I fail to seize the initiative. However, I was prepared for this and only deployed a solitaire and 5 harlequins seperately out of los. The wraithknight is placed in some ruins in the corner where he is out of range of most shooting attacks.

Game Turn 1: He does exactely what I would do. He focuses all firepower onto the wraithknight. This includes all 18 missiles from the skyray missile launchers. I hold my breath and roll my saves. The cover and FNP hold up but I lose 4 wounds in the process. He disembarks all drones and moves them to the front of his lines to give his models cover. On my turn I prioritize his only riptide with EWO. I hit with my first shot and he makes his invul save. I hit with the second D cannon shot and roll a . I manage a key first blood and limit some of his shooting. The solitaire moves up and stays hidden behind some ruins along with the 5 harlequin squad. I make sure to keep the wraithknight out of range of the Missile Broadsides.

Game Turn 2: My opponent picks up the relic with a riptide and moves backwards toward his own board edge with his assault moves. He fires into the wraithknight but I tank the few wounds that make it through. My opponent fails a couple of his overcharge roles on the riptides. He shoots the squad of 5 harlequins to death. He also shoots the solitaire and does a wound. On my turn i get the farseer + jetbikes in from reserves. A shadowseer outflanks on the right flank and attempts to shriek his riptide. I roll well but he makes 4 out of 5 invul saves. Both units of harlequins come in from reserve and get veil of tears off to keep them alive. The farseer fortunes the wraithknight as it advances up some but still in cover. The solitaire goes for a dangerous charge on the broadsides on the right flank. Sadly he fails the final save he needed after weathering an impossible amount of shots. The skyweavers move in from reserve and hide in cover.

Game Turn 3: [spoiler] He disembarks some firewarriors and has the riptide hand off the relic to them. The shadowseer on the right flank eats sms to the face and dies. He attempts to shoot the wraithknight but fortune shrugs off the wounds. He shoots and kills off the skyweavers before they can make it up field. Not looking good for the harlequins as the maelstrom missions are secure the relic and stop your opponent from securing the relic. Losing primary is losing secondary. The deathjester comes in on the right flank and shoots his riptide for a wound... sadly he makes his leadership test and stays around. I deepstrike the voidweaver in the middle of his formation and target the fire warriors with a S3 ap4 blast. The result is devastating as he is forced to drop the relic when he takes 8 wounds from dakka. I move the wraithknight up as I need to get into combat with the tau. The game takes a turn for the worse as I roll my psychic powers... 4 dice on fortune passes but my opponnet rolls two 's to deny on 3 dice. I then proceed to fail veil of tears on both harlequin squads. Not the turn I needed. I am not screwed but this could get ugly. The only good news is that I managed to kill off both riptides with shooting.

Game Turn 4: He disembarks more of the firewarriors and moves to encircle the relic and to get everyone within range to cover a charge. He shoots his missile sides into my wraithknight and just do enough to bring him down. He shoots and kills my voidweaver with fire warriors. Lastly, he shoots and kills off the deathjester with the other broadsides. Had either of those units survived I would of been feeling pretty good. His drones target one of the harlequin squads and chops them up with some dakka. My turn I move the farseer and his bike squad out and begin to advance up the field... the starweaver deepstrikes in his deployment zone behind his lines. It fires into the ethereal devilfish and stuns the vehicle. I cast fortune on the warlord harlequins and veil of tears. They advance up into the ruins and actually charge his fire warriors and broadsides on that flank. They win combat but the broadsides hold while the firewarriors flee safely. I turbo boost a solo bike onto the relic to keep him from claiming it in the next turn. I also turbo boost my farseer and his squad up the field and land in the ruins on his left flank out of LOS. Sadly one dies from terrain. I have now lost 3 of my 6 bikes from terrain in this game.

Game Turn 5: He advances a devilfish down the left flank to go for linebreaker. He tank shocks my one bike on the relic and the bike flee's before being shot dead. He bubble wraps the relic with all of his vehicles. At this point we are close for time so I see if I can get warlord and I do via a charge from the farseer and the remaining bike. The Starweaver takes down the ethereals transport and secures linebreaker for me. We didnt bother fighting the broadside in another round of combat as he held the last round with the ethereals buffs. We roll to see if the game ends naturally and it does.


Game Results:
Primary: Tau 1 turn held to Harlequins 0 turns held
Secondary: Tau 4 to harlequins 2
Bonus:
Tau: Line breaker
Harlequins: Line Breaker, First Blood, Slay the warlord
Total: 16 to 3 in favor of Mech Tau

I made a few mistakes in this game and got a little unlucky in one turn but overall it was a hard mission to play. I originally thought the relic could not be picked up. You can even hear me say this in the into video. This was a mistake that would cost me as I had plans of killing his guys off the relic and claiming maelstrom points via turbo boosting. The relic is probably my least favorite mission as it heavily favors the army that gets the first turn. He was able to get into position practically setting his entire army on top of the relic turn one. Had I kept the wraithknight alive a little longer then maybe I break through but with me going second and the game ending in 5 I really didnt stand much of a chance of claiming the relic at any point. One flaw of my army is the speed. Either way I am happy to go 2-2 with an army that I expected to get tabled with every game. I am currently sitting at 39 of a possible 72 battle points and my army was selected for one of the armies for secondary judging on day two. I am still in the running for best overall.

Game Turn 1:
I infiltrate my death jester on the right flank and plan to shoot his acolyte squad which includes the inquisitor. The solitaire infiltrates on the far left flank and plans on heading for his ballistari on that flank or helping with the middle knight. I move my wraithknight up next to my shadowseer and a unit of harlequins. I move to encircle my shadowseer with shrounding with the plan of giving every unit a boost to their cover saves. I move the harlequins on the left flank forward with this in mind. I manage to fail shrouding and then I fail veil on both harlequins squads. I do manage to get guide on the wraithknight. The wraithknight fires at one of his dakka knights. He makes his save on the first shot but fails his save on the second shot. I do d3 hull points which turns out to be 3. I then roll my penetration and get a 6 for an additional d3 hullpoints. This also turns out to be a 3 on the d3 killing the knight outright with one non destroyer shot. The blast doesnt do much but does cause a wound to the acolyte squad.... which happens to be the only model within range of the deathjester. On his turn he moves up the left flank and fires into my wraithknight and harlequins that were left unprotected. He kills off 5 of the harlequins and kills the Heroes' path shadowseer. On the right flank he advances his wraithknight and fires into the middle harlequins killing a few while also targeting the wraithknight and the deathjester. I think the wraithknight takes a wound and he kills off the deathjester. He attempts to charge my wraithknight on the left flank but fails his 11" charge.

Game Turn 2:
I get a unit of bikes in from reserve and attempt to deepstrike a vehicle from reserves(Messed this up as its not allowed to but it scatters and mishaps anyway). I also get my skyweavers on the left flank that come in and plan to target his ballistri on the left flank. I decide that I am going to go for the knights and I blitz the solitaire and roll his move . My wraithknight shotts into the knights but I only manage one hp on one of them. The wraithknight fires its scatter laser into the ballistri and kills it off before the skyweavers can target them. In the center I send in my harlequins on that knight. Being able to run and then charge is huge. On the right flank 8 harlequins kill the knight outright before it even strikes. On the left flank the solitaire fails an 11" charge. The warlord troupe master gets lucky with 3 's to hit before the other 3 harlequins get to strike. With the shadowseer unable to damage the knight it falls to the 3 regular harlequins and they get the remaining 3 hps via Harlequins Caress. I have killed both imperial knights in one assault phase. My opponent attempts to retaliate but his reserves fail to come in and there isnt one of a punch left in his army.

Game Turn 3:
The harlequins continue to push up the board as his army begins to shrink. It relatively a forgone conclusion at this point. He brings his skitarii vanguard in from reserves and they kill all but the shadowseer in the center harlequin squad.

Game Turn 4:
The last of my reserves comes in. Again I illegally deepstrike my vehicle but it didnt really come into play as I could of moved on and shot the vanguard as he did. Either way I apologize for wrongly playing those models. The Wraithknight kills off the dunecrawler and it gets to a point where destroyer cannons are targeting peasents. The solitaire charges and wins combat against his rangers... they are auto swept via initiative ridiculous. We decide to call the game here.

Results:
Primary: Harlequins: 4 to 0
Secondary: Harlequins 8 to 2
Bonus: Harlequins gain all 3 bonus points.


This game went surprisingly well. I could not believe how quickly his knights died off to the basic harlequin troupes. I know I got a little lucky but they are definitely a hard counter to IK as long as they can make it to combat. My opponents army was beautiful and he actually won the best painted award at the event. I now go into round 6 with 57 out of 90 possible points. Not a bad showing for the harlequins so far.

These guys were my johny on the spot and made the list work. Without them harlequins would not even be viable. My only regret is only running two that could join squads. Shadowseers are the #1 unit in this Codex!

These guys were surprisingly effective. They come in at 250pts which is kind of high for such a fragile unit. IMHO the Caress is the only way to run these guys. I would rather charge these into deathstars then just about any unit in the game as long as you can protect them enough to get there.

Without upgrades they are just slannesh equivalent decent at holding objectives!

These guys were probably the most disappointing unit in the army. I probably should of run them with the haywire cannons. I would recommend haywire if you run them as the army kind of needs some ranged anti mech!

It was nice to have a transport but I mainly just used this guy for 2 shuriken cannons. I would rather have two of these instead of the skyweavers because of the cheaper points total.

This prismatic cannon was a nice mix-up and my only real ranged threat for my harlequin detachment. It could put out some serious dakka with two shuriken cannons and the prismatic cannon.

Great on paper... terrible in execution! He is just too situational to be a real threat.

I rolled on telepathy with him every game and infiltrated him for some nice buffs in the midfield. His biggest issue was getting instant killed when i failed a single 2+ cover save.

I love the idea of him but he can charge no sooner then turn 2 and he is only a T3 model with a 3++ save. If he makes it to combat alone then most MEQ armies will be able to deal with him. At least in this detachment he is more viable then if he had been taken without the cover buffs.

played that entire event trying to hide him with 3 bikes.... that is my own fault. He should of been hiding with the harlequins. Fortune is still one of the best powers in the game. Against the Tau player I had a fortuned harlequin squad make it through 3 units of overwatch thanks to him.

Great ObSec but no real impact besides that!

He is still just a wraithknight but he is the one heavy hitter that really complemented the list well. He was my best anti-mech and anti-air. His main purpose in the list was to soak of fire which he did well. If my opponents were not shooting my harlequins then I was likely going to win that game. If you see the reports most of my opponents comment on shooting the wrong things during the game. They were targeting this guy while my troupes were taking their armies apart.

(C+) Harlequins just really are not that viable on their own. I like the synergy of this list but I was going into this event expecting to get tabled in a majority of my games. I got a little lucky and a couple of good breaks and managed to finish the event 5th overall. Sadly the painting rubric was a little soft so a lot of people got really high scores which didn't really diversify the field as well as I would of hoped. There was only one player left undefeated after 6 rounds and he took best general. The player with the highest battle points won best overall as he had a good number of battle points on me and I could not make up the difference on the paint score. I ended up losing best painted by one point to the knight army I played in the 5th round. C.J. has a beautiful army + display board and wins best painted every year so it was of no surprise that he won it. He deserved it!

Overall Assessment of the Event/Missions: I really was not fond of the format. Winning primary meant you won the game unless the opponent won secondary and max ed his battle points. In that situation I am not sure what the tiebreaker would be to decide who advanced. My second issue with the missions were the similarities with the primary mission. In every game if you were winning the primary you were most likely winning the secondary because they coincided so much with the primary. In this event I lost two on both of the missions I hate... Relic and Kill points. I played good opponents in both rounds but the mission is poorly designed and just favors a first turn heavily. In both games I went second and relatively lost the game on turn one. The event was great and I would like to thank Tim for a great show. IMO it could of been better with some minor tweaks to the missions and maybe a few tweaks to the painting rubric to help diversify the field a little more.