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yukishiro1 wrote:
Transhuman and -1 to wound doesn't stack.

Dark Angels are definitely better now than people give credit for, though. And Warded deserves a mention too as it is pretty clearly the best warlord trait in the whole game by some distance.

As a mostly Loyalist Scum player I can tell you that you shouldn't be afraid of them.

eparedes0785 wrote:
I'm not very experienced in the game but I feel that harlequins have the tools they need to kill quite a lot.

If frozen stars and within the TM aura, a troupe of 12 players or a unit of 6 skyweavers with zephyrglaives hit very hard... they'll force 30 and 12 saves at dmg 1 and -2 dmg 2 respectively assuming they wound on 4+. If necessary, the damage of their melee weapons can be increased by one via stratagem.

Add the possibility of fighting twice, giving the players S5 weapons, increasing their save to 3++, giving them +1 to wound, hitting & running without retaliation with the curtain falls, charging without being overwatched thanks to the new DJ ability... not to mention flip belts and rising crescendo

I feel that 12-player frozen stars troupes could deal with meta units such as possessed bomb, GK paladins, IH infantry near Feirros and with 5+++, etc

Delivery has always been a problem. Can't walk them up the board, which means they have to DS and get lucky on a big charge. If you fail that charge, the squad is going to suffer immense losses.

You don't want to be delivering troupes anywhere, by and large. They just don't hit hard enough to be that kind of unit - largely because they don't buff up well the way lots of assault units do - posssessed bomb, sang guard, death company, etc all get extensive buff interactions that make them so dangerous. Troupes have virtually none of this.

What troupes are excellent at is existing on a board with cover. If you play on open boards, don't play harlequins period - but especially don't play troupes. But if you play on open boards I kinda question why you play 40k at all.

On boards with decent terrain troupes have no problem taking and holding the middle of the board. In fact, 11 points for a 4++ with -to wound and easy access to a 6+++ and/or hit modifiers is an extremely points efficient way to hold ground with a unit that your opponent doesn't really want to get in charge range of, but that also isn't so deadly (and therefore expensive) that your opponent won't come into it. Which is what you want them to do.

People have this misconception that if you play quins you should be charging straight up the enemy's grill and that is a sure-fire way to lose. You just don't have the durability for it. The way to win with quins is to take the middle of the board and then use your mobility to hold+hold more every turn while tempting your opponent into an engagement in the middle that they aren't favored on.

I admit I'm not a seasoned player, but... delivering a 12-player unit doesn't seem very complicated imo.

The unit has a 8 + D6 + 8 + D6 (or 6" straight for 1CP) + 2D6 threat range if you cast twilight pathways on them and would get its rerolls to wound via a TM delivered by means of virtuosos of the webway strat. If said TM had player of the light, prince of the light or both, it would reroll charges (with +1 to the roll if both). You can use the same character and technique but put the unit on the webway instead. You can't make them 3++ if you do so... unless you take casualties on overwatch and use isha's weeping

That'd be 60A that hit on 3+ at S5 rerolling to wound at dmg 1. You can give them +1 to wound and +1dmg via strat too. TM would also join the party. DJ with humbling cruelty would prevent the assaulted unit from overwatching and reduce their movement by 2" so that you can use twilit encore on the following turn if you don't kill the unit and don't wrap or enemy has fly to stay in combat.

That unit could be supported by a solitaire or sth if needed too


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That unit is just 216 points approximately.

I normally run my melee quins in transports, but spread all over the table. Turn one my characters jump out of their transport and move forward (normally near the center) and all my other transports, bikes, and voidweaver roll into a single flank. Turn two the troupes jump out of their transports for an 11 inch movement towards their line while their transports rush up to provide a buffer from anything on the other side of the table and to make the initial charge rolls to eat overwatch.

I run with the great harlequin strategem and falling stars, so when I hit that line with the 5 man teams they are ~80 attacks hitting on twos and there's re-rolling ones to hit and all failed wound rolls.

Normally I can clear a whole table side with that hammer. If the opponent applies too much pressure, I'll hop back into my transports and scoot to where they're thinned out and punch there too.

The new death next rules make me a super happy camper. Normally I have 4-5 of them to mitigate deepstrike and to harass things. Making them better at tackling horses of better snipers will make them even better at their jobs.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I normally run my melee quins in transports, but spread all over the table. Turn one my characters jump out of their transport and move forward (normally near the center) and all my other transports, bikes, and voidweaver roll into a single flank. Turn two the troupes jump out of their transports for an 11 inch movement towards their line while their transports rush up to provide a buffer from anything on the other side of the table and to make the initial charge rolls to eat overwatch.

I run with the great harlequin strategem and falling stars, so when I hit that line with the 5 man teams they are ~80 attacks hitting on twos and there's re-rolling ones to hit and all failed wound rolls.

Normally I can clear a whole table side with that hammer. If the opponent applies too much pressure, I'll hop back into my transports and scoot to where they're thinned out and punch there too.

The new death next rules make me a super happy camper. Normally I have 4-5 of them to mitigate deepstrike and to harass things. Making them better at tackling horses of better snipers will make them even better at their jobs.

How are you hitting on twos with your Troupe squads?

I think he meant multiple squads of 5-mans, but I'm not sure where the hitting on 2s comes from either. I mean Ynnari, but then he couldn't use great harlequin nor could he be frozen stars, so that doesn't check out.

Sorry, my phone autocorrected "threes" to "there's".

I still run my masque with last editions force org chart in mind, so three troupes with three troupe masters who are spread around the combat to make sure everyone in an almost 3 foot chunk of table is re-rolling wounds in melee with the great harlequin in the middle.

Also, everyone advances when they leave the transport and normally there is at least one shadowseers that gets shunted up there to help mitigate damage in return. (Normally it's the one who causes negatives to hit with it's powers that gets pathways to get them up there.) So hopefully they give -1 to hit whichever troupe is strongest at the time, and their strongest fighters are at a -1 to hit with my center being harder to wound.

What are people's thoughts on the best warlord traits? Given how starved this army will be for CP, I think Player of Twilight is probably still the best in general, although I can see using Player of Light to set up re-rollable 8 inch charges with a Troupe Master's new Pivotal Role also being extremely useful.

Couple days late on this one, but we posted up our take on the Harlequin update rules here.

Check out the link below if anyone's interested and super excited to see more clowns dancing around the battlefield in the near future!

https://www.grimdarkfilthycasuals.com/harlequins-review-cegorach-gets-the-last-laugh/

sweetbacon wrote:
What are people's thoughts on the best warlord traits? Given how starved this army will be for CP, I think Player of Twilight is probably still the best in general, although I can see using Player of Light to set up re-rollable 8 inch charges with a Troupe Master's new Pivotal Role also being extremely useful.

Depends on your list and you

Attempting long or DSing charges ? Player of the Light. This is great with Prince of Light
Want more CP and a better WL? Player of the Twilight. I like this on my Shadowseer, i'd go with 1CP to keep -1w and take Veil of Illusions.
Want a Super fast tricky HQ? A Foot in the Future. This is really fun with Twilight Fang relic, or even Starmist Raiment

I've always really like Twilight and A Foot in the Future and most likely will stay with either of them.

Player of the Light got a lot less attractive due to the Pivotal Role letting you get the same effect for 1cp. The stacking there seems like a trap to me most of the time. The +1 to charge is only really super useful coming out of DS and quins really aren't set up to do that well anyway. Meanwhile Twilight's CP generation is even more valuable than before, and it was already the best of the CP generation traits. It's good for a reliable 3CP a game, and often significantly more than that. I think it would be very rare that you'd want to take anything else, and if you were going to it would be because you wanted to turn your TM into an assassin, in which case Foot in the Future is just straight-up better. I don't see many situations where you're going to be charging out of deepstrike with a different unit but within 6" of a TM. Though I guess there may be some combos with Virtuosos of the Webway that could make this more attractive, +1 just seems small; if it was +2 that might really open some stuff up.

 wannabmoy wrote:
Couple days late on this one, but we posted up our take on the Harlequin update rules here.

Check out the link below if anyone's interested and super excited to see more clowns dancing around the battlefield in the near future!

https://www.grimdarkfilthycasuals.com/harlequins-review-cegorach-gets-the-last-laugh/

Link is broken.

I agree on the twilight warlord trait. The free cp are useful, and that one reroll to keep your warlord alive can be clutch. Basically giving you a free command point and then letting you get extra.

(Helps that my warlord from last edition was twilight too, I didn't have to change anything!)

 wannabmoy wrote:
Couple days late on this one, but we posted up our take on the Harlequin update rules here.

Check out the link below if anyone's interested and super excited to see more clowns dancing around the battlefield in the near future!

https://www.grimdarkfilthycasuals.com/harlequins-review-cegorach-gets-the-last-laugh/

Great write up and really enjoyed it. One minor quibble is I think it's premature call for toning down any of the new stuff. Yes, the new rules are good and definitely boost the army, but Harlequins weren't exactly setting the meta on fire before and although they're certainly better, I still don't foresee them winning a lot of events, as they still have plenty of bad match ups (just slightly fewer than before).

Some of the stuff probably will be toned down because of its interactions with CWE; I don't think mono quins is suddenly going to become top tier, but CWE is already top-tier and some of this stuff may push them over the top. I wouldn't be surprised if like the overwatch suppression gets nerfed the way jinx did, so it only stops the target from shooting at quins, not at CWE/DE, for example.

Then there's the stuff like the new relic shrieker stacking with itself and with the base weapon/curtainfall, meaning you can stack -6LD just from the relic and another -2 from another DJ, which seems like they just didn't proofread their rules carefully enough. I guarantee you they did not intend to let two DJs stack -8LD on a unit.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see The Curtain Falls limited to once per phase, to stop the "I fight twice, you fight no times, AND I escape" interaction that feels pretty problematic even for 5CP.

I agree that they almost certainly did not intend for the DJ leadership modifiers to stack. The DJ overwatch suppression is fine either way, so I'm not too bothered if they change that.

I don't really see any issue with Curtain Falls because for 5 CP, it's likely only something you can do with one unit, once per game. It's good, but it is the kind of tricky feat that Harlequins need in order to compete in the current meta.

It may turn out to be fine. It just feels like the sort of problematic, unanticipated interaction that has caused broken lists in the past - broviathan relied on a similarly unanticipated way of stacking stratagems to make a unit invulnerable, for example. Obviously they aren't the same - broviathan was really cheap in CP expenditure to make something invincible, whereas this is super expensive - but I am always instinctively wary of super powerful interactions like this one. We've never had a strat that a whole army can use to fight and then escape before being hit back, and we've certainly never had a strat combo that allows you to do that twice in a single fight phase. It's really uncharted territory, and I think we'll have to see how abusive it ends up being.

I'd like to see it in widespread use first before declaring if it's too good. I still think the general CP hungriness of Quins means unless you're using this combo on turn one, you probably won't have enough CP for it, as pre-game CP expenditures can easily reach 5-6 CP now.

Well i'm taking 2 bats and a vanguard, in total thats 14CP. 6 Pre-game CP means i have 8CP left, thats 1 turn for Skyweavers to be super tanky and the rest for melee combos. We are for sure way to CP hungry, so taking Twilight i feel is a must. And a 3rd mono quins Bat isn't worth it, nor is a brigade.

Optional, i only take 2 relics over 3 (meaning my Solitaire doesn't get 1) and i don't take 3 Pivotal + base rules. This will only be 3 pre-game CP.

In the end i think that is what top lists are going to do.

Very cool. What Masques/Relics are you taking? Also, how are you running your Troupes?

I'm considering the below 2k points list for ITC:

SOARING SPITE BATALLION -- 1130pts
TM (caress, fusion pistol); SS (TP, webway dance)
5 naked players; 5 players (4 with fusion pistols); 5 players (4 with fusion pistols and caresses)
2 units of 6 skyweavers (6 with haywire and 5 with glaives)
2 starweavers

FROZEN STARS BATALLION -- 629pts
TM (warlord, player of the light, prince of light -1CP to keep wound rerolls, caress), SS (TP, veil of tears)
12 players (2 with blades, 10 caresses), 12 players (3 with blades, 9 caresses), 5 naked players

MIXED VANGUARD -- 255pts
FS TM with kiss
2 x DJ (cegorach's lament, harvester of torment / humbling cruelty) (dreaming shadow), Solitaire with rose and blitz (midnight sorrow)

Undecided whether the 2nd relic is worth it... probably twilight fang on the FS FM in the vanguard detachment

Thoughts? 2,014pts... will drop a couple weapons or the kiss in the TM if I'm taking the twilight fang or whatever

It's 3 + 5 + 5 + 1 - 1CP (prince of light) - 1CP (additional relic, rose) = 12CP... if going second against certain enemies both units of skyweavers may go on the webway... one or two units of 12 FS players otherwise

I'm for sure taking Fang on a TM, Shadowstone on my WL Shadowseer with Twilight WL trait. I've been and will still be running Soaring spite for most my list then a DJ vanguard. IDK what my 2nd battalion will be now that the new Shadowseer is 9" bubble with -1w and -6" to shooting against you. I might just go all Soaring Spite for aura management and the Vanguard detachment as something else (like Dreaming). Also i might just go Soaring for DJ's too b.c i can move farther and still shoot well. I value speed and placement over everything else. If i have the ability to reposition mid game and hit a flank you was not ready for, i 100% will do that.

Also i might just do a Mix detachment of vanguard something like FS TM/10man Troupe, Dreaming DJ, soaring DJ, Silent Solitaire.

I'm not sure there's much point to a Solitaire without the Rose. I mean I can see not taking the Rose in some specific matchups, but if your general plan is not to take it, I'm not sure taking the Solitaire at all makes a lot of sense. Without the Rose he has less than a 50% chance to kill a T4/5W character with a 4++ even when blitzing (compared to a ~85% chance with the Rose), and at that point, you're paying 100 points for a model that is fast but not actually threatening.

A FS Troupe Master with Twilight Fang might replace the Solitaire in my lists going forward if points are tight and I can only afford one, as he can get close to the same number of attacks that wound most targets easier and with better AP. ideally, I'd take both to have two decent character hunters, though.

sweetbacon wrote:
A FS Troupe Master with Twilight Fang might replace the Solitaire in my lists going forward if points are tight and I can only afford one, as he can get close to the same number of attacks that wound most targets easier and with better AP. ideally, I'd take both to have two decent character hunters, though.

The problem I have with that is that the Troupe Master isn't really a combat monster even with a Relic Weapon. A Solitaire already has that purpose and the Rose makes him that much better. A Troupe Master with a supporting relic would be far more useful.

A TM with the 2 mortal wound pivotal role added and the Fang relic does more damage than a blitzing Solitaire with the Rose against almost every target in the game, even from turn 1, and the disparity only gets worse from there as the turns go higher. The Solitaire comes out slightly ahead against infantry with a 4++ or better until turn 3, when the TM goes ahead. Models with very good FNP might mess with these stats slightly as that has more effect on the TM than the Solitaire, but for 99% of targets in the game, the TM is doing more damage from turn 3 at the latest.

The downside is it costs an extra CP, and the TM lacks the movement and the 3++ of the Solitaire.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

sweetbacon wrote:
A FS Troupe Master with Twilight Fang might replace the Solitaire in my lists going forward if points are tight and I can only afford one, as he can get close to the same number of attacks that wound most targets easier and with better AP. ideally, I'd take both to have two decent character hunters, though.

The problem I have with that is that the Troupe Master isn't really a combat monster even with a Relic Weapon. A Solitaire already has that purpose and the Rose makes him that much better. A Troupe Master with a supporting relic would be far more useful.

I don't know much about harlequins, but I want to learn more about their combinations and lists so I am asking this out of ignorance, but why isn't the troupe master with the new relic blade a combat monster similar to the solitaire? He has good strength, ap and dmg, re rolls wounds and gets more attacks the longer the game goes. Isn't that very similar to the solitaire?

TM with the relic and role is actually better at pure blending, people just haven't done the math yet and figured it out.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I'm not sure there's much point to a Solitaire without the Rose. I mean I can see not taking the Rose in some specific matchups, but if your general plan is not to take it, I'm not sure taking the Solitaire at all makes a lot of sense. Without the Rose he has less than a 50% chance to kill a T4/5W character with a 4++ even when blitzing (compared to a ~85% chance with the Rose), and at that point, you're paying 100 points for a model that is fast but not actually threatening.

He is still a very fast character able to kill small units off of objectives, and even if he can not reliably 1 round a character he still can scare them