New Warhammer 40k 11th Edition stratagems just got leaked by GW on the Armageddon launch box page, and almost every one changed.
Games Workshop already confirmed the umbrella rule: only one stratagem per unit per phase. That alone reshapes how lists get built and how command points get spent. But Warhammer 40k 11th Edition is doing more than just shutting down strat-stacking.
Plus, the Armageddon launch box preview, which Auspex Tactics broke down in their video, flashed an entire page of the new core stratagems, and the bigger story is that the rules themselves got rewritten right alongside the new umbrella.
That being said, if you’ve spent the last two years using Tank Shock to flatten infantry, baiting out Overwatch with a screening unit, or popping smoke on your battle tank in someone’s face, you will love the new rules!
Honestly, some changes are simple name swaps, some clean up old edge cases, and a few of the most-used core strats (Overwatch, Heroic Intervention, Smoke Screen) had their timing windows reworked entirely.
For 11th Edition players who lean on stratagems for melee delivery, terrain plays, or just the humble Command Reroll, this preview is the first real look at how core strats actually behave in the new edition.
Tank Shock Becomes Crushing Impact (and Monsters Finally Get In)
Updated on May 5, 2026, by Rob Baer with the latest Stratagem rules.
- Stratagem stacking is dead, on top of every per-strat change below: GW already confirmed the one-strat-per-unit-per-phase rule, and the new core strat sheet builds the rest of the cleanup on top of it.
- Tank Shock becomes Crushing Impact, and Monsters can finally use it: Tyranids, Daemons, and anything else on the MONSTER keyword get the mortal-wound charge effect.
- Fire Overwatch and Heroic Intervention move to end of phase: no more reactive mid-move Overwatch, no more 6″ Heroic snap-counter; your opponent commits first, then you pick the best target.
- Smoke Screen got worse on its primary job, but now grants cover to friends: less reactive durability, more positional play.
- Command Reroll is the most-nerfed strat without anyone changing a word in its rules: the no-stacking rule kills the most common stratagem combo in 10th.
The first reveal looks like a name swap, but the keyword fix actually matters: Tank Shock is now Crushing Impact, and it works with Monsters as well as Vehicles. So Tyranids, Daemons, and anything else living on the MONSTER keyword can finally do mortal-wound damage on the charge.
The old lockout was always a little arbitrary, since most of those big bugs and Daemons hit harder in melee than the average Imperial Knight anyway. Now an Emperor’s Children Wings Daemon Prince can chunk five mortal wounds and then stack a couple more on the charge, and a Kill Rig (which moved over to MONSTER instead of VEHICLE) suddenly has a real bite again on top of its existing damage.
Grenades Are Now Explosives, With One Small New Trick
Grenades got renamed to Explosives, presumably because not every grenade-keyword effect on a datasheet is literally a thrown grenade. Honestly, mechanically it looks almost identical, with the same 8″ range and a 4+ for mortal wounds.
One new wrinkle: the strat doesn’t appear to lock out units that fell back, only units that advanced. So a unit with a fall-back-and-shoot rule (a squad with a Primaris Lieutenant attached, for example) can now fall back, throw Explosives, and then keep shooting.
Still, that’s niche but real, and skirmish-style infantry that already wanted to play that way just got handed a small bonus.
Fire Overwatch Moves to End of Movement Phase Only
This one is a much bigger shift than the wording suggests: Overwatch can now only be fired at the end of your opponent’s Movement phase, not mid-move and not in the Charge phase.
That kills the bait-out game where you’d dangle a cheap unit forward to soak Overwatch so your real threat could move freely. Now your opponent moves everything, and then you pick the single best target to dump shots into. Overall cleaner to play, but it cuts both ways:
- Active player wins on speed: no more pausing to weigh an Overwatch reaction after every single unit moves; the active player rolls through the phase.
- Hide-and-board plays get easier: a unit ducking behind a ruin or boarding a transport partway through its move is no longer eligible to be Overwatched on the way.
- Assault armies get a quiet buff: units that used to dread getting pasted by a flamer firing twice (once on movement, once on charge) only have to weather one volley now.
The strat itself still hits on snapshots only and still excludes Titanic units. So, overall, the timing window is the change, not the rolls.
Smoke Screen Got Quietly Worse, But Now Helps Friends Too
Smoke Screen kept its name, but the new version is weaker on its primary job and slightly more interesting on a secondary one.
You now have to commit Smoke at the start of your opponent’s Shooting phase, before you know what they’re actually firing at, so the reactive “they’re shooting my tank, screen it now” play is gone. Plus, Smoke now only grants the benefit of cover, and since cover in 11th Edition is just -1 to hit, you lose the old +1 to saves layer that made Smoke a real lifesaver.
That new detail is a bit positional, too, because a Smoked unit now provides cover to friendly units behind it. So a Leman Russ in front of two more Russes can essentially turn itself into mobile cover for the rest of the formation, and a Phobos squad popping smoke can shield infantry tucked behind them.
Still, the big catch is that you need a frontline unit durable enough to soak the alpha strike on its own.
Heroic Intervention Gets a 12″ Window and a New “Into the Fray” Mode
Heroic Intervention got hit harder than any other strat on the page, and it picked up a buff and a hidden second mode at the same time:
- Resolution moved to the end of the Charge phase: like Overwatch, you can’t snap-counter a charge as it’s being declared. Your opponent makes all their charges first, then you pick the best place to counter it.
- Declaration range jumps from 6″ to 12″: you don’t auto-make the move at 12″ the way you did at 6″; you still need to roll over the distance. The old mini-game of staying just outside 6″ of an angry Death Star turns into a soft pull toward distance instead of a hard cliff edge.
- Character VEHICLES qualify now: Tank Commanders, mounted Commissars, and similar character-keyword vehicles can Heroic Intervene for the first time.
- A teased “Into the Fray” mode: GW didn’t fully reveal it, but the wording implies an in-combat reposition or a way to feed extra models into an existing brawl.
The combo pain is real. Because of the no-stacking rule, you can’t Heroic Intervene and burn a Command Reroll on the same unit in the same phase, and the Fights First changes from the assault rules preview mean the unit you intervene with might not even swing first when it lands. Still, Heroic Intervention is an impactful strat, but it asks for more committed positioning than the reactive 10th Edition version.
The Quieter Cleanups: Rapid Ingress, Command Reroll, and Keyword Renames
A few smaller changes round out the page, and one of them is sneakily the biggest indirect NERF on the whole sheet:
- Rapid Ingress is mostly unchanged: still the go-to for dropping melee threats into your opponent’s turn for a follow-up charge. Aircraft are no longer eligible; the strat now explicitly works only on strategic reserves, and battle round one is locked out.
- Command Reroll loses Desperate Escape rerolls: GW probably wants those tests to actually mean something now. Battleshocks weren’t rerollable anyway, so the change is small on paper overall
- The bigger Reroll story is indirect: Reroll was the single most commonly stacked strat in 10th Edition, and the no-stacking umbrella means you can’t pair it with a damage strat or a durability strat anymore. So, without anyone changing a word in its rules, Command Reroll is probably the most-nerfed strat on the whole page.
- Pistol becomes Close Quarters: looks like a cleanup label, so non-pistol weapons that fire in engagement range stop being weird edge cases.
- A new Cleave keyword shows up: it reads as “Cleave 1” on a couple of datasheets, which implies it scales (Cleave 2, Cleave 3) and probably hands extra attacks against bigger targets, which would be a clean answer to monstrous-creature spam. They did mention in the Armageddon preview that it would work similarly to blast.
- Rules in the book are now numbered: a small organizational tweak, but it should make rules-on-rules cross-references a lot easier to handle in the FAQ later.
Final Thoughts on Warhammer 40k 11th Edition Stratagems
Put it all together, and the cumulative effect on Warhammer 40k 11th Edition stratagems is pretty straightforward. So far, each strat does less damage on its own, and players have to commit to their decisions earlier and more cleanly. So there is less reactive ping-pong every phase, and a lot more “pick your spot and live with it.”
The interesting question is what happens to the 10th Edition tournament archetypes that were built around stacking three strats on a death star unit.
Sure, those builds and their units still exist on paper, but the strat math behind them does not. So watch for tournament list shapes to flatten out as 11th drops, with fewer unit-with-five-buffs alpha strikes and more spread-the-strats-across-the-army planning. That’s exactly the kind of change GW seemed to be aiming at when they killed strat-stacking, and the per-strat reworks above are the second half of that same gameplay direction for 11th edition.
🔗 Related Reads:
- All the Latest 11th Edition Rules Changes
- 11th Edition Assault Rules: Charges + Fight Phases
- New 11th Edition Terrain Rules
- 40k 11th Edition Starter Set Details
- 40k Codex Release Schedule 2026 Roadmap
- 10th Edition Core Stratagems & Reserves Rules
What do you think about the new Warhammer 40k 11th Edition core stratagems?
