It feels like it’s quite the lead up to Christmas with the continued reveals of new Emperor’s Children bits and now a lovely surprise on the 12th day of The Grotmas Calendar, a new Creations of Bile detachment!

When talking about the army I play in 40k I regularly refer to them as “Emperor’s Children / Creations of Bile”. Now, finally, that’s actually a thing I can play (at least until we get the Emperor’s Children Codex anyway). Beautiful times!

I’m working from seeing the new detachment rules at the same time as everyone else so reserving the right to change my mind on a lot of this (and explaining why it’s taken until now to pull this together!) but hopefully it will highlight a few interesting bits. I’ll largely be looking through the lens of my own Emperor’s Children slanted Creations of Bile army but hopefully some of the practical uses for things or the synergies discussed here will provide some inspiration for you to take The Clonelord’s finest for a spin!

Experimental Augmentations

This is the detachment rule and it’s a great one! Fabius’ creations are enhanced in various different ways. There’s a table of results that will apply to all of your HERETIC ASTARTES INFANTRY units excluding DAMNED models. This means anything that’s a foot-slogging Chaos Space Marine essentially (ruling out Cultists, Traitor Guard, Fellgors and Accursed Cultists plus their related character options).

At the start of the battle, you can either pick one of the results or roll twice and whatever you pick or roll applies to all eligible units in your army. You don’t get to re-roll duplicates (and the rules point out that duplicates have no effect), however, if Fabius Bile is your WARLORD, you can re-roll one or both of the dice.

1. Cholinergic Accelerants: Add 1 to the Attacks characteristic of melee weapons equipped by this model.
2. Hyperadrenal Infusion: Add 2″ to the Move characteristic of this model.
   
3. Paraneural Reactions: Improve the Weapon Skill characteristic of melee weapons equipped by this model by 1.
   
4. Supracutaneous Chitination: Improve the Toughness characteristic of this model by 1.
5. Macrotensile Sinews: Add 1 to the Strength characteristic of melee weapons equipped by this model.
   
6. Ophthalmic Enhancement: Improve the Ballistic Skill characteristic of ranged weapons equipped by this model by 1.

Looking at this list there’s not really any bad options but really that will depend most on what you and your opponent are running. The Ballistic Skill one feels like probably the runt of this litter as a lot of the best shooting units aren’t INFANTRY, although Noise Marines and Havocs won’t complain about the increased chance to hit with their guns (nor Terminators or Obliterators to be fair). Otherwise, the three standout choices are most likely to be Toughness to boost the survivability of your units; Movement to get your units up the board quicker; or the additional Attack if you want the boost your melee output.

As this is done at the start of the battle you can react to what you’re up against either mitigating against an advantage that the opponent may have over you or leaning more heavily into a strength you have over them. My default choice here if I have to pick one blind is probably the boost to Toughness as you’re most likely to benefit from that in every game and probably many times over the course of the game as it is likely to boost you whether your opponent is shooting or melee heavy

Should you roll twice or pick one though? Whilst I reckon that probably depends again on your list, if you’ve got plenty that benefits from any of these then it might be worth the risk of rolling to get the two boosts, I do think if you’re rolling though you ideally want Fabius Bile as your WARLORD. The re-roll can really help avoid wasted duplicates and/or it gives you a chance to try and swap out any augmentations that don’t really benefit you. If you’ve not got Fabius as your WARLORD, I reckon your best bet might be to just pick one augmentation to give you the most bang for your buck. Again, personally, I think these are mostly going to be one of three: the bonus to Toughness, Attacks, or Movement.

Also worth flagging at this point that Fabius gives the squad he’s attached to the Enhanced Warriors rule:

Enhanced Warriors – Fabius Bile

If this unit is attached to a unit at the start of the battle, until the end of the battle, add 1 to Strength characteristic of melee weapons equipped by Bodyguard models in that unit and add 1 to the Toughness characteristic of Bodyguard models in that unit.

The great thing is this stacks with the Experimental Augmentations detachment rule. Instantly my mind goes to Strength 6 and Toughness 6 Chosen Marines accompanying The Manflayer… Slaanesh of course favours the number 6 so it’s meant to be!

Seeing as we’re talking about an EPIC HERO in the form of Fabius, remember, that this benefits all of your eligible infantry units and that includes characters and even INFANTRY EPIC HEROES (excluding DAMNED models of course). Of course, if like Abaddon or Lucius (in Emperor’s Children)  you have a Character that has to be the WARLORD that means Fabius can’t be so you’ll not get the re-roll advantage. Not a deal-breaker but worth remembering when deciding which characters to bring along. You don’t want to get lumbered rolling Opthalmic Enhancement twice all because you brought Abaddon along too and forgot you couldn’t re-roll!

Enhancements

I reckon that all 4 of these have some play but the points quickly add up and there’s one maybe two to prioritise during list-building

• Surgical Precision (10pts) – Can’t be given to DAMNED models but otherwise this can go on anything (and not just Chaos Lords or INFANTRY characters). This gives the bearer the PRECISION ability. Handy for character hunting but one of those that I wouldn’t be prioritising unless you’re left with the points and have nowhere else to spend them.
  
• Living Carapace (15pts) – For CHAOS LORD models only, this one gives that character an additional Wound and the 5+ Feel No Pain ability. I really love this one and it’s not badly priced too. I think it probably is the second priority in lists but if you’ve got plans for a solo Terminator Lord to make a nuisance of himself or some such then this definitely plays nicely into that!
  
• Helm of All Seeing (25pts) – Has to go on an INFANTRY HERETIC ASTARTES model excluding DAMNED models and it’s probably that last bit that stops this being taken for me. It’s a little bit pricey at 25pts but it switches off Reserves in a 12″ radius of the bearer. If this could go on a cheap character like the Cultist Firebrand then it may have a tad more use. I really like the effect and I can definitely see the benefit in having this on something lurking on or near your home objective after your Cultists have ‘stickied’ it. If you’re running a Warpsmith with a tank or two as a firing platform this may have more use but I’m less inclined to go in that direction with this detachment.
  
• Prime Test Subject (35pts) – It comes with a hefty price tag but we’ve definitely saved the best to last. This can go on an INFANTRY HERETIC ASTARTES model excluding DAMNED models and it gives you two pretty awesome effects. Firstly, you add 1 to the Damage characteristic of the bearers melee weapons. It also gives them re-rolls to hit. This means that your Hammer-wielding Chaos Lord is chucking out 5 Strength 8, Ap-2, Damage 3 attacks that hit on 3s with a re-roll and have Devastating Wounds (before any other possible bonuses from being in a Creations of Bile detachment). By the time you add the Lord’s Chance for Glory ability, Dark Pacts and the potential re-roll to Wound from hanging around with some Legionary chums they hit like the proverbial tonne of bricks!

Chance for Glory – Chaos Lord

Once per battle, at the start of the Fight phase, this model can use this ability. If it does, until the end of the phase, improve the Strength, Attacks, Armour Penetration and Damage characteristics of melee weapons equipped by this model by 1.

I think this starts to create some of your list for you at this point. You probably want Fabius in there (I certainly do) and a bodyguard unit and you probably want a Chaos Lord with Prime Test Subject and some Legionaries to accompany them!

Stratagems

There are 6 stratagems for the Creations of Bile and there are a few here that provide plenty of juice to make the detachment competitive.

• Monstrous Visages (1CP) – In your opponent’s Shooting or Fight phase one HERETIC ASTARTES INFANTRY unit can be at -1 to Hit for the whole phase. The timing on this being released would struggle to be much better, always a good rule but with the nerf to all of the variations of Armour of Contempt in the latest Balance Dataslate, this effect got a little bit stronger. Boosting the toughness of your units with the Experimental Augmentation and then adding a further penalty for your opponent to hit them at a crucial time can really come in clutch!
  
• Masters Are Watching (1CP) – In the Fight phase, give a HERETIC ASTARTES INFANTRY unit Fight on Death on a 4+ (5+ instead if they’re a DAMNED unit). Much like the other variations of this stratagem it can be really great on a big block of models at the optimum moment – usually when your opponent has put a lot of effort into removing them to make it as painful a process as possible!
  
• Specimens for the Spider (2CP) – The first of two 2CP stratagems and this is definitely the lesser of the two (but by no means useless). You can give a HERETIC ASTARTES INFANTRY unit re-rolls to wound in the Fight phase when fighting a CHARACTER unit. This is potentially pretty decent when going into a bodyguard unit, especially when coupled with a re-roll to hit e.g. from Prime Test Subject. There’s a second part to the stratagem (but never going to be the reason you use it) whereby if you destroyed any CHARACTER models then you can select one enemy unit within 6″ of the target of the stratagem (or all units within 6″ of them if that CHARACTER was also the enemy WARLORD) and they have to take a Battle-shock test.
  
• Delayed Mutations (2CP) – This is one of the stars of this detachment, but it does come at a bit of a cost. In your Command phase you can give one HERESTIC ASTARTES INFANTRY unit from your army (excluding DAMNED units) an additional augmentation from Experimental Augmentations that lasts until your next Command Phase. The unit suffers D3 Mortal Wounds as a result of the unstable nature of Fabius Bile’s work. This has the potential to be amazing and give you the power to take down a specific target (or to better stand up to an enemy unit if you haven’t already picked the Toughness option). Again, it’s often going to be about your list, the opponent’s, and the game state on how you use this but if working to my default of having picked Toughness for my Experimental Augmentation I’d imagine I’m probably using this to gain the extra attack on the go-turn for my Chaos Lord with Prime Test Subject. You might sometimes lose a model to this and the CP cost is high but probably being offset by a Chaos Lord. There’s always the next stratagem to help offset the mortal wounds too…
  
• Diabolic Regeneration (1CP) – In your Command phase, you can return a destroyed (non-CHARACTER) model to the target HERETIC ASTARTES INFANTRY unit. If that unit is a BATTLELINE unit you can return D3 destroyed models. Getting D3 models back on some Legionaries could be quite handy but equally this can be really good on valuable high wounds units like Terminators or Chosen for example. You could use this to offset or repair the damage caused by Delayed Mutations.
  
• Auto Stimulants (1CP) – In your Charge phase this stratagem allows a HERETIC ASTARTES INFANTRY unit that has advanced to declare a charge. Always a great strat to help get a melee unit where they need to be. Feels like there’s lots of fun to be had pairing this with the movement buff from Experimental Augmentations to create some really rapid threats but even without the extra buff, this will work especially well on units like Warp Talons or maybe even Possessed

This does bring us to one of the hard truths about this detachment, it’s good but it’s pretty CP heavy to get it there! As ever in 10th edition, the resource management of your Command Points is likely going to be a key narrative within your games but there is a decent enough toolbox here even if the pricey 2CP stratagems make it a little more expensive to get the maximum value from them. Again, the Chaos Lord shows his value here as Lord of Chaos is going to allow us to reduce some of the CP cost involved of running Creations of Bile:

Lord of Chaos – Chaos Lord

Once per battle round, one unit from your army with this ability can use it when it is targeted with a Stratagem. If it does, reduce the CP cost of that usage of that Stratagem by 1 CP.

It’s How You Use It…

How might we pull that all together then into a list in? Firstly this is the bit where I repeat a couple of key caveats: This isn’t a list I’m saying will win you tournaments but hopefully exploring the rationale of the choices and any synergies helps to inspire some ideas for you. Also, this is for how I like to play my Emperor’s Children / Creations of Bile army.

So first off, here’s the list:

For The Pater Mutatis - 1985pts

Army: Emperor's Children
Detachment: Creations of Bile

Lucius - Warlord
Master of Executions
10 Legionaries
Land Raider

Fabius Bile
10 Chosen
Rhino

Chaos Lord - Prime Test Subject
5 Legionaries
5 Noise Marines
Rhino

5 Legionaries
5 Noise Marines
Rhino

5 Noise Marines
5 Noise Marines
Rhino

10 Cultists

3 Chaos Bikers

The list is split out into the various squads that I reckon these would often default into – although there’s scope for some flexibility here. The list is quite infantry heavy but with a healthy dose of Rhino-rush which remains amongst my favourite things!

Starting with the Experimental Augmentations, this is a list that will benefit from any of the results so you could do a lot worse than rolling for them, however, even though we have Fabius in the list, he isn’t the WARLORD as we’re Emperor’s Children, which means needing to have Lucius as our WARLORD, this means we don’t get the re-roll. I reckon I would probably tend towards choosing one and for this list that’s likely to be Cholinergic Accelerants (+1 Attack) or Supracutaneous Chitination (+1 Toughness) depending on whether the bigger challenge is going to be killing enough stuff or having enough stuff survive. The Toughness is probably where I would go more often I reckon as Chaos Space Marines aren’t slouches in combat but it’ll depend if the extra Toughness is going to be enough to impact the Wound rolls for your opponent. If they’re already mostly on 5s and the change won’t take them to 6s for example then Attacks will be the better pick here. If there’s no clear better option, then it might be worth rolling and gaining the potential benefit of two rolls.

Let’s start with Fabius Bile himself. Here he’s in a unit of 10 Chosen Marines. Thanks to his Enhanced Warriors rule, as we’ve discussed already, the Chosen are hitting at Strength 6 with their Accursed Weapons and are Toughness 5. This is all before we even add our Experimental Augmentations to the mix! The Surgeon Acolyte that accompanies him allows him to save the unit from nasty attack each turn:

Surgeon Acolyte – Fabius Bile

Once per turn, when an attack is allocated to a model in this unit, if this unit contains FABIUS BILE, you can change the Damage characteristic of that attack to 0.

In return, the Chosen give Fabius a 30 wound bodyguard unit and with their Chosen Marauders rule you know they’re not going to need a CP for Auto Stimulants  to Advance and Charge, making them a surprisingly mobile threat:

Chosen Marauders – Chosen

This unit is eligible to shoot and declare a charge in a turn in which it Advanced or Fell Back.

Leading the army, we have Lucius The Eternal as WARLORD. He’s in a unit of 10 Legionaries with a Master of Executions attached as well. This creates a second block alongside Fabius and his Chosen. There are a few rules that work in synergy for this block. Firstly, Lucius leading the unit offers his Duellist’s Pride rule:

Duellist’s Pride – Lucius

While this model is leading a unit, models in that unit have the Fights First ability.

This allows you to shunt these guys forward into cover near an objective, for example, and just lock the area down as they’re a big threat both offensively and defensively. Next up the Master of Executions adds Warp-Sighted Butcher for Lucius and the Legionaries:

Warp-Sighted Butcher – Master of Executions

While this model is leading a unit, each time a model in that unit makes a melee attack that targets a unit that is below its Starting Strength, you can re-roll the Hit roll. If that unit is Below Half-strength, you can re-roll the Wound roll as well.

So as long as you’ve caused some damage to the target unit, you’re getting full re-rolls to Hit, which is amazing and there’s a further chance of re-rolls to Wound as well but we’re less concerned on that one as we also get some of that from the Legionaries and their Veterans of the Long War ability:

Veterans of the Long War – Legionaries

Each time a model in this unit targets an enemy with a melee attack, re-roll a Wound roll of 1. If that enemy unit is within range of an objective marker, you can re-roll the Wound roll instead.

So we’re re-rolling 1s in our Wound roll regardless, but we can get full re-rolls to Wound if one of these conditions are true: the target unit is Below Half-strength OR the target unit is within range of an objective marker. The real power in the unit comes from Lucius, the Master of Executions and the two Heavy-Melee Weapon wielding Legionaries so it’s about keeping them alive for as long as possible (so potentially another tick in the box for Supracutaneous Chitination aka +1 Toughness) to make the ablative Legionaries as tough to remove as possible. Both Lucius and the Master of Executions have Precision on their attacks as well so this unit can be great for hunting characters.

The Land Raider that these guys are in is certainly not necessary, but it felt like the list needed a little more anti-tank and the Lascannon sponsons support the Legionaries and Noise Marines in their tank-hunting duties with their Lascannons and Blastmasters respectively. It’s also a Land Raider so can be something of a battering ram or distraction as required!

The Fabius and Lucius led units make up your core, both are good targets for Diabolic Regeneration (bringing back D3 Legionaries or 1 Chosen is pretty decent) to help them to stick around and can use Monstrous Visages to make targeting them more of a challenge for your opponent, but otherwise, can operate without needing lots of CP to support them. Around this there are a few smaller satellites made up of units of 5 Legionaries or 5 Noise Marines and these are likely to be split amongst the remaining Rhinos in the list.

We’ve looked at the Legionaries already, however, the smaller 5-man units can still do some work as there’s still two Heavy Melee Weapons in each and they have access to their re-rolls for the Wound roll. One of the units is accompanied by a Chaos Lord with Prime Test Subject, the Legionaries are mostly a delivery method for the Chaos Lord but as we’ve already looked at the Lord of Chaos ability it’s worth remembering that we can help support this unit with Stratagems for a little less cost on CP. In particular, between the Chosen and Legionaries (and even the Noise Marines) we have a few instances where Delayed Mutations can allow us to create a solution to a problem posed by an enemy unit and allow these smaller units to punch above their weight. We might need to boost the Toughness of a unit to help it take the charge of an enemy or perhaps there’s a penalty to our Hit rolls that the boost to Weapon Skill will offset or maybe there’s a lot of bodies or wounds in a unit and we just need to drown them under the weight of attacks. These are reactive choices we can make to the game state and both the opponent or the individual units that make their lists. This toolbox can be invaluable in helping us to overcome challenges and definitely where there’s some real value to be had with Creations of Bile.

The Noise Marines are here to be cheap bodies that can provide a combat threat when pushed but the real power is in their Blastmasters providing some high quality, high strength and high damage attacks. As a bonus when you use them this way you can benefit from their Riotous Cacophony rule:

Riotous Cacophony – Noise Marines

In your Shooting phase, after this unit has shot, select one enemy unit that was hit by one or more of those attacks. That unit must take a Battle-shock test.

It’s important to remember this isn’t just from their Sonic Weapons, when you shoot with your Bolt Pistols if tied up in combat you can still trigger this rule. Not one to rely on, but if you’re forcing a few extra Battle-shock tests the chances of one scuppering your opponent’s plans increases at least!

The Cultists are here to do what Cultists do in every Chaos Space Marine list – trigger For The Dark Gods:

For The Dark Gods – Cultist Mob

At the end of your Command phase, if this unit is within range of an objective marker you control, that objective marker remains under your control, even if you have no models within range of it, until your opponent controls it at the start or end of any turn.

Finally, the Chaos Bikers make good use of a Movement of 12″ and their Objective Control score of 2 more than anything else. They are able to carry two special weapons in the unit so they can be used to provide an extra ant-tank threat if equipped with Meltaguns as they possess the speed to get into Melta range for D6+2 damage or you might choose to go for Plasma Guns to help deal with armoured infantry. At Toughness 5 with 3 Wounds each, they’re durable enough to stick around unless targeted properly too. The Bikers don’t benefit from any of the Creations of Bile rules – if Raptors get a points drop, or some further points can be gleaned from somewhere else then there’d maybe be benefit to swapping them in, in place of the Bikes in this list to carry out a similar role and at least be able to benefit from the detachment rules at a push but in truth, Bikers probably do this better.

Don’t forget the Rhinos either, again, they’re not going to gain anything from being in Creations of Bile but they remain fast, cheap and durable and can help with scoring, move blocking and screening – their transport role is just one of their many uses! There is a lot of love for Rhinos here at Oath of Moment!

One question to consider is, what does this list gain in other detachments and why should we use Creations of Bile for it? Ultimately it’s about leveraging the additional quality we can give to INFANTRY units from the Experimental Augmentations rule. There’s an argument for doing something with Possessed or maybe even Terminators to take this list further away from what otherwise would be a good Renegade Raiders list. I think power-wise, Creations of Bile probably sits in the top 3 or 4 for Chaos Space Marines but there’s definitely enough here between the detachment rule, enhancements and stratagems to do something very clever and I dare say we might see smarter people than me leverage these really well! I do think Delayed Mutations is probably the key stratagem for really making this detachment sing as it’ll help make a list a bit more of a Swiss Army Knife able to react to and overcome different challenges and also somewhat offset any unlucky rolls (if we go that way) or difficult choices around Experimental Augmentations.

So that’s how I might try using my Emperor’s Children / Creations of Bile army to begin with – certainly some bits to test out there in a few different combinations. What do you reckon on the detachment? Where do you think it sits compared to the Renegade Raiders and Veterans of the Long War detachments in particular?