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Where did they go?

For some time now I haven't seen them being mentioned among top 3 finishes in tournaments.

Do they get countered by the recent releases? Or did players just abandon them for more up to date armies?

It feels like with the release of Death Guard, those armies got played less by tourny winners.

Where are they standing in the current meta?

both are still present in the competitive scene, the reason the buzz about them has died down is, much like before, their playrate is relatively low so unless theyre the top dogs winrate wise, you wont hear much about them.

Chaos Daemons sit a hair above a 50% winrate at this point and harlequins are at like...53% or so, technically I think like the sixth or seventh best faction though a few of those are weird outlier flash in the pans like Thousand Sons and CWE which currently have super super low playrates so if someone comes in and surprises with a really good tourney performance, you get a massive winrate spike.

That's why thousand sons are "technically" a top army at this point - playrate is so low, so someone who took like an all DP+Magnus list and went 5-0 jumped their average up to like 55% for the last few weeks.

I have stopped playing my harlequins for a bit, mostly as there are a lot of dark angels in my local scene and I have no idea how to get through 20-30 deathwing with harlequins.

The short answer is they're both victims of 9th edition defensive power creep who haven't got their 9th edition offensive power creep to compensate.

They still wreck many other 8th edition armies and do ok against some 9th edition armies and therefore post decent win rates, but they just bounce off the more resilient 9th edition stuff. So they've gone back to being played only by the people who actually like them; the power gamers have almost all moved on to 9th edition books.

Quinns are still one of the best armies. Probably better than DE after these recent nerfs for DE.

Daemons same story.

They are both exceptionally rare armies and even those players have gotten tired of playing with them.

I imagine the sheer weight of attacks that DE can throw out are a detriment to Harlequin players.

And plenty of them have most of a DE army sitting on a shelf anyway so easier to just switch to that.

Harlequins are still top tier. Slaanesh was always a bit iffy

yukishiro1 wrote:
The short answer is they're both victims of 9th edition defensive power creep who haven't got their 9th edition offensive power creep to compensate.

They still wreck many other 8th edition armies and do ok against some 9th edition armies and therefore post decent win rates, but they just bounce off the more resilient 9th edition stuff. So they've gone back to being played only by the people who actually like them; the power gamers have almost all moved on to 9th edition books.

...Harlequins have almost exactly the same winrate they had back when they were considered OP BUSTED BROKEN EMERGENCY EMERGENCY NERF NOW AWOOOOOOOOOOGA AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGA GW A CLOWN HAS BROKEN INTO MY HOUSE AND IS MURDERING MY FIRSTBORN.

Daemons were very obviously a space marine countermeta pick that stopped being nearly as good when the meta began including anything not space marines. Harlequins are still identically as relevant to the meta as they were - i.e. not particularly, given their ~2% playrate.

I don't see how any of that refutes what I said. Bits of it are also simply wrong, i.e. quins when they were the strongest were more like ~5% of the competitive meta; the reason they have dropped to 2% is because, like I said, the power gamers don't play them any more because again, like I said, they have certain 9th edition matchups they don't do well against, meaning they are no longer one of the best picks to actually win events with. It isn't some big magical coincidence that quins aren't winning events regularly any more, it's because of changes caused by the release of more 9th edition books that make them less competitive into very particular lists. They have become one of those factions with decent win rates but that struggles to actually go the final mile because of certain bad matchups. Also quins at their height were hovering around a 58% win rate, which is a significant difference from the 53% you said they are at now, and again is mostly attributable to their decreased performance against certain new 9th edition books.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I don't see how any of that refutes what I said. Bits of it are also simply wrong, i.e. quins when they were the strongest were more like ~5% of the competitive meta; the reason they have dropped to 2% is because, like I said, the power gamers don't play them any more because again, like I said, they have certain 9th edition matchups they don't do well against, meaning they are no longer one of the best picks to actually win events with. It isn't some big magical coincidence that quins aren't winning events regularly any more, it's because of changes caused by the release of more 9th edition books that make them less competitive into very particular lists. They have become one of those factions with decent win rates but that struggles to actually go the final mile because of certain bad matchups. Also quins at their height were hovering around a 58% win rate, which is a significant difference from the 53% you said they are at now, and again is mostly attributable to their decreased performance against certain new 9th edition books.

This is flase. Quinns don't have bad matchups...except for maybe...daemons and de...The reason quinns aren't winning events regularly is due to DE. Many of these Quinn players just played DE instead. They are still laughably OP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The short answer is they're both victims of 9th edition defensive power creep who haven't got their 9th edition offensive power creep to compensate.

They still wreck many other 8th edition armies and do ok against some 9th edition armies and therefore post decent win rates, but they just bounce off the more resilient 9th edition stuff. So they've gone back to being played only by the people who actually like them; the power gamers have almost all moved on to 9th edition books.

...Harlequins have almost exactly the same winrate they had back when they were considered OP BUSTED BROKEN EMERGENCY EMERGENCY NERF NOW AWOOOOOOOOOOGA AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGA GW A CLOWN HAS BROKEN INTO MY HOUSE AND IS MURDERING MY FIRSTBORN.

Daemons were very obviously a space marine countermeta pick that stopped being nearly as good when the meta began including anything not space marines. Harlequins are still identically as relevant to the meta as they were - i.e. not particularly, given their ~2% playrate.

Sorry but Daemons were an anti everything pick. Broken keepers with insane cp pregame for bonus make them a huge board control threat vs anything. Want this objective? Fight this super durable daemon with like 14 quality attacks I paid 225 for.

DE do kinda murder this list though - when DE are strong - monster lists have to stay home.

They (quins) have a terrible, terrible match-up vs DE, which is indeed a large part of the reason people don't play them much any more; getting dominated by the best faction in the game is a very bad way to win tournaments. But they also don't perform particularly well vs a number of other lists - DA, Necrons, Ad Mech even before their new codex which looks like it'll eat them alive even more than the old book, etc.

They're still in the upper echelon, but the 9th edition codex creep has pushed them out of a place where they are a favorite to win events the way they used to be. DE is a big part of it, but not the only part. Their performance was starting to erode even before the DE book came out.

I imagine people are willing to switch away from Quins, because their playstyle is a bit boring and the new books tend to offer more variety overall.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I imagine people are willing to switch away from Quins, because their playstyle is a bit boring and the new books tend to offer more variety overall.

I'm curious why you call them boring; I'd be willing to say they're one-note but it's a good/fun note (though looking at your last thought, that may be more what you were saying anyways.)

Scotsman has talked about running foot Quins; that's one thing that I'd like to try but never have done (I'd probably have to proxy). I doubt it would do well in the meta but it does mix it up somewhat.

I think he meant they are one-note (well I guess technically two-note, there's the foot lists and then there's the soaring spite lists), which is obviously true.

 the_scotsman wrote:
...Harlequins have almost exactly the same winrate they had back when they were considered OP BUSTED BROKEN EMERGENCY EMERGENCY NERF NOW AWOOOOOOOOOOGA AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGA GW A CLOWN HAS BROKEN INTO MY HOUSE AND IS MURDERING MY FIRSTBORN.

According to who? Harlequins went from over 55% win rate to below 50% win rate. Drukhari could do everything Harlequins can better, we'll see what happens with the nerfs now.

yukishiro1 wrote:
They (quins) have a terrible, terrible match-up vs DE, which is indeed a large part of the reason people don't play them much any more; getting dominated by the best faction in the game is a very bad way to win tournaments. But they also don't perform particularly well vs a number of other lists - DA, Necrons, Ad Mech even before their new codex which looks like it'll eat them alive even more than the old book, etc.

They're still in the upper echelon, but the 9th edition codex creep has pushed them out of a place where they are a favorite to win events the way they used to be. DE is a big part of it, but not the only part. Their performance was starting to erode even before the DE book came out.

Add mech is new - we have no idea how they are going to perform against quins. The scariest thing for the quinns was robots...which were heavily nerfed. No idea how they are going to match up. Admech in general is going to be good at killing infantry - not tanks with a strong invune - if you can't kill Quinn transports - you lose.

Quinns are actually an anti shooting army. With -1 to hit accross the board on their transports and 4++ saves as standard on every model in the army -6 inch range to all weapons and -1 to wound aura 9" aura. Ad mech is going to struggle vs quinns because like everyone - cracking t5 - to wound vehicles with -1 to hit and 4++ proves very difficult. And literally nothing hangs with quinns in melle. str 5 ap-2 in mass with reroll all wounds...Nothing lives. Just throw a -1 attack relic in there to add insult to injury if they don't kill everything in 1 pass.

Necrons are effing terrible vs quinns - unless you go full melee crons and that list is a coin flip. Win if you go first - lose if you go second.

Necrons have beat quins exactly as much as they have lost to them over the last 3 months - precisely the same record as DA have. Obviously those competitive Necron players know something you don't.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I imagine people are willing to switch away from Quins, because their playstyle is a bit boring and the new books tend to offer more variety overall.

I'm curious why you call them boring; I'd be willing to say they're one-note but it's a good/fun note (though looking at your last thought, that may be more what you were saying anyways.)

Scotsman has talked about running foot Quins; that's one thing that I'd like to try but never have done (I'd probably have to proxy). I doubt it would do well in the meta but it does mix it up somewhat.

Yea, pretty much this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
...Harlequins have almost exactly the same winrate they had back when they were considered OP BUSTED BROKEN EMERGENCY EMERGENCY NERF NOW AWOOOOOOOOOOGA AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGA GW A CLOWN HAS BROKEN INTO MY HOUSE AND IS MURDERING MY FIRSTBORN.

According to who? Harlequins went from over 55% win rate to below 50% win rate. Drukhari could do everything Harlequins can better, we'll see what happens with the nerfs now.

Recent tournament data has this:

WR% #Games 05/01 - 54.7 - 31 05/08 - 80.0 - 10 05/15 - 56.7 - 30 05/22 - 41.7 - 48 05/29 - 66.7 - 12 06/05 - 52.9 - 17

yukishiro1 wrote:
Necrons have beat quins exactly as much as they have lost to them over the last 3 months - precisely the same record as DA have. Obviously those competitive Necron players know something you don't.

Wouldn't a coin flip suggest...winning the same number of games?

Harlequins are the quintessential and apex high skill floor army. If you run into a player who plays them because they are the flavor of the month, with about as much time learning to pilot them, they aren't such a bad matchup.

But if you run into someone who knows that twilight pathways to turn one charge is normally a bad move, and understands the second most powerful stat in the game, next to points cost is movement, you probably just stepped in some deep doggie doo doo.

My "son" plays harlequins, and he's a pretty competitive player, and normally does pretty well on a regional level, and that's been his main for a while. We were discussing this. His point of view is that if we were to dissect each individual player's record that played harlequins, you would probably see the same list or the same couple of lists (with like a 15-20% list variation between players) but you would see one or two or three people with 4-1 and 5-0 records and the other three or so people with like 1-4 and 0-5 records.

Now, obvioulsy, i dont know how true that is, but I do know that from my own personal experience, a good harlequin player is an absolute BEAR to play against. There is almost no amount of casualties you can cause to them to make them inert short of tabling them, and they always seem to be in the game.

Experienced players know how to maximize on them, and learning players don't.

 Xenomancers wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Necrons have beat quins exactly as much as they have lost to them over the last 3 months - precisely the same record as DA have. Obviously those competitive Necron players know something you don't.

Wouldn't a coin flip suggest...winning the same number of games?

That isn't what you said. You stated melee crons were a coin flip. I have seen no melee focused crons in like...ever ( but I definitely think people should be running them more ).

You said "Necrons are effing terrible vs quinns". A 50/50 is a lot different than "effing terrible".

jaredb wrote:
I have stopped playing my harlequins for a bit, mostly as there are a lot of dark angels in my local scene and I have no idea how to get through 20-30 deathwing with harlequins.

You shoot them. Alot.
You do it again.
And then you melee survivors if/when/where you have the advantage.
Any way of inflicting mortal wounds is a big +.

In short you simply have to make them roll saves.
They WILL eventually roll poorly.

 Xenomancers wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Necrons have beat quins exactly as much as they have lost to them over the last 3 months - precisely the same record as DA have. Obviously those competitive Necron players know something you don't.

Wouldn't a coin flip suggest...winning the same number of games?

Lol- Unless you're Rosencantz or Guildenstern (sorry, couldn't resist a Tom Stoppard nerd joke).

The initial Dark Eldar release had most of what made Harlequins strong but more-so, a deeper codex, as well as a very positive match-up against Harlequins. Why play clown elves when edgy elves do everything you do but better, often cheaper, and with more variety to what you can field?

With the recent DE nerfs we'll have to see if that brings them down enough to make clowns more relevant again.

ccs wrote:

jaredb wrote:
I have stopped playing my harlequins for a bit, mostly as there are a lot of dark angels in my local scene and I have no idea how to get through 20-30 deathwing with harlequins.

You shoot them. Alot.
You do it again.
And then you melee survivors if/when/where you have the advantage.
Any way of inflicting mortal wounds is a big +.

In short you simply have to make them roll saves.
They WILL eventually roll poorly.

I would think 20 to 30 termies would be easier to handle, because they won't all be buffed up. Pick on the other ones and then toy with the death ( life? ) star. Maybe score No Prisoners? Not sure how well it would turn out with bad damage rolls.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
...Harlequins have almost exactly the same winrate they had back when they were considered OP BUSTED BROKEN EMERGENCY EMERGENCY NERF NOW AWOOOOOOOOOOGA AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGA GW A CLOWN HAS BROKEN INTO MY HOUSE AND IS MURDERING MY FIRSTBORN.

According to who? Harlequins went from over 55% win rate to below 50% win rate. Drukhari could do everything Harlequins can better, we'll see what happens with the nerfs now.

Recent tournament data has this:

WR% #Games 05/01 - 54.7 - 31 05/08 - 80.0 - 10 05/15 - 56.7 - 30 05/22 - 41.7 - 48 05/29 - 66.7 - 12 06/05 - 52.9 - 17

My bad, I accidentally picked a biased sample with the last 3 dates. If you go with pre-Drukhari vs post-Drukhari data then they've gone from 58% to 54%, don't know how statistically significant that is, but it's above and then below the 55% line.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Necrons have beat quins exactly as much as they have lost to them over the last 3 months - precisely the same record as DA have. Obviously those competitive Necron players know something you don't.

Wouldn't a coin flip suggest...winning the same number of games?

That isn't what you said. You stated melee crons were a coin flip. I have seen no melee focused crons in like...ever ( but I definitely think people should be running them more ).

You said "Necrons are effing terrible vs quinns". A 50/50 is a lot different than "effing terrible".

Melee crons is popular...Just take a look at blood of kittens. Half the lists that place in 2021 are melee focus.
Wraiths and skorpeks with relentless expansionist. Though Crons don't really have a "meta" list. That is what good internal balance does for a codex.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Melee crons is popular...Just take a look at blood of kittens. Half the lists that place in 2021 are melee focus.
Wraiths and skorpeks with relentless expansionist. Though Crons don't really have a "meta" list. That is what good internal balance does for a codex.

I stand corrected. Still - there is no data to support melee Crons being better or worse vs Harlies. It'd take a gakload of time to find those games, ferret out bad lists, bad players, etc.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Melee crons is popular...Just take a look at blood of kittens. Half the lists that place in 2021 are melee focus.
Wraiths and skorpeks with relentless expansionist. Though Crons don't really have a "meta" list. That is what good internal balance does for a codex.

I stand corrected. Still - there is no data to support melee Crons being better or worse vs Harlies. It'd take a gakload of time to find those games, ferret out bad lists, bad players, etc.

Oh I know it's an impossible query to really search. Don't bother. Just consider this.
Quinns relic for -6 inch range to guns and 2CP stratagem to make All units in a 9" aura (some pivotal roll that makes auras 9 inches) -1 to wound...You are lucky lot kill a single starweaver on you first turn.

a 20 man warriors with reapers can not veil and engage on them even with mephrite +3 inch range bonus. (this is literally crons best trick) I stopped using warriors a long time ago because of this...(I play against quinns A LOT)
Regardless - it is an uphill battle. A -6 inch range to guns aura should not exist on an army which comfortably charges 20 inches out of a transport with no issue.

Melee crons don't care about any of this OFC. Plus they can force quinns to deploy defensively because of their pregame move. They are still at a big disadvantage. Quinns ignore AP and they really don't care about toughness ether...They can win objective game though if they go first and overload the objectives. Plus the Ctan really can do a number on quinns. Hence - coin flip.