Detachment Focus: Slaanesh’s Chosen

Codex Emperor’s Children gives the devotees of Slaanesh an excessive six Detachments to choose from. In today’s articles, we take a look at each of them to see which will allow you to live the most deliciously.

Slaanesh is very much about pride and vanity, and as such it’s easy to imagine the Emperor’s Children as a series of vainglorious warriors vying individually for the favor of Slaanesh. And that’s what the Slaanesh’s Chosen Detachment is all about – each round your warriors will vie to be the first to claim glory and as a result, the powerful rewards which go with it. If you’re looking for a Detachment which replicates the feeling of a warband’s internal competition, this is the Detachment for you.

Detachment Overview

Slaanesh’s Chosen focuses on buffing up your character units, making them into exquisite duelists constantly trying to outdo each other for the next kill. It’s worth noting here that character units includes units with characters attached, so really this works on just about any non-vehicle in the army (sorry terminators). Do these limited buffs manage to compete with the easier to access ones of the other Detachments? Let’s take a look.

The Video Version

If you’d rather watch this Detachment than read about it, you can find the video version of this article here:

Detachment Rule – Internal Rivalries

Internal Rivalries gives all Emperor’s Children the ability to ignore modifiers to their movement and their Advance and Charge rolls. In addition, at the beginning of the battle your Warlord’s unit gains the Favoured Champions keyword which gives them full re-rolls to wound. Any time another Character unit kills an enemy unit, they gain the keyword instead. 

The first part of the rule is kinda lame as a passive buff. It’s nice to have, but there are very few things in the game that debuff movement but this rule will be welcome any time you encounter something that does. The other issue here is, while full wound re-rolls are nice, you only get them after your attacks, so unless you kill something in shooting then charge something (you won’t in this army) you will never benefit from the change in the same turn you make it. This means your opponent will know in their turn exactly which units to avoid, giving them a bit more control than you’d generally like. 

Enhancements

There’s a nice varied roster of Enhancements to draw from. Most of these work by having a standard enhancement effect and then adds a bonus for the unit when they’re the Favoured Champion. As a result, these tend to be just kind of mediocre unless the unit they’re on is Favoured, though Slayer of Champions eschews this requirement and is basically a must-take.

• Eager To Prove: Let’s you reroll charge rolls for the bearer’s unit and gives +2 to that unit’s move characteristic when they’re favoured. This is a nice buff that will almost always be handy to have on hand. I wouldn’t rush to put it in every list, but it’s a great points filler.

• Repulsed By Weakness: Forces (non-Monster non-Vehicle) units to do desperate escape tests when they fall back and, if you’re favoured, imposes -1 to those tests. Since your opponent will be trying to fall back to deny your favoured unit its buff this is nice for keeping them pinned in place.

• Proud and Vainglorious: You can re-roll Battle-Shock and Leadership tests for the bearer’s unit and and while they’re favoured you add 1 OC to models in the unit. This one’s kinda lame. Battle-Shock and Leadership bonuses are rarely helpful and the extra OC is nice but it’s a shame that you need to be favoured to get it.

• Slayer of Champions: Gives the bearer’s melee weapons [PRECISION] and extra Strength and AP when targeting hero units. This one’s a slam dunk. It has no favoured requirement so it’s always helpful and helps juice up your daemon princes to become horrifying character hunters.

Stratagems

All of the stratagems in this Detachment work to buff up your Character units. It’s worth noting that none of these work on non-character units, so don’t expect to get any juice for your Maulerfiends or something. It also means that any unit that wants to get this benefit needs to pay for an attached character, and given the same character attaches to Terminator and Noise Marine units (the Lord Kakophonist) well, you’re going to be struggling to find room there.

• Devoted Duellists (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Used in the Fight phase. You pick an enemy unit and any number of Emperor’s Children Character units in combat with that unit. Those units get [SUSTAINED HITS 1] against that target for the rest of the phase. This feels a bit off brand since this Detachment is about selfishness but it lets your units work together to bring something down. It’s also a bit of a non-bo with the army ability since you won’t be able to advance and charge into the same unit. That said if you can set it up, this can be a really useful stratagem for confirming the kill.
• Beautiful Death (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Used in the Fight phase, after an enemy unit picks targets. Gives a character unit a 4+ fight on death that becomes a 3+ if that unit is Favoured. This one’s nifty but I’m not sure what unit you use it on. Flawless Blades can’t use their ability with this since they aren’t being chosen to fight but it’s still useful into elite infantry. The other option is Infractors with a Lord Exultant, which can be useful but isn’t a huge threat. 
• Heightened Jealousy (Battle Tactic, 1CP): Used in your Shooting phase or the Fight phase after a unit becomes Favoured, or after your Favoured unit kills something. All other Character units get +1 strength until the end of the phase. Where this can be really useful is on Noise Marines if you can pop something early in the phase and you have two more units ready to go. This is also nice in melee just generally, but your Slayer of Champions Daemon Prince loves this since it gets them to S10, allowing them to more reliably kill elite infantry.
• Diabolic Majesty (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Used in your Shooting phase or the Fight phase. When a unit becomes Favoured you can force all enemy units within 6” to take a battleshock test at -1. This can be helpful for turning off certain stratagems but if you got Favoured you probably already killed the thing you’d be worried about.
• Refusal to be Outdone (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Used in your Charge phase. Gives you +2 to charge a unit that’s already in combat with another unit. This can be nice to get your deepstrikers into combat more reliably or just getting multiple units where they need to be to bully an objective or score a secondary.
• Vengeful Surge (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase. Lets you make a D6” Surge Move after being shot and if that unit isn’t Favoured you can reroll the move. This is handy for getting units into combat after an enemy falls back or punishing something trying to bully one of your objectives. This can also be very handy on Fulgrim in the right situations, allowing you to dodge some shooting if you can make it back into combat after committing him.

Playing This Detachment

This Detachment needs you to pick your activations in a very specific order so you can set up your desired unit to be Favoured for the next turn. That set up, combined with the fact that the payoff you get for it, makes this a really difficult Detachment to get juice out of, especially when you could just run Peerless Bladesmen, which would help everyone without nearly as much set up required. Fulgrim probably makes the cut in this Detachment since he’ll start out Favoured which means your alpha strike with him will be all the more consistent. Daemon Princes are also probably a must-have here since they’re some of your most effective characters. Outside that, anything you want to bring that isn’t scoring will almost always want a character attached so you can get the maximum benefit from this Detachment. Otherwise you can go slim on characters so you can more consistently get the units you want Favoured.

Strengths

• Strong offensive buff for the Favoured unit. Re-rolling wounds is very strong in an army that has so much accurate, middling strength, attacks.
• Characters are some of your best units. This Detachment focuses on buffing characters, which are some of the army’s best units. Going heavy on Daemon Princes is absolutely an option.
• Slayer of Champions is a great enhancement that’s almost always helpful.

Weaknesses

• Too Many Hoops. The Detachment ability requires too much set up to get the effect it pays off for.
• The Buff is Slow. There’s not any way to reliably get something favoured in the same turn you want to commit them.
• Limited Scope. Does nothing for non-Character units.

Analysis

Overall, this Detachment isn’t great. There’s just not enough juice for the narrow build and playstyle the Detachment is asking you to do. In addition, when you do get something Favored, your opponent likely has an entire turn to react and kill your Favored unit, leaving you with nothing to benefit from your Detachment rule next turn. The premise is a neat one, but it feels a bit half-baked. Even if you wanna go character-heavy, there’s probably a better Detachment for it (Peerless Bladesmen or Coterie, really).

A Sample List

It’s hard to predict how you’re going to get that Rivalry bonus in a given turn, and if you keep killing things with the same buffed unit at the start of each round, you’re going to just keep having the same chosen unit. That’s not the end of the world, however.

Middle Manager Simulator - Click to Expand

This list largely aims to just get stuff Favored in the fight phase while also trying to play the mission with Spawn, Tormentors, and the Rhinos once the noise marines are out. Lucius goes solo with the Daemon Prince on foot to let both benefit from Lone Operative and go character hunting. Fulgrim has to be your warlord, so he’ll start Favoured, allowing your alpha strike with him to be more consistent and hopefully he doesn’t just evaporate on the next turn.

Final Thoughts

Overall this Detachment is kind of a let down. Usually if a ruleset like this is underpowered we at least hope it’s interesting to play, but honestly this feels like it just won’t come together on the tabletop. That said there’s some neat ideas here, and who knows? Maybe there’s a balance dataslate in the future that’ll bring this up to snuff.

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