40K: The Best Stratagems – So Far

Stratagems are the new hotness for maximizing your army’s power. Lets take a look at some of the best ones in the first five books.

Stratagems are one of the major advantages that Codex armies have over Index armies. With five codices and more than 100 stratagems released, it can all be a lot to keep track of. Today lets take a look at some of the best stratagems across all the current books. These are the stratagems you need to keep an eye out for – both to use them and defend against them. Now lets dig in.

Note: We’ve Combined Some Stratagems that do similar things into one entry for ease

Tide of Traitors/Fresh Converts

Both of these powerful abilities allow you to “heal” a damaged unit back to full strength and as a bonus redeploy it. While not cheap, the ability to in effect teleport units across the table is almost as good as bringing them back to full strength. Fresh Converts is most likely the more powerful, allowing up to a free 20 CPs, but Tide of Traitors is by far the more common to see.

Chapter Master

While this is an expensive stratagem, upgrading the captains from re-roll 1s to hit to re-roll ALL misses is a huge upgrade. In the right army this can really up your power.

Flakk Missles/Hellfire shells/Daemon Shell

While all of these are slightly different the end result is the same. Make one attack with a certain weapon and, if it hits, the enemy takes d3 mortal wounds. These are all cheap abilities at 1 CP and a great way to put out some mortal wounds. Expect good players to use these utility damage stratagems.

Veterans of the Long War

This is a super amazing stratagem that both CSM and Death Guard get. The ability to add +1 to wound to a whole units attacks is pretty awesome and can really tip the scales of any engagement. It’s cheap at 1CP it can really pay off on those 20 Man Chaos units. This ability can also be combo’d with any thing that has special effects on wounds of 6+ to really maximize the effect.

The Dead Walk Again

This might be my favorite stratagem in the game. It’s super cheap at 1 CP and it allows you to add models to your Poxwalkers whenever infantry within 7″ are killed – this is totally amazing! In the right list, it can give you a crazy huge Poxwalker unit (or two) and really pays off vs big horde armies. The dead fight for you and what could be better?

Cloud of Files

Man, the Death Guard really have some great Stratagems. This is another super powerful and cheap one that you can except to see used anytime Death Guard are on the table. Preventing the enemy from being able to shoot at your linchpin unit is such a good tactic. Death Guard especially need this to make up for their short range and slow movement.

If you were wondering how to get a 20 man unit into grenade range, this is stratagem should answer that question.

Honour The Chapter/Fury of Khone/Endless Cacophony

Almost every army has one of these available to them to either let them shoot or fight again. I don’t think I need to say much about this stratagem other than acting twice means twice the kills.

Protector/Conqueror Doctina Imperative

These two Ad Mech Stratagems combine to allow a unit of Skitarii to get +1 or +2 to hit in either the fight or shooting phase. This is a super powerful and relatively cheap combo that meshes well with weapons that do bonus hits on +6s. Simple, but effective.

Auspex Scan/Infosalve Skull

These identical Space Marine and Ad Mech stratagems allow a unit to shoot out of turn at an enemy unit arriving as reinforcements. This is another super powerful stratagem that lets you counter those devastating sudden strikes. Enemies may think twice about trying to land near you when you can shoot them off the table first.

Loads More

There a ton of amazing stratagems out there. While we’ve only scratched the surface so far, we think these are the most generically useful ones. Many other stratagems may not have made this list but are still very useful depending on the situation. I, personally, can’t wait to see what new ones we get in the upcoming books. Maybe something involving tanks and close combat?

Thats all for today folks! Let us know what your favorite stratagems are, down in the comments. 

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.