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.

If you want to play a solitaire, regardless of how he compares to the troupe master with the new relic blade, would you play him with cegorachs rose or is a combination of suits of hidden knives and his new -1 to hit pivotal role viable? With the -1 to hit stratagem and psychic powers from the shadow seer he could be potentially -4 to hit.
Is that more of a gimmik, or a viable strategy, because I find the idea rather appealing.
Also if you were to do this, I think the 1cp spent to keep blitz along his - 1 pivotal role would be well spent, would it not?

Edit: in this case a troupe master with the new relic blade could be your character killer and the solitaire with the suit could be your horde blender. Or rather the horde blends itself.

Usually more of a gimmick against a good opponent, who's going to make it very difficult for you to deliver your Solitaire into melee with anything they care about dying to the debuff with a big enough -to hit to make it actually dangerous. It basically requires putting all your eggs into a very fragile and gimmicky basket and hoping your opponent lets you do it.

It's really only good against low quality, damage 1 attacks - anything else will kill you pretty fast anyway - and that's exactly the sort of thing your opponent probably isn't going to care much about losing, and that is probably going to kill your solitaire anyway if they really want to.

There are some very niche match-ups where it might make sense, but it isn't something you want to plan around.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Usually more of a gimmick against a good opponent, who's going to make it very difficult for you to deliver your Solitaire into melee with anything they care about dying to the debuff with a big enough -to hit to make it actually dangerous. It basically requires putting all your eggs into a very fragile and gimmicky basket and hoping your opponent lets you do it.

It's really only good against low quality, damage 1 attacks - anything else will kill you pretty fast anyway - and that's exactly the sort of thing your opponent probably isn't going to care much about losing, and that is probably going to kill your solitaire anyway if they really want to.

There are some very niche match-ups where it might make sense, but it isn't something you want to plan around.

Weight of attacks is the way to go though, and the Solitaire having that small investment isn't the worst idea in the world, but it's still meh.

Can't have heroe's path without a solitaire...

yukishiro1 wrote:
Usually more of a gimmick against a good opponent, who's going to make it very difficult for you to deliver your Solitaire into melee with anything they care about dying to the debuff with a big enough -to hit to make it actually dangerous. It basically requires putting all your eggs into a very fragile and gimmicky basket and hoping your opponent lets you do it.

It's really only good against low quality, damage 1 attacks - anything else will kill you pretty fast anyway - and that's exactly the sort of thing your opponent probably isn't going to care much about losing, and that is probably going to kill your solitaire anyway if they really want to.

There are some very niche match-ups where it might make sense, but it isn't something you want to plan around.

I don't know it seems pretty solid against more than a few good units. Against a gunline obviously not so much, but against any kind of elite/semi-elite melee unit it seems like it'd be a pretty a pretty good trade. And the Solitaire is nimble enough that it shouldn't be too hard to dictate what you want to charge. The goonhammer harlies review has a nice breakdown on it. He advocates forgetting about any further negs to hit and just relying on the -1 to hit from his role and an additional -1 from lightning reflexes. Charge in do some damage, then ~50% of your opponents retaliation turns in to mortal wounds. Sure you most likely die but if its against the right kind of target you just significantly traded up for your Solitaire. I'm thinking this works against, possessed, paladins, sang guard, death guard, maybe even opposing shining spears, etc.

eparedes0785 wrote:
Can't have heroe's path without a solitaire...

Which is a fantastic Strat

I'm taking a solitaire every game, period. By far my favourite model in the book. I won't replace Blitz, but may add on depending on opponent. Relics will be optional, with Rose being top choice, although still going to play around with other ones (Domino shroud for example).

Only downside is that I want 4 relics in my list, not 3....going to be some tough choices.

Twilight Fang
Cegorach's Lament
Shadowstone
Cegorach's Rose

really, really tough call

 astro_nomicon wrote:


I don't know it seems pretty solid against more than a few good units. Against a gunline obviously not so much, but against any kind of elite/semi-elite melee unit it seems like it'd be a pretty a pretty good trade. And the Solitaire is nimble enough that it shouldn't be too hard to dictate what you want to charge. The goonhammer harlies review has a nice breakdown on it. He advocates forgetting about any further negs to hit and just relying on the -1 to hit from his role and an additional -1 from lightning reflexes. Charge in do some damage, then ~50% of your opponents retaliation turns in to mortal wounds. Sure you most likely die but if its against the right kind of target you just significantly traded up for your Solitaire. I'm thinking this works against, possessed, paladins, sang guard, death guard, maybe even opposing shining spears, etc.

This is actually a good illustration of why it's not really all that awesome. Take sang guard, for example. Blood angels have easy access to hit rerolls on sang guards - they have the built in bad kind when near a warlord, and any chaplain can give them the good kind. They also have access to a +1 to hit from Astorath, and from quake bolts. They probably won't be able to get quake bolts onto you, but the +1 from Astorath is very possible.

Even without any + to hit, they're still hitting on 5s rerolls, which is a 54% hit rate, with your chance of doing a mortal wound back at around 37% (I just eyeballed this math, it might be off by a few %). Each hit wounds on a 2+ and does 1d3. Taking into account the 3++, assuming each sang guard has 4 attacks, you're taking about 1.2 damage on average from each sang guard, and doing 1.5 mortal wounds back in return. Four models worth of attacks on average kills the solitaire even if he's full health going in, and you've done back 6 mortal wounds, killing 3 of them - though it's more likely only 2 because they probably have the 5+++ banner close, but let's ignore that to give the best realistic scenario. That's not terrible - it's 84 points worth of models you traded your solitaire for, plus one more assuming you get the charge and fight first (solitaire is terrible at killing sang guard because of the 2+ armor save). So you end up trading 2CP, a 98 point solitaire, and a relic for...112 points. And that's really your best-case realistic scenario (you are very unlikely to get at them without hit rerolls). Doesn't seem like a great trade, does it?

We could do the math for other stuff you mentioned, but I suspect it comes out similarly, or maybe even worse.

Basically the tl;dr is if you can get him into a unit without hit rerolls or access to + to hit he can do some work...but there aren't many elite combat units that applies to in 8th. Ironically, other quins are probably some of your best targets.

Its more about Shining spears/Council, SoB (they actually have a lot of melee), and stuff like that. There are more than you would think.

Seer council only gets 2 attacks each (maybe 3 on an objective if they took the list with shining spears too), and can access a + to hit (not usually taken, but obviously it could be if they know what you're planning). Even without it, they're on 32mm bases, so you're unlikely to be able to force them to fight you with more than 2-3 models unless they really mess up their movement phase. At which point you're looking at like 2-3MW from the relic assuming -2 to hit, less if fortune is up, after which they can just fall back and easily pick up your Solitaire with smite and/or shuriken. If I am playing seer council, I am very happy if you want to trade 2CP, your solitaire and a relic for 1 seer council skyrunner, maybe 2 if you're lucky. The thing that scares you about a solitaire with seer council isn't that they'll use it against your council, it's that they'll goon out one of your farseers.

Same basic deal with the spears, except that they also have no defenses in melee, so they're going to be a lot more afraid of the offensive potential of a solitaire than of hitting themselves to death on him.

Against repentia, they'll just hit you with their base profile; they get full rerolls, so they're again hitting you 54% of the time, MWing themselves 37% of the time, wounding on 3s with hits, though only 1 damage. The innate 5++ mitigates a lot of your suit output. They're also cheap as chips - less than 120 points total - so again if worse comes to worst they trade that 117 points for your solitaire, 2CP and the relic...it's not a bad trade usually, especially since repentia are not very good against quins period so they're not going to care that much about throwing them away

I want to like the idea as much as the next guy, and I'm not trying to ruin anyone's fun. But if we are talking competitiveness, it just doesn't get there most of the time.

Having used suit of Knifed in 3 events. I can tell you it works more than you are giving it credit for. Tho i only had a -2 at most (never tried for for and never wanted too), the opponent has to space 2" apart every model in the unit or you are tagging 5+ every time to force them to fight, this includes Shining spears and alike (also they can't re-roll the modifiers don't forget that).

Why did i play with it do much? B.c my character is actively being avoided, i can protect sections of the board from melee threats. No one is going to charge up when a hidden Suit of Knives if near. I used it to harass and it was fun.

I even made a special TM with the Suit (not pained fully yet, its a WIP) https://imgur.com/a/wjkbzO2

Can't reroll modifiers is the old rerolls. New rerolls let you reroll everything. Repentia, chaplain, etc all have new rerolls. And models only need to be spaced 1.01 inch apart to avoid you tagging them with the solitaire; only models within 1 inch of the solitaire or within 1 inch of a model within 1 inch can/must fight. As a matter of geometry, if 32mm models are 1.01 inches apart from every other model, it is not physically possible to tag more than 5 with a 25mm model, and that is only if they are placed in a perfect pentagon and you can place your model exactly in the middle of that pentagon. More likely, you're looking at 3, even if you're charging from point blank range and distance isn't an issue.

But I don't want to argue any more about it. If you're having success that's great, I'm happy for you. My advice to the person who asked is that it's a gimmick, but if you disagree, that's useful information for him to have too. And whether it's a gimmick or not, I don't disagree that it can do a number on someone who doesn't realize what it is and doesn't take the care necessary to mitigate it.

It depends the on wording, re-roll all dice vs re-roll hits/misses. A lot of the re-rolls are still old wording for auras. But yes some of the new units you do need to watch out for that. (Edit: missing a word)

I never run the suit of knives, and only ran the rose once or twice My solitaire will rush towards the center and hold it as a threat/speed bump to keep the enemy at bay while I clear a table quarter, then he rushes in alongside my troupmaster and the rest of them for the cleanup action turns 3+. Letting him reroll 1s to hit and all wounds really makes his blitz ability worthwhile (though honestly the speed boost and already having 8 attacks means I'll probably be taking the -1 to hit from now on).

So when he slams into their line, he is normally backed up by at least 2 TM, normally all 3 shadowseers, around 10-12 troupe players, and a couple bikes and transports. Usually my voidweaver is still bopping around claiming objectives, and now my Death Jesters can effectively target characters or shut down overwatch.

To be honest, the solitaire isn't really a unit you want to take on other heavy hitters or big squads. They're a bully unit. They should be taking down scout teams on objectives, or heavy weapon teams mid-late game once you've pushed their screen back. If it takes down two objective campers and allows the rest of your force time to deal with other threats, it's points well spent.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. You're all right that it's probably a bit premature to say they need to be toned down.

So far in our playtesting, The Curtain Falls is just so dominant.

Harlequins are in such a great position right now, and the soup list I've been playtesting has been neigh unstoppable (so far).

I fully expect armies to tech against a lot of the new goodies we got as best they can. Super cool to see how the meta shifts based on these updates.

 wannabmoy wrote:
Thanks for the feedback everyone. You're all right that it's probably a bit premature to say they need to be toned down.

So far in our playtesting, The Curtain Falls is just so dominant.

Harlequins are in such a great position right now, and the soup list I've been playtesting has been neigh unstoppable (so far).

I fully expect armies to tech against a lot of the new goodies we got as best they can. Super cool to see how the meta shifts based on these updates.

I've really been enjoying GFDC's content. You guys have really been stepping it up lately which is much needed during quarantine. Any chance you'll post some written or video batreps to document how you've been doing with your new Harlequins so far?

Reading a few pages back - wait, what? Troupes aren't killy anymore? Can someone fill me in? Been out of the loop.

karandrasss wrote:
Reading a few pages back - wait, what? Troupes aren't killy anymore? Can someone fill me in? Been out of the loop.

They are even more killy, idk who said they aren't, they got better stratagems now. +1D, move after melee (and able to melee again) etc..

 Amishprn86 wrote:

karandrasss wrote:
Reading a few pages back - wait, what? Troupes aren't killy anymore? Can someone fill me in? Been out of the loop.

They are even more killy, idk who said they aren't, they got better stratagems now. +1D, move after melee (and able to melee again) etc..

A few pages back, people saying they are comparable to Wyches, valued more for holding objectives rather than killing etc. Always thought they were infantry blenders.

Troupes really aren't killy, not properly so. They're mid-tier combat infantry, and they perform like it. They're not the sort of unit that will wipe pretty much whatever it collides with, the way, say, repentia, sanguinary guards, death company, buffed possessed, etc etc will. In particular, troupes struggle against T4, 2W, 3+ save models...which, as we all know, is a big chunk of the game right now. The basic problem is troupes have no efficient weapons for killing 2W models. If kisses were flat D2 it would change things significantly, but they aren't, and the result is that they are actually the worst weapon of all at killing primaris, which is just weird. Troupes also struggle badly against T8 unless armed with caresses and TM wound rerolls, which is usually not so much of an issue, but is another contrast with higher-tier combat units.

The other way they come up a bit short compared to dedicated combat infantry is that they suffer from not having good access to hit rerolls or modifiers. Almost all dedicated combat infantry either gets hits rerolls or adds at least +1 to hit, and troupes get neither (great harlequin is terrible, it doesn't count). Hitting only 66% of your attacks as opposed to well over 80% for most top-tier combat units is a huge loss of damage.

All of this is totally fine - troupes have a ton of other things going for them. The new stratagems ramp this up even further; making them a real contender for best troops choice in the game, IMO. Games of 40k aren't won by killing stuff, and troupes do the things that do win you games better than almost anything else.



Now the +1D stratagem does allow you to make one troupe unit a turn good at killing 2W models, albeit at a steep CP cost.

I see this "40k is a game of movement" everywhere recently, but what are you all playing? ITC? Unfortunately my meta is still mostly in the dark ages of Eternal War.

I disagree with troupes struggling to kill T4 2W 3+ models... It's quite the opposite in fact. With frozen stars and caresses, each have 5A that wound on 3+ at AP -2.

Let's say you are running a 12 player unit and you buy caresses for 10 of them. We'll ignore the 2 players with swords to simplify the calculations... that's 50A hitting on 3's and wounding on 3's... and most likely rerolling wounds... that's about 20 wounds on average... or 10 primaris SM... without even using any of the strats.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes, they can't hit better than on 3's... and I don't understand what the big deal is there... they have 5A each without strats, powers or whatever wadnot... just a subfaction... at 18 points a model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
With regards to the solitaire and the suit, I personally don't think it's worth it.

A 10-man frozen stars squad with every man with caresses kills slightly over 7 primaris average, or 9.5 with reroll wounds, assuming they have no invuln or FNP. Meanwhile, 9 repentia, which cost 60 points less, kill 12 primaris even with zero buffs - with the passives they typically have, they kill an absolutely absurd 23 primaris. Making them more than twice as deadly as troupes. Repentia are extreme, but you get similar results for other top-tier combat units.

That same 10-man primaris intercessor squad, despite not being an assault-focused squad, kills virtually the same number of troupes as the troupes kill of it, if it fights first (6.89 vs 7.11), even with zero buffs and no chapter trait (i.e. not apples to apples). Blood angels and space wolf intercessors trade better than frozen stars troupes armed with caresses, even if they aren't in assault doctrine, and even if they have absolutely zero buffs aside from their chapter tactic. And cost less points, and have much better ranged shooting.

It's not that troupes are bad at killing stuff. They aren't. They're pretty good at killing stuff. They just aren't a top-tier combat unit - which, again, is fine.

yukishiro1 wrote:
A 10-man frozen stars squad with every man with caresses kills slightly over 7 primaris average, or 9.5 with reroll wounds, assuming they have no invuln or FNP. Meanwhile, 9 repentia, which cost 60 points less, kill 12 primaris even with zero buffs - with the passives they typically have, they kill an absolutely absurd 23 primaris. Making them more than twice as deadly as troupes. Repentia are extreme, but you get similar results for other top-tier combat units.

That same 10-man primaris intercessor squad, despite not being an assault-focused squad, kills virtually the same number of troupes as the troupes kill of it, if it fights first (6.89 vs 7.11), even with zero buffs and no chapter trait (i.e. not apples to apples). Blood angels and space wolf intercessors trade better than frozen stars troupes armed with caresses, even if they aren't in assault doctrine, and even if they have absolutely zero buffs aside from their chapter tactic. And cost less points, and have much better ranged shooting.

It's not that troupes are bad at killing stuff. They aren't. They're pretty good at killing stuff. They just aren't a top-tier combat unit - which, again, is fine.

True they are not A tier at damage, but with Invuls, advance and charge, flip belts, etc.. they do things that those other units can not.

Undoubtedly. And that's where their value is.

Troupes are B-tier combat units, but they're A or arguably even S-tier when it comes to board control and utility.

That's also why you never see the 10 or 12 man unit with everyone equipped with weapons in competitive lists. If you take a 12 or 10 man it's for board control, so you take them with 3-6 weapons per squad, not 10-12.

I'm not disputing whether they are tier A, B, etc. I'm disputing that they struggle to kill primaris SM or similar units. Also, you have to compare alike things, you explained how many troupes the intercessors would kill but did not say how many repentia they would.

9th edition killed my White Dwarf excitement anyway. Back to waiting...maybe the killer clowns are killer in 9th.

karandrasss wrote:
9th edition killed my White Dwarf excitement anyway. Back to waiting...maybe the killer clowns are killer in 9th.

PA rules are being used in 9th.

eparedes0785 wrote:
I'm not disputing whether they are tier A, B, etc. I'm disputing that they struggle to kill primaris SM or similar units. Also, you have to compare alike things, you explained how many troupes the intercessors would kill but did not say how many repentia they would.

I don't think how many repentia intercessors kill is all that directly relevant, but FWIW, on base profile they kill 7.59; with the passives they usually have, it goes down to 4.59, compared to 5.17 for troupes with their usual passive -1 to wound. They're both not durable in combat. The difference is that repentia, while costing substantially less, will obliterate anything they charge, whereas troupes will not.

I mean maybe this is just a matter of terminology. When I say they struggle, I don't mean they find it objectively difficult to kill primaris, I mean they do not do so efficiently.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

karandrasss wrote:
9th edition killed my White Dwarf excitement anyway. Back to waiting...maybe the killer clowns are killer in 9th.

PA rules are being used in 9th.

Yes but we don't know how much our strategies will change, what with vehicles now shooting in combat yet allegedly a better assault phase.