How to Play Emperor's Children in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

This is the section to read first, because Thrill Seekers is usually described as a pure mobility bonus and it is not. It is a trade.

Thrill Seekers. If your Army Faction is EMPEROR'S CHILDREN, a unit is eligible to shoot and declare a charge in a turn in which it Advanced or Fell Back. That is the famous half, and it is genuinely rare: most units in the game give up shooting when they Advance and give up charging when they Fall Back.

Then come the two clauses that pay for it. When a unit does this:

• It cannot target a unit it was within Engagement Range of at the start of the turn.
• It cannot target a unit that was the target of another unit's charge or attack this phase.

Read those together and the rule stops being a movement bonus and becomes a rule about picking new fights. You may peel a squad out of a losing combat and charge somewhere else, but you may not peel it out and charge back into the same enemy. You may throw three units at three different targets, but you may not focus all three onto one target this way.

That is the discipline the army demands. Emperor's Children are punished for concentration and rewarded for spread. A list that wants to gang up on one big threat is fighting its own army rule; a list that wants to be in six places at once is playing it correctly.

The second army rule. Pact of Excess is a mustering restriction rather than a battlefield ability: when mustering your army, unless specifically stated otherwise, you cannot select LEGIONS OF EXCESS as your Army Faction. Our earlier army guide omitted this rule entirely. The Carnival of Excess detachment is the one that carries a Legions of Excess allowance, and it is worth being precise about what that allowance is: it lets you include Legions of Excess units up to a points cap despite their lacking the Emperor's Children keyword. It does not say you may select Legions of Excess as your Army Faction, and we do not claim it does.

Sourcing note. The pack does not reprint Thrill Seekers in full. The name is first-party: the Defiler datasheet the pack prints on page 7 carries FACTION: Thrill Seekers in its abilities block. The rule's full text and Pact of Excess are read off a community rules mirror. We are telling you that here because it is the one part of this guide that is only partly backed by the pack.

In 11th edition you spend a Detachment Points (DP) budget rather than picking one detachment. The budget scales with game size: roughly 2 DP at 1,000 points (Incursion) and 3 DP at 2,000 points (Strike Force). The Munitorum Field Manual points at the Warhammer 40,000 app for exact figures.

The Emperor's Children spread is middle-heavy, with one expensive detachment, a wide 2 DP tier and three cheap specialists:

• 3 DP: Coterie of the Conceited.
• 2 DP: Carnival of Excess, Court of the Phoenician, Mercurial Host, Peerless Bladesmen, Rapid Evisceration, Slaanesh's Chosen.
• 1 DP: Elegant Brutes, Frenzied Host, Spectacle of Slaughter.

That count is worth pausing on, because it is the biggest correction on this page. Ten detachments are legal, and we can show it in two independent directions. The pack prints four in full: Elegant Brutes, Frenzied Host, Spectacle of Slaughter and Court of the Phoenician. Its Rules Updates section amends six more by name: Carnival of Excess, Coterie of the Conceited, Mercurial Host, Peerless Bladesmen, Rapid Evisceration and Slaanesh's Chosen. Four plus six is exactly the ten the Munitorum Field Manual lists, so nothing is unaccounted for either way.

Now the constraint that shapes list-building, which for this faction is unusually simple: there is none beyond the budget.

Exactly one Emperor's Children detachment carries a Unique Tag. Frenzied Host carries HOST, stated in words inside its own detachment rules block. Because a Unique Tag only stops you taking two detachments that share it, and no second Emperor's Children detachment carries HOST, that tag blocks nothing. The Emperor's Children have no illegal pairing at all.

We are confident in that in both directions. The word tag occurs exactly once across all ten pages of the pack, at that one sentence. Column geometry confirms the sentence belongs to Frenzied Host rather than bleeding across from the stratagem column: it sits in the same left-hand column as the Frantic Focus rule heading, while every Frenzied Host stratagem label sits in the right-hand column. For the nine with no tag, we checked the Munitorum Field Manual's Emperor's Children section with a parser we validated the same day in both directions: run against the Astra Militarum page it correctly recovers eleven detachments and four tags, and run against the Grey Knights page it correctly recovers nine detachments and no tags at all.

One honest caveat, because two official documents disagree. Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 lists no Unique Tag for any Emperor's Children detachment, while Faction Pack v1.2 states one in words. Both are official. We tell you the tag exists, because the pack states it in words and the column geometry confirms it, and we tell you it restricts nothing, because under either document no second detachment shares it. We assert nothing beyond that.

Run the arithmetic and there are twenty-two legal multi-detachment armies at 2,000 points: eighteen that pair a 1 DP detachment with a 2 DP detachment for exactly 3 DP, three that pair two 1 DP detachments and leave a point unspent, and exactly one three-detachment army made of all three 1 DP detachments together. Two 2 DP detachments would cost 4 DP and are out of budget. Coterie of the Conceited spends the whole budget alone.

No Emperor's Children DP cost is contested. The Munitorum Field Manual and the community mirror's own detachment index agree on all ten, and the Munitorum Field Manual prints no increase or decrease marker on any Emperor's Children Detachment Point cost.

The menu is one whole-army identity at 3 DP, six mid-weight themes at 2 DP, and three cheap specialists at 1 DP.

Start here. Frenzied Host (1 DP) is the right first pick. Frantic Focus gives your Battleline infantry +1 Strength for Advancing or Falling Back, which is exactly the behaviour Thrill Seekers already pushes you toward, so it teaches the army rule by paying you for using it. It uses the cheap models you will buy first, and it costs a single Detachment Point.

If you want one detachment to be your whole army. Coterie of the Conceited (3 DP) is the faction's big commitment: you pledge a number of enemy units to kill each battle round, and hitting your pledges ramps army-wide bonuses up to [LETHAL HITS] and [SUSTAINED HITS 1] on every melee weapon. Miss a pledge and your Warlord takes D3 mortal wounds. That risk is why it costs the entire budget.

If you like Terminators. Elegant Brutes (1 DP) gives Terminator units +1 to charge rolls when they are set up, and Warp Plunge lets a squad leave the table and be set up again, which turns the bonus back on.

If you like duelists. Spectacle of Slaughter (1 DP) gives Flawless Blades units Fights First, full stop. It is the shortest detachment rule in the faction and one of the most decisive.

If you like characters. Slaanesh's Chosen (2 DP) runs a Favoured Champions title that moves to whichever of your characters kills something first each turn, which rewards fielding several rather than protecting one.

If you like daemons. Carnival of Excess (2 DP) is the allied detachment. It lets you include Legions of Excess daemons up to a points cap, and gives both halves [SUSTAINED HITS 1] for staying within 6 inches of each other.

If you like transports. Rapid Evisceration (2 DP) re-rolls hit and wound rolls of 1 for anything that is a transport or disembarked from one this turn.

If you like speed. Mercurial Host (2 DP) re-rolls Advance rolls army-wide, which in a faction that can shoot and charge after Advancing is a damage rule as much as a movement one.

The remaining 2 DP themes. Peerless Bladesmen lets any unit that charged pick [LETHAL HITS] or [SUSTAINED HITS 1] after seeing what it is fighting. Court of the Phoenician improves the Strength and Armour Penetration of a charging unit's melee weapons by 1, and is the detachment our previous coverage missed entirely.

Our recommended first 2,000-point army is Elegant Brutes plus Peerless Bladesmen, the most cohesive is Spectacle of Slaughter plus Court of the Phoenician, and the one most people wrongly rule out is Frenzied Host plus Mercurial Host.

Most factions in this programme have a pairing the arithmetic invites and a rule forbids. The Emperor's Children have the opposite problem, and it is worth a section of its own because the mistake it causes is invisible: a player rules out a good army and never finds out they were allowed to build it.

[Frenzied Host plus Mercurial Host](/40k/armies/emperors-children/detachments/frenzied-host-mercurial-host) costs 1 DP plus 2 DP, which is exactly the 3 DP Strike Force budget, and it is entirely legal.

It reads as illegal for two good reasons rather than one. Frenzied Host's own detachment rule says in plain words that it cannot be taken with another HOST detachment. Then you look down the menu and there is a detachment called Mercurial Host. And if you check further, you find both detachments also share the Reconnaissance force disposition, which looks like confirmation that they belong to the same restricted family. A careful player who has just read the tag rule does exactly the right thing and rules the pairing out.

They are wrong on both counts. A Unique Tag is a printed property, not a name. Mercurial Host carries no Unique Tag under Faction Pack v1.2, under Munitorum Field Manual v1.3, or on the community mirror. And a force disposition is not a Unique Tag either: it describes what a detachment is for, not what it may be taken with, and plenty of unrelated detachments share one. Nothing is shared that restricts anything, so nothing is blocked.

Mechanically the two fit as well as they read. Mercurial Host re-rolls Advance rolls army-wide, and Frenzied Host pays your Battleline units +1 Strength for Advancing. One detachment makes the move reliable and the other makes it profitable, and both sit on top of an army rule that lets you shoot and charge after Advancing anyway.

Both detachment pages suggest each other, deliberately and in both directions, and the collision gets its own page.

The general rule to carry away: in this faction, check the tag line, not the name and not the disposition. Only one detachment has a tag, nothing shares it, and every combination that fits the budget is legal.

Three habits separate an Emperor's Children player who wins from one who throws elites away.

Plan your targets before you plan your moves. Thrill Seekers restricts what a unit may target after it Advances or Falls Back: not the enemy it was already engaged with, and not an enemy another of your units has already attacked this phase. That means the order you activate units in genuinely matters, and it means a plan of the form 'everything charges the big thing' is illegal as often as it is bad. Decide who is killing what, then work out the movement that gets you there.

Spread out, because the army rule rewards it. The second restriction clause is effectively a ban on focus-firing with charges. An army with six units attacking six targets gets full value; an army with six units attacking two targets is fighting itself. This is the single biggest behavioural difference between Emperor's Children and the other Chaos legions, and it is why the faction's detachments so often buff whole armies rather than single hammers.

Buy your delivery before you buy your damage. Almost every Emperor's Children unit hits hard enough. What varies is whether it arrives. That is why Mercurial Host and Rapid Evisceration are better than they look, why Eager Patrons at 20 points and Spearhead Striker at 20 points are among the best-value enhancements in the faction, and why a detachment that improves your charge is usually worth more than one that improves your swing.

The straight answer: [Combat Patrol: Emperor's Children](/40k/boxes/combat-patrol-emperors-children). It is the cheapest way into the faction, it is a legal Combat Patrol force on its own, and it puts you into the Battleline core the army is actually built on rather than a set of oddities.

If you want an army box rather than a starter. Battleforce: Emperor's Children is the bulk-value option and the closest thing this faction has to an army-in-a-box. The Emperor's Children Army Set is the legion launch set, and worth checking against current sealed prices before you commit, because launch sets tend to carry an early premium.

Then buy toward a detachment, not toward a wishlist. The units that earn their place fastest:

• Tormentors. The Battleline backbone, named directly by Rapid Evisceration's Advance and Claim stratagem, and one of the two units Frenzied Host is built on. Their power sword had its Strength changed to 5 in this pack.
• Flawless Blades. The dedicated melee unit, the only unit Spectacle of Slaughter does anything for, and the unit Court of the Phoenician's Exalted Patron enhancement is recorded against. Their Blissblade had its Attacks changed to 4 in this pack.
• Lord Exultant. The generic character the largest number of enhancements are written for, including both of Frenzied Host's.
• Lord Kakophonist. Only really needed for Elegant Brutes, where he is the only model that can take Cacophonic Accompaniment.
• Noise Marines. Named in Mercurial Host's own flavour text, and a shooting unit benefits unusually well from a faction that can Advance and still shoot.
• Fulgrim. The centrepiece, named directly by Court of the Phoenician's Master of the Pageant rule, and the strongest Warlord for Coterie of the Conceited. Expensive in points and money, and not a first purchase.
• Lucius the Eternal. The duelist character, at home in Spectacle of Slaughter and Slaanesh's Chosen.

On painting. We are asked often which paint set gets an Emperor's Children army table-ready fastest. We do not stock or track an Emperor's Children paint set, and we are not going to point you at an approximate product to answer the question, so here is the honest version instead: the scheme is a pink or purple armour over a bright base with gold trim, which is the single best case in the whole Chaos range for a contrast or speedpaint approach, and the gold is the part worth doing by hand. Pick two accent colours and stop, because the temptation with this legion is to add a third and a fourth and never finish the squad.

What we deliberately do not link. Several datasheets these detachments are built on have no exact entry in our catalog, including Infractors, Chaos Terminators, Chaos Rhino, Chaos Land Raider, Defiler, Maulerfiend, Heldrake, Daemon Prince of Slaanesh and the Legions of Excess daemon units. We leave those unlinked rather than point you at an approximate kit, because buying the wrong box is worse than being told we do not have it. Infractors is the one to watch: Frenzied Host is built on 'Tormentors and Infractors', the Tormentors box is in our catalog and the Infractors box is not, and they are different datasheets. The Tormentors box is not a substitute.