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

Read this section first. It is the question that brings most people to a Knights page, and the answer is shorter than the myth.

Imperial 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, no requirement that your army 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 two genuine army construction rules, and neither one touches Detachment Points.

Freeblades is an army rule, and it runs in the direction people usually forget. If every model in your army has the IMPERIUM keyword, you can include either one TITANIC IMPERIAL KNIGHTS model or up to three ARMIGER 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 Space Marine or Astra Militarum army borrowing a Knight. It is not a rule about how a Knights army is built, and it grants no Detachment Point relief to anybody. This one is mirror-sourced: it is codex text the pack does not reprint.

Mechanicus Allies is the other, and this one is printed in full in the pack, on page 3, inside the Questor Forgepact detachment rule. While using that detachment you can include TECH-PRIEST DOMINUS, TECH-PRIEST MANIPULUS, MARSHAL, RANGERS and VANGUARD units in your army, and the combined points value of such units cannot exceed 500 points. That is a points allowance living inside one detachment, not a Detachment Point rule, and it is the single most consequential list-building fact in the faction: it is how a Knights army gets bodies.

What we are not telling you, because no document we read says it: that a Knights army must be all-Titanic; that Armigers are capped outside a specific detachment; that Knights cannot take Battleline units, which Spearhead-at-Arms and Questor Forgepact both contradict anyway; or that Knights face any restriction on mission or game size. If you have read otherwise, check the Warhammer 40,000 app.

Three rules shape every Knights list, and they are sourced differently, so we label them differently.

Code Chivalric is the army rule proper. If your Army Faction is IMPERIAL KNIGHTS, at the end of the Read Mission Objectives step you determine your army's Oath: one Deed and one Quality, three options each. You may select each part, or roll a D6 for it. The first time your selected Deed is completed your Oath is fulfilled, your army becomes Honoured until the end of the battle, and you gain 2CP, or 3CP if you randomly selected the Deed and/or the Quality. That CP gain is an explicit exemption to the core rule capping CP gained per battle round at 1.

The randomisation bonus is not decoration. Rolling for both parts is worth a full extra Command Point over choosing both, and in an army with very few models and therefore very few decisions, a third of a turn's stratagem budget is a real number. Choose when you need a specific Deed for the mission; roll when you do not.

One clause is first-party and current, and we can tell you exactly what changed. The pack's Rules Updates section amends the 'We pledge to reap a great tally' Deed under ARMY RULES to read: this deed is completed at the end of the battle round if the number of enemy units destroyed this battle round is greater than the battle round number, even if those units are subsequently returned to the battlefield. The example the pack gives is two destroyed enemy units in the first battle round. That clause closes a real loophole against armies that resurrect units, and the mirror already reproduces it word for word despite carrying an older pack stamp, so this is not a single-source claim.

Bondsman is the rule two of the eight detachments exist to bend. Some IMPERIAL KNIGHTS models have a Bondsman ability. In your Command phase, one or more models with one can use it; for each, select one friendly ARMIGER model within 12 inches that is not already affected by a Bondsman ability, and until the start of your next Command phase that Armiger is affected. Throne-bonded Outriders extends what a Bondsman-affected Armiger gets; Spearhead-at-Arms extends how many Armigers one use reaches. Both are mirror-sourced or partly so, and both pages say which.

Super-heavy Walker is why Knights ignore terrain that stops other armies. A model with this ability can move through models, excluding TITANIC models, and through terrain features 4 inches or less in height, moving within but not ending within Engagement Range. It can also cross taller terrain, but rolls one D6 afterwards and is Battle-shocked on a 1. A Battle-shocked model has Objective Control 0, so the tall-terrain option is a scoring risk as well as a movement one. The ability's existence is first-party, printed on the pack's own new Knight Destrier datasheet; its wording is mirror-sourced.

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 Imperial Knights spread is top-heavy, with two detachments that eat the whole budget rather than the usual one:

• 3 DP: Freeblade Company, Questoris Companions.
• 2 DP: Gate Warden Lance, Spearhead-at-Arms, Valourstrike Lance.
• 1 DP: Dominus Foebreakers, Questor Forgepact, Throne-bonded Outriders.

Eight detachments are legal, and this faction does not reconcile as neatly as some. The pack prints four in full: Dominus Foebreakers (page 2), Questor Forgepact (page 3), Throne-bonded Outriders (page 4) and Freeblade Company (pages 5 and 6). Its Rules Updates section amends two more by name: Gate Warden Lance and Valourstrike Lance. Four plus two is six. The remaining two, Questoris Companions and Spearhead-at-Arms, appear in the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and in the mirror's own index, but the pack does not mention them anywhere. We tell you that on their pages rather than presenting mirror text as though it came from Games Workshop.

No Imperial 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:

• [Dominus Foebreakers](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/dominus-foebreakers) (1 DP, PRIORITY ASSETS). +1 to hit against units in terrain, for DOMINUS units only, which is exactly two datasheets: the Knight Castellan and the Knight Valiant. The narrowest detachment in the faction, priced accordingly.
• [Questor Forgepact](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/questor-forgepact) (1 DP, DISRUPTION). The detachment that gives a Knights army bodies, via a 500 point Adeptus Mechanicus allowance, plus a Tech-Priest healing loop and a ranged aura.
• [Throne-bonded Outriders](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/throne-bonded-outriders) (1 DP, RECONNAISSANCE, ARMIGERS). Bondsman-affected Armigers get [IGNORES COVER] on their shooting. Carries a Unique Tag, so read the section below before pairing it.
• [Freeblade Company](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/freeblade-company) (3 DP, PRIORITY ASSETS). Feel No Pain 6+ and 1 wound regained per Command phase on every Imperial Knights model you own, with no keyword gate at all. Six stratagems, four enhancements, and the whole budget.

The two the pack amends by name:

• [Gate Warden Lance](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/gate-warden-lance) (2 DP, TAKE AND HOLD). A defensive line drawn between two chosen objectives. The pack rewrote the rule in full this version, and the rewrite widens the line.
• [Valourstrike Lance](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/valourstrike-lance) (2 DP, PURGE THE FOE). When any Imperial Knights unit Advances, every Imperial Knights ranged weapon in your army gains [ASSAULT] for the turn. The scope is army-wide, which is the detail most readers miss.

The two the pack does not cover:

• [Questoris Companions](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/questoris-companions) (3 DP, TAKE AND HOLD). Additional Oaths after the first is fulfilled, with Qualities that stack, and four one-shot enhancements the Oath cycle recharges.
• [Spearhead-at-Arms](/40k/armies/imperial-knights/detachments/spearhead-at-arms) (2 DP, RECONNAISSANCE, ARMIGERS). One Bondsman use reaches up to three Armigers, and Armigers become Battleline.

Now the constraint that actually shapes list-building.

Two of the eight detachments carry a Unique Tag, and both carry the same one: ARMIGERS. They are Throne-bonded Outriders (1 DP) and Spearhead-at-Arms (2 DP).

Throne-bonded Outriders' own printed rule says it plainly: this detachment has the ARMIGERS tag and cannot be taken with another ARMIGERS detachment. The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 lists both detachments with that tag.

One plus two is three, which is exactly a Strike Force budget. So the natural army for anyone who owns a shelf of Armiger Warglaives and Helverins, the one that takes both Armiger detachments and nothing else, is illegal.

We can say that flatly, and it is worth explaining why, because a sister page on this site refuses to. Both halves of the chain are first-party: the restriction is printed in the pack, and the partner's tag is printed in the Munitorum Field Manual. Nothing is in dispute between the two official documents. Compare our Chaos Knights guide, where the two official documents genuinely disagree about a tag with the same geometry and the same arithmetic, and where we therefore tell you we do not know.

The one piece of contrary evidence, disclosed rather than buried: the community rules mirror's Spearhead-at-Arms entry prints no tag sentence in its rules text. That mirror is one version behind the Munitorum Field Manual for this faction, so it is a lagging document rather than a second opinion, and the official document wins. Confirm in the Warhammer 40,000 app before a tournament.

Now the inverse case, which is the part people get wrong in the other direction. Dominus Foebreakers plus Questor Forgepact plus Throne-bonded Outriders costs 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 3 DP and is legal, even though one of the three carries a tag. Carrying a tag is not the same as sharing one. The restriction bites only when two detachments hold the same tag, and neither Dominus Foebreakers nor Questor Forgepact holds any.

That three-detachment shape is also the clearest demonstration of the point the first section made: three separate detachment rules, three separate stratagem sets, one ordinary Strike Force budget, with no Knights-specific exception anywhere in sight.

One new datasheet. The pack prints the Knight Destrier in full on pages 7 and 8: a Titanic, Towering, Bellatus-class Character walker with Move 12 inches, Toughness 10, Save 3+, 18 Wounds, and a 5+ invulnerable save against ranged attacks only. It carries Ram Jets, adding D3 inches to Normal and Advance moves, and Saturation Fire, giving its ranged attacks [IGNORES COVER] against units within range of an objective marker. It is named by name in Freeblade Company's Full Tilt stratagem, which grants Armiger and Destrier units 9 inches of guaranteed Advance rather than 6.

A large Imperial Armour section. Pages 9 to 25 print the Cerastus Knight Acheron, Atrapos, Castigator and Lancer; the Questoris Knight Magaera and Styrix; the Acastus Knight Asterius and Porphyrion; and the Armiger Moirax, which carries the ARMIGER keyword and therefore counts for everything the two Armiger 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, Datasheets, 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. So unlike several factions in this series, there is no Legends shelf to warn you about here.

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

Datasheet changes worth knowing before you build. The pack's Rules Updates section rewrote the Damaged section on ten datasheets: Canis Rex, Knight Crusader, Defender, Errant, Gallant, Paladin, Preceptor and Warden now read 1 to 9 wounds remaining, and Knight Castellan and Knight Valiant read 1 to 10, each subtracting 5 from Objective Control and 1 from Hit rolls. It also changed the Objective Control characteristic to 10 on Canis Rex, Castellan, Crusader, Defender, Errant, Gallant, Paladin, Preceptor, Valiant and Warden. Both changes matter more than they look: a wounded Knight standing on an objective drops from 10 Objective Control to 5, which is often the difference between holding and losing it.

One official FAQ. Can Adeptus Mechanicus units use the Doctrina Imperatives ability when taken as part of the Questor Forgepact detachment? No. If you were planning a Skitarii core around that, plan differently.

We track no Imperial Knights product at all. Not a Combat Patrol, not a Battleforce, not a single Knight or Armiger kit. Every unit named across these pages therefore renders without a link, and we would rather say that than point you at a Grey Knights box because the word Knight appears in both names.

That means this section cannot tell you a price. What it can tell you is what the rules reward, which is the part that survives a price change.

If you own nothing yet, the cheapest genuinely playable direction the rules point at is Armigers plus one big Knight. Two of the eight detachments, Throne-bonded Outriders at 1 DP and Spearhead-at-Arms at 2 DP, exist entirely to make Armigers better, and both need a Bondsman-capable Knight on the table to function at all. Buy the Armigers and the Knight together or neither works.

If you own one big Knight already, the 1 Detachment Point detachments are where the value is. Questor Forgepact is the one that changes the shape of your army rather than its damage: 500 points of Adeptus Mechanicus units is the difference between a three-model army that cannot hold two objectives and one that can.

If you own a Knight Castellan or a Knight Valiant, note that those are the only two DOMINUS datasheets, and Dominus Foebreakers is a 1 DP detachment written for them alone. It is the cheapest way to get a detachment rule that actually applies to the model you already have.

A caution about the two 3 DP detachments. Freeblade Company and Questoris Companions each consume a full Strike Force budget. They are strong, but they lock you out of the pairing game entirely, and at 1,000 points you cannot take either at all. If you are buying toward your first army rather than optimising an existing one, the 1 and 2 DP detachments give you more to learn from.