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Now that it's been a little bit, i was just wondering some experience/theory crafting/math hammer you all have on Harlequin weapon load outs for troupe, bikes, and vehicles.

My person input:

Troupe - I find kisses to be far more useful than any of the others. Even with the Master, kiss seems to be better. I'm running 3 in a 5 man right now. Disruptor pistols are the bomb. Without drop pods the melta is meh.

Bikes - I personally see zero reason to ditch the shuriken cannon. They shred infantry and transports alike. The glaive's sweet spot seems to be 1/3 of them, but I'm really not 100% on this yet.

Voidweavers - This is the one I just can't seem to figure out. The prism is just so garbage on paper, but it feels better than haywire when played

What are everyone's thoughts and experiences?

I know little on the Math, but I find caress to be the best.

With so many attacks, any 6s being an auto wound/glance is far better than 1 attack per model with a bonus and a chance of instant death.

Embrace is ok, But I would only take it in large squads (at max 3 a squad).


The bikes, I plan on keeping shuriken cannons because I can simply use some eldar to take care of vehicles from the other codices. Glaive has been useful so far, never used the bola so I simply stick with the glaive now.

Im going with the prism on my voidweaver. The haywire has only a blast mode which means it cannot jink and fire. Haywire is OK on the bikes, but I think its better to simply use the prism on the voidweaver. Means you can try fire every turn no matter what at least.

Sorry, but no math, just my experience fighting crazy necron builds.

So you basically feel the same way I do except you like the caress. My issue with it is that in order to get an average of 1 S6 AP2 hit you need 6 attacks, which means that not even a Master gets one and you need 2 caresses for one. On top of that, they cost 3 points more. It just doesn't add up. If you get rerolls from something then the caress instantly becomes better.

Well thats how the odds work yea, there is a chance you get less than the kiss, but a chance you get more.

With the kiss you are garanteed one per model yea? With the caress there is a chance for each attack made. So on the charge they get 4 attacks (I think), so thats 4 1/6 chances per model fighting.

In my experience with small 6 man squads I usually get a minimum of 4 (usually) and sometimes I get as many as 10.

I guess its a risk, but it also means vehicles are a piece of cake if you happen to get close.

I have tried the kiss and found it lackluster. Remember the caress is on the to hit roll of a 6, giving you A LOT of chances to roll a 6.

My 6 boy quinn units (5 plus a master) run a power sword, 3 kiss, 1 caress, 1 embrace.

Its my generic assault unit, able to deal with any threat and win.

The embrace lets me drop a couple of high S hits before the fight and is great for light vehicles as well. This is the first body to die in the unit though.

The kisses are my work horse - reliable high S and AP2 along with the rest of their attacks.

The caress is my coin toss - able to kill tanks and monsters or infantry, it means I am never without a weapon for the task

The power sword - despite its cost - does something the other weapons don't. It provides reliable AP attacks on a good WS and S model to the unit. The troupe master will almost always kill 2-3 MEQ on the charge and then kill 1-2 every round after that. Yes its probably 5 points to expensive but when I can charge in knowing what the likely outcome is rather than relying on 6's, it makes the unit easier to manage.

For the Sky weavers, I am presently running mine in 2 units of 2 with haywire and glaives. They run in tandem - targeting transports and then charging the contents. Going first, I will get a vehicle almost every time and then pop the mirage launchers so I don't have to jink in turn 2 so I can bag another vehicle - ideally charging the contents as it falls out! The small blast is even useful for light infantry - S4, AP4 is not bad!

As for the void weaver - I stick to the haywire. I think the prism is worse all round. Those worried about jinking are not following the thought through. Yes - you can fire a single S7, Ap2 lance shot as a snap shot but that's far and away from being any good. The haywire works well against light infantry and tanks alike. Reliable hull point stripping is work far more to me.

That said - I play dark elder primarily and think Jink is a trap for the venoms - and am almost going to say its a trap for the void weavers... more play tests needed before I commit to that though!

Okay, lets have some real talk about kissing and caressing. For this lets assume we have a unit of 5 all with either kisses or caresses.

Kisses seem like the clear better choice because you get 5 of them automatically, instead of needing a 1 in 6 chance. You might assume that you would need 30 caress attacks to do the work 5 kisses (30/6=5) But this is wrong. You get 5 s6 ap2 attacks but they still need to hit. At ws5 you are hitting most things at a 3+, meaning of your 5 guaranteed kisses 3.333 hit. From there you still need to wound. Against t4 or less that is a 2+ so you can expect to kill 2.77. If the units toughness is higher you will be doing even less wounds. Now lets look at the caresses. On the charge you will have 21 attacks (4 per player, 5 for the master). For those the 6's are auto wounds, meaning you will have 3.5 auto wounds. This does not change based on enemy toughness which is really nice and because these are also glances against vehicles, you can take out the majority of vehicles with these hits as well. The downside of caresses is if you are not on the charge you have less attacks so less auto-wounds. But even when you are not on the charge you have 16 attacks which is roughly 2.6 auto-wounds, close to the 2.77 from the kisses. The difference is again the caresses work on ALL targets. So in reality, the caresses are better than the kisses.

 lambsandlions wrote:
Okay, lets have some real talk about kissing and caressing.

The Tactics forum has become very interesting of late.

Yeah, I prefer caresses to kisses, which is too bad because the fluff behind the kiss is what got me into the army all those years ago.

Bikes - I prefe glaives. I hate the idea of a one shot weapon, especially if I can ditch it for a cheap price. I agree about keeping the two Shuriken cannons.

Voidweaver- I waffle on this one. I think the prism and haywire both look good.

I'm running one blast spam haywire bike squad and one glaive shuriken bike side by side to compare. Neither have failed to impress me.

I use a melta squad deep striking in with a DE archon plus a pair of Shadowseers, and two Starweavers full of 2x embrace 3x kiss and a Death Jester. The other Shadowseer rocks a star mist raiment and runs around brain bulleting people and the other DJ chills in a raider with some warriors.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In my experience, the kiss and embrace are both good for what you want to do. I love the ID on the kiss and I hate the awkward points cost of the caress. After I popped a Carnifex and Tervigon back to back with my kisses in one game I decided if stick with that forever.

I've had zero intention of fielding Harlequins, but this thread's title has inspired me to filed an army of clowm models using the Harlequin rules.

From what few BR's I have read the embrace really seems to be paying its rent.

10 man squads fully armed w embraces are cleaning up pretty good.

Originally I was looking at mixing up squads ex. 10 player unit 6 kisses, 2 caress and 2 embrace.

6 player squad, 4 kiss, 1 embrace, 1 embrace

Though I am seeing 10 man embrace units, 6 man caress units and 6 man kiss units fielded at once and attacking threat priority based on their efficiency and has had me thinking I might do the same thing.

Tropic Thunder posted some good post game thoughts on the loadouts after his couple of games in the BR section. He faces off on CSM and AM/ Inquisition.

I have not gotten a chance to play with the harlies yet so its all theory hammer with me right now.

 Jimsolo wrote:

Voidweaver- I waffle on this one. I think the prism and haywire both look like garbage.

Fixed that for ya.

Seriously though, I wish you could put both shurcannons facing the same direction, and have the Aft weapon be the Haywire/Prismatic cannon. No matter how you equip the Voidweaver, its guns will not harmonize. Meaning either the shuricannon will be firing at targets it is good at, but the Haywire/Prism blast is meh, or the Haywire/Prism lance will be firing at a target the the shuricannon cant hurt.

From what few BR's I have read the embrace really seems to be paying its rent.

10 man squads fully armed w embraces are cleaning up pretty good.

Originally I was looking at mixing up squads ex. 10 player unit 6 kisses, 2 caress and 2 embrace, maybe mix in a PS instead of kiss for the TM.

6 player squad, 4 kiss, 1 embrace, 1 carres

Though I am seeing 10 man embrace units, 6 man caress units and 6 man kiss units fielded at once and attacking threat priority based on their efficiency and has had me thinking I might do the same thing.

Tropic Thunder posted some good post game thoughts on the loadouts after his couple of games in the BR section. He faces off on CSM and AM/ Inquisition.

I have not gotten a chance to play with the harlies yet so its all theory hammer with me right now.