Valourstrike Lance: The 11th-Edition Imperial Knights Advance and Shoot Detachment

Each time an IMPERIAL KNIGHTS unit from your army Advances, until the end of the turn, ranged weapons equipped by IMPERIAL KNIGHTS models from your army have the [ASSAULT] ability.

Read the scope twice, because it is the whole detachment. One unit Advancing turns on [ASSAULT] for the entire army for the rest of the turn, not just for the unit that Advanced. The trigger is on one model; the benefit is on all of them.

What that means in practice. The cheapest, most expendable thing you own becomes the switch for everybody else's guns. An Armiger Warglaive that Advances into a corner where it does nothing else has still paid for itself, because every Knight in your army can now Advance and shoot at full effect. This is why Valourstrike Lance plays as an aggressive detachment rather than as a tax on mobility: you are not choosing between moving and shooting, you are choosing one unit to spend on the choice.

PURGE THE FOE as a force disposition is consistent with that. The detachment is trying to close and kill rather than to hold.

The pack does not reprint these stratagems in full, but it rewrites a named section in each, and those rewritten lines are first-party.

Run Them Through! Target section changed to: one IMPERIAL KNIGHTS unit from your army that has not been selected to fight this phase.

Full Tilt. Target section changed to: one IMPERIAL KNIGHTS unit from your army that has not been selected to move this phase. Note that Freeblade Company has a stratagem of the same name whose full text the pack does print. They belong to different detachments and should not be conflated when you are reading a list or an opponent's army.

Tactical Foil. Target section changed: 9 inches becomes 8 inches. That is a nerf rather than a clarification, and a one inch reduction is exactly the kind of change that decides whether a move or an intervention is on. If you learned this stratagem before 26 August 2026, relearn the number.

The effect text of all three is not printed in the pack, and we are not reproducing it from a mirror that lags this faction on both stamps. Read the full cards in the Warhammer 40,000 app.

The pack does not print the rules text of this detachment's enhancements. From the official Munitorum Field Manual v1.3, reprinted only as a planning aid and dataslate-volatile:

• Bearer of the Judicant's Helm, 25 points.
• Bearer of the Lancer's Sigil, 25 points.
• Bearer of the Iron Chalice, 20 points.
• Bearer of the Evanescent Ion, 15 points.

Four enhancements at 85 points total is the most expensive enhancement list among the Imperial Knights 2 Detachment Point detachments, which is worth knowing when you are budgeting points rather than Detachment Points. None of the four carries a change marker in this pass.

Two practical consequences follow from the rule's scope.

Bring something cheap that wants to Advance anyway. An Armiger is the obvious candidate. The Knight Destrier is another: its own Ram Jets ability already adds D3 inches to Normal and Advance moves, so Advancing costs it less than it costs anybody else.

Order your Movement phase deliberately. The rule fires when a unit Advances and lasts until the end of the turn, so Advance the switch first and then move the guns. Doing it the other way round wastes the turn.

A datasheet note that matters for an aggressive detachment. The pack's Rules Updates rewrote the Damaged section on ten Knight datasheets, most now reading 1 to 9 wounds remaining with minus 5 Objective Control and minus 1 to Hit rolls, and set the Objective Control characteristic to 10 on the same models. A detachment that pushes forward gets its Knights wounded sooner, so plan for the Hit roll penalty on top of everything else.

At 2 Detachment Points this leaves exactly 1 DP at Strike Force, and it carries no Unique Tag.

Plus [Questor Forgepact](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/questor-forgepact) (1 DP, total 3). This is the pairing that turns an aggressive detachment into an army that can still score. Bold Gallantry wants everything moving forward; Questor Forgepact's 500 point Adeptus Mechanicus allowance provides the cheap bodies that stay behind and hold, and its In the Shadow of Giants stratagem lets those bodies Advance and still start actions.