Reserves and Deep Strike in Warhammer 40K 11th Edition

Reserves are where a lot of games are decided before deployment even finishes. Holding the right units back gives you angles your opponent cannot screen against; holding too much back means you lose the first two turns of scoring and never catch up. 11th Edition also simplified the maths compared to 10th, in a way that quietly changes which lists work.

This guide covers the current rules, the difference from 10th Edition, and the practical planning that follows from them.

The 11th Edition reserves cap

The rule is a single number:

No more than half the points of your army may start the battle in Reserves.

That is it. One pool, 50%, measured in points.

Two clarifications that matter:

What changed from 10th Edition

If you played 10th, you are used to two separate limits: 50% of your army in Reserves overall, and a further sub-cap of 25% specifically in Strategic Reserves. There was also a unit-count restriction to keep track of.

11th collapses this into one 50% pool covering all Reserves, Deep Strike and Strategic Reserves alike. There is no separate Strategic Reserves sub-cap.

The practical consequence: Strategic Reserves got substantially better. In 10th, a list that wanted to hold back a big unit for a late flank had to fit it under 25% of the army. In 11th that unit competes with everything else for the same 50%, but the ceiling is twice as high. Lists that put real weight into Strategic Reserves are viable now in a way they were not.

Deep Strike vs Strategic Reserves

Both put a unit off the board, but they are different tools.

Deep Strike is an ability printed on the datasheet. A unit that has it can be set up in Reserves and arrive anywhere on the battlefield more than 9" from enemy models. It is the precision option: you choose the angle.

Strategic Reserves is available to almost any unit — the exception is Fortifications, which cannot use it. Units arriving from Strategic Reserves come on from your own battlefield edge, and in the early rounds from a restricted portion of it. It is the mass option: less precise, available to everything.

The choice usually comes down to what you are trying to threaten. Deep Strike threatens the whole table and forces your opponent to screen everywhere. Strategic Reserves threatens a flank and is far better for late-game objective grabs, because arriving on your own edge and walking onto an objective is often exactly what you want on turn 4.

The attached-leader trap

This one costs games and it is not obvious.

If you attach a Character to a unit, every model in the combined unit must have Deep Strike for the unit to Deep Strike.

Attach a Character without Deep Strike to a squad that has it, and the whole squad loses the ability. The squad is now anchored to the battlefield and you find out during deployment, after the list is locked.

The reverse is also true and equally easy to miss — a Deep Strike Character attached to a squad without the ability does not grant it to them.

This is why leader assignment and reserve planning have to happen together, not in sequence. GrimSlate's builder greys out the Deep Strike option automatically when an attached leader would break it, which is the kind of thing you would rather find out at home.

Embarked units follow their transport

A unit inside a Dedicated Transport does not have its own reserve status — it inherits the transport's. If the transport starts in Strategic Reserves, so does everyone inside it. If the transport deploys on the table, so do they.

The points still count, though: the transport *and* its passengers all count towards the 50% cap. A full transport is an efficient way to put a lot of points into Reserves, and an easy way to blow through the cap without noticing.

Attached Characters follow the same logic one level up: a Character attached to a squad inherits the squad's deployment, and if that squad is embarked, the Character is in the transport too.

How much should you actually reserve?

The cap is 50%. The right answer is almost never 50%.

Reserving too much is the more common mistake. Primary objectives start scoring in battle round 2. An army that is half off the table in round 1 and arrives in round 2 has given away scoring it cannot get back, and against a deployment that screens well, arriving units land where they can be shot rather than where you wanted.

Some rules of thumb that hold up:

Planning it before the game

Reserve decisions are made under time pressure at the table, which is exactly when the leader-attachment rule gets forgotten. Planning them at home costs nothing.

GrimSlate lets you mark each unit's intended deployment — on the battlefield, Deep Strike, or Strategic Reserves — as part of the list, and tracks the running total against the 50% cap. Attached Characters and embarked units inherit their group's zone automatically, so the numbers cannot desync from what you would actually be allowed to do.

You can try it free. For the surrounding composition rules, see the 11th Edition army composition guide.

Quick reference