You probably already know it but the Emperor’s Children are on the way! If you’ve looked at anything else on this blog, or on any of the forums, Discord servers or social media platforms I’m on you’ll already know I’m incredibly excited about this!

PLASTIC NOISE MARINES! PLASTIC FULGRIM! PLASTIC LUCIUS!

These are all things so exciting they can only be written in capital letters!

The purpose of this post is to have a quick look at what we know so far, what the main rumours are telling us and then from there, to make all sorts of wild guesses. The internet is short of spurious nonsense and I’m here to correct that!

So, don your tinfoil hats and be ready to add many pinches of salt as we’re going off the reservation with this one!

What Do We KNOW So Far?

It all started with the Warhammer Day Preview back at the beginning of October when the live stream ended with this teaser:

Then we had over a month of radio silence on the matter before the Warhammer Community website posted The Ecstatic Epistle which showed off some (beautiful) renders of three Emperor’s Children Shoulder Pads.

Then finally, bringing us up-to-date, at the World Championships of Warhammer Preview the front cover of the new Codex Aeldari featuring a fallen Slaaneshi (and probably Emperor’s Children) Chaos Space Marine:

We’ll come back to some of these when we look at them in conjunction with some of the rumours we also have to form some completely unfounded conclusions!

What’s Been Rumoured?

So all the rumours I have seen come via Chapter Master Valrak who clearly has some very reliable little birdies that come and tell him about all the wonderful things around the corner.

Initially, back on 14th October, Valrak gave us these rumours – where he spoke about:

• New Legionnaires – in a box of 10 models
• New Noise Marines – in a 6 man squad with Sonic Weapons and other upgrades with potentially another type of weapon
• New Elite Unit – Similar to the Eightbound, 3 models but an elite unit of Swordmasters but possibly quite warped
• New Lucius The Eternal
• New Emperor’s Children Lord – not a named character with lots of upgrades
• New Fulgrim – Daemon Primarch, apparently one of the best models that Games Workshop have ever made (which would only be right) with multiple face options
• There probably is going to be an upgrade kit

Valrak later added in a comment that the Elite unit could be Terminators.

Then we have silence for a month until Valrak returned with some boxset rumours on 18th November a few days prior to the World Championships previews. Here he spoke about:

• Death Korps of Krieg boxset rumour – obviously this isn’t relevant to the rest of this but highlighting because the accuracy of this was proven a few days later – here we heard that it’s a boxset with the Limited Edition Codex, a new artillery piece and mostly built around Death Riders with 10 of these including detail on the loadouts that we saw and a Death Rider character. He also mentioned a 5 man squad of special weapons with a mini-tank drone with them. Barring the names for things this was all pretty much dead-on.
• Emperor’s Children boxset rumor – the contents sounds like a Limited Edition Codex, a Lord, 20 Emperor’s Children Legionnaires (lots of plumes, loads of flair, beautiful with lots of character), 12 Noise Marines.

This all sounds incredibly exciting. I could lament some of the things not being spoken about but after soooooo long pining for a new Noise Marine kit I’m absolutely delighted to be getting those and regular Emperor’s Children Legionnaires let alone all the other stuff!

What Are These Crazy Guesses Then?

Right, so I need to add an extra disclaimer here. Everything that follows on is me forming my own conclusions on the combination of what Games Workshop have shown us and the rumours relayed to us by Chapter Master Valrak. I stress this because I’d hate for anyone to conflate my opinion into the rumours from Valrak and question his sanity when it’s mine that is up for debate here!

That means I have very little (if any) evidence to go with this and a big chunk of it is just a hunch. But what else am I meant to do whilst waiting to see some of this amazing stuff other than to speculate?!

I’ve discussed previously on here the question of whether Emperor’s Children would get a Codex or be the first Codex Supplement to Chaos Space Marines for this edition (we’ve had Chaos Codex Supplements before after all). I’m really starting to lean towards this being a Codex Supplement. But I’ll back some of this supposition up with some evidence (all circumstantial at best!)

• Based on the rumours, there’s just not enough new datasheets to warrant a full Codex. Based on what we’ve heard so far at most we’ve got Fulgrim, Lucius, the Generic HQ, Legionnaire, Noise Marines and the Elite Swordsmen for 6 datasheets. Some of these might be kits that build more than one unit so it may be more but equally, some of these might not actually be unique datasheets. The Generic HQ could just be a Chaos Lord and the Legionnaires might just be exactly that.
  
  Now the obvious counter-argument to that is that World Eaters got a Codex and they don’t have many unique datasheets either. True, but they do have 8 of their own so it’s already at least a couple more than we’re potentially getting for the Emperor’s Children. I think it could easily be argued that World Eaters could have been a Codex Supplement for Codex: Chaos Space Marines. Worth highlighting that they have 15 datasheets that are a World Eaters version of a Chaos Space Marine datasheet. Now some of these have different rules for World Eaters than they do regular Chaos Space Marines but there’s certainly an argument that the game gets a lot easier for opponents if they don’t need to remember there are 5 slightly different rules for Forge Fiends etc. depending on which Legion has taken them…
  
  If you’re like me, you instantly then started to wonder what does it look like for Thousand Sons and Death Guard by comparison. There are 12 datasheets that are unique to the Thousand Sons legion and they also have 15 datasheets that are sort of shared with Codex: Chaos Space Marines. Death Guard are the outlier as they’ve been positively spoilt by comparison with a massive 19 unique datasheets and currently using only 13 that have an equivalent in Codex: Chaos Space Marines.
  
  We’ve digressed but there’s definitely a world of difference between where the Death Guard are as a standalone army and where it sounds like the Emperor’s Children would be.

• Some further circumstantial evidence for the supplement is around the portrayal of the Emperor’s Children both within Warhammer 40,000 and the associated lore and the wider IP through things like the Black Library novels. It might not always have been true (although it has mostly been so over the years) but the bits that make the Emperor’s Children differ from the other Cult Legions is the level to which they are their iconic cult unit. Death Guard in 40k have pretty much always all been some variety of Plague Marine (maybe not in the definition of that datasheet nowadays as far as wargear etc). Thousand Sons are pretty exclusively Sorcerers or Rubricae of some variety. World Eaters are largely Berzerkers (although I accept this is the most tenuous of these as we’ve had mixed portrayals for World Eaters – there are a few who seem to have a greater level of control over the Butcher’s Nails and operate closer to how they did during the Horus Heresy). For the Emperor’s Children the Noise Marines have largely been a sub-cult within that (although at different points the ration of Noise Marines to ‘regular’ Legionnaires has differed) – starting during the Horus Heresy and following through into all of the recent 40k fiction also.
  
  In both the Fabius Bile trilogy by Josh Reynolds and the more recent Renegades: Lord of Excess by Rich McCormick, the portrayal of Noise Marines is that of a super elite and almost independent sub-cult. They have an almost spiritual warrior monk vibe about them too, pilgrims moving between warbands and entirely dedicated to continuing the Song of Slaanesh. The Song sits well above the internal politics and ambitions of the rest of their fractured legion for example. The majority of Emperor’s Children marines in these books are the more ‘traditional’ sensation-seekers, hedonists and obsessive sorts united in their worship of the Younger God.
• The Emperor’s Children were largely absent from the more recent Chaos Space Marine releases, they don’t even have a transfer on the newer Chaos Space Marine decal sheet. However, this particular Marine is present on the updated box art for Chosen Chaos Space Marines. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will retain Chosen but it will be odd for them to be on the box for them but to not be an option.

• If we take the rumours via Chapter Master Valrak and squish them together with the cover art for the new Aeldari Codex we can also start to make some (again spurious) conclusions… The Emperor’s Children Chaos Space Marine there would presumably be one of these Legionnaires that Valrak mentions. Certainly he’s got some distinctly Slaaneshi armour decoration with the armour plate breast dome thing that’s been a common motif of the followers of Slaanesh across all of Games Workshop’s different settings. What stands out though is that it’s still recognisably a Chaos Space Marine Legionary. The equivalent of that marine in miniature form would be easy to achieve with an upgrade sprue including all the lovely details that Valrak references these particular marines having. Once upon a time I might have been slightly concerned over only getting an upgrade sprue but now after having worked with the Night Lords Nemesis Claw Kill Team I’d be confident it’d be amazing! Depending on the approach they take they could add even more options (think of all the space saved without those bat wings!) than the impressive amount of new and useful stuff the Nemesis Claw sprue added and if it were being released as a standalone kit then it could even be a couple of sprues for lots of extra customisation and weapons options. Now whether these are separate miniatures or an upgrade kit alone wouldn’t determine if the Emperor’s Children were a Codex or Codex Supplement, however, how many current units that exist through upgrade sprues of other kits have a full Codex of their own?

• The upgrade sprues put me in mind of the Blood Angels. Their recent release, including a pre-release Death Company box, was built around the existing Primaris Space Marine kits and a new Upgrades and Transfers set. This has loads of stuff for making your marines look like Blood Angels and includes bits for Terminators and vehicles etc as well as a Blood Angels specific transfer sheet. Remember I mentioned the missing Emperor’s Children transfers. An equivalent of this set for Emperor’s Children could be pretty cool as an option and then that pre-release Emperor’s Children box could well be 20 Chaos Space Marine Legionaries and a couple of sets of these to go alongside the Noise Marines and new generic character. Blood Angels also got a new Captain and in general feel like quite a good approximation of the rumoured Emperor’s Children release outside of the Daemonic Primarch that is a staple of the cult legions. I do think that if armies as unique as Blood Angels (15 specific datasheets) can exist as a Codex Supplement then there’s absolutely no reason that any of the Chaos Cult Legions (even Death Guard) couldn’t also exist, as fully realised as they already are, within the bounds of a Codex Supplement.

• Fabius Bile. I was going to say it’s a miracle I’ve gone this long without mentioning him but I did mention the Black Library trilogy about him so that’s not strictly true. However, Fabius Bile is formerly of the Emperor’s Children Legion. From a background perspective he’s been long divorced from them and operating independently but through the Black Library in particular there’s been a real emphasis on his connection to his old Legion. Aaron Dembski-Bowden gave us Fabius Bile at the forefront of the Emperor’s Children in Talon of Horus. Then afterwards (in the setting) across all three of Josh Reynolds’ novels, Fabius is leading forces of which the bulk are former Emperor’s Children Legionaries. Across the books he comes into contact a few times with members of The Phoenix Conclave, a group of influential Emperor’s Children leaders including Eidolon and Lucius The Eternal who are looking to unite the Legion and bring Fulgrim back to lead them. We even see some confirmation of where the Primarch has been in his absence (avoiding spoilers as much as possible here!).
  
  Suffice to say, for all he’s a part of the wider Chaos Space Marine forces, Fabius remains a key element of the Emperor’s Children background and I’d be shocked if there’s not some way of including him. Indeed, I do wonder if there’s a reason we lost the Creations of Bile as an army structure in Codex Chaos Space Marines? Is it because a Creations of Bile detachment might be an extra option in Codex Supplement Emperor’s Children? It could even be that the Grotmas Calendar for Christmas includes this amongst the options as they mentioned detachments for current and future books. I’m confident from the Red Gobbos clues too that we’re going to see Fulgrim revealed as a Christmas present…

So there’s some rationale for why I think we might see a Codex Supplement. Either way, I’ll be over the moon. Emperor’s Children players have had to wait a long time for some real love from Games Workshop! Finally getting plastic Noise Marines minis would have been enough to have us celebrating but with what it sounds like we might get… I can’t wait!

What do you reckon, am I just letting my excitement send me round the bend or does it feel like this could be something a bit different from how the other Cult Legion releases have been handled?