Gate Warden Lance: The 11th-Edition Imperial Knights Defensive Line Detachment

At the start of the first battle round, select two objectives to be your foundations. Place a circular 40mm foundation marker in each one. When you draw a line from any part of one of your foundation markers to any part of the other, if any part of a model's base, or any part of a model's hull for a model without a base, crosses that line, that model's unit is said to be on your defensive line.

While an IMPERIAL KNIGHTS unit from your army is on your defensive line, that unit has Against the Horde: each time a model in it makes an attack that targets a visible enemy unit, you can ignore any or all modifiers to the Hit roll, and weapons equipped by models in the unit have [SUSTAINED HITS 1].

What the rewrite changed, and why it is worth reading rather than skimming. The amended text measures from any part of one marker to any part of the other. The older wording, which a community mirror still prints, measured from the closest part to the closest part. That is a real difference: closest-to-closest gives you one fixed shortest line, while any-to-any gives you a band of legal lines, so more of your army qualifies. The amendment also pins the marker at 40mm, where the older text just said circular.

Reading the payout correctly. Ignoring any or all modifiers to the Hit roll is broader than a plus one. It turns off Stealth, cover-driven penalties and every other minus a defensive opponent stacks on you, and you choose which ones to ignore. Against an army built on hit modifiers this is close to a switch that disables their plan. [SUSTAINED HITS 1] on top scales with volume of fire.

Everything here follows from where you put two markers at the start of the first battle round, before you know very much.

The two objectives you pick define a corridor, not a point. Any model whose base or hull crosses a line between them is on the defensive line, so the geometry rewards choosing two objectives whose connecting band runs through where your army was going to stand anyway.

Force disposition is TAKE AND HOLD, which is consistent: the detachment is trying to win on objectives rather than on kills, and its rule is only live where you have committed to stand.

A Damaged-section caution that specifically matters here. The pack's Rules Updates rewrote the Damaged section on ten Knight datasheets. Most Questoris Knights now read 1 to 9 wounds remaining and the Castellan and Valiant 1 to 10, and in that state the model subtracts 5 from its Objective Control as well as 1 from Hit rolls. On a TAKE AND HOLD detachment built around holding two specific objectives, a wounded anchor is a scoring problem as much as a damage one. The same update set the Objective Control characteristic to 10 on those datasheets, so the drop is from 10 to 5 rather than to nothing.

The Faction Pack version 1.2 does not reprint this detachment's stratagems and does not amend any of them by name, and it does not print the rules text of its four enhancements.

A community mirror lists six stratagems under this detachment and gives rules text for the enhancements. We are not reproducing six stratagem texts and four enhancement rules from that mirror as though they were current, because for this faction the mirror lags on both stamps: it records Faction Pack v1.1 against the official v1.2 and Munitorum Field Manual v1.2 against the official v1.3. Read them in the Warhammer 40,000 app.

What we can give you from the official Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 is the enhancement points, which are reprinted only as a planning aid and are dataslate-volatile: Augury Halo 20, Purgation's Hand 20, Acquisitor-at-Arms 15, Vengeful Tread 15. Four enhancements at a total of 70 points is a normal spread for a 2 DP detachment in this faction.

At 2 Detachment Points this leaves exactly 1 DP at Strike Force, and it carries no Unique Tag, so both pairings below are unambiguously legal.

Plus [Dominus Foebreakers](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/dominus-foebreakers) (1 DP, total 3). The same instinct twice. Both detachments pay big guns for not moving, and a Knight Castellan on a foundation marker is collecting from both rules at once: Against the Horde's modifier immunity and Rain of Devastation's +1 to hit against units in terrain.

Plus [Throne-bonded Outriders](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/throne-bonded-outriders) (1 DP, total 3). This is the pairing that stops a defensive detachment being purely passive. The big Knights hold the line; the Armigers push out under a Bondsman ability with [IGNORES COVER] and take what the line does not reach.