Detachment Focus: Court of the Phoenician

In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into individual detachments, examine their rules, what makes them tick, and how to play them. In this article we’re looking at the Court of the Phoenician Detachment for Emperor’s Children.

Emperor’s Children has had an interesting edition so far – since their codex release this past spring they briefly flirted with greatness, but then were quickly overshadowed by the release of their other god counterparts in Thousand Sons and Death Guard. Since then they’ve seen limited success, with their biggest win being the Edmonton Open in June. Their limited success has primarily revolved around a single detachment – Coterie of the Conceited.

Now as part of this year’s Grotmas we have some fresh stimuli for Emperor’s Children players in the form of the Court of the Phoenician – which even brings some welcome gifts for their primarch, Fulgrim.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Detachment Overview

Court of the Phoenician revolves around getting into combat quickly, with some protective and positioning abilities to help with this, and then hitting as hard as possible with each individual combatant. It relies on the Emperor’s Children’s natural speed to achieve this, while the detachment rule improves their melee characteristics.
Detachment Rule: Sensational Performance
The detachment rule extends the army rule by adding an additional bonus – each time this unit is selected to fight, if this unit has made a Charge move this turn, it can use this ability. If it does, until the end of the phase:

• This unit cannot target a unit it was within Engagement Range of at the start of the turn.
• This unit cannot target a unit that was the target of another unit’s charge or attack this phase.
• Improve the Strength and Armour Penetration characteristics of this unit’s melee weapons by 1.

In addition, once per battle round when you target a Fulgrim unit from your army with the Sinuous Breach or Prideful Superiority Stratagems, you can reduce the CP cost of that use of that Stratagem by 1CP.

Definitely an interesting detachment rule – it offers a nice buff to melee output while lining up with the army rule’s restrictions. The interesting thing is that you can still activate several times into the same unit, provided the first unit to swing uses the detachment rule and it was the sole charging unit (think ongoing combats or piling from one combat to another).

That being said, this is considerably weaker than the current preferred detachment – Coterie of the Conceited. Coterie offers considerably higher buffs to the melee output of Emperor’s Children units, at the cost of having to correctly pledge and slowly build up to full power while this new rule allows for instant gratification. More interestingly this rule does amp up the current trade pieces for the army (Infractors) quite a bit. Pushing them to S5 and AP-2 is a very nice upgrade over their current S4 AP-1. We could see big units of Infractors being used in this detachment with the better output.

Enhancements

As (almost) always, this detachment comes with four enhancements designed to amp up your melee damage and aid in the delivery of some key units.

• Tears of the Phoenix (25 pts): Each time a model in the bearer’s unit makes a melee attack, you can ignore any or all modifiers to that attack’s Weapon Skill characteristic and any or all modifiers to the Hit roll and Wound roll. Very solid enhancement, but the only unit that can make good use of this is Infractors lead by a Lord Exultant, and these tend to be a one-shot unit so paying a premium for one round of ignoring (most) modifiers may not be worth it. That being said, it is very valuable into armies like Death Guard, Custodes, and Sisters’ Sacresant spam.
• Exalted Patron (15 pts): Lord Exultant model only. Add 1” to the Move characteristic of the bearer. In the Declare Battle Formations step, the bearer can be attached to a Flawless Blades unit. Interesting upgrade – Lord Exultants don’t necessarily need the anti-everything 3+ that Flawless would give them, but the Lethal hits on the Flawless Blades reduces the necessity of using it into smaller targets. The bigger thing here is that it’s a more durable delivery vehicle for the Lord as they are T5 and have a 5+ invulnerable save as compared to the normal battle line options’ T4.
• Soulstain Made Manifest (15 pts): At the start of the Fight phase, you can select one enemy unit within Engagement Range of the bearer, that unit must take a Battle-shock test, subtracting 1 from the result. Helpful enhancement if you have the points to spare, but with no other interaction with Battle Shock it’s not that useful.
• Spiritsliver (20 pts): Daemon Prince model only. Add 1 to the Strength and Attacks characteristics of the bearer’s melee weapons. Solid enhancement, stacks with the detachment rule pushing either form of Daemon Prince to 7 attacks at S10 AP-3 D3 on the charge. If put on a foot prince, this pushes them to AP-4 on the charge – quite the interesting pick!

Stratagems

Six stratagems, two for output, two for protection, and two for positioning. Balance in all things – starting with Contemptuous Disregard (yes this is the same name as a completely different stratagem in Chaos Space Marines):

• Contemptuous Disregard (1 CP): In your opponent’s Shooting Phase or the Fight Phase; until the end of the Phase subtract 1 from the Wound roll whenever the incoming Strength is greater than the Toughness of your unit. This is a solid defensive stratagem, with no unit restrictions. Everyone hates playing into -1 to wound.
• Prideful Superiority (2 CP): In the Fight Phase, each time a model in your unit makes a melee attack that targets a Character unit, you can re-roll the Hit roll and re-roll and Wound roll. This is really pricey but as mentioned above Fulgrim can use this at a 1CP discount, costing just 1CP for these re-rolls. Fulgrim already hits on 2s and will wound most units on a 3+ at worst with his strike attacks so you’re really going to want this on either his sweep or when he’s punching up into tougher targets like knights.
• Sinuous Breach (1 CP): Your Movement Phase or your Charge Phase, a Daemon unit can move horizontally through terrain features when making a Normal, Advance, or Charge move. Another win for Fulgrim – this (partially) solves the mobility challenges presented by his massive base. More interestingly this can be used on Maulerfiends or Daemon Princes to run them through walls, giving them a lot more utility than you’d otherwise get.
• Close-Quarters Excruciation (1 CP): In your Shooting Phase, you improve the Strength and Armour Penetration characteristics by 1 for any attack targeting an eligible unit within 12” of that model. Noise Marine lovers rejoice! They get even more powerful, especially since this pushes the Blastmaster focused profile to S11 AP-3 D3, a terrifying profile into nearly every meta threat right now. AP boosts always feel better on attacks with [IGNORES COVER].
• Euphoric Inspiration (1 CP): In your Charge Phase, one Daemon unit gives re-roll charge rolls to all friendly units within 6”. Situationally good, if there is more than one critical charge you can flatten the curve somewhat with this instead of relying on the Command Re-roll Stratagem.
• Catalytic Stimulus (1 CP): In your opponent’s Shooting Phase, just after they have shot; one of your units that lost one or more wounds as a result of those attacks can make a Stimulus move of up to d6” towards the closest enemy unit. Your unit can finish in engagement range of that enemy unit. This is a decent surge move stratagem, but only moving d6” means it’s not as potent as that presented by Khorne Berzerkers or Carnifexes. That said, the lack of limitations means you can use it on nearly anything – including Fulgrim.

Playing This Detachment

As laid out above, the key to success with this detachment is deciding where a unit benefits more from taking advantage of the detachment ability as opposed to needing to commit multiple units to that combat. Weakening units with Noise Marine shooting using Close-quarters Excruciation will go a long ways in getting this balance right.

In addition, this is a detachment that can go full gas from the first turn – a big change for those used to the careful tempo of Coterie of the Conceited and bound to catch some people unawares. Nothing more terrifying than Fulgrim ripping up the battlefield from behind a deployment ruin!

Command Point management is also going to be key here – there are good stratagems to make use of in both players’ turns, so you’re going to have to be very choosy about when you use a defensive stratagem like Contemptuous Disregard right before your go turn.

Strengths

• Support for Fulgrim. Good tools to get Fulgrim on to the tabletop.
• Strong offensive buffs. There is a good balance of melee and shooting buffs to the army here.
• Good defensive and movement buffs. There are some nice defensive & mobility buffs to aid you in getting into combat.

Weaknesses

• Forced Isolation. The Detachment rule heavily restricts multiple activations into a single enemy unit, leaving you vulnerable to single activation defenses e.g. Armour of Contempt.
• Charge Triggers. This Detachment’s bonuses are reliant on getting charges off – if you are charged, you get no benefit. Makes the melee matchup quite challenging as a result.
• Fulgrim. Fulgrim’s datasheet is well… not great.

A Sample List

Emperor’s Children has a fairly shallow codex so most lists look very similar – but in keeping with the theme of the detachment we’re going to start with Fulgrim and a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh with the Spiritsliver enhancement. We’re also including some spawn as their melee gets tuned up nicely with this detachment, enabling them to be our early skirmish unit. As is tradition, 18 noise marines round out the list.

Army List - click to expand

Fulgrim’s here, along with a Daemon Prince on foot, Lucius, and a pair of Lords Exultant. We’ve eschewed Winged Daemon Princes here in favor of the AP buff you can get from the standard Daemon Prince – stacking that with the Detachment bonus can get you to some really solid AP values pretty quickly. We’re also not running Flawless Blades here, but it may be worth testing those at some point.

Final Thoughts

This is definitely an interesting detachment for the Emperor’s Children – it brings some much-needed love to Fulgrim, though that attention might have been better served through datasheet changes to Fulgrim. If they’re going to give him the ability to go through walls for free in this detachment, just give it to him naturally! All said, I don’t expect this detachment to considerably shake up the current preferred Coterie meta lists. Think differently? I encourage all of your to prove me wrong and get some results with this detachment.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.