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Im a wh40k virgin and just now building an Ork army to play, but Harlequins are one of the reasons I really wanted to play. I seem to not be able to find a lot about them being playable competitively or if they were just fun to collect and paint. Thanks in advance for your time and replies.

Harlequins are a really solid army. They do suffer from the limited units they have. You really only have a few to choose from. Even then, you have units like the Solitaire who are amazing but you can only have one in your list. Their anti tank is limited to primarily fusion pistols as the best and most reliable anti tank. This forces them to be extremely close to vehicles to use, which isn't too hard since they are so fast. The problem stacks up when you go against someone like Guard or Nids where there are a ton of bodies. Harlequins are an elite army with a low model count. They tend to struggle against mass fire and mass bodies. They have a great 4++ pretty much army wide, but their T3 on troops and even elites and HQ causes them to fall to focus fire pretty quick. They are a great army but not super forgiving if you make a mistake. They do well competitively but many people would rather take an "easy" army if they want to do well. Harlequins force you to make a lot of decisions on where to go since they are extremely maneuverable and fragile. These decisions can end up really good or really bad quickly.

Aeldari? Pair them with their brothers.

 ArmyC wrote:
Aeldari? Pair them with their brothers.

Hoodwink is right about the current incarnation of the Harlie play style.
I'd consider one Bataillion of Harlies and other detachments from either Craftworlds or Drukhari which can complement the Harlie play style very well.

Harlequins are quite competitive and easy to build a decent army since they only have 8 choices in the entire codex.

They require some experience but they're quite cheap in terms of money and not extremely common so a new harlequin player is always good news for the meta.

Harlequins also can be played with drukhari or eldar, and even with the ynnari rules. But pure harlequins armies are solid.

Players + master with fusion pistols and embraces in a Starweaver is a very good and surprisingly versatile unit. A bunch of them can make for a competitive list.
Also harlequins are not that common, so people are often surprised by their speed/firepower (6 fusion pistols often one-shot tanks), but after you've played someone a couple time, they'll learn to bubblewrap and position so you can't use your speed so easily.
I also feel mono-harlies to become boring after a while. It's really that there are too few units. So I almost always play with CWE or DE units mixed in now.

fresus wrote:
Players + master with fusion pistols and embraces in a Starweaver is a very good and surprisingly versatile unit. A bunch of them can make for a competitive list.
Also harlequins are not that common, so people are often surprised by their speed/firepower (6 fusion pistols often one-shot tanks), but after you've played someone a couple time, they'll learn to bubblewrap and position so you can't use your speed so easily.
I also feel mono-harlies to become boring after a while. It's really that there are too few units. So I almost always play with CWE or DE units mixed in now.

Fusion is still hit or miss tho, ive tried the full fusion style and i gotta say, its not as strong as having cheaper dedicated CC quins with large numbers of Dark Reapers with Autarch as back up range damage, they can AA and AT easier than 18-20 fusion... with that said I still take 8 fusion guns more so as back up and wound striking.

Quins lack real AT/AA, if you can get solid AT that can also be AA at the same time then you can make an extremely strong Quin army.

I also agree with you that Mono quins are more boring than with with DE or Eldar.

PS the more i play them the more Embraces i feel are the way to go, math hammer with a Master they are better than Caress as well. Just my 0.2c

Harlequins are great. Tricky to master, but fantastic to play. However, as it's been mentioned - you WILL be outnumbered by every other army in game, bar some Grey Knight lists or a pure Knight list.

This leads to two issues. First, buffering of important units with chaff, tying up your Harlie's and forcing you to eliminate them.
Second, the sheer weight of attacks will cause wounds, and you only need to get unlucky tools a few times to see your army rapidly dwindling.

 Freddy Kruger wrote:
Harlequins are great. Tricky to master, but fantastic to play. However, as it's been mentioned - you WILL be outnumbered by every other army in game, bar some Grey Knight lists or a pure Knight list.

This leads to two issues. First, buffering of important units with chaff, tying up your Harlie's and forcing you to eliminate them.
Second, the sheer weight of attacks will cause wounds, and you only need to get unlucky tools a few times to see your army rapidly dwindling.

There is a downside discussed in another threat here.
If you charge with two or more Harlie units in one turn, the opponent might spend 2 CP to strike first.
This can let your Harlie army struggle.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Freddy Kruger wrote:
Harlequins are great. Tricky to master, but fantastic to play. However, as it's been mentioned - you WILL be outnumbered by every other army in game, bar some Grey Knight lists or a pure Knight list.

This leads to two issues. First, buffering of important units with chaff, tying up your Harlie's and forcing you to eliminate them.
Second, the sheer weight of attacks will cause wounds, and you only need to get unlucky tools a few times to see your army rapidly dwindling.

There is a downside discussed in another threat here.
If you charge with two or more Harlie units in one turn, the opponent might spend 2 CP to strike first.
This can let your Harlie army struggle.

I've played many Harlequin games in 8th by now, this is great advice for sure, quins want to play the positioning game more so than any other army, you need to out position your opponent, strike fast and hard but at the same time not with your whole force, you want to only send out what is needed to make the kill, make sure of the mass Shuriken, Fusions and the Hit and run/charge again as mucha s you can, ther are many times i didnt charge for a turn.

My first 4-5 games i pushed the army to the extremely limit, hyper aggressive and to see what they can and can not do. Do NOT get caught up in needing to make large amounts of charges, once you get the army down you will only need to make 1-2 key charges a turn, you want to play minor victories every turn if you can.

Also dont get caught up in chasing him around, make them out position themselves.

They are EXTREMELY fun b.c of the strategies you need to play them but it can get a bit going using the same 3-4 units over and over again.

i really want to thank you all for your responses and showing me light on the Harlequins. Think i might give to a whirl and try them out mixed with DE. happy playing everyone

Another pretty good set of units to run in tandem with Harlequins, in my mind at least, would be Warp Spiders. They have the movement capabilities to keep up, more weight of fire, and have the ability to reduce hit rolls against them by one. The CC prowess of Harlequins make up for the Spiders' lack. You could easily run an Autarch with Warp Gen, some spiders, and even a Night Spinner for ranged fire and to keep a theme.