The latest Warhammer 40,000 Balance Dataslate emerged into realspace quite suddenly on Friday night. Some might point to the temporal vagaries of the Immaterium, others may believe somebody pressed a button they shouldn’t have done…
But now everyone has had a few days to consider the changes the document brings to the game, we’ve directed the Warhammer Community astropathic choir towards emissaries of the Emperor’s most holy Design Studio to find out a little more about the ‘why’ of this quarter’s changes.
There were no core changes this time, as we are generally happy with most systems and have decided to not cause a ruckus this time! Likewise, we weren’t able to supply new Detachments – they weren’t quite ready in time, but we intend to add more at the next update.
Perhaps the most important change this time is to the Chapter Approved 2025/26 Mission Pack. Mission balance has been quite tight with the most recent Chapter Approved pack, and after listening to player feedback we feel that the Challenger cards are not needed in the competitive environment at present, so we have removed them from tournament play.
We continue to encourage Challenger cards for pick-up-and-play situations where the skill levels between players can be quite different.
While we are generally happy with the performance of the Adepta Sororitas, we’ve given Retributors a little boost to their ability, which now gets +1 to Hit and +1 to Wound, alongside some minor points drops.
We reduced the points for certain key Adeptus Custodes units which were not showing up in as many lists as we’d like.
Belisarius Cawl is supposed to be a centrepiece of Adeptus Mechanicus armies, but he hasn’t played as we imagine him to be, so we’ve overhauled Cawl’s abilities and improved his solar atomizer, and as a result given him a price hike to better go in line with his new-found power. The Onager Dunecrawler’s eradication beamer has also been reimagined, though its points are the same for now. Finally, we’ve also improved the weapons on Ironstriders, Sicarian Infiltrators and Ruststalkers as we wanted them to feel a bit better offensively.
We want to keep a close eye on Aeldari, and to promote list diversity at all levels we’ve brought down the points on Asurmen, the Avatar, 10-model Corsairs units, Dire Avengers and Wraithblades, and increased the points for units of five Corsairs and 10 Swooping Hawks.
We know Astra Militarum players love their big tanks, but the Rogal Dorn and Rogal Dorn Tank Commander have been pretty consistently overperforming so we've raised them by 10 points each. Super-heavy tank variants are all down by 30 points, joining Gaunt’s Ghosts, Lord Solar Leontus and Krieg Engineers in drops.
The Blood Angels’ Sanguinary Guard have increased WS and points to push their status as elite bladesmen.
The Legion of Excess has regained re-rolls to Hit in its Detachment Rule, while the Keeper of Secrets and Fiends have fallen in points to reflect their role and power in relation to the rest of the Chaos Daemons.
The Infernal Lance has come out the gate a bit strong for the Chaos Knights so we’ve changed Unnatural Fortitude into a choice between a 5+ invulnerable save or 6+ Feel No Pain. The Knight Abominant’s ability may no longer be used multiple times on the same unit by multiple Abominants.
The Venomcrawler, Chaos Land Raider and Abaddon have all fallen in price for the Chaos Space Marines, with a minor points increase on the Dark Commune. We’re not pushing them too much at this time as we’re interested in seeing how their bully armies behave before taking another look at them.
For the Dark Angels, we’ve been nudging the Lion towards a version we are happy with. Feedback has suggested that he needed to keep one of his abilities on all the time, which wasn’t offering much of a choice. We’ve now brought him in line with Guilliman, and will let him choose two of his abilities. Meanwhile, to motivate Ravenwing lists, the Land Speeder Vengeance has had its plasma damage improved, while the Darkshroud is now cheaper.
The Death Guard have recently received changes, so we want to keep an eye on them before we make further amends.
The Deathwatch and Drukhari have had minor points reductions in certain areas.
We want players to be excited by Fulgrim, and with his large base he needs some help getting around. We’ve therefore given him a new ability called Serpentine to help manage his form and move through smaller terrain. We’ve also changed some points to boost unit diversity in the Emperor’s Children.
We were aware of certain Genestealer Cults stratagems which needed some tune-up as a result of the Cult Ambush changes last year, and we’ve now beefed them up. The Host of Ascension can sometimes be punishing to interact with, so we’ve reduced its power and looked at the points of the Abominant, Hybrid Metamorphs and Purestrain Genestealers to help some of the other builds.
Grey Knights are under observation for the most part, with a view to changes perhaps in the next dataslate. Land Raiders have come down in points.
We don’t want the Valourstrike Lance Detachment to become the only Imperial Knights formation, so the stratagems now only affect one unit, and Advances may no longer be re-rolled. We feel confident that the Detachment will still have options but will not be oppressive.
We don’t generally like having rules which ignore the opponent’s rules, so for the Necrons we’ve looked at the Silent King’s ability to ignore modifiers and have changed it to a Movement buff for nearby units. We’ve brought down his points accordingly, alongside Triarch Praetorians to get them onto tables.
We really wanted to give love to the Orks without opening up any problematic playstyles. As a result we’ve made a few interesting changes, with numerous points drops to boot. In particular Ghazghkull can now join Nobz and Boyz, and takes up four Transport slots on Battlewagons.
For Space Marines we’ve been relatively light on points changes.
Space Wolves have come out swinging, so we’ve brought up a few points on the overperforming units.
For the T’au Empire, we wanted the Riptide to be able to handle light hulls a bit better, so the ion accelerators are now a bit punchier.
We haven’t been happy with the risk-reward relationship for the Thousand Sons, and we’ve taken another pass at the Army Rule. You can now only attempt to manifest each power once – this is to encourage using extra dice when you need it to go off without just stacking multiple casters. Sorcerers now have a different benefit to the unit they lead, while there are numerous points changes.
The armies that Tyranids have had a rougher time against have been dialled back, so we’ve only made a few points changes.
The Exalted Eightbound and Slaughterbound have had some help against tougher targets, while there have been a few other World Eaters points changes too.
The Leagues of Votann, Imperial Agents and Black Templars are untouched this time around.
You can download the Balance Dataslate below.
