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

11th edition (launched mid-2026) didn't hand Grey Knights a fresh codex — like most factions they run their existing 10th-edition Codex alongside a free 11th-edition Faction Pack PDF from Warhammer Community. The Faction Pack re-costs everything into the new Detachment Points economy and, crucially, adds three new narrow detachments — Argent Assault, Fires of Purgation and Immaterial Interdiction — each built around a single previously underused unit. Your familiar codex detachments (Warpbane Task Force, Brotherhood Strike, Hallowed Conclave, Banishers, Sanctic Spearhead, Augurium Task Force) all survive, re-slotted into the DP framework. The headline shift is structural rather than a stat overhaul: the same datasheets, but a new list-building layer that lets you pair a powerhouse detachment with cheaper, focused ones. Always check the latest Munitorum points and dataslate before locking a list.

Two things define a Grey Knights army. First, everybody is a psyker: rank-and-file Strike Squads, Terminators, even the walkers, all carry the Psyker keyword and Nemesis force weapons that punch hard in melee. Second, the faction ability — Gate of Infinity, the evolved form of the old Teleport Assault rule — lets you scoop eligible units off the board at the end of your opponent's turn and drop them into Strategic Reserves, then redeploy them from your next Movement phase. How many units you can teleport scales with game size (broadly two, three or four as you climb from Incursion to Strike Force to Onslaught). That turns the whole army into a repositioning threat: you dodge charges, escape being pinned, and reappear exactly where the game is being decided. Confirm the exact wording and unit counts in the current Faction Pack — teleport rules are a frequent errata target.

11th edition replaces 'pick one detachment' with a Detachment Points budget: you get 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points, and you spend that budget across one to three detachments. Detachments are priced by power — narrow, conditional ones cost 1 DP, standard codex detachments cost 2 DP, and army-wide powerhouses cost 3 DP. For Grey Knights that means their strongest codex option, Warpbane Task Force, eats your entire 3 DP budget on its own, the other codex detachments land at 2 DP, and the three new Faction Pack detachments come in at just 1 DP each. The interesting builds live in the maths: at 2,000 points you can go all-in on one 3 DP detachment, run a 2 DP codex plus a 1 DP specialist, or stack a couple of cheap 1 DP detachments. With so few models on the table, every DP choice really tells.

Grey Knights' roster splits cleanly. The codex side gives broad, whole-army identities: Warpbane Task Force is the established powerhouse and competitive benchmark; Brotherhood Strike leans into deep-strike aggression; Hallowed Conclave rewards Terminator-heavy lists; Banishers turns your psychic melee up against tough targets; Sanctic Spearhead builds around Dreadknights and vehicles; and Augurium Task Force adds extra repositioning tricks. The three new 11th-edition detachments are deliberately narrow, each supercharging one unit that codex builds tended to ignore: Argent Assault for Paladins, Fires of Purgation for Purgation Squads, and Immaterial Interdiction for Interceptors. Because they cost only 1 DP, they're less 'build your whole army around this' and more 'a focused package you bolt on'. The precise stratagems and enhancements inside each are best read straight from the Faction Pack, since exact values move with balance updates.

Start from what you own and how you want to win. If you have a Terminator-heavy collection and love an alpha strike, a codex detachment like Brotherhood Strike or Hallowed Conclave gives your whole army a coherent plan for 2 DP. If you're chasing the strongest competitive shell and can spend your full budget, Warpbane Task Force at 3 DP is the standard other Grey Knights lists are measured against. If you already have a favourite unit — a squad of Paladins, Interceptors or Purgation Squads gathering dust — the matching 1 DP Faction Pack detachment is a cheap way to make them punch above their weight, and it pairs neatly with a 2 DP codex detachment in a Strike Force game. New players should resist over-combining: one clear detachment identity beats three half-used ones. Whatever you pick, sanity-check the current points and DP costs in the app first.

Here's the Grey Knights discipline lesson: you will always be outnumbered. This is one of the lowest model-count armies in the game — a full 2,000-point force can be under thirty models — and each one is expensive, so every casualty is a real chunk of your army gone. That changes how you play. Don't fling units forward hoping to trade; use Gate of Infinity to strike only when you can win the exchange, then teleport survivors out before your opponent swings back. Screen your key characters, value objective scoring over kills, and remember that a unit sitting in Strategic Reserves is a unit that can't be shot. The flip side of fragility is precision: your teleporting elites should always be where they matter most and never caught out of position. Patience and target selection win far more Grey Knights games than raw aggression.

To get playing, the Grey Knights Combat Patrol box is the natural on-ramp: it packs a leader, a Nemesis Dreadknight, and a couple of Terminator and Strike squads — a legal small-game force and the core of something bigger. From there, Terminators and Paladins form your durable elite hammer, while a second Dreadknight adds mobile firepower. Because the army is so model-light, you reach a full-size list faster (and cheaper in painting hours) than almost any other faction — a genuine perk for newcomers. Browse current Grey Knights boxes and starter bundles at /40k/boxes, and if you're still weighing factions, our beginner army guide compares Grey Knights against easier-to-pilot starting armies. For the full army breakdown and unit-by-unit detail, see the Grey Knights army hub.