Detachment Points Explained — Warhammer 40K 11th Edition

In 10th Edition you picked one detachment and that was the whole conversation. 11th Edition replaced that with a budget: every detachment has a Detachment Points cost, your army has a DP allowance set by battle size, and you spend the allowance however you like. It is the change that most alters how a list gets built, and it is the one people most often get subtly wrong.

Here is how the system actually works, what the budgets are, and where the edge cases live.

The budget

Your battle size sets your Detachment Points allowance:

Every detachment costs somewhere between 1 and 3 DP. Broadly, the cheaper a detachment is, the narrower or more conditional its rules; the 3 DP detachments are the headline ones with the strongest army rule and the deepest stratagem list.

At Strike Force, the standard competitive size, you have 3 DP. That gives you three shapes:

None of these is automatically correct. That is the point of the system.

The Incursion exception

The rule that catches people out:

At Incursion the budget is 2 DP. But you may instead bring a single 3 DP detachment on its own. Add any second detachment and the 2 DP budget applies again.

So at 1,000 points:

The exception exists so small games are not locked out of the flagship detachments. It is not a general +1 DP; it applies only when the detachment is alone.

What you actually get per detachment

Each detachment brings four things, and all four stack when you take more than one:

That third point is the trap. Enhancements are capped by battle size, not by detachment. Four at Strike Force, total, no matter whether you brought one detachment or three. Taking three detachments gives you three Enhancement *lists* to choose from — it does not give you more Enhancements.

The fourth point is the one that quietly reshapes lists. If a detachment grants Battleline to a datasheet, that datasheet's duplicate limit doubles — six copies at Strike Force instead of three. A 1 DP detachment that grants Battleline to the right unit can be worth more to a list than the 3 DP detachment it replaced. This is derived from the detachment's own rules text rather than being listed separately, so it is easy to miss when reading a codex.

How to think about spending the budget

A few patterns that hold up:

Take the 3 DP detachment when your list has one plan. If your army rule is the reason the list works — a strong movement shenanigan, a re-roll aura, a scoring mechanic — dilution costs you more than breadth gains.

Split when you want stratagem coverage. Two detachments means roughly twelve stratagems instead of six. If your weakness is reactive options in your opponent's turn, a cheap second detachment is often better value than a marginal army rule upgrade.

Split when a cheap detachment fixes a composition problem. A 1 DP detachment that makes your key unit Battleline, or lifts a unit count restriction, can unlock a list shape that was otherwise illegal. Check the grants before you check the army rule.

Watch out for army rules that key off the Warlord. Some detachment rules only apply to units sharing keywords with your Warlord. With two detachments and one Warlord, half your army may not benefit from half your rules.

Common ways lists go illegal

Checking it without doing arithmetic at the table

GrimSlate validates the DP budget live, including the Incursion single-detachment exception, and derives Battleline grants from each detachment's rules text rather than requiring you to spot them. When you add a detachment the app tells you what it cost, what remains, and which of your unit limits just changed.

You can build a list for free — no account needed to start, and it works offline once loaded.

For the wider set of composition rules that surround the DP budget, see our 11th Edition army composition guide. If you are bringing a list forward from last edition, converting a 10th Edition list covers what survives the transition.

Quick reference