Emperor's Children: Court of the Phoenician Detachment Guide (11th Edition)

Look at those three bullets again and you will notice something: the two restrictions are the same restrictions the Thrill Seekers army rule already imposes on a unit that Advanced or Fell Back.

That is deliberate, and it is why the word can matters so much. Sensational Performance says the unit can use this ability, which means using it is a choice you make each time the unit fights.

So the decision in front of you every Fight phase is:

• Use it and take +1 Strength and +1 Armour Penetration, accepting that this unit may not attack the enemy it was already engaged with, nor an enemy one of your other units has already attacked this phase.
• Decline it and attack whatever you like with your normal profile.

That makes the detachment a discipline tax with a reward attached. If your army is already playing the way Emperor's Children want to play, spreading attacks across many targets rather than concentrating them, you take the bonus on almost every unit almost every turn and pay nothing real for it. If your instinct is to gang up on the biggest threat, the detachment will keep offering you a bonus you cannot accept.

The practical planning rule follows: fight your units in ascending order of importance. Once a unit has attacked a target, no other unit using Sensational Performance may attack that target this phase, so activate the squad that only needs to finish off a weakened enemy first, and leave the squad with the real job free to pick from a clean board.

The detachment carries a second rule that is easy to skip and is worth real command points.

Master of the Pageant: once per battle round, when you target a Fulgrim unit from your army with the Sinuous Breach or Prideful Superiority stratagem, you can reduce the CP cost of that use by 1 CP.

That matters most for Prideful Superiority, which is this detachment's only 2 CP stratagem. Targeting Fulgrim with it makes it cost 1 CP, which halves the price of the strongest offensive stratagem here.

Prideful Superiority targets an Emperor's Children unit that has not fought this phase, and until the end of the phase its models re-roll the hit roll and the wound roll against Character units. On Fulgrim himself, at half price, that is the faction's best answer to an enemy character.

Sinuous Breach costs 1 CP and lets an Emperor's Children Daemon unit move horizontally through terrain features on its Normal, Advance or Charge moves until the end of the phase. Discounted to 0 CP on Fulgrim, it is effectively free movement through the board's furniture.

The conclusion is direct: this detachment is better if Fulgrim is in your list, and it is the only detachment in the faction that says so in its own rules.

Six stratagems in total, the widest suite in the faction, and unusually most of them name only Emperor's Children rather than a narrower keyword.

Contemptuous Disregard (1 CP) works in your opponent's Shooting phase or the Fight phase: while an attack targeting your unit has Strength greater than your unit's Toughness, subtract 1 from the wound roll. It is the Elegant Brutes defensive stratagem without the Terminator restriction, which makes it much more generally useful.

Close-quarters Excruciation (1 CP) is the shooting counterpart to the detachment rule: attacks targeting an eligible unit within 12 inches get +1 Strength and +1 Armour Penetration. Same bonus, different phase, no targeting restriction attached.

Euphoric Inspiration (1 CP) targets an Emperor's Children Daemon unit and lets friendly Emperor's Children units within 6 inches re-roll Charge rolls. Read that carefully: it is an aura off the daemon, not a buff to it, so one cheap Daemon unit placed centrally can re-roll charges for several squads at once. In a detachment whose rule only pays out on a charge, that is the enabler.

Catalytic Stimulus (1 CP) fires just after an enemy unit has shot, targeting one of your units that lost one or more wounds, and lets it make a surge move of up to D6 inches. Being shot moves you forward, which converts the unavoidable cost of crossing the table into progress toward the charge the detachment needs.

Tears of the Phoenix (25 pts) is the expensive one and the best. Each time a model in the bearer's unit makes a melee attack, you can ignore any or all modifiers to Weapon Skill, to the hit roll and to the wound roll. Note it reads the unit rather than the bearer, which is what justifies the price: it makes an entire squad immune to the stacked negative modifiers that otherwise blunt a charge.

Exalted Patron (15 pts) is Lord Exultant model only and adds 1 inch of Move to the bearer. Modest on its face, but Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 records it as a LEADER: FLAWLESS BLADES enhancement, which is the clearest signal in the pack that this detachment is designed to sit alongside a Flawless Blades core.

Soulstain Made Manifest (15 pts) forces an enemy unit within Engagement Range of the bearer to take a Battle-shock test at -1 at the start of the Fight phase. Cheap, repeatable, and it suits the Purge the Foe disposition.

Spiritsliver (20 pts) is Emperor's Children Daemon Prince model only and adds 1 to the Strength and Attacks of the bearer's melee weapons. Only budget for it if a Daemon Prince is already in the list.

For the list itself: Flawless Blades are the unit Exalted Patron points at and the one most likely to be charging every turn. Fulgrim is named by Master of the Pageant and his keywords gained MOBILE in this pack. Lord Exultant is the only model that can take Exalted Patron. A Daemon Prince of Slaanesh is the only model that can take Spiritsliver and the natural Daemon unit for Sinuous Breach and Euphoric Inspiration; we link no box because our catalog holds no exact entry for it.

At 2 DP this pairs with any of the three 1 DP detachments for exactly 3 DP. The best is Spectacle of Slaughter, on its own page.