Warhammer 40k 11th Edition points and the refreshed app drop on June 17, bringing a new interactive Munitorum Field Manual and unit updates to the game.
With all the Faction, core, and mission rules out, the only thing left for GW to drop is the points, and luckily, we only have a couple of days to wait. The new app and full Warhammer 40k 11th Edition points go live on Wednesday, June 17, which is roughly 48 hours before everyone grabs their Armageddon Launch boxes and starts their first games with the new edition.
Games Workshop’s announcement also made one thing pretty clear to us: 11th Edition points might (will) get reworked a lot in the first three months, as they already promised three balance patches in the first three months. Either way, Wednesday’s update brings the refreshed Warhammer 40k app, the new interactive Munitorum Field Manual, and a full points refresh, all while GW is already warning that the opening months of 11th may need some course correction.
So yeah, the first three months of Warhammer 40k 11th Edition are going to be interesting.
- App + Points Drop: Wednesday, June 17, brings a refreshed Warhammer 40,000 App, an interactive Munitorum Field Manual, and the full points list for the new edition.
- Points Themes: Big vehicles, monsters, fliers, fast melee, battle-shock, Psychic, and re-roll-charge units climb. Fights First, 20-plus model bricks, Infiltrate+Scout combos, Stealth, and indirect fire drop.
- Balance Promise: Studio commits to monthly patches for the first three months of the new edition, with the first update due by the end of July.
The Warhammer 40k App Update Is Bigger Than Just New Points
Honestly, the Warhammer 40k app update reads like a huge change for how people will play 11th Edition. But, with GW’s app track record, we’re not going to hold our breath on how this shakes up the new edition.
On paper, though, the refresh brings full integration with the new edition’s rules, a War Journal feature to track games, and the ability to see your opponent’s full army rules and datasheets during play. The Munitorum Field Manual goes interactive, too, which means the 10th edition Munitorum Field Manual we’ve been using for the last year may be the last one to live as a static PDF.
Either way, if you already have the app installed, the new edition rules show up on the standard update. Existing Codex rules you unlocked last edition stay accessible, which is the right call given how much GW asked players to spend on that content over the last three years.
Here’s the one thing that may matter for this weekend: if you’re heading to a farewell 10th edition tournament, like the Warhammer Open in Edmonton, kill auto-updates on your device before Wednesday. The app does not support older editions of Warhammer 40,000 once the patch lands. So with that one push all the 10e support is gone.
11th Edition Points Push Vehicles, Monsters, and Fliers Up
While we don’t have the points yet, GW gave us some previews of units that will be increasing:
- Big shooty vehicles cost more because the new movement rules let them open firing lanes by half-moving into terrain.
- Large monsters and combat vehicles cost more because they reach combat faster. Fast melee infantry, large flying models, and Titanic units with the Towering keyword all climb because they’re more lethal at short range in 11e.
- Battle-shock manipulators, Psychic-weapon units, and units that re-roll charges are all going up too for the same reason of “accidentally” getting better at what they do.
The drops are just as indicative of how the new edition plays, too:
- Fights First is less dominant now, so units that lean on it pay less. Large units of 20 or more models, which used to sprawl across the board, are losing ground to the 9-inch coherency rule and paying less.
- Units with both Infiltrate and Scout have to pick one each game now, so they cost less. Stealth no longer stacks with Cover, which collapses the value of the keyword on a lot of units.
- And indirect fire is weaker against distant targets nobody can see, which finally puts artillery spam on a points diet.
Customization is Sorta Back
The two other changes here are the multi-unit cost rule and the weapon upgrade fees. Defilers got named by GW directly, which is one of those “we see you” moments where the studio adjusts the spam tax instead of NERFING the datasheet.
- Basically, for certain big or elite units, you’ll have to pay more if you take more than just one unit. This should help stop some spammy lists from being everywhere in the meta.
- The weapon upgrade rule works the same way. The macro plasma incinerator on a Redemptor Dreadnought now costs 10 points to equip, though the Dreadnought base drops by 10 to offset, so it nets neutral on plasma and 10 cheaper if you swap to the heavy onslaught gatling cannon.
So that’s a massive shift to how kit choices interact with list points now, and it even pulls some cost trade-offs back into wargear that 10th had stripped out.
GW Locked in Monthly Balance Patches for the First Three Months
Games Workshop is treating 11e like a release worth babysitting, as they should. This go around, regular balance updates for the new edition stay on the quarterly cadence we know from 10e. But for the first three months, the studio rules team will step in monthly if anything breaks, with the first patch dropping at the end of July.
That’s GW openly saying the points might wobble, and they want a way to fix it before the meta hardens around a broken combo.
This definitely lines up with the rest of the 11th Edition rules revealed so far, which have leaned cautious and incremental. So a monthly patch promise will cover a lot of ground for the first 90 days, as the studio is promising to keep the game updated and balanced this time around instead of just letting it ride into autumn…
Final Thoughts on Warhammer 40k 11th Edition’s Wednesday Launch
The Wednesday drop of all the points sets up the launch of Warhammer 40k 11th Edition. But the official start comes Saturday when the Armageddon launch box hits, and gaming groups around the world start playing games of the new edition.
After that, the update promise is the thing to keep an eye on, because if the July patch affects the problem armies that pop up, we know GW saw the same problems we did. If it touches very little, that’s a stronger statement about the edition’s balance (at least in GW’s eyes) than anything else we’ll see early in 11th edition.
We won’t complain about having points, but we think folks would have liked them a little sooner. Mainly because it would have been fun to have more than a couple of days to write out lists and test units before all the games start this weekend.
🔗 Related Reads:
- Warhammer 40k 11th Edition hub
- The new edition’s release date has been confirmed
- 11th Edition rules reveals so far
- GW’s 11th Edition Q&A on codex and USR changes
- The last 10th edition balance dataslate
- Armageddon launch box pre-order coverage
What’s your first Warhammer 40k 11th Edition list look like after the new app drops Wednesday?
