Dedicated Transports in Warhammer 40K 11th Edition

Transports are the least glamorous part of a Warhammer 40,000 list and one of the most decisive. A melee unit that walks up the board arrives late and diminished; the same unit in a Rhino arrives on turn 2 with everyone alive. But transports also come with a set of capacity rules that are checked at list-building time in most tournament packs — and an illegal transport assignment is an illegal list.

The list-building rules

Two numbers govern how transports fit into a list:

Six per army. You may include up to six Dedicated Transports at every battle size — Incursion, Strike Force and Onslaught alike. This does not scale down for smaller games.

They sit outside the duplicate limit. Ordinary datasheets are capped at three copies at Strike Force. Dedicated Transports are not counted against that limit; the six-per-army ceiling is their only cap. Five Rhinos in a Strike Force list is legal.

That combination is why transport-heavy lists are a real archetype rather than a novelty — the rules deliberately leave room for them.

Capacity, and why it is not just a number

Every transport's ability text states a capacity, and the template is consistent:

"This model has a transport capacity of 12 ADEPTUS ASTARTES INFANTRY models. It cannot transport JUMP PACK, WULFEN or TERMINATOR models."

Three separate constraints hide in that sentence:

The number. How many model slots the vehicle has.

The keyword requirement. "ADEPTUS ASTARTES INFANTRY models" is not decoration — a unit that lacks those keywords cannot embark at all, regardless of how much space is free.

The prohibition list. A separate explicit list of what cannot ride, even if it satisfies the keyword requirement.

And then a fourth, in a separate sentence on many datasheets:

"Each Jump Pack, Gravis or Terminator model takes up the space of 2 models."

A ten-capacity transport holds five Terminators, not ten. This is the rule that most often produces an illegal list, because the points and the model count both look fine.

The attached-Character problem

An attached Character rides with its squad. That is convenient and it is also where capacity maths goes wrong:

So a ten-capacity Rhino carrying a ten-model squad has no room for the Lieutenant you attached, and if that Lieutenant is in Gravis armour you are two over, not one.

Since 11th Edition allows both a Leader and a Support Character on the same bodyguard unit — see our leaders and Support Characters guide — a full squad plus two attached Characters is a very easy way to exceed a transport you thought was the right size.

Transports and Reserves

A unit inside a transport does not have its own deployment status. It inherits the transport's:

The points, however, all count. Transport plus passengers plus any attached Characters all go towards the 50% Reserves cap. A loaded transport is an efficient way to put a lot of points off the table, and an easy way to exceed the cap without realising — the vehicle's own points are the part people forget.

Our reserves and Deep Strike guide has the full cap rules.

When a transport is worth it

Transports cost points that could be models. The cases where they pay:

Your unit needs to arrive intact. A melee unit crossing open ground takes two turns of shooting. In a transport it takes none. This is the primary reason and it is usually sufficient on its own.

You need mid-board presence on turn 2. Objective Control is decided by who is standing on things, and transports move bodies onto objectives a turn earlier than legs do.

The transport itself does work. Some transports are genuinely good units — real firepower, real durability, and a threat your opponent has to answer. Those are close to free.

You are hiding from Deep Strike angles. A unit inside a vehicle cannot be shot directly.

And where they do not pay:

Planning it before the game

Transport assignment is a planning decision, not a rules-enforced one at list time — the rules no longer bind a specific unit to a specific vehicle. But the capacity has to work for the plan to be legal on the table, and that is worth checking at home.

GrimSlate lets you assign units to transports as part of the list and checks the assignment against the parsed capacity from the datasheet's ability text: the raw number, the keyword requirement, the prohibition list, and the double-space multiplier for Jump Pack, Gravis and Terminator models. Attached Characters are counted automatically, which is the part that is genuinely tedious by hand.

You can try it free — no account required to start.

Quick reference