Today’s points update for Warhammer 40,000 gives us the rare off-cycle balance update, changing the points values on units for three of the game’s most powerful factions. In this article we’ll look at what changed, how it affects the top lists, and what it means going forward.

Wings: They’ve only gone and actually done it – they nerfed the sick filth!

As regular tournament attendees and followers of Competitive Innovations will know, the metagame for the last few months has been overshadowed by three factions dominating the game thanks (in part) to some very undercosted Datasheets. Death Guard, Chaos Knights and Imperial Knights can all put down overwhelming quantities of powerful threats, and while players of other factions have done their best to adapt, the dominance has continued for long enough that it’s clearly not going to stop organically. Happily, rather than wait for the next Dataslate, the studio has decided to step in, bringing us an emergency Munitorum Field Manual update that solely focuses on the big three factions. Will it bring them back in line with the rest of the game? Let’s dig in and find out.

Thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with early access to this update for review purposes. If you were wondering why Competitive Innovations wasn’t in its normal slot earlier – this is why, and it’ll be coming later today now this has been released.

Death Guard

TheChirurgeon: The Death Guard have very few bad match ups in this metagame – they do many things well – and this is made even more problematic by the fact that their units are just too cheap. A series of point changes across the board raise the cost of many of the faction’s key units, shaving off two to three units per army for the common top lists.

The Changes

Characters

• Biologus Putrifier +15pts
• Foul Blightspawn +15pts
• Lord of Contagion +10pts
• Lord of Virulence +10pts
• Tallyman +10pts
• Typhus +10pts

Infantry

• Deathshrouds +20pts at both sizes
• Poxwalkers +5pts (10 models only)

Other

• Foetid Bloat-Drone +10pts
• Foetid Bloat-Drone with Heavy Blight Launcher +20pts
• Myphitic Blight-haulers +10pts/model
• Plagueburst Crawler +15pts

List Impact

Death Guard lists come in three key varieties: Vehicle-heavy Mortarion’s Hammer, Virulent Vectorium (typically with Mortarion), and the character-heavy Champions of Contagion.

Mortarion’s Hammer – Junior Aflleje – Lone Star Open 1st Place

Increases by 245pts.

Army List - Click to Expand

Virulent Vectorium – Alban de Polignac – 1st Place WTC Warmaster GT

Increases by 200pts.

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Virulent Vectorium with Mortarion – Derek Apsche – Undefeated 4th Place Lone Star Open

Increases by 135pts.

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Champions of Contagion – Ben Hackländer – Undefeated 3rd Place Krefeld Major

Increases by 225pts.

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Analysis

Wings: My hot take here is that this is probably about right, and is mostly pretty well targeted. I think as a rule the most an army should be changing in a single update (outside of comical Index Aeldari or ninth edition Harlequins situations) is around 200-250pts, as it gets hard to predict whether you’ll hit a cliff-edge beyond that, and looking at the impact on top builds above, they’ve hit that on the head, with the “best” build at the upper end of the range, and other common builds at the lower end. They’ve also done a good job of hitting pretty much everything – on a first read I was a little worried that 10-model Plague Marines could still be an issue, but the power Characters for those units have taken a hit too, so you’re taking a hit unless you run them bare bones.

The only outlier from our top builds is Derek’s, which is running Mortarion and 2×5 Plague Marines without power Characters, so gets a much lighter touch. That’s probably OK because builds with Mortarion are notably less dominant than Mortarion’s Hammer and Vectorium/Champions goodstuff, but you’ll certainly see more people trying him because of that. I think the 2×5 Plague Marines in a Rhino will become more common just in general, as it’s a good value piece that projects moderate threat, and doesn’t hike as much in cost. Also likely to see increased use are foot Daemon Princes, a legitimately great unit that sees some play already, plus Spawn as cheap filler, Helbrutes now they’re closer in cost to Haulers, and maybe 3x Blightlords in the place of one Deathshroud unit to harvest some points. Even with a serious dedication to dodging the impacts, almost every build is down one real unit, and to that I say – good.

The only miss here is probably the Blight Launcher Bloat-drone, because honestly that’s a unit that’s going into the hall of fame of stuff that has a datasheet so bananas that you can never cost it realistically. 120pts is still a steal and you’ll continue seeing minimum two in most lists. That is legitimately my only actual complaint though – everything else is pretty much spot on, and should comfortably knock the army from S-tier down to a low A-tier.

TheChirurgeon: I think these points are a deft touch, but welcome. Death Guard have been just Too Good, and it’s in large part because they just have too many units. I’ve had multiple games where I’ve ended things before even dropping the third unit of Deathshrouds onto the table, and I think the army will be just fine if I have to drop a unit of Deathshrouds and a Blight-Hauler.

The one area I’ll disagree on is the Bloat-Drone, and that’s because it’s a bit of a complicated knot. 120 is more or less the perfect cost for them currently. At 130 they start to become too expensive, to the point where you just replace them with Predators which, at 10 points more, offer a bit more shooting and durability. That said, I expect we may start seeing Predators in Hammer lists soon anyways, as at 140 points they’re an absolute steal given they can also further improve your AP against targets.

I’m still more than happy to bring the Death Guard at these increased points values, which feel fair but don’t kill the faction competitively.

Imperial Knights

Imperial Knights would likely have been good but not dominant if it weren’t for the point changes to Forge World Knights – the Cerastus and Questoris variants – whose low costs and improved invulnerable saves led to them becoming dominant in competitive play over the last two months. The new points increase the costs of knights across the board, making them more manageable and more cumbersome as allied units.

The Changes

• Armiger Helverin +10pts
• Canis Rex +35pts
• Knight Castellan +15pts
• Knight Crusader +30pts
• Knight Errant +30pts
• Knight Gallant +30pts
• Knight Paladin +30pts
• Knight Preceptor +30ptts
• Knight Valiant +15pts
• Knight Warden +20pts
• Cerastus Knight Acheron +30pts
• Cerastus Knight Atrapos +40pts
• Cerastus Knight Castigator +30pts
• Cerastus Knight Lancer +30pts
• Questoris Knight Magaera +30pts
• Questoris Knight Styrix +30pts

List Impact

The biggest impact is that running triple Atrapos + Canis just isn’t nearly as feasible any more.

Christian Schachmann – 1st Place Krefeld Major

Increases by 195pts

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Jason Welch – 3rd Place The BIg Sky Open 2025

Increases by 90pts.

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Analysis

Wings: The hammer drops hard here too, with almost all big Knights increasing by 30pts, and special attention paid to the Knight Atrapos, which gets bumped by 40pts. I’m looking at my notes here – turns out that if you make a Knight Datasheet where it gets 1.5 big guns and a melee weapon and bypasses the faction’s weakness to high AP melee, that can be a problem. Weird. Definitely did not have the exact same problem with the Magaera in ninth, so there was no way to prevent this, and we are definitely not still somehow living with the consequences of the ITC normalising Forge World for competitive play in eighth.

Leaving aside my now seven-year-long vendetta against the Forge World menace, this looks like another solid hit – there’s basically no way to wiggle around having to drop a unit in every list, with even the less impacted build shown needing to take out an Armiger or the Assassin to make ends meet. The vast gap between how hard the two builds get hit does showcase the fact that Imperial Knights are quite flexible, and have lots of options in how they shake things up. Though the Canis/triple Atrapos build is easily and obviously the “best” current build, building more heavily around Armigers is still viable, and as well as the Warden list shown I have seen a few Canis/all Armiger builds go past my desk even after the changes. You also have the option to go deeper into Imperial Agents to mitigate some of the impact, and I expect we’ll see more lists with one or two Immolators as a result of this. A smaller price jump to a Castellan also makes those appealing – one route that Jason’s build could easily go would be to drop one Armiger, upgrade the Banner Warden to a Castellan, and spend the left over change on an enhancement or something, and the army is still quite threatening. 

There’s also going to be a second-order effect with both kinds of Knight where reducing their power will also reduce the extent to which people are teching for them – right now, every list that’s serious about winning an event has a plan for killing Knights, and reducing that will make their units go further. That’s part of why I’m expecting the Castellan to jump in popularity a bit – the enhanced defences make it more of a lift to kill, and it’s very good at spiking out a gun tank or two against foes that are only moderately prepared for big robots. 

Where does that leave us? It’s notable that Imperial Knights have done a much better job of weathering a metagame tuned for them than Chaos Knights have up till now, to the point you could argue that the latter has been pushed out of S-tier to the top of A-tier, and the triple Atrapos build has been the key driver of that. Taking that out removes S-tier status, but I’m comfortable that with a bit of re-configuration, there are builds that still sit in A-tier. There is one thing I’m a little worried about, which is that Canis +35pts still leaves him as an extremely good take as an ally in many Imperium factions, and if the amount of anti-Knight tech reduces he could become better in the slot despite costing a bit more, which risks freezing out some variety.

TheChirurgeon: This is where I point out that well, technically, there are plastic versions of some of these Knights now – specifically the Lancer. But either way I agree that most problems with both Knights and Chaos Knights stem from having access to this extra pool of units whose design philosophies seem off from those of the standard Codex/Index units.

Chaos Knights

While both Imperial and Chaos Knights saw major changes to their datasheets earlier this year, Chaos Knights had a full Codex release, which changed their army rule and gave them a number of Detachments to work with. While they have more variety, they arguably have less overall power, as the re-rolls and feel no pain Imperial Knights get just ups the raw power of their datasheets in a way Chaos Knights struggle to match.

The Changes

• Knight Abominant +30pts
• Knight Desecrator +30pts
• Knight Despoiler +40pts
• Knight Rampager +30pts
• Knight Ruinator +25pts
• Knight Tyrant +15pts
• War Dog Karnivore +10pts
• Chaos Cerastus Knight Acheron +30pts
• Chaos Cerastus Knight Atrapos +40pts
• Chaos Cerastus Knight Castigator +30pts
• Chaos Cerastus Knight Lancer +30pts
• Chaos Questoris Knight Magaera +30pts
• Chaos Questoris Knight Styrix +30pts

List Impact

The biggest impact here is the change to the Abominant, which now makes taking six big knights in a list impossible.

Colin Kay – Infernal Lance – 1st Place The BIg Sky Open 2025

Increases by 180pts.

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Alex Rigby – Lords of Dread – 1st Place Capital Clash

Increases by 200pts.

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Kieren Trimbee – Houndpack Lance – 1st Place River City Rumble

Increases by 60pts.

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Analysis

Wings: As alluded to above, Chaos Knights are in a weird place at the moment where they are definitely A Problem For the Game, but don’t quite have the raw performance of Death Guard or Imperial Knights, to the point where it’s arguable whether they’re even quite in S-tier as it stands. The reason for that is that they’re far more vulnerable than their Imperial brethren to an anti-Knight metagame. Lords of Dread demands you run five bigs to be worth it, so if an opponent can handle that then it falls over, while Infernal Lance relies on the use of Knight Despoilers, which don’t have a melee invulnerable save, so actually die to stuff that hits them really hard up close. People sticking to Lords of Dread in spite of this has, bluntly, been suppressing the win rate slightly, and with a few exceptions (as above, though I had to go further back to pull a winning build) Infernal Lance has been driving the faction’s ongoing success.

That success has been real because the double gatling Despoiler in Infernals is a complete nightmare, and definitely not OK at the 335pts price tag it used to have. Realistically, even at +40pts I think every successful Chaos Knights build will still have one of them, and you can still make an argument for two, though it’s harder to fit the rest of what you then want, especially as you get a bit of a tax on the Karnivores these builds fill out with. You do have the asset of the Abominant being the cheapest “real” Knight that either side gets (though the six big version of Lords is now fully dead since the floor per Knight is 355pts), and War Dog Stalkers are also very nasty in Infernals. My assumption is that you end up with three big Infernals as the “stock” build for the faction, probably two Despoilers (one double gatling, one double melta) and one more big, then Dogs and Daemons to fill.

That’s… good still, but I think it does fall out of A tier into the high end of B. Final accounting will depend on how hard people stick to their anti-knight guns, given my thesis is already that this is hurting Chaos more than the Imperium. You could also potentially see a rise of a more balanced Lords of Dread build on three bigs, since a Mirror of Fates Lancer/Atrapos is still a banger centrepiece. Finally – other detachments are available, mostly Houndpack Lance, which does have one GT win to its name that I’ve pulled out above. It’s great threat saturation, and people might not be ready for the heat it’s bringing once they grow complacent about the robot threat. All things taken together though, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the changes here end up getting walked back a bit for Chaos in the longer run – fundamentally, the Feel No Pain the Imperium has pushes the value on some of the Forge World big Knights that much harder than Chaos ever has, and they’re catching a few strays on that front.

TheChirurgeon: We knew months ago that when these nerfs finally came, Chaos Knights were going to catch strays, namely from Games Workshop having the insane belief that all of their Knights should cost the same as their Imperial counterparts. That’s wild when you consider how much more value Imperial Knights get out of big Knights from their army rule. These changes aren’t unnecessary – six big knights with Triple Abominants was hilarious for taunting Norman with but shouldn’t exist – but they do go a little too hard on the faction in my opinion, and they’re more interesting and fun to play with and against than Imperial Knights.

The Lurking Threats

Wings: Reducing the power of the big three factions opens up the metagame considerably, but it does also come with some risks. Lots of stuff should be viable now, but there are also a few builds that have been floating just below the top players, and with the field cleared there’s a risk that they now leap too much to the fore. If I were the studio, these are the builds I’d be watching very closely in the next few weeks, hopefully with an eye to making tweaks to the “full” Balance Dataslate when that arrives.

Genestealer Cults

The Genestealer Cults are already seen as a counter to big knights armies – our own Ben Jurek wrote about this a few weeks ago – but are just as capable in other matchups.

Sample List – Innes Wilson – Host of Ascension – 2nd Place WTC Warmaster GT

Army List - Click to Expand

Analysis

Wings: Really living the vibe of lurking threat, we have Genestealer Cults, especially Host of Ascension horde builds as seen from Innes above. These have risen to prominence as anti-Knight tech, but that process has brought to light that they’re very overwhelming for many armies to handle. They’ve always had big damage out of Deep Strike and good scoring, but combining the increased reliability of the Resurgence Points version of Cult Ambush with the very low costs for using it on early board presence pieces like Jackals and Purestrains has pushed them over the top. They can go ham on jailing the foe at minimal cost to their long-term resource supply, and set up to methodically overwhelm and liquidate the opposition from there, and that’s a very strong strategy that needs careful monitoring. Rusted Claw builds (and a few more all-rounder Hosts lists) have also seen some strong performances, but aren’t quite worrying on the same level as Host is. 

Blood Angels

The Blood Angels have been hanging around the periphery for a while, having improved in the last Dataslate, and also play well into big knights, where hitting at S6 is the key breakpoint for their updated, lower Toughness value.

Sample List – Toby Bennett – Liberator Assault Group – Black Crow Gaming’s Battle of the RAGNAR GT!

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Analysis

Wings: Blood Angels are our next entrant here, having received massive buffs in the last Dataslate, but then partially suppressed from their full potential by Death Guard domination. It is only partially mind – the army had a 55% win rate this past weekend, and has been putting up a solid clip of top results with a variety of Liberator builds (some all melee, some adding Vindicators/Ballistus), plus a few Inheritors lists. The Liberator lists are the ones that need closest monitoring because they do the classic Blood Angels thing of turbo-boosting all the cheap melee Infantry Marines have into being “real” units at bargain basement prices. That can leave them with a fairly overwhelming number of (fast) threats up their sleeve, and they also get a great durable centrepiece from the Lemartes brick, creating a solid anchor. It’s an army that’s a bit easier to tech for than the other threats here, but in terms of raw power it’s worthy of serious respect.

TheChirurgeon: If there’s a matchup that Death Guard don’t love, it’s probably this one and Lords of Dread. Death Company hit hard enough to reliably kill 3-man units of Deathshroud and with the right terrain these guys can get the drop on you and make those blast weapons a lot less useful.

Ultramarines

The Ultramarines saw some nerfs in the last Dataslate around bringing Guilliman and Calgar, making them less useful together. However those were compensated for with point drops that made it hard to be upset about the changes.

Sample List – Conan Jennings – Stormlance Task Force – 1st Place Arch City GT4

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Analysis

Wings: Despite rules changes specifically designed to discourage running both in the same build, doubling up on Calgar/Guilliman is still incredibly strong when supported by shooty Ultramarines threats, and we’ve seen a continued clip of results from both Gladius and Stormlance spins on that theme, particularly as they easily have the killing power to deck Knights out of games. For my money, the Stormlance build is the one to watch, as the speed with which it can adapt on the table makes it especially hard to strategise against, and I also think the sheer power it has into Knights might cause them to drop off more precipitously than intended.

Thousand Sons

TheChirurgeon: On paper, the Thousand Sons should have been thriving – their ability to focus down large threats should make them an army that can handle Knights, while loads of flamers, strong movement, and high volumes of smaller shooting would make them able to handle GSC. In reality, well, sometimes your opponent just rolls their 4+ saves and lives.

Sample List – Matthew Green – Grand Coven – Undefeated 2nd Place Palm Springs Open

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Analysis

Wings: Last but not least, the Thousand Sons, another very powerful Cult Marine Codex that’s overshadowed by their poor matchup into the big players. Grand Coven Thousand Sons can brutally hose many factions off the board, and have access to what is arguably the single most undercosted unit in the game (6-model Enlightened) to provide their armies with depth and redundancy. Now that some of their predators have been removed, there’s a real risk that some armies find this matchup almost insurmountable.

TheChirurgeon: The Thousand Sons are a very solid army and when they’re under less pressure to kill two big Knights in rounds 1/2 they’ll have a much easier time. Right now their biggest challenge is just that taking down big Knights needs a lot of coordination across units in their army, but they’re elite enough that killing two will likely not stay viable after the Knights player starts taking out some of their units. And on top of that they really don’t want to be in melee. If they don’t break out after this, it’ll be because Blood Angels have become too good and because even post-nerf, Death Guard can still absolutely wreck them.

Various Other Space Marines

Blood Angels and Ultramarines rule the roost, but other Marine Chapters are also nipping at the heels of the big four challenger factions above. However, it’s probably worth mentioning that once you get past the three challenger factions. In no particular order:

• Deathwing Knight-heavy Dark Angels as Wrath of the Rock or Stormlance.
• The Mark Hertel Deathwatch spectacular.
• Gladius or Beastslayer Space Wolves.

The mood music around the new Templars book is also pretty good, and it took down a major this weekend as you’ll see in Competitive Innovations later on today.

Fundamentally, Marines have a core of absolutely rock solid utility and shooting units that provide a reliable foundation to layer Chapter-specific datasheets on top of, and that means they’re always going to float around a low-mid A-tier, always waiting for the top players to stumble.

Final Thoughts

Wings: Overall, this is a very good day for Competitive 40K, and I’m substantially more excited about both reporting on and attending events as a result of it. Shameless plug time on that front – if you want to try out the new metagame, it’ll be live for the GHO UK that’s coming up in just a few weeks time on 6th-7th-September in Leicester – buy tickets here.

Returning to analysis, I imagine pulling the trigger on an emergency update isn’t a decision that was made lightly, but it was the right one here – with no specific knowledge, I’d guess we’re still a month out from a full Balance Dataslate, and we just don’t need another three or four weeks of this, especially not with some of the biggest events of the year coming soon. It’s also heartening that the nerfs feel mostly about right – if you’re going to do this kind of change, it’s important that it lands well, and I think this mostly will, with the only issue being that it might be a tiny bit too harsh for Chaos Knights once the smoke clears. Big fan overall.

TheChirurgeon: Is this change good? Yes. It’s a good thing for the meta, and I’m glad they did it. Do I think we needed an emergency patch for this particular meta? No – not at all. With only a month or so to go before we were likely to see the next Dataslate, this feels like a bone we didn’t need to be thrown. I’m glad we got it, but I’m worried about the precedent this will set. Death Guard/Knights were nowhere near as oppressive as the More Dakka! Detachment. What I’d like to see from Games Workshop is more open communication and transparency around when balance updates will drop. Give us a target date or range and let players know that hey, balance problems are temporary and a fix will always be along soon.

But in the mean time most players are pretty bad at determining how bad things are and the reality is that even Death Guard were topping out at 7.4% of played armies this past weekend. An average player may not even notice the rise and fall of a particular meta if they only go to a few events a year and even if they do, odds are good they may not play one of the faction boogeymen unless they win multiple games in a row.

Wings: I think that’s fair, and I do wonder if this could have been prevented if GW had put a sticking plaster change on Death Guard in the last Balance Dataslate. The army was obviously too good even with a few weeks of run time, and just the +20pts each on Bloat-drones and Deathshrouds would probably have reduced the magnitude of the issue enough that we could have avoided needing this emergency change (and I don’t think Knights alone would have driven this). Something to consider for GW when balancing the risk for future updates.

Wrap Up

This update significantly shifts things for September’s events but we’re pretty sure there’s more than this to come with the Dataslate. Hopefully that hits in September and does something to address some of these “next problem up” armies to prevent them from becoming too powerful. And as always, we’ll be keeping an eye on the meta here each week, both on our stats site, 40kstats and in our weekly Competitive Innovations articles.

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