Detachment Focus: Infernal Lance (Updated November 18, 2025)

In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into an army’s Detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games. In this Detachment Focus we’re looking at the Infernal Lance from the Chaos Knights codex.

One of the great things about Chaos Knights is how evil and messed up they are. Sometimes this is due to brutal Iconoclast rule on their home world. Other times it’s due to cool contracts they sign with devious daemons. This detachment focuses on the latter type of Knight, giving your knights otherworldly, powerful, abilities with definitely, absolutely no risk to them at all.

Update Log

• Updated (Latest): 2025-11-18 with a new list and Dataslate updates
• Initial Publication: 2025-06-07

Detachment Overview

This detachment lets you juice up your knights with the risk of some mortal wounds in exchange for power. Anyone who’s played Chaos Knights in editions past and played an Infernal Household will be familiar with this rule. This detachment also opens up some great combos to let your knights do things that would otherwise be impossible in other detachments. You want a melee monster Abominant? You got it. You wanna move 21” on turn one with a Stalker and then charge? We got you. There’s a lot to like here.

Detachment Rule: Malefic Surge

If you’re familiar with the Chaos Space Marines’ Dark Pacts rule, this will look very familiar. In your command phase you can take a Leadership test on any and all of your knights to make them Empowered. If you fail the test, you take D3 mortals but still get the buff and on a success you just get the buff. During the round you can spend your Empowered buff to get one of the following abilities:

• Unholy Hunger: +3” to movement
• Diabolic Power: gain your pick of [LETHAL HITS] or [SUSTAINED HITS 1] when you shoot or fight this phase
• Unnatural Fortitude: when this model is selected as a target you get a 5+ invuln for the phase (useful in the fight phase) or a 6+ Feel No Pain.

There is a lot you can do with this rule. Unholy Hunger is massively helpful here since movement is so key to winning games, and your knights are already so fast. We’re talking 15” move Rampagers, 17” move Karnivores and Lancers, and when combined with their scout move, 21” move Stalkers on turn 1. That said, don’t sleep on Diabolic Power – the ability to gain Lethal or Sustained Hits on a Gatling Cannon Despoiler is huge, and turns that unit into an absolute nightmare. Finally that 5+ invulnerable save is great in melee when you’re going up against AP-3 attacks – it could be just the thing your Rampager needs to survive the turn. And worst-case, you can opt for the 6+ Feel No Pain if the invulnerable save won’t help you.

There’s a lot to like here and we’re only on the Detachment Rule.

Enhancements

All of these enhancements make your Malefic Surges a bit more powerful.

• Knight Diabolus (25 pts): Improve the Weapon Skill of the model by 1 and when it uses Diabolic Power (sustained or lethal) it gets Lance for the phase. This is an amazing enhancement, letting your less reliable melee knights really shine. It’s also not bad on an Abominant.
• Blasphemous Engine (35 pts): Gives you 2 extra wounds and you can reroll the Leadership tests for your Malefic Surge. The two extra wounds don’t really move the needle on a 26 wound model but the reroll is nice. As it stands, it’s too expensive. If it gets cheaper I can see this being a good enhancement to fill out a list but right now I’d pass.
• Fleshmetal Fusion (35 pts): +1 toughness and if you use Unnatural Fortitude (invuln and feel no pain) you get +1 to your save against damage 1 attacks. Hey look T12 knights, what a concept. With the new points this is definitely interesting, but I’m not running to use this one unless I happen to have exactly 35 points left over.
• Bestial Aspect (20 pts): You get assault on ranged weapons and can ignore modifiers to your move when you use Unholy Hunger (the movement one). Yeah, pass on this one. Most movement Modifiers don’t work on vehicles and assault is really only useful on a harpoon Tyrant or a thermal Despoiler.

Stratagems

There’s not much of a coherent theme to these Stratagems but what you do have here is a diverse toolkit to work with.

• Profane Symbiosis (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): At the end of any phase, you can use this on a Chaos Knight that isn’t Empowered to make another Malefic Surge. Note that a unit that hasn’t used its Surge buff yet is Empowered, but it will stop being Empowered once it uses its ability. This is amazing for making sure you get your offensive and defensive buffs in the same round. Note that you can’t use this on the same target more than once per Battle Round, so getting all three is off the table, but you can use this in a pinch to bypass the Leadership test and chance at mortal wounds if you’re worried you might not pass it and you can’t afford to take the damage.
• Hellforged Construction (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Good ol’ Armor of Contempt. Used in the Fight phase to reduce the AP on incoming attacks by 1 from a single unit. Really nice for keeping you in the game and can combo easily with the 6+ Feel No Pain from being Empowered in a pinch.
• Corrupting Taint (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Used in your Command phase, right after a CHARACTER unit in your army makes a Surge. Makes an objective marker you control sticky. This is one of the most valuable tools available to Knights, so make sure you don’t pass it over.
• Unleash Balefire (Wargear, 1 CP): Used in your Shooting phase. This is probably the least valuable of the bunch but still handy. After you shoot something you can force it to take a Battleshock test. If they fail, they’re -2″ to their Movement characteristic and charge rolls for the round. This can be a life saver and can trigger your army abilities, but it relies on a failed test, and even at -1 most units will just pass the test.
• Warp Vision (Wargear, 1 CP): Used in the Shooting phase to give one of your Chaos Knights [IGNORES COVER] for the phase. This is really solid on chaincannons and the like and works amazingly well with double gatling cannon Despoilers. You’re going to use this a lot.
• Diabolic Bulwark (Wargear, 1 CP): Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase to give one of your targeted knights a 4+ invulnerable save for the rest of the phase. The once-ubiquitous +1 to shooting invuln stratagem is now unique to this detachment. It’s a good one, but a lot of folks throw this on something that would die anyway – make sure you use this when it can actually make a difference.

Playing This Detachment

This detachment excels at getting around the table and buffing your shooting. As such, it has become the de facto way to play Chaos Knights in a competitive setting. The ability to add movement, damage output, or defensive buffs to any knight in your army basically means that this makes all of your datasheets better, and so a good Infernal Lance army is one that makes the best use of the army’s best datasheets. When the Atrapos was undercosted, that meant taking three of them. Following their points increase, the meta has shifted to settle more or less on running three double Gatling Cannon Despoilers, though you will still occasionally see an Atrapos, Lancer, or even a Desecrator in these lists. The Lancer really wants +3″ to movement to make early long charges, while the Atrapos and Despoiler want SUSTAINED HITS most of the time to boost their damage output.

In addition to the triple Despoilers, these lists typically run a mix of War Dogs and Nurgle Daemons for support. Karnivores and Stalkers tend to be the preferred tools here on the War Dog side, and Stalkers have some crazy turn 1 movement options with their movement, Scout move, and a Malefic Surge. That said, be mindful that at Ld 7 you’ll want to be a little more careful with how you use Malefic Surges on your War Dogs – they’re a little more fragile than they used to be and shaving a wound or two off with a Malefic Surge can make a huge difference in their ability to stay on the table.

There’s a lot to like here and it’s a really flexible detachment for such a strong rule.

Strengths

• Amazing Detachment Ability: This detachment ability is transformative, fully changing the capabilities of your knights and letting them do everything just a bit better. 

• Good Stratagem Suite: With most of the stratagems not requiring a Surge, you can use them with absolutely no risk and the toolbox here is very handy.

• Good Defensive Tools: generally the things you look for in Knight lists are ways to keep your high cost units alive. Between Unnatural Fortitude, Hellforged Construction, and Diabolic Bulwark, you have some great options for keeping you in the game

Weaknesses

• Mortals Risk: While D3 mortals isn’t a lot when you fail, it can add up quickly especially on war dogs. Don’t take unnecessary wounds to put you below half, risk a Battleshock test and lose an objective! 

• CP Hungry: There’s a lot of great stratagems here, but Chaos Knights have no way to generate extra CP outside discarding objectives. Kairos is a consideration to soup in, but it’s really not worth it in the end.
• This Makes Iconoclast Fiefdom Look Really Dumb: any of the cool things Iconoclast Fiefdom was doing outside just bringing some cultists is fully out done by this detachment. They occupy a too similar design space and this one is just much stronger.

Sample Lists

Right now Infernal Lance is the go-to play if you’re running Chaos Knights competitively. This list was run by Kyle Sams at the Innsmouth Slaughter 40k GT event in early November, where he piloted the list to a 4-1, 2nd place finish, losing in the final round to T’au but beating two Space Marine armies, Blood Angels, and Drukhari along the way.

The Despoilers here are the stars of the show, and can just be an absolute menace with Unholy Hunger powering their guns. They’re supported by five War Dogs – two Stalkers and three Karnivores, but if you wanted to squeeze out an extra War Dog – which Tim Mellings did in his 2nd place list at another event that same weekend, you could swap the Nurglings and the Bestial Aspect Enhancement for one more. On the flip side, if you wanted to go heavier on Daemons – which Arjan Fintelman did with his second-place list at a different event that same weekend, you could drop the Stalkers and one unit of Nurglings and add a unit of Plaguebearers and three Beasts of Nurgle. This would also let you swap out Bestial Aspect for Fleshmetal Fusion. You have some options for how you want to tool this list, essentially, but the core of it is those three Despoilers.

Bestial Aspect is a weird one here but it theoretically does more for a Despoiler than Knight Diabolus.

Final Thoughts

Infernal Lance is a slam dunk detachment, providing a great rule and great support stratagems to help you get there. It’s no surprise that it has emerged as the best Chaos Knights detachment for competitive play and we expect it to stay their top option for the foreseeable future.

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