The temptation is always the same
A balance update lands and, within about four minutes, half the community is rebuilding 2,000 points from scratch. The other half is declaring their army dead. Somewhere in the middle sits the player who changes two units, plays six games and quietly turns up to the next GT much better prepared than either of them.
The September 2026 update is exactly why I prefer that third approach. Games Workshop did not simply shuffle points around. A large group of power-armoured factions received changes to movement, toughness and staple weapons, and those changes sit alongside points adjustments. That means the useful question is not, “What got buffed?” It is, “What job can this unit do now that it could not do last week?”
Movement is a rules change disguised as a small number
Phobos-armoured Space Marines going to an 8-inch Move characteristic is the sort of change that can look fairly innocent while you are reading a PDF. On an actual tournament table, two inches can be enormous.
It can be the difference between touching the far side of a terrain area and not touching it. It can make a screening line wider. It can turn a secondary from “probably next turn” into “done”. It can let a unit stand in precisely the irritating place your opponent hoped would stay empty.
That matters even more in 11th because movement is not simply how you get into weapon range. Movement is how you decide where the next fight is allowed to happen. A cheap fast unit that dies after standing in exactly the wrong place for the other player can be worth more than a much more expensive damage piece that spends three turns waiting for the perfect target.
More toughness can still mean less army
The obvious headline around tougher Marines is that they survive more fire. Fine. The less obvious part is that associated points increases can leave you with fewer separate pieces on the table. That changes how I would judge the army.
A unit getting better in isolation does not automatically make the list better across five or six rounds. If three improved units replace four old ones, you might gain durability while quietly losing the spare body that screened a reserve lane, stood on home, blocked a charge or performed the annoying little job your expensive brick should never have been doing in the first place.
When I test a post-update list I count jobs before I count damage. How many independent things can the army do in one turn? How many places can it contest? How many screens can it build? How many units can I lose without the whole plan collapsing? If those answers have gone backwards, the points increase has hurt you twice.
Strength 5 changes what you are allowed to ignore
The common boltgun and chainsword-style weapon increases also change target selection. Games Workshop highlighted many of these workhorse weapons moving to Strength 5, with some receiving improved AP as well. Death Guard are particularly interesting because their own toughness was not raised with the wider Astartes wave, while their boltguns and plague knives got more dangerous.
The practical response is not to sit down with a calculator until your eyes bleed. Revisit your “safe” screens. If your game plan depends on a T4 one-wound unit sitting in front of something important, ask whether that unit still costs the opponent enough effort to remove. A screen that disappears to incidental fire is not really a screen. It is a strongly worded letter.
Do not rebuild the list. Re-test the jobs.
The first week after an update should be about roles. Keep the core of the army intact and deliberately test the bits whose job has changed. Put the newly faster unit on the board instead of in reserve. Start the tougher unit behind the central lane instead of on it. Try the expensive piece as a threat rather than a delivery system.
Most importantly, play the same opening more than once. One game tells you what happened. Three games start telling you why.
The strongest tournament lists usually have at least one part of the board the opponent is forced to respect before you have committed your premium unit. Balance updates often move that pressure point somewhere unexpected. Find that first. The points make far more sense once you know what every unit is actually being paid to do.