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This is unit vs unit, so not a battle report in the strictest sense.  Inspired by Frontline Gaming's recent battles along with 40kuk's 'Big Fight' I wanted to see who would come out on top between these two behemoths.

For those unfamiliar with the concepts, on the side of the Imperium we have the Grey Knights finest warriors led by the grand master Draigo himself, now making the unit fearless.  Each Paladin is a character is his own right with two wounds, terminator armour, force weapon, lots of low-mid strength firepower and due to the apothecary a 5+ FNP save.  

The new kids on the deathstar block are the nemesis of many armies in 4th edition, the harlequins.  Whilst they provide much of the offensive power with lots of ap2 rending at I6 and S4 on the charge.  There is huge synergy with two shadow field archons on defence, given fortune re-rolls by Eldrad, that's 2++ with a re-roll!  Add to that Vect's fearlessness and preferred enemy for the unit along with re-rolls to wound from Eldrad's doom and you have the ultimate in death by a thousand cuts.

Ground rules; 

Harlequins get the charge
Paladins overwatch
Paladins get counter attack
Hit and run is allowed
No challenges
No shooting into combat from hit and run

Paladins

Draigo 275
Paladin, Apothecary, halberd 130
Paladin, psycannon, warding stave 95
2x Paladin, psycannon, sword 150
Paladin, psycannon, halberd 75
3x Paladin, hammer 165
Paladin, Brotherhood Banner 80
Paladin, halberd 55
Psybolt ammo 20

Total = 1045

Eldar Alliance

Vect 240
Archon, shadow field, power axe, blast pistol, combat drugs, ghost plate140
Eldrad 210
Harlequin, shadow seer, harlequin's kiss 52
Harlequin, troupe master, power axe 38
Harlequin, death jester, harlequin's kiss 32
2x Harlequins, harlequin's kiss, fusion pistol 64
5x Harlequins, harlequin's kiss 110

Total = 886

My test game ended in a fairly even match up over 5 full turns!  I've tweaked the war gear slightly on both sides by adding some ap2 to the Eldar and also bolstering the Paladin's defences with a 2++ warding stave.

I'll start posting pics and the turn-by-turn tomorrow...

Eldar Turn 1



GK Turn 1


Eldar Turn 2


GK Turn 2


Eldar Turn 3

While perhaps not the most informative or tactically sound battle report, it will none the less be entertaining to read if just to see how the crazy Harlie bomb stacks up to one of the most notorious death stars of 5th. Looking forward to the report!

Despite me being a GK player, I have a soft spot for the harlies. I'm actually finding myself rooting for the clowns XD

I don't see how this can be a fair comparison, given the fact that one of the sides is over 150 points bigger than the other, but it should still be interesting. It doesn't consider the fact that one unit is scoring either.

I thought Eldar psychic powers could only cast powers onto Codex Eldar units

Harlequins are a Codex: Eldar unit

Job done and learnt loads about the intricacies of assault in 6th, it involves a lot of micro-managing with units this complex.

Positioning is absolutely key but can be mitigated to some extent with precision strikes and LOS, but boy does it slow things down. I ended up rolling 3 dice at a time for the Paladins; white, blue, red for LOS, armour, FNP respectively.

Karandras instead of a second Archon makes this unit much more potent, particularly against Pallies.

Try sticking him in there and see how big of a difference those 7 strength 8, AP2 attacks makes.

Crazy how this game is now. These units simply overpower "normal" units.

djn wrote:Job done and learnt loads about the intricacies of assault in 6th, it involves a lot of micro-managing with units this complex.

Positioning is absolutely key but can be mitigated to some extent with precision strikes and LOS, but boy does it slow things down. I ended up rolling 3 dice at a time for the Paladins; white, blue, red for LOS, armour, FNP respectively.

Just read through it, thanks for putting this up!

Just a few nitpicks; All Paladins are characters so every model has Precision Strikes - so those 2 psycannon hits turn 1 should have been placed whereever the GKs wanted.

Iranna.

Just an observation, but you didn't shoot with the Eldar unit prior to the assault. Also, the Death Jester trades his pistol/ccw for a Shrieker Cannon and thus cannot get a Kiss, so you need to knock 4 points off their total. If you're more likely to run than shoot with the Harlies, you might as well drop the Death Jester and the Fusion Pistol to get another Kiss Harlie for the attacks.

If you are going to shoot, you should give the Shadowseer a Fusion Pistol, as well. You'll get 2 S8 AP1 shots, along with the Archon's Blast Pistol which is, what S6 AP2? Then the remaining 9 shuri's from the harlies and Eldrad and whatever Vect has. You might wound and/or kill 1-3 Pallys from shooting if you get lucky.

Also, remember that Eldrad doesn't have Fleet, so you're losing that reroll for your move/assault.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Reecius wrote:Karandras instead of a second Archon makes this unit much more potent, particularly against Pallies.

Try sticking him in there and see how big of a difference those 7 strength 8, AP2 attacks makes.

Crazy how this game is now. These units simply overpower "normal" units.

I have been thinking about Karandras he is a monster but you lose the second shadow field which means you have a single point of failure. Point taken he would rip through Paladins, fun times

Gavin Thorne wrote:Just an observation, but you didn't shoot with the Eldar unit prior to the assault. Also, the Death Jester trades his pistol/ccw for a Shrieker Cannon and thus cannot get a Kiss, so you need to knock 4 points off their total. If you're more likely to run than shoot with the Harlies, you might as well drop the Death Jester and the Fusion Pistol to get another Kiss Harlie for the attacks.

If you are going to shoot, you should give the Shadowseer a Fusion Pistol, as well. You'll get 2 S8 AP1 shots, along with the Archon's Blast Pistol which is, what S6 AP2? Then the remaining 9 shuri's from the harlies and Eldrad and whatever Vect has. You might wound and/or kill 1-3 Pallys from shooting if you get lucky.

Also, remember that Eldrad doesn't have Fleet, so you're losing that reroll for your move/assault.

Ah yes the rules for jesters are different in the Two Eldar codices, I think a shrieker and kiss is ok for DE but obviously that doesn't work for the psychic powers. Good spot.

I didn't shoot as I wanted to make this about assault, so I tried to balance hit and run by allowing overwatch only. As you say 3x S8 ap1/2 shots plus small arms from the Eldar would likely have swung things even further their way.

Iranna wrote:

Just read through it, thanks for putting this up!

Just a few nitpicks; All Paladins are characters so every model has Precision Strikes - so those 2 psycannon hits turn 1 should have been placed whereever the GKs wanted.

Iranna.

I think I got overwatch and snap fire confused - I know you can't precisely snap fire but is overwatch distinct from this? Will check the book in the morning!

Ohh sorry, my mistake; I had forgot that Snap Shots can't be precision shots, thanks!

Iranna.

Karandras has a 2+ save and EW, so he is a lot more durable than people think.

He can be the lead character, anything that is AP 2 you can LOS to the Archon, and if the LOS fails, he still has a rerollable 4+ or 2+ cover save from the Harlies. In HtH his 2+ and EW means he laughs at force weapons. Just make sure not to have him in B2B with a Hammer.

He is a lot tougher than he at first appears. But, the Archon is super cheap, too!

So.....After taking just over 200 points of casualties, the D/Eldar wipe out over 1000 points of Knights?!

Looks like it's finally time for me to beef out the Quin's I just got for painting years ago

It would be interesting to see how this played out if the Paladins were the ones charging though. Also, how they'd perform with a Libby attached as was the popular set up under 5th. Although that would make the GK even more expensive than the Eldar but maybe they need it to take on the new DE/Eldar death star?

Lol the clowns win! but seriously, I think the GK death star's problem is that it's more shooty than choppy which is how they performed back in 5th as well for those that ran them alot.

Sigh, while I actually cheered for the clowns up top, it's pretty disheartening to see how badly Gk have been performing in general since 6th.

The real issue is that in an actual in game situation the Harlies are much more vulnerable to shooting than the Terminators. I think it would also do worse than the Paladins against units which can dump more attacks into them, even basic assault units like Ork Boyz would do reasonably well against them since they just dump wounds into the unit until the Shadowfields break, and then you get overrun whereas against the Terminators they bounce off the 2+ saves all day. Likewise the Paladins would crush two of the other notable Deathstar units, Nob Bikers and Thunderwolves since they can instant kill them, whereas the Harlies would have to punch through T5.

Btw did you roll for Grand Strategy? Re-rolling 1's wound definitely have helped, as would Counter Attack.

The main advantage for the Eldar here is clearly their psychic powers and the fact that they can shut down the GK ones in return. It would be interesting to see this repeated with any form of Deathstar which brings proper psychic protection along (Eldar + Wolves for complete shutdown), this unit is similar to a JetCouncil in that it becomes significantly worse if you can simply remove Fortune.

You can get a maxed out squad of Beasts, the Baron, an Autarch (on Jetbike) and a Farseer (in a real game he would be hiding well back but could also be run on a Jetbike to keep it unit vs unit) for 200 odd points less than the Harlies but would probably stand up better than the Paladins did. The psychic powers cancel each other out or at least probably stop after a turn or two to avoiding killing themselves (Eldrad only gets one shot at Fortune when in assault), which leaves the Beasts dumping 24+ wounds into the unit on the charge at more of less the same time as the Harlies. The 4+ invulnerables (+ a Shadowfield) and no way of instant killing Razorwings means your damage output isn't that amazing but since its all more or less at the same I at worst its a MAD scenario (which is advantage Beasts). The Beasts have a much much better threat range, 12" move and reroll charges vs 6" move and a standard charge so its fair to assume they get the charge. Both units have Hit and Run which makes things messy, but the Beasts get Defensive Grenades as well so the Harlies don't get as much benefit for bouncing out.

Of course the Beasts would probably struggle more against the Paladins, they still do ~7 wounds on the charge but that's not that bad considering they cost about half the points.

Reecius wrote:Karandras has a 2+ save and EW, so he is a lot more durable than people think.

He can be the lead character, anything that is AP 2 you can LOS to the Archon, and if the LOS fails, he still has a rerollable 4+ or 2+ cover save from the Harlies. In HtH his 2+ and EW means he laughs at force weapons. Just make sure not to have him in B2B with a Hammer.

He is a lot tougher than he at first appears. But, the Archon is super cheap, too!

You're definitely selling him! Might just give him a try, he's always been my favourite Phoenix lord.

Gorechild wrote:So.....After taking just over 200 points of casualties, the D/Eldar wipe out over 1000 points of Knights?!

Looks like it's finally time for me to beef out the Quin's I just got for painting years ago

This time yes, losing a shadow field early or a bunch of harlies due to bad placement can be a real problem though.

ColdSadHungry wrote:It would be interesting to see how this played out if the Paladins were the ones charging though. Also, how they'd perform with a Libby attached as was the popular set up under 5th. Although that would make the GK even more expensive than the Eldar but maybe they need it to take on the new DE/Eldar death star?

I gave the Paladins counter attack to try and balance the fight, admittedly the harlequins losing the extra attacks would hurt somewhat but with hit and run they can reliably get the charge off later. You're right a Libby wold be a big help with the hood and sanctuary might prevent the charge. Rematch with Karandras and Libby perhaps? I don't know how long he'd live due to runes induced perils though.

sudojoe wrote:Lol the clowns win! but seriously, I think the GK death star's problem is that it's more shooty than choppy which is how they performed back in 5th as well for those that ran them alot.

Sigh, while I actually cheered for the clowns up top, it's pretty disheartening to see how badly Gk have been performing in general since 6th.

True that, although I think in a shoot out the harlies might take it too! Preferred enemy with 3 S8 ap2 guns plus 2 shadow fields to get through.

Powerguy wrote:The real issue is that in an actual in game situation the Harlies are much more vulnerable to shooting than the Terminators. I think it would also do worse ft vgycthan the Paladins against units which can dump more attacks into them, even basic assault units like Ork Boyz would do reasonably well against them since they just dump wounds into the unit until the Shadowfields break, and then you get overrun whereas against the Terminators they bounce off the 2+ saves all day. Likewise the Paladins would crush two of the other notable Deathstar units, Nob Bikers and Thunderwolves since they can instant kill them, whereas the Harlies would have to punch through T5.

In cover the harlies will be tough to shift, in fact against high ap weapons their save will be far superior to the pallies. The problem will be with anything which avoids cover and bypasses the Archons.

Powerguy wrote: Btw did you roll for Grand Strategy? Re-rolling 1's wound definitely have helped, as would Counter Attack.

I went with counter attack but re-rolls may be the way to go.

Powerguy wrote:The main advantage for the Eldar here is clearly their psychic powers and the fact that they can shut down the GK ones in return. It would be interesting to see this repeated with any form of Deathstar which brings proper psychic protection along (Eldar + Wolves for complete shutdown), this unit is similar to a JetCouncil in that it becomes significantly worse if you can simply remove Fortune.

Very true and given most armies can ally to Eldar and get relatively cheap psychic defence it shouldn't be too much of a problem to remove fortune.

Powerguy wrote:You can get a maxed out squad of Beasts, the Baron, an Autarch (on Jetbike) and a Farseer (in a real game he would be hiding well back but could also be run on a Jetbike to keep it unit vs unit) for 200 odd points less than the Harlies but would probably stand up better than the Paladins did. The psychic powers cancel each other out or at least probably stop after a turn or two to avoiding killing themselves (Eldrad only gets one shot at Fortune when in assault), which leaves the Beasts dumping 24+ wounds into the unit on the charge at more of less the same time as the Harlies. The 4+ invulnerables (+ a Shadowfield) and no way of instant killing Razorwings means your damage output isn't that amazing but since its all more or less at the same I at worst its a MAD scenario (which is advantage Beasts). The Beasts have a much much better threat range, 12" move and reroll charges vs 6" move and a standard charge so its fair to assume they get the charge. Both units have Hit and Run which makes things messy, but the Beasts get Defensive Grenades as well so the Harlies don't get as much benefit for bouncing out.

Of course the Beasts would probably struggle more against the Paladins, they still do ~7 wounds on the charge but that's not that bad considering they cost about half the points.

Interesting scenario, I wonder if not being fearless would be the biggest issue for the beaststar. Would it be worth considering Vect or a Phoenix lord perhaps?

Until the latest FAQ Harlies couldn't be shot at all at range, now you can trim wounds off them the same way you do with Terminators (just dumping wounds into them). I found that they died to Heavy Flamers/Flamers a large chunk of the time when I ran them before since they were so common, and they are still the easiest way to deal with them. Of course anyone with any brains is going to bait the Harlies out of cover, which drops you down to a 4+ save, which is very easy to torrent away.

If you are purely interested in Deathstar vs Deathstar then yeah Karandras would be more helpful than the Autarch in that Beast unit. In practice he slows them down too much, the only way to get Fearless without slowing that unit down is to use Baharroth. Fearless is its obvious weakness, but if it can munch through 3 infantry units then it becomes Fearless.

That reminds me, Draigo has a flamer template too though runes of warding still mess them up bad. Probably makes no difference to this match up though.

In all honesty, 3 str 8 hits against draigo doesn't scare me much. storm shield and FnP means he'll usually survive. Usually takes something like 9 lascannons to get a wound on. Could just be the dice but meh.

Reecius wrote:
Crazy how this game is now. These units simply overpower "normal" units.

But then, shouldn't that be the case? I mean, alliance of Vect & Eldrad, with Harlequins - difficult to come up with more dangerous combo of mortals in the galaxy. It's meant to be crazy.

Of course, if everyone starts running huge, killy - and cookie-cutter - deathstars, then it gets boring fast.

Fun read hard to tell, but were you making sure to reroll any non-6s on your to wound with the Kisses? The big thing as others have said that would have made this drastically more one sided is challenges and shooting while coming back in from hit and run. Challenging the warding stave or Drago would have mucked things up rather badly.

BlueDagger wrote:Fun read hard to tell, but were you making sure to reroll any non-6s on your to wound with the Kisses? The big thing as others have said that would have made this drastically more one sided is challenges and shooting while coming back in from hit and run. Challenging the warding stave or Drago would have mucked things up rather badly.

Damn no I was only re-rolling failed wounds, thanks for bringing that up. I would have thought challenges would slow things down against the stave or Draigo as you need weight of attacks to get through and inevitably all ap2 hits get dropped onto them rather than from just a single character?

Was hoping to get a1500 point game in with a modified harlie star but looks like it will be next week now, so this weekend I'll do a rematch; Draigo/Libby/Paladins vs Vect/Eldrad/Karandras/Harlequins.

Harlies are still pretty durable when being shot at. the new FAQ gave the stealth and shrouding so they always have 4+ cover and when they're actually in cover its 2+ and they get rerolls from fortune. Also, the FAQ did NOT take out the 2d6x2 range for shooting them. So... you esentially have to be within their charge range to shoot them and they get rerollable 4+ cover saves at worst, 2+ if your opponent knows what he's doing.

I wish i had seen this before last wednesday when i played my friend who was running this death star. I had to watch it chew through most of my army and more than half of another guys army. It made me realize that i may be friends with TFG lol.

Extremely flawed as the GKs pay lots of points for their shooty abilities that you never use.
Its´s like comparing minmaxed SM devastator squads with powerfist seargents to ork lootas and then never allowing the powerfist to be used but still count in the points.

Both groups should be given at least one turn of shooting each and then pile into CC.
Besides did you include the paladins all being characters and thereby getting to allocate both shooting as well as melee wounds on 6:es to enemy models of their choice (good way to kill of eldrad faster and get rid of those rerollable 2++ saves)?

Also were psychic powers negated (deny the witch) and as such did you include all paladins and draigo being psychers for that added chance too?

Pyriel- wrote:Also were psychic powers negated (deny the witch) and as such did you include all paladins and draigo being psychers for that added chance too?

is answered if the first turn is read with...

djn wrote:However doom is at leadership 9 due to the aegis and then the paladins save against the power with a 5+ deny the witch save

and voila.

Pyriel- wrote:Extremely flawed as the GKs pay lots of points for their shooty abilities that you never use.
Its´s like comparing minmaxed SM devastator squads with powerfist seargents to ork lootas and then never allowing the powerfist to be used but still count in the points.

Both groups should be given at least one turn of shooting each and then pile into CC.

I tried to make the fight as fair as possible and whilst perhaps flawed I wouldn't agree to it being extremely so. strictly speaking the Paladins did get to shoot with overwatch, yes this does dilute their powers somewhat. However even one turn of shooting is unlikely to achieve much vs shadow fields;

16 psycannon shots = 9 wounds.
12 psybolter shots = 7 wounds.

Thats 16 chances for the shadow field to fail, but likely still not enough.

Pyriel- wrote:Besides did you include the paladins all being characters and thereby getting to allocate both shooting as well as melee wounds on 6:es to enemy models of their choice (good way to kill of eldrad faster and get rid of those rerollable 2++ saves)?

Also were psychic powers negated (deny the witch) and as such did you include all paladins and draigo being psychers for that added chance too?

I think emp answers most of this, but It's all in the report. Deny only works vs Doom in this scenario though.

I'll take on board your comments when I do the rematch, thanks for reading and the feed back.

I tried to make the fight as fair as possible and whilst perhaps flawed I wouldn't agree to it being extremely so. strictly speaking the Paladins did get to shoot with overwatch, yes this does dilute their powers somewhat. However even one turn of shooting is unlikely to achieve much vs shadow fields;

Well there is a significant difference between hitting on a 6 and on a 3.
Besides deny the witch will screw up the rerolled 2++ 16:% of the times if a 6 is needed and double that if a 5 is needed.

The whole archon-up-front is also negated with deepstrike, something the paladins also do pay points for.
You DS on the side of the enemy you want to, get shooting of, probably kill 2/3 of the enemy deathstar and then take the charge with overwatch using character allocations to kill of everything but the archon.

You need to think of how YOU would use the deathstar to maximise their chance of winning by utilizing the abilities they do pay points for.
You dont simply take an SM squad and stand and exchange fore with a stormtrooper squad, you utilize melee to counter the stormtroopers since that is what you pay for.
Only when all aspects have been included then you can better say which unit is the better.

This is a good initiative on your part by the way.

Pyriel- wrote:
Besides deny the witch will screw up the rerolled 2++ 16:% of the times if a 6 is needed and double that if a 5 is needed.

Unfortunately not as fortune doesn't target the Paladins so no deny save.

Pyriel- wrote:The whole archon-up-front is also negated with deepstrike, something the paladins also do pay points for.
You DS on the side of the enemy you want to, get shooting of, probably kill 2/3 of the enemy deathstar and then take the charge with overwatch using character allocations to kill of everything but the archon.

I think anything which can manoeuvre around the harlequins and put wounds on would be a big issue, such as out flankers in numbers, interceptors, teleporting crons, dread knights, speeders etc. However a single deep striking unit would just force me to get as close to the middle/objectives as possible and hunker down in terrain for a 2+ cover all around.

Pyriel- wrote:You need to think of how YOU would use the deathstar to maximise their chance of winning by utilizing the abilities they do pay points for.
You dont simply take an SM squad and stand and exchange fore with a stormtrooper squad, you utilize melee to counter the stormtroopers since that is what you pay for.
Only when all aspects have been included then you can better say which unit is the better.

Indeed I appreciate I'm not simulating all facet's of the units and I'm not claiming the harlie star is a superior unit, just that in the stated scenario and in this instance they came out on top. In fact in my two partial practice games the Paladins won the day but I made too many rules mistakes so considered them null and void.

Pyriel- wrote:This is a good initiative on your part by the way.

Cheers dude, appreciate the discussion.