Emperor's Children: Spectacle of Slaughter plus Court of the Phoenician (2,000 Points)

Spectacle of Slaughter gives friendly FLAWLESS BLADES units Fights First. That is its entire rule, and it means your Flawless Blades are dangerous to charge as well as dangerous when charging.

Court of the Phoenician's Sensational Performance lets a unit that made a Charge move this turn improve the Strength and Armour Penetration of its melee weapons by 1, at the cost of two targeting restrictions that mirror the army rule's own.

Put them on one unit and you get a squad that strikes first and strikes harder, and which your opponent can neither profitably charge nor safely ignore.

The enhancements point the same way. Exalted Patron at 15 points adds 1 inch of Move to a Lord Exultant and is recorded as a Flawless Blades leader enhancement. Eager Patrons at 20 points adds +2 inches Move to the Flawless Blades unit itself. Together that is 35 points spent almost entirely on closing the distance, which is the one thing Fights First cannot do for you.

Tears of the Phoenix (25 pts) is the upgrade that makes the whole thing reliable. 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. On a unit that is already striking first with improved Strength and AP, removing every negative modifier your opponent can apply is what turns a strong swing into a decisive one.

And the CP economy works. Court of the Phoenician's only 2 CP stratagem, Prideful Superiority, drops to 1 CP when you target a [Fulgrim](/40k/boxes/emperors-children-fulgrim) unit with it, thanks to Master of the Pageant. Everything else in both detachments costs 1 CP, so this army spends command points steadily rather than in spikes.

Decide each fight whether to use Sensational Performance. It is optional, and using it locks your unit out of targeting an enemy it was engaged with at the start of the turn, or one another of your units has already attacked this phase. On a fresh charge into a new target you take the bonus every time. When you need to finish the unit you were already fighting, decline it and swing with your normal profile.

Fight your cheap units first. Because Sensational Performance fences off any target another unit has already attacked, activating your Flawless Blades first denies that target to everyone else. Let your Tormentors finish the weakened chaff, then let the Flawless Blades pick freely from what is left.

Use Honour is for Fools on the character, not the squad. Spectacle of Slaughter's 1 CP stratagem gives your unit's melee attacks [PRECISION], and combined with Fights First you can kill an enemy character before it swings at all. That is the highest-value single action available to this army, and it is worth holding a command point for.

Beat screens with Single-minded Strike. For 1 CP your Flawless Blades can move through models, excluding Monsters and Vehicles, when they start a charge. An opponent who has read the rest of this page will put a cheap unit in front of your best one, and this is the answer.

Let a cheap Daemon unit carry Euphoric Inspiration. Court of the Phoenician's 1 CP stratagem is an aura off an Emperor's Children Daemon unit that lets friendly units within 6 inches re-roll Charge rolls. It buffs the units around the daemon rather than the daemon itself, so one inexpensive Daemon model placed centrally can re-roll charges for the whole advancing line, which is exactly what a detachment gated on charging needs.

This list is unusually catalog-friendly, because both detachments are built on units we track.

Flawless Blades are close to mandatory and are the unit both detachments are written for. Their Blissblade had its Attacks characteristic changed to 4 in this pack, which is a straight increase to the centrepiece of this army.

Lord Exultant is the only model that can take Exalted Patron, and the leader you attach to the Flawless Blades unit.

Fulgrim is worth fielding here specifically, because Master of the Pageant discounts Prideful Superiority and Sinuous Breach by 1 CP when you target a Fulgrim unit, and he is the only model that triggers it. His keywords gained MOBILE in this pack.

Tormentors are the cheap Battleline bodies that screen, hold objectives and finish weakened units first in the Fight phase so your Flawless Blades keep a clean choice of targets.

Combat Patrol: Emperor's Children remains the cheapest way to start, and Battleforce: Emperor's Children is the bulk option.

A Daemon Prince of Slaanesh is the natural carrier for Spiritsliver and the natural Daemon unit for Sinuous Breach and Euphoric Inspiration, and Infractors are the other Battleline unit you may want. We link no boxes for either, because our catalog holds no exact entries for them, and in the Infractors case the Tormentors box is a different datasheet rather than a substitute.