A bit of everything wants Realspace Raiders. All are 2 DP and leave a point spare. Harlequins already on the shelf point at Reaper's Wager, which fills the budget alone.

If your core is a 2-DP detachment, spend the leftover DP on a 1-DP support, and the tag rule does most of the choosing for you:

• On Covenite Coterie (COVENS), take Exhibition of Slaughter or Kabalite Agonysts. Not Tools of Torment.
• On Kabalite Cartel (KABAL), take Tools of Torment or Exhibition of Slaughter. Not Kabalite Agonysts.
• On Spectacle of Spite (WYCH CULT), take Kabalite Agonysts or Tools of Torment. Not Exhibition of Slaughter.
• On Realspace Raiders or Skysplinter Assault, which carry no tag, take whichever of the three fits your models.

One trap is worth spelling out twice, because the arithmetic is so inviting. Exhibition of Slaughter plus Spectacle of Spite is 3 DP and is illegal. So is Kabalite Agonysts plus Kabalite Cartel, and so is Tools of Torment plus Covenite Coterie. In each case the two detachments are the small and large versions of the same pillar, which is exactly why they share a tag and exactly why they look like a perfect fit.

A concrete 2,000-point example that does work: Skysplinter Assault (2 DP) + Kabalite Agonysts (1 DP). A Kabalite Warriors squad stepping off a Raider gets Ignores Cover from Rain of Cruelty and Sustained Hits 1 from Contracted Harvest in the same shooting phase, and neither detachment carries a tag that blocks the other.

Three habits carry Drukhari games.

First, spend Pain tokens on decisions, not on reflexes. Empowering a unit lasts one phase, so a token spent to squeeze a marginal extra kill out of a fight you were winning is a token you will not have when the game turns. Bank early, because your income rises as the board empties, and spend in the phase that changes the result.

Second, kill to generate, not to feel good. Two of your three token sources are enemy units destroyed and enemy units failing Battle-shock. That means finishing off a unit is worth a token, and so is frightening one. Detachments such as Covenite Coterie and Tools of Torment carry stratagems that manufacture Battle-shock tests specifically, and each failed test is fuel.

Third, stage your threats. Almost everything you own is fast, hits above its points and dies to a stiff breeze. The temptation is to throw the whole army forward on turn two and then watch it evaporate. Commit only what a target can absorb, keep a second wave in transports or reserve, and screen your open-topped skimmers, because a popped Raider that dumps a unit into the open is how Drukhari games are lost.

A note on command points: the three 1-DP detachments have only three stratagems each, so a list built from nothing but 1-DP detachments can run out of things to spend CP on. The 2-DP and 3-DP detachments each carry six, and several of the best are reactive, including Night Shield, Connoisseurs of Pain, Fighting Shadows, Insensible to Pain, Berserk Fugue, Murderer's Circus and Dance Macabre. Hold a point for your opponent's turn.

The honest answer is that your first purchase should decide which pillar you are, because the detachment list is organised by pillar and the tag rule means you cannot hedge by taking two detachments from the same one.

• Kabal (shooting). Kabalite Warriors plus an Archon, then a Raider to move them and a Ravager for anti-tank. This is the most forgiving way to learn the faction, because shooting from cover punishes positioning mistakes far less than melee does. It leads to Kabalite Agonysts or Kabalite Cartel.
• Wych Cult (melee). Wyches plus a Succubus, with Reavers or Hellions for speed. Highest ceiling, least forgiving. It leads to Exhibition of Slaughter or Spectacle of Spite.
• Haemonculus Covens (durability). Wracks plus a Haemonculus and a Talos. The one Drukhari playstyle that wants to take a hit, and the easiest to hold objectives with. It leads to Tools of Torment or Covenite Coterie.

For bulk, Battleforce: Drukhari is the seasonal multi-kit bundle, and Kill Team: Hand of the Archon and Kill Team: Mandrakes are both playable 40k datasheets as well as Kill Team sets. See current prices across retailers on the Drukhari army page and the boxes page.

Whichever pillar you pick, buy a transport early. Raiders and Venoms are not optional for Drukhari the way a Rhino is optional for a Space Marine list, and Skysplinter Assault is a whole detachment built on owning them.

This one causes real confusion, because two completely different boxed sets have carried the name Combat Patrol: Drukhari, and advice written for one is wrong for the other.

The current box is a Coven army. The warhammer.com product page, read on 27 August 2026, states it builds 13 multipart plastic miniatures: 1 Haemonculus, 1 Cronos (which can alternatively be built as a Talos), 1 Talos (which can alternatively be built as a Cronos) and 10 Wracks, and describes it as a complete Drukhari Coven of Agonies. There is not a single Kabalite, Wych or Raider in it.

The older box was a Kabal army. Its official Warhammer Community rules PDF, dated 17 September 2024 and titled The Blades of Torment, lists Archon Malivex, 10 Kabalite Warriors, 5 Incubi, 1 Raider and 1 Ravager. That set is out of print, and its rules PDF is a 10th-edition document.

So if you are searching for the old Drukhari Combat Patrol, what you remember is the Blades of Torment roster, and you will not find it in the current box. It also changes the answer to what you do next:

• The current Coven box is close to a ready-made core for Tools of Torment (1 DP) or Covenite Coterie (2 DP). Both carry the COVENS tag, so you take one or the other, never both.
• The older Kabal box is a core for Kabalite Agonysts (1 DP) or Kabalite Cartel (2 DP). Both carry the KABAL tag, so again, one or the other.

If you own the old box and want to expand toward the current one, note that you are effectively starting a second pillar rather than growing the first, and that a mixed army is exactly what Realspace Raiders rewards: an Archon with Kabalites and a Haemonculus with Wracks is 4 Pain tokens before the first turn. Check current availability and pricing on the Combat Patrol: Drukhari page.

If you are new or returning, build a Kabalite Agonysts list first. At 1 DP it is cheap enough to leave you room to experiment, its rule is a single clause you cannot misplay, and shooting from cover is far more forgiving than committing fragile bodies to a charge you might fail.

Once you are comfortable, try a 2 + 1 DP split. The cleanest one to learn on is Skysplinter Assault plus Kabalite Agonysts, because both reward the same behaviour: get out of a transport, shoot, and be somewhere else next turn.

When you want the full faction fantasy, run all three 1-DP detachments together. Exhibition of Slaughter, Kabalite Agonysts and Tools of Torment carry three different tags, cost 3 DP together, and give you a genuine Kabal, Wych and Coven raiding party where each element buffs its own units.

Because Drukhari are still on a faction pack rather than a full 11th-edition codex, expect a future codex to re-tune this lineup and its points. Until then, everything here reflects the current, live rules.