Detachment Focus: Valourstrike Lance (Updated September 17, 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 Valourstrike Lance from the Imperial Knights.

Sound the war horns! Codex Imperial Knights is here and along with it is a slew of new Detachments. In this article we’ll be focusing on the Valourstrike Lance, which is focused around moving fast and blasting your opponents at close range.

Changelog

• 2025-09-17 (Current): Updated with the changes from the September 2025 Balance Dataslate.
• 2025-09-06: Original Publication

Detachment Overview

This is your generalist Imperial Knights Detachment, looking to give you basic movement buffs via the Detachment rule and a slew of generic but effective buffs via stratagems. Ostensibly the Detachment wants you to keep a tight formation with the rest of your lance, but there’s plenty here that works just fine if you’re just winging it. This Detachment favors a varied list of Knights between bigs and smalls, but like I said, you can go any direction with this one. This Detachment actually received some pre-release nerfs in the Q3 balance dataslate, toning down its Detachment rule and key Stratagems, but overall it’s still a solid choice.

Detachment Rule: Bold Gallantry

Each time an IMPERIAL KNIGHTS unit from your army Advances, their ranged weapons gain the [ASSAULT] ability until the end of the turn. A very handy Detachment ability, giving you some much needed flexibility to get your Knights around the table and into position, and combines well with the Quality to improve your Movement and Advance rolls. Where this shines is with the trusty Thermal Lance and Cannon, allowing you to get into melta range early and often to blast your opponent’s off the table. Just remember you can’t advance and action with this Detachment, so your big knights may still forgo advancing in favor of doing secondaries.

Enhancements

It’s worth noting the wording on these – they all specify one other model, so you can’t use the ability on the model that has it. You’ll need to be intelligent about putting these on the model you intend to hand out the buff, not the one you want to have it.

• Bearer of the Iron Chalice: At the end of your Movement phase, select one other IMPERIAL KNIGHTS model from your army that is within 12” of and visible to the bearer. That model regains d3 lost wounds, or 3 if your army is Honoured. A useful ability to have, and being at the end of the Movement phase gives you a lot of flexibility in getting it where it’s needed. That said, 3 wounds is often a drop in the bucket on your bigger Knights, but is very welcome on your small guys.
• Bearer of the Evanescent Ion: At the end of your Movement phase, select one other IMPERIAL KNIGHTS model from your army that is within 12” of and visible to the bearer. Until the start of your next Movement phase, that selected model has the Stealth ability. Again, a handy thing to be able to hand out to your Knights to make them a little tougher to crack. This is the auto take in this Detachment, since giving your Knights more durability is always what you want to be seeking out.
• Bearer of the Judicant’s Helm: At the start of your Shooting phase, select one other IMPERIAL KNIGHTS model from your army that is within 12” of and visible to the bearer. Until the end of the phase, that model’s ranged weapons have IGNORES COVER. Again, a neat trick to be able to hand out, particularly on Battle Cannons.
• Bearer of the Lancer’s Sigil: At the start of your Charge phase, select one other IMPERIAL KNIGHTS model from your army that is within 12” of and visible to the bearer. Until the end of the phase that model can re-roll Charge rolls. Once again, a handy choice for making your charges more reliable. That said, you often aren’t really charging with most Imperial Knights and often the ones that are are ranging ahead of the rest of your lance.

Stratagems

Three of these Stratagems changed in the Q3 Dataslate, moving from “pick three Imperial Knights within 9″ of a point on the battlefield” to “a single knight.” This is worse, but ultimately the effects you get are still pretty good and you’re no longer incentivized to bunch your big knights up on the table, so you’re free to range around.

• Run Them Through! (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Use this in the Fight phase to give one knight the [LANCE] ability on its melee weapons for the phase. This is a big buff and helpful for turning those 3+ wound rolls into 2+ when you’re going into bigger vehicles or getting more out of your sweeps.
• Thunderstomp (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Used in the Fight phase to upgrade the feet attacks of a knight: A small Knight gets 8 attacks with its feet or a big one gets 12 and they also improve the AP of those attacks by 1. This isn’t a strat to go into the game with a plan to use it, but it’s a nice “Oh Shit” button if your Crusader gets charged. It’ll basically take a big knight from “killing one space marine, maybe” to “likely to kill three,” so keep that math in mind.
• Full Tilt (Battle Tactic, 2 CP): Used in your Movement phase to give one Imperial Knight in your army that hasn’t move yet +2″ to its Movement and +2 to its Advance rolls. This was already a bit steep at 2 CP for three models and the nerf makes it very situational at best. The good news is that you’re likely to have lots of CP later after becoming Honoured and +4″ is a pretty big deal.
• Vow of Retribution (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Used in the Shooting phase to give a Knight [LETHAL HITS] on its ranged attacks. This one of those you’ll be windmill slamming every turn. Battle Cannons, Gatling Cannons, and the entire Defender armament loves to see this. 
• Tactical Foil (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Used in your opponent’s Movement phase. If something ends a move within 9” of a knight, it can move D6”. A bit risky with no way to bump it up, but this can win games.
• Rotate Ion Shields (Wargear, 1 CP): If you’ve ever played any kind of Knight you know this one, 1 CP to improve your invulnable saves against ranged attacks to a 4+ for the duration of the phase. You don’t wanna use this as often as you might think, but it can be a life saver.

Playing This Detachment

This Detachment wants a little bit of everything but largely favors a shooting-heavy gameplan with some light melee support. The Crusader, Paladin, Errant, and Defender thrive in this Detachment both due to its Detachment rule and the stratagem support. For the most part you’ll be making death stars that move around the table and looking to blow your opponent away early and often. The goal here is to use your movement to find good angles on opposing units and position on objectives early, without giving up your ranged damage output. This army skews hard into taking out threats at range while using extra movement to hold objectives across the table and reach firing angles that opponents otherwise felt were safe. That’s the big advantage of the extra movement here – being both unpredictable and difficult to avoid when you can squeeze out an extra 2-4″, put a toe on a ruin, and then blast an opponent with impunity.

That said, it’s important to know that while this is the “general” Detachment for Imperial Knights in the Codex, it’s very different from the Index Detachment, and you’ll need to keep that in mind when you play it or you’ll suddenly find yourself realizing your Knights are not nearly as durable as you expected them to be! This one’s much more about movement, and losing that 6+ Feel No Pain is a big deal.

Strengths

• Very aggressive. With Assault on all your models and re-rolls on Advances to help you get where you need to be, it’s going to be very difficult to pin this army down.
• Fantastic support. With access to Stealth and Lethal Hits, this might be one of the best Detachments for Knights in the game – you have some great support for a ranged strategy here.
• Flexible. Nothing here is tied to Armigers or Titanic models so everything you see works on everything.

Weaknesses

• Master of none. While there’s a lot here for everyone, nothing really outlines a concrete gameplan outside “shoot your opponent” which, you know what? Fair.
• Easy to overextend. For the most part Imperial Knights are a shooting army and this Detachment has you clump up and get in close; if you’re not careful you can get tied up very easily.
• No scoring support. With no way to sticky objectives or do actions more effectively you’ll likely need to lean on agents to do the boring stuff.

A Sample List

You’ll want hybrid units in this list who can shoot well to take advantage of Assault but also rumble in melee if it gets tied down. Agent support is likely a must to help with scoring and you’ll want to lean towards big Knights over small ones since the buffs affect both equally.

Sample List - click to expand

This is a pretty straightforward list, letting you use [ASSAULT] to the fullest to help your Errants and Paladin get into position and then blasting your opponent hard. It will struggle somewhat into hordes so you’ll have to play around that, but midrange to elite armies hate to see this coming. The agents will help hold your home while the Callidus hops around debuffing your opponent and scoring secondaries. It’s not the most elegant list, but it’s certainly got teeth.

Final Thoughts

This is an interesting Detachment; there’s no clear gameplan outside “put Knights on the table” but it gives you the tools to make that strategy viable and flexible. There’s a lot to like here even if it’s a bit vanilla and I expect we’ll see this pop up in Competitive Innovations after this book makes the scene. Movement is powerful in 40k, and with Knights moving to more of a ranged army, this Detachment plays right into that.

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