Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last Time Around I was finishing off my games for the Ettin League, playing against Bridgehead Strike, and then testing a new Emperor’s Children list. This week I’m testing a new Emperor’s Children list and ramping up my hobby progress on the army.
Coterie of the Conceited
Last week I tested a list for Emperor’s Children using the Rapid Evisceration Detachment. It was decent – I liked the boost from disembarking and the speed on the list was great – but I’ve been meaning to test out a Coterie list as well. This is partly because John Lennon’s been big on Coterie since we first got our hands on the Codex, even moreso than Peerless Bladesmen. And he’s got a good point – let’s dig in to why.
The Emperor’s Children are an elite army, with very good datasheets. They’re incredibly fast and they tend to be just a little bit better than other comparable datasheets – Tormentors Infiltrate and have more guns with Precision, while Infractors Scout and have Precision on their attacks, and the Daemon Princes and Lucius have some of the game’s best datasheets. What Coterie does is make those Datasheets even better, giving you ways to buff the entire army in one go. If you can get the first two buffs (re-roll 1s to hit and wound), you’re basically just throwing around some of game’s heftiest datasheets.
The challenge comes in scoring those points, and I think being able to plan ahead is a huge part of this army. I’ve seen battle reports where players get 5 points on the first turn and I don’t think that’s super likely, especially against a capable opponent. But I do think getting 1-2 per round in the first two rounds is very doable and occasionally stretching to five by the end of round 2 may be possible, but not necessarily something you can plan for. So I see the goal as being “get to 3 as quickly as possible and try and have 5 going into the game’s final two rounds,” and that will already mean I’m in a great position. Part of that will mean keeping my Warlord alive and on the table, but the Winged Daemon Prince is pretty tough and you can give him an Enhancement to stand back up.
With that in mind, I decided to just go ahead and test a list that was already out there – specifically, John Lennon’s list from the Art of War Streamhouse RTT. It’s close to what I’d build anyways, and is in line with what I was going to build for the army from a hobby standpoint, though if I’m going hard on best painted later I’ll need to add a Land Raider.
I’m not wild about assembling and painting two winged daemon princes and I’m already dreading the prospect of a potential glow-up for daemon princes in Death Guard and World Eaters and Thousand Sons which may force me to paint up half a dozen more before year’s end, but otherwise most of this was already on my radar. Except maybe that third Rhino. I was planning to assemble and paint two and if I want to do three I’ll have to source more Forgeworld Rhino bits and that is a massive pain in the ass.
I could spend a lot of time testing different variations of this but John’s a much better player than I am and the Emperor’s Children only have like ten datasheets anyways so every list is going to look more or less the same – so I may as well start from this spot. The only real question here is whether you want a unit of spawn or a second Kakophonist and another enhancement but I think Spawn are too good to not include.
The Game: vs. KC’s Dark Angels
This was a heck of a game to test a new army – KC’s a good player and his Dark Angels are no joke. Plus, T5, 4W threats with -1 damage and a 2+/4++ are not good targets for uh, Infractors. That said, they aren’t terrible targets – throwing out a lot of AP-1 attacks with Lethal Hits is among the better ways to kill them but five-man Infractor units will seldom have enough of that to kill a full unit of five dudes.
KC’s army is running two Vindicators, Azrael and some Inner Circle dweebs, a Justiciar and some Inner Circle Companions, three units of Deathwing Knights, Scouts, Infiltrators, a Combi-Lieutenant, and a unit of Intercessors. He puts a Vindicator into reserves and puts two units of Terminators on the table.
The Mission: Linchpin / Raise Banners / Search and Destroy
I put a unit of Tormentors on my objective to sticky it – this is still Linchpin – and one on the upper left objective as infiltrators. Then I win the first turn roll-off and we are off to the races. I decide I’m going for it. My chaos spawn scouts forward while is scouts move back, and I plow forward doing an advance and charge with nearly everything that can. My plan here is to get stuck in early and try and do as much damage as possible. The Winged Daemon Princes are great here for fighting terminators – they do a ton of mortals on the charge and can easily shrug off hits with -1 damage built-in. I call 1 for my pledge count – it’s early and I’m not sure I’ll get more than one unit this round.
My initial charge goes well enough – I kill a unit of companions with the daemon prince but only manage to kill two of the Deathwing Knights. Then I messed up here – I used the Embrace the Pain Stratagem to force KC to attack my Chaos Spawn, but this isn’t legal as it can only be done with an Infantry unit. I ended up spiking my saves with the spawn, and so I don’t think this would have mattered too much – I could have used Armour of Abhorrence on my Infractors instead to give them 4+ saves and I’d have ended up only losing two – but it does put an asterisk on the game. Still, these things happen when you’re doing practice games with a new army. I score Recover Assets and pitch Assassination.
On that note, while KC is a very good player he tends to get a little excited seeing new armies at work and wants to test things out, and that means he’s not always playing the mission. That will end up hurting him here as I think he got a bit too aggressive and ignored secondary play. He also just had bad luck with his draws, though – he pulled Marked and Locus on turn 1, chucking Marked to get Bring it Down. He’d end up bouncing off the Daemon Prince, though – it survived with 1 wound thanks to its Pledge of Unholy Fortune.
I went with two units for my pledge in round 2 – it gets a little easier as you improve in power and get stuck in, but this is a tough army – and barely pulled it off with a second kill in KC’s turn. The second time I popped Embrace the Pain it was on a single-model Lord Exultant, using him to protect a full, new squad charging in and that felt pretty great. It’s a good stratagem for forcing your opponent to waste attacks.
The terminators were a problem but I was able to kill two units of them, partly by using the Noise Marines, who can do a ton of damage. The Kakophonist’s unit also killed Azrael’s whole squad in one go. I probably should have let the lower right corner go at that point, however – KC dropped his third unit of Terminators over there with his other Vindicator and took out most of my Noise Marines. KC’s Vindicators were on fire this game, and that one in the lower right took out an entire unit of noise marines with one shot at one point. I made do sweeping around the top of the table – you can only kill so many terminators in a game and sometimes you just have to leave them alone while you do other stuff. Lucius killed the other Vindicator and then met up with the Daemon Prince on KC’s home objective, where they prevented Linchpin scoring on KC’s end.
KC’s terminators eventually made their way to mid table but the damage had been done. KC’s dark angels are an elite army and they need to play aggressively early to avoid falling too far behind on scoring. I did a ton of damage and as we got later into the game KC also got bad draws, pulling Cleanse and Recover Assets on rounds 2 and 3, then Sabotage and Engage on All Fronts in the final round, neither of which was great for what he had left.
Result: 82-42, Win
KC’s biggest mistake when we play is how he uses his Scouts – he likes to put them out front and use them as a speed bump, keeping the Infiltrators in his back field to protect his home. This is ultimately a mistake, and backwards – the Infiltrators’ 12″ deep strike screening bubble is interesting, but as a unit they aren’t nearly as valuable as Scouts, who can come back up and drop back down on the table, scoring easy points late in the game and forcing me to stay on my home objective longer. I told KC he needs to put the Infiltrators out front for screening if he’s going that route and hold the Scouts somewhere much safer – they are one of the army’s best units.
On that note, I’m continually impressed by how damn fast the Emperor’s Children are – they just move so much and you never have to worry about getting bogged down in combat. That’s huge, though I did run into some sequencing challenges making sure I could shoot and charge everything I wanted. Stratagem-wise, I used Embrace the pain twice, Protection of the Dark Prince once (it saved a winged DP from grenades), and Armour of Abhorrence. I think I planned to use Martial Perfection and Unbound Arrogance, but neither came up with opportunities in the game.
Hobby Progress
Still can’t show everything. I’ve been working on finishing my Goremongers, and should have them done next week. But in the meantime I’ve been working hard on my Emperor’s Children, getting a full army up and running. Most of that is assembly at the moment, but I’ve made great progress there:
Still need to get another two Rhinos together, plus two Daemon Princes, and then I’ll need Lucius and the Lord Kakophonist when they come out.
Though in Dadhammer news, the boy and I finished playing our games and reading our books for Games Workshop’s “New Year, New Challenge” challenge, getting our cards stamped at the local Games Workshop this past week and earning ourselves some sick medals for doing so.
Bryce is pretty much ecstatic any time he gets anything resembling a trophy or medal – he’s a simple lad when it comes to rewards – and this was some decent encouragement to keep going. We still have some work to do on his knight before I post it here but it’s nearly done. If you’re close to finishing your card, hurry up and get it done – it’s my understanding this program is ending so you might not be able to get these much longer.
Final Thoughts
That wraps up this week but I’ll be back next week with more Emperor’s Children practice and hobby progress – I’ll have some new things to show off that I’ve been unable to talk about the past couple of weeks. So check back for an update on that and more of my test games with Emperor’s Children.
See you then.
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