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Greetings fellow Dakka-ites,

Been out of the loop awhile, and a few friends have gotten into the hobby. One of them has picked Harlequins and wants me to play. I haven't the slightest idea what they are capable of, so I have no idea what to build my list around. I have Nids, Daemons, and Chaos Marines (Black legion and Crimson Slaughter) available. Any of them well suited to dealing with Harlequins? Any general strategies or the like you could recommend? Sorry for the vagueness, but any info would be a great help. Still re-learning the rules, but I'll be using my google-fu shortly.

I don't know any of your armies terribly well (Grey Knight and Eldar player here), but I do know Harlequins since they're Battle Brothers with Eldar.

What you need to be on the lookout for are some lightning fast assaults as Harlequins are capable of both running and assaulting after moving in certain formations. A special unit, called the Solitaire, is also capable of doing an enormous board jump and buffing his base attacks to 10 for one turn.

Harlequins also excel at messing up an enemy's leadership and using it to route them. Harlequin psykers, called Shadowseers, can psychically attack units based on their leadership and reduce it with an artifact. Death Jesters force morale checks and then choose which direction your unit falls back if it fails the check.

Harlequins also come standard with Flip Belts, which allow them to ignore difficult terrain. So they're going to move and they're going to move fast.

That said, they are absolute squish and have fairly bad ranged weapon options. They're mostly Toughness 3 and will be instant death'd by S6 and higher weapons. None of them have armor saves and rely on 4+ invulnerables and cover.

Harlequins are also extremely random/luck-based when they are attacking enemies with high Toughness or vehicles with high AV. They need 6's on To-Wound rolls to really hurt these things with their melee weapons. Without these 6's, they also do not have much access to low AP weaponry.

Obviously, this is just a general overview. I hope it helps, though!

Honestly, Harlequins aren't that strong by themselves, so I'd really advise tailoring your list against them specifically. (Especially when your buddy is just getting into the hobby, don't want him to get a sour taste)

That said, Harlequins have effectively nothing vs fliers, as well as low toughness across the board (and low av skimmers). If you're wanting to tailor the list, a lot bolters and flamers will work. Avoid combat unless you're sporting a super combat unit such as wulfen or such.

Nids and Daemons are both relatively good matchups against Harelequins.

Harlequins are an army of no armour saves but army-wide invulnerable saves and so laugh at armies relying on low-AP firepower. Nids have very little of that but are excellent at just piling on wounds and forcing saves. Not great against 2+ armour saves, but it works well when the highest save in the army (one model, the Solitare, not included) is a 5+, invulnerable or no. Nids also have a lot of S6 knocking around, most notably brainleech devourers and the Mawloc's S6 Deep Strike blast. This will ID the Shadowseer, Death Jester and Troupe Master characters that form a big part of the Harlequin army, as well as make mincemeat of their light transports (there's no AV14 to worry about here). Speaking of Flyrants, Harlequins have very little that can deal with fliers and so a couple of Flyrants will prove very hard for your friend to deal with.

Daemons sort of flip the first point I made around as their own army-wide invulnerable saves help mitigate the Harlequins' ability to heap a lot of AP2 on you in combat. Sadly, CSM, as with most MEQs, will get hit hard by this. I'm not very familiar with Daemons, but, as I understand, they have Fearless (or at least some form of it?), army-wide? One tactic many Harlequin players employ is leadership reducing shenanigans to force Pinning and easily-failed Morale checks where they can catch you with Sweeping Advance easily thanks to I6+ across the board. Bear in mind though that Fearless won't protect you from any Psychic Shrieks their Shadowseers bring to the table, often combined with an item that will reduce your leadership by 2 if you're within 12".

Speaking of Shadowseers, another advantage of Tyranids and Daemons is the ability to go toe-to-toe with Harlequins in the Psychic Phase, which is important considering the numerous nasty spells the Harlequins have access to.

Finally, bear in mind that Harlequins are battle-brothers with both Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar and that the three armies are regularly combined. Indeed, Harlequins don't work brilliantly as a stand-alone army (especially in larger value points games) due to the limited options available in their codex and so allies are a common sight, to fill out the points if anything.

Hope this helps, if you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask!

They will tear anything other than wulfen or greater daemons in melee but die to high volume of fire as fast as guardsmen, unless they have psychic buffs. They are mobile and ignore terrain.