Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Been away from the game for awhile and noticed Harlequins have their own dex and plastic models now. Anybody here play them as a primary force? What are they like?
All of the codexes in my FLGS are shrink wrapped so I haven't had the chance to peruse their rules yet.
I play them as my main, until my renegades come in, that is. They are super fast and can kill literally anything without much problems, but they are T3 that only has a 5++. They die so easy so shadowseers or starweavers are your ways to make them stay alive. If on foot with shadowseer you can make sure that no one can shoot at them if they are 25+" away!
They are probably my favourite force to play. They are very much all about hugging terrain and careful tactical play. If your opponent catches you, even for a moment, your forces disappear into a fine red (and potentially many other coloured) mist.
I thoroughly enjoy playing them though. They tend to engage your opponent from very odd angles. The Harlequin Psychic powers are also very useful again almost every faction, but always in very different ways.
Always fun with the Psycho Space Clowns!
Galef wrote: If you refuse to use rock, you will never beat scissors.
In Warp Transit to next battlefield location, Destination Unknown
cosmicsoybean wrote: I play them as my main, until my renegades come in, that is. They are super fast and can kill literally anything without much problems, but they are T3 that only has a 5++. They die so easy so shadowseers or starweavers are your ways to make them stay alive. If on foot with shadowseer you can make sure that no one can shoot at them if they are 25+" away!
Not even with indirect fire weapons?
Cowards will be shot! Survivors will be shot again!
cosmicsoybean wrote: I play them as my main, until my renegades come in, that is. They are super fast and can kill literally anything without much problems, but they are T3 that only has a 5++. They die so easy so shadowseers or starweavers are your ways to make them stay alive. If on foot with shadowseer you can make sure that no one can shoot at them if they are 25+" away!
Not even with indirect fire weapons?
Nope. The shot is discarded without effect. Veil of Tears isn't Warmachine Stealth, it's much funnier.
They do not function as a competitive army in even a mostly casual setting.
"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."
This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.
Freelance Ontologist
When people ask, "What's the point in understanding everything?" they've just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don't understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life.
They do not function as a competitive army in even a mostly casual setting.
I've been led to believe that Craftworlders help. That said very few armies wouldn't be helped by a Craftworld allied detachment, so make of that what you will.
They do not function as a competitive army in even a mostly casual setting.
Then your meta is brutal or you are building your harelys incorrectly. I can't recall a single unit they couldn't destroy, even TWC dont stand a chance against a troupe and seer.
Mine went undefeated for months. Took being beaten on pointz in tactical escalation by a Tyranid list based on flyers and horde units that could respawn when killed. Too many bodies on the table at the end to stop them from claiming objectives, and msu infiltrated sporemines ruin an army that relies on hitting theit opponent first.
Most people choose either blobs of psychic protected troupers on foot, or transports to keep them alive. I mix both. Warlords groups starts at 6 strong, two more troupes start with 5 and a shadowseer. All in transports about 8" away from each other. Turn one they all move up, the warlord troupe disembarks as do the seers who then join that unit. On the charge that's 10 fleshbane armorbane attacks @init 7 plus whatever else you want in the unit. The empty transport rides around blocking enemy firing lines while the other two troupes ensure the main one doesn't get bogged down.
I run a heroes path formation for board control, and my other death jesters individually so their special rules can affect more units per turn (since you only need to kill one model for them to work.)
The best part is, I can run this army three different ways by changing what your base formations are! Two are unbound, but that's only at 1850 and if you opponent has problems with adding individual independent characters then stick with the masque and heroes path.
Then your meta is brutal or you are building your harelys incorrectly. I can't recall a single unit they couldn't destroy, even TWC dont stand a chance against a troupe and seer.
See, in reality, games aren't decided by what particular unit you may or may not be able to kill in a vacuum. Because even TWC will shot Harlequins dead before they need to worry about assaulting the leftovers.
"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."
This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.
Freelance Ontologist
When people ask, "What's the point in understanding everything?" they've just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don't understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life.
Then your meta is brutal or you are building your harelys incorrectly. I can't recall a single unit they couldn't destroy, even TWC dont stand a chance against a troupe and seer.
See, in reality, games aren't decided by what particular unit you may or may not be able to kill in a vacuum. Because even TWC will shot Harlequins dead before they need to worry about assaulting the leftovers.
Yup, with all of their pistols. 6 thunderwolf we will kill MAYBE two harlequins. Considering they're a melee unit and don't have relentless, they aren't packing any serious s.all arms fire.
Turn one, harlequins are too far to shoot due to veil of tears, turn two, the harlequins are 22" away from where they stafted in their transport and still have the option to assault you.
Considering their transports can gain an I cup save as opposed to jink one turn, even if ores cover ranged shots won't put them down before they threaten you.
They are, with out exception the most rubbish faction out there rules wise, point wise they are expensive with no real survivability and can be countered so hard they aren't worth playing.
The transports are utter garbage thanks to being a 2 hull point, fragile. open topped thing which, when it explodes (and at AV10, it will explode) it'll murder all your T3 5+ clowns. (that's if they don't just flame everything inside.
Flamers makes your basic dudes worthless and deep strikers invalidates your army.
Their Psychic powers are great, but the psykers themselves really need either another mastery level and all their independent characters really need the option to ride on a Skyweaver... They have no HQ so if your meta doesn't like formations, don't bother playing them and the Masque detachment is soo restrictive you'll be bored of them within the month.
Learn from my experience and save yourself the time, money and expense of running these guys outside of the Fachou's blade. hero's path formations...
They are a utter waste of your time as anything other than a painting project.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/09/02 11:54:43
Hawky wrote: Power Armour's greatest weakness is Newton, the deadliest snfbtch in space.
Wow, considering I eat drop pod Marines for lunch with mine. The only really hard counters are flyer spam and hordes. That's it.
Seeing as how the vast majority of marine armies field grav if they have it, plasma if they don't, your need to worry about flamers is actually pretty minimal.
I dropped serious cash on harlequins when they came out, and I am still enjoying them so much that it's hard for me to fit in more than a token game or two with my corsairs. Which I have close to 6000 points of and ordered both of their imperial armor books from forge world as soon as they dropped.
Harlis are fun, challenging, and very interesting to play with and against. If you want to see some decent battle reports using them with some allies, check out skaredcast on YouTube. He's been working g them into lists, and his last game he absolutely ate a scatbike spam vehicle heavy eldar force for lunch.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, their units were all previewed in white dwarf. So you won't get to see the relics, psychic powers, or warlord traits but you can see their point totals and wargear.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/09/02 12:19:51
Okay, I feel like maybe I should write you a bit more, because the above posters may be giving you the impression to stay away from Harlequins. First, let me say though that the Harlequin line IS very limited, so I wouldn't recommend playing Harlequins as your first faction, unless you plan to branch into either Eldar or Dark Eldar in the near future. They are an utterly unforgiving army that will cause you to lose the moment you make a mistake.
The best post above was this;
"Then your meta is brutal or you are building your harelys incorrectly." - cosmicsoybean
Against the top tier stuff in the game, Harlequins will fold. This is because the top tier stuff is either Flyers (which the Harlequins have nothing to combat with), or are crazy Invl rerolling (which Harlie's can't ignore), or are Superheavies (which Harlie's can't deal with quickly enough). The only other list that solo-Harlequins have a REALLY hard time against is a force most people laugh at; Astra Militarum (because they have a ton of redundancy and tons of low-powered shooting, which is the deadliest kind of shooting to Harlequins).
There's 2 primary ways that I've heard of Harlequins being played:
#1 - Troupes & Star Weavers; The basic Troupe squad is REALLY good in close combat, and REALLY fragile outside of it. Their Star Weavers may only be AV10 with 2HP, but can get a 4+ Inv save for a turn, and the Troupe can get out, run, and charge in the same turn. This gives them an astonishing threat range on the second turn forwards (the average is 25 inches, minimum is 15 inches with literally rolling only 1's and rerolling only 1's). That average is very important, since you'll notice that it's 1 inch MORE than the range of most basic weapons in the game. Don't rely on it too heavily, but it is insane. Once in combat, Troupes often take far fewer hits than they would in the open. Against non-Space Marine opponents, there's a pretty good chance you wipe them out due to causing enough casualties to inflict a severe Ld penalty, and your initiative makes catching them easy. Against Space Marines or tougher opponents, Hit & Run lets you get out and recharge where you need to be on your next turn too.
As such, Troupes & Star Weavers are a solid option when played right. You just need to be careful in avoiding the long-range firepower of your opponent (Autocannons, Scatterlasers are more dangerous than Lascannons, but you get the picture), and unless you've got a heavy numerical advantage with Caresses and multiple units with Haywire, avoid walkers. AV10 walkers are susceptible to Kisses & charges from Embraces though, so keep that in mind.
#2 - Shadowseers & Troupes; Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have Star Weavers here too, but they're not essential. This is because the Phantasmancy discipline is so choke full of goodness that can't be used from within a Star Weaver. Every power on this list is useful against most opponents, and some powers are fantastic against the right opponents. Veil of Tears makes anything past 20" almost impossible for your opponent to engage. Gaining Stealth + Shrouded means even a forest provides 2+ cover. Shards of Light causing Blind tests is insanely effective against Necrons and Orks, and can randomly blind even Space Marines. Fog of Dreams causing an Imperial Knight to treat all other targets as invisible is hilariously effective. Laugh of Sorrows is probably the least effective power, but even then it can easily murder any Independent Character and seriously harm Monstrous or Gargantuan creatures (as most of them have Ld10, which this power is best against). Mirror of Minds can also hit these such units very effectively, and when combo'd with the Mask of Secrets, is terribly effective against Monstrous & Gargantuan creatures too.
Seriously, given the right setup, Harlequins will almost seem broken to some opponents - but the trick is that when they catch them, well, Shadowseers only have a T3 with a 5+ Inv. They die REALLY easily, so be careful with them!
Galef wrote: If you refuse to use rock, you will never beat scissors.
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote: Wow, considering I eat drop pod Marines for lunch with mine. The only really hard counters are flyer spam and hordes. That's it.
Seeing as how the vast majority of marine armies field grav if they have it, plasma if they don't, your need to worry about flamers is actually pretty minimal.
I dropped serious cash on harlequins when they came out, and I am still enjoying them so much that it's hard for me to fit in more than a token game or two with my corsairs. Which I have close to 6000 points of and ordered both of their imperial armor books from forge world as soon as they dropped.
Harlis are fun, challenging, and very interesting to play with and against. If you want to see some decent battle reports using them with some allies, check out skaredcast on YouTube. He's been working g them into lists, and his last game he absolutely ate a scatbike spam vehicle heavy eldar force for lunch.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, their units were all previewed in white dwarf. So you won't get to see the relics, psychic powers, or warlord traits but you can see their point totals and wargear.
Unfortunately if you're in a league or have to organize your games in advance, once your opponent figures out you are using harlequins, suddenly all the grav weaponry disappears and everything has a flamer.
And tbh if you have any tricks for surviving an alpha strike drop pod marine list I'd like to hear it (no sarcasm there, I've been trying for ages)
Hawky wrote: Power Armour's greatest weakness is Newton, the deadliest snfbtch in space.
Two words... Glass Cannon... they are even worse than D.E on that aspect of play. It feels very nice when you win but they aren't very forgiving and against an experienced opponent that knows what he is doing you are going to pay dearly for every mistake you make.
Got milk?
All I can say about painting is that VMC tastes much better than VMA... especially black...
Here is someone using a relatively non-competitive Harlequin list (a whole cegorach's revenge detachment paired with some barebones dark eldar) against a very competitive list of what is considered the best army in the game, and winning fairly handily.
I have been playing Harlequins since their release. They are not on the level of Eldar, or Space Marines, but can handily compete with most lists of either if you're smart with them, and they ally extremely well with both other eldar factions for variety.
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote: Wow, considering I eat drop pod Marines for lunch with mine. The only really hard counters are flyer spam and hordes. That's it.
Seeing as how the vast majority of marine armies field grav if they have it, plasma if they don't, your need to worry about flamers is actually pretty minimal.
I dropped serious cash on harlequins when they came out, and I am still enjoying them so much that it's hard for me to fit in more than a token game or two with my corsairs. Which I have close to 6000 points of and ordered both of their imperial armor books from forge world as soon as they dropped.
Harlis are fun, challenging, and very interesting to play with and against. If you want to see some decent battle reports using them with some allies, check out skaredcast on YouTube. He's been working g them into lists, and his last game he absolutely ate a scatbike spam vehicle heavy eldar force for lunch.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, their units were all previewed in white dwarf. So you won't get to see the relics, psychic powers, or warlord traits but you can see their point totals and wargear.
Unfortunately if you're in a league or have to organize your games in advance, once your opponent figures out you are using harlequins, suddenly all the grav weaponry disappears and everything has a flamer.
And tbh if you have any tricks for surviving an alpha strike drop pod marine list I'd like to hear it (no sarcasm there, I've been trying for ages)
Well, I can't speak to obvious, blatant list tailoring like you describe, but I can say most of the time I do fairly well against pods with my clowns. If someone wanted to tailor their list against mine, then..yeah, they'll probably win, 16 flamers will drop down and nuke me.
But against most pod lists, you see meltas and grav, sometimes a heavy flamer on a dreadnought. In those cases, I will reserve my skyweavers and voidweaver (both shooting focused and only useful turn 2 onward anyway) to form a beta strike where I want to take back a chunk of the board, and I'll defensively deploy everything else, trying to use the Hero's Path models to block off some of the good pod drop spots.
If I'm really up against a wall, I have in the past null-deployed just my hero's path solitaire somewhere that LOS was extremely limited to him (Extreme top-level corner of a building, for instance) which usually causes most of the pods to land spread around the map. then, I'm fighting immobile footslogging marines without many good anti-tank weapons, which means my midrange options will really be favorable against him, even if my melee is less useful.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/02 13:06:26
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
Then your meta is brutal or you are building your harelys incorrectly. I can't recall a single unit they couldn't destroy, even TWC dont stand a chance against a troupe and seer.
See, in reality, games aren't decided by what particular unit you may or may not be able to kill in a vacuum. Because even TWC will shot Harlequins dead before they need to worry about assaulting the leftovers.
.... uh.... you do know what harelys can run and charge in the most useful formation and TWC ranged weapons are not good, right?
When I'm taking on drop pods, the primary goal i have is to create a line of my units on the table. I also run my 3-6 death jesters individually all over my deployment zone.
By forcing the enemy to surround me, meaning they are nearer to the edges of the table, I force more probable mishaps and most will ignore the jesters. Now, a death jesters only needs to cause a single wound to cause a leadership test at -2. I will always have the mask of secrets somewhere near the center of the table. One round of shooting will probably eliminate your transports, but they won't be able to do much against your infantry (again, unless they're list tailoring) so when their units are being forced to take 2-5 leadership tests with a leadership of 4-5 for the most part their whole initial force will be useless.
Remember, death jesters force the enemy to run in ANY direction. If they touch a table edge, they leave the battle. Since you forced them to the table edges by positioning centrally and spreading out, their own want to be aggressive and cause damage will be what causes their demise.
Here's a good example of what I'm talking about.
Spoiler:
I played a game to turn three against a fulll battle company with their free transports (mix of all three, but with 5 pods) turn one, I stole the initiative with the warlord trait giving me a +4 to the roll. I spread out, and used the jeaters to eliminate the scouts he had camping objectives midfield. Then he dropped in, killed my voidweaver and one transport. Maybe killed two troupers as well. Now, his army covered the table from end to end. Turn two I eliminated every one of his units in my deployment zone with no casualties (key to this is remembering when to actually roll the attacks with the kiss on your units, roll them first if characters are near the outside of the unit, last if the character is in a challenge or embedded in the center. That way your flurry of basic attacks can wear through the chaff) at the bottom of turn three he had surrounded my warlords groups, but at that point it was shrouded, with the veil of tears, and had the outside edges of the unit in ruins. So after his entire army fired, he killed 4 models. (Some weren't able to fire, a 2+ is always useful, and I position my shadowseers and troupe master in a triangular position to absorb a small amount of fire before passing damage onto basic troupers behind) he called it shortly after because I had by then eliminated 3/4 of his army and would push the rest off with little issue my next turn. He considered it a "crushing defeat"
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/02 21:34:18
~1.5k
Cowards will be shot! Survivors will be shot again!
