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So, the phoenix lords add a lot. Some, more than others. In particular I was wondering if people had thoughts on Fuegan and Maugun Ra. Are they each worth an additional 5 aspect warriors? Fuegan's extra range is great but is it needed for a unit that is likely to be in a transport? Maugun Ra's ability seems very situational.

Lhykhis' ability is such that it can be helpful to the entire army. Baharroth is just crazy OP. JAinzar's inclusion means banshees can do without a transport.

Not sure about Asurmen. Thoughts?

All the phoenix lords are considered to be somewhere between Good and Great.

Fuegan: Absolutely worth it. Just a complete menace. The discussions I see around him are never about whether he's good enough to include but rather about whether he should be taken with 10 dragons, 5 dragons, or just left by himself. His buffs to his squad are just okay, but being able to steal their shrine tokens for guaranteed sustained hits and/or overwatch is really nice as is the ability to bring a solid beatstick back to life on a 2+.

Maugan Ra is closer to Good than Great, but he's perfectly viable. The main use for him I've seen is in a falcon with 5 reapers. You use the falcon's fire support rule to help him fish for devastating wounds and can also use the squad's shrine token to guarantee some devastating wounds. This helps him fit in with his squad a bit better given that they're *usually* tank busting or going after multi-wound targets while he kind of wants to just be shooting at marines. His special abilities *are* a bit situational, but not as situational as you'd think. Being able to potentially sprinkle some mortal wounds around has actually been really nice when I've used him.

Lhykis is just amazing. You take her with the full melee exarch so that between the two of them they have something like 20 melee attacks with some combination of lethal hits, crits on 5+, etc. It's not the biggest beatstick in the game, but it's pretty solid, and it has a charge threat range of 24+2d6". Which is just crazy. And yeah, the crits on 5+ thing is really nice if you build your army around it. I fielded her with a bunch of hawks, windriders, some avengers, and a war walker for extra AP, and it was surprisingly feels-good and effective.

Baharroth probably isn't "crazy OP" now that you can't use him to yo-yo off the table the same turn he arrives (changes to the seer council strat), but he is pretty solid. Without him, hawks are still good, but they're kind of stuck flying up the table or else using Rapid Ingress or just waiting an extra turn to use their grenade packs if they deepstrike. And are otherwise just an S4 machinegun unit. With Baharroth, they can deliver that don't-call-it-a-grenade sucker punch way more reliably and without any real threat of being hurt on their way in. So basically 5ish mortal wounds all but guaranteed. And then on top of that, Baharroth's auto-crits ability means that he's able to punch up into high toughness targets. The rest of his squad can too thanks to Lethal Hits, but his better AP and damage really helps the squad lean into this. And on top of *that*, he potentially lets your squad fly away to deliever their sucker punch *again*. Unless your opponent gets within grenade range to try and stop him.

So in short, he changes up how the squad behaves by bringing back some of the mobility they lost from the index, and he helps his squad punch up against durable targets.

Jain Zar is great. Yes, you can get a similar offense boost by just making a 5-man squad a 10-man squad instead, but she can also add even more oomph to a 10-man squad. And in a 10-man squad, she suddenly has enough ablative wounds to survive retaliation more reliably so that she can hit the enemy a second time. Also, adding her to a 5-man squad lets you get a lot more offense in one squad without dramatically incresaing that squad's footprint.

She's also a fantastic choice for Epic Challenge, and her auto-advance 6" rule just makes the squad's threat range a lot more reliable. I've also found that the extra movement (especially combined with the extra movement maneuver) often means that I can maneuver her squad in such a way that they can hide from overwatch threats on the way in meaning I can save the no-overwatch maneuver for a different squad. She probably has the least impact on how you pilot her squad of all the lords, but she's fantastic at making them better at what they were already doing.

* Asurmen is good*. Note the asterisk. The "best" way to use him is probably with a squad of 5 avengers coming out of a falcon. You use fire support to give him rerolls to help his devastating wounds attacks and pop his once per game ability to tear a target up. The avengers are mostly there as ablative wounds and to let him move-shoot-move back into the falcon if he doesn't need to charge something.

I've found that fielding him with a large squad of avengers and using his move-shoot-move to use them as a mobile guerilla fighting unit (or to hide them back inside a transport each turn) feels pretty good, but it's also just less cost-effective. Especially since you're probably trying to keep your distance from the enemy to hide more easily, which in turn means the dire avengers' special rule isn't kicking in. It feels good, but it kind of makes me wish dire avengers just had move-shoot-move as a baked in rule so that they could be our aggressive guerilla fighter infantry...

* Karandras is cool. Not sure if they ever fixed some of his rule wonkyness after they put him in Legends, but he's a decent way to turn your scorpions into a beatstick unit rather than just using them as a slippery infiltrator+scout sacrificial speedbump/action monkey. The thing is that an autarch can *also* turn scorpions into a beatstick unit. Karandras arguably does it better though, so he still kind of has a niche if you use legends.

As Wyldhunt has said - I don't think any are bad. There have been competitive performances by lists which are essentially aspect warrior MSU with a bunch of Phoenix Lords thrown in, including Maugan Ra.

For me though I think 10 man+Phoenix Lord can become a trap - and if you are going to do it, I'd probably only include one in your list. Its very powerful - but its a lot of points for one unit, and its not as if this is a Knight. For their points, Aspect Warriors still fall over to a stiff breeze, and the Phoenix Lords themselves are not "that" tough.

Like say 10 Fire Dragons+Fuegan, 10 Banshees+Jain Zar and 10 Reapers+Maugan Ra is 950(?) points. If you add say 2 Wave Serpents we are up to 1200 points. Into some armies I just think this isn't going to get into anything critical - and then the counter attack is going to be so points efficient its probably going to throw the game.

But trial and error is the way to go - and it will probably vary depending on who/what you play.

Regarding what Tyel said, I'd point out that the nature/value of phoenix lords is such that not every lord really benefits from a 10-man squad and vice versa.

Asurmen is actually more efficient with a 5-man squad of avengers because avengers are considered "bad" compared to most eldar units. So the point of the squad is mostly just to give Asurmen a few ablative wounds and to let him use his move-shoot-move rule to keep himself safe. But most of the unit's killing power is from Asurmen himself. Running 10 avengers instead of 5 actually makes the unit less cost-effective overall for that reason *and* prevents you from benefitting from Falcon rerolls.

Similarly, while 10-man reaper squads are good, and while Maugan can be good, Maguan isn't good in a way that scales up based on his squad size. He doesn't have a rule that buffs all the models in his unit and thus benefits from a larger unit; he has rules that lock you into not splitting fire, and also he really enjoys those falcon rerolls so he can fish for devastating wounds.

Lhykis doesn't really benefit from extra spider bodies because the only models in the unit that are good in melee are herself and the melee exarch you're probably taking with her. So a bigger squad is kind of just a bigger, harder to hide target that risks tying more torrent guns up in melee if you can't finish off your target.

Baharroth can go either way. He leans towards being in a big squad because the grenade pack sucker punch is part of his gimmick and scales up with squad size, but you could theoretically still get use of him with his auto-crit attacks and constant uppy-downy behavior. And not being tempted to go for a grenade pack attack each turn means that he's relatively easy to keep safely away from the foe to let him uppy downy later.

Jain could also kind of go either way. In a 5-girl squad, her speed boost makes them both really mobile and relatively easy to hide while still putting out roughly the same punch as a 10-girl squad. Plus they're probably sufficient to go melee sniping characters with the Epic Challenge strat. With a 10-girl squad, she pushes the unit into a genuinely pretty lethal blender in the same ballpark as a lot of the better marine melee units, plus the extra ablative wounds means you're more likely to take a few bolter shots and still have around to Fights First in the fight phase.

Fuegan really doesn't scale up much. He can put a fire pike exarch into melta range coming out of reserves, but you only get one exarch regardless of squad size. Other than that, the only benefits of the bigger squad are extra ablative wounds for Fuegan and an extra shrine token for him to steal.

Karandras is the only one that really truly scales up in usefulness with a larger squad. Mostly because his +1 to-hit rule benefits each model in his squad, and partly because he helps change scorpions from speedbumps/action monkeys to credible melee threats; so having more bodies and thus attacks in the unit ups the unit's overall offense.

That's not to say that taking big squads with Maugan or Fuegan is necessarily a bad idea; just the thing that makes those phoenix lords useful doesn't scale up with the larger squad size. You're just... putting more eggs into one basket. So like, Fuegan and a 10-man dragon squad will almost certainly take out that landraider you want dead, but 5 of those dragons on their own with or without Fuegan have pretty good odds of killing a rhino.

Phoenix Lords are great... Unless you're playing Crusade, because they don't grow over time.