Games Workshop says no armies are squatted in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

Games Workshop’s clearest 11th Edition signal so far is simple: no armies were squatted, and the new edition is being built to change list-building without forcing players to start over. The free core rules arrived on 1 June, Armageddon went up for pre-order on 6 June, and the refreshed app plus updated points followed on 17 June, giving current players a staggered route into the new system rather than a single hard reset.

That matters because the company said players can still use their current codexes in the new edition, while the launch roster will include more than 70 detachments. Detachments are now the main army-building lever, and Games Workshop’s new Upgrade tag lets some Enhancements apply to up to three non-Character units while counting as a single choice. Larger forces can also be built from several smaller specialist detachments or one big one, which keeps older collections useful even as the list-building framework gets tighter and more defined.

Armageddon is the other key piece of the rollout. Games Workshop said the box is the launching point for the edition, not the whole edition, and it is packed with 23 Space Marines and 38 Orks, plus a Core Rules booklet, Operation: Imperator lore book, the Chapter Approved 2026-27 Mission Deck, the Dominatus Narrative Campaign Deck, datasheet cards and a transfer sheet. That makes the set important for players who want the models and the story, but it also underlines that the new rules structure is not locked behind one purchase.

The biggest table-top shift is in the mission game. Warhammer 40,000 now has five Force Dispositions, Take and Hold, Purge the Foe, Disruption, Reconnaissance and Priority Assets, and event packs lock players into a single Force Disposition for an entire event. Terrain also does more work, with objectives tied to the battlefield itself and the rules pushing cover, hidden units and mission scoring into the same conversation as list construction. On the table, that means deployment, terrain and target priorities matter from the first turn, not just the last.

The overall direction is continuity, not erasure. Games Workshop described 10th Edition in 2023 as a complete revision of the game, and Combat Patrol became its fast, balanced entry point. 11th Edition is taking the same philosophy further, but with a more explicit link between army construction, mission identity and terrain. The collection on the shelf still counts; the real change is how the game asks you to use it.